The prize tent was at the farther end of the enclosure and facing the Ehlatini ridge, towards which the spectators’ backs were, by the position, of necessity turned. But Lamont, as he manoeuvred his prisoner on to the fringe of the crowd, took care that his was not. He noticed, moreover, a thread of smoke arising from the summit of the ridge. Well, there was nothing very extraordinary about that—or—there might have been.
“Throw up thy cap, Qubani,” he said pleasantly, as another cheer broke forth and some hats were thrown in the air. “Throw up thy cap, and rejoice with us. Thy white cap.”
The witch-doctor dared not refuse. With a broad grin, as though he were entering into the fun of the thing, he threw into the air—the white signal.
Again, and again, every time the cheering broke forth, Lamont banteringly bade him throw it higher, promising much tywala when the proceedings were over, till finally many of the spectators turned their attention to him and laughed like anything, cheering him. And one of them remarked that it was worth coming for alone, just to see the old boy flinging up his cap and hooraying like a white man and a brother.
They little knew, those light-hearted ones, that but for one man’s nerve and presence of mind the red signal would have gone up, and then—
Chapter Thirteen.
On Ehlatini.
When Clare Vidal awoke on the morning after the race meeting, and her thoughts went back to some of the events and incidents of that sporting and festive gathering, she was fain to own herself sorely puzzled: and those events and incidents, it may as well be said, comprised the extraordinary behaviour of Lamont. He had deliberately snubbed her. He had been especially favoured in being singled out and asked to help her—and, incidentally, her sister—and had, lamely, but decidedly refused. Refused! Why, not a man there present but would have sprung to comply with such a request—such a command—as she laughingly recalled how on their first arrival in the country, by the Umtali route at the close of the war of occupation, she had been christened ‘The Queen of the Laager,’ when a passing scare had rendered it advisable to laager up. Yet this one had refused—refused her! Well, what then? He was simply a morose, unmannerly misogynistic brute! No. She could not look upon it in this light at all.