“Well, we shan’t meet in the next world yet, my friends,” remarked Hicks, with a laugh, referring to the last God-speed hurled after them as they began their perilous crossing. Then, leading their horses, they turned towards the roadside inn, which lay a couple of hundred yards from the river bank, and whose landlord, by reason of the presence of a number of men in a state of enforced idleness, was driving a roaring trade. The inn, or “hotel” as it was usually called, was, this afternoon, in a state of exceeding liveliness, for it was full of transport-riders, making merry—one or two of them, indeed, decidedly “cut,” and in that condition affording huge entertainment to the rest. Ordinarily a sober class of men, they were now indulging through sheer ennui, being driven, as one of them expressed it, “to get on the spree in self-defence,” and to keep their spirits up. So the place rang with the boisterous mirth of many jovial souls, and the air was heavy with the fumes of grog and Boer tobacco which not all the open windows and the door sufficed to carry off. Hicks started, as a dog and an empty whisky-bottle shot past his legs at the same time in the doorway.
“Beg pardon, mate,” cried a giant in corduroy, from across the room, not moving from his place on a dingy sofa, where he sat wedged in among other boon companions. “Sims here bet me I couldn’t hit that Kafir cur on the side of the ear, the loser to stand drinks all round.”
“And, by jingo, you’ve lost,” rejoined Hicks, good-humouredly, “so we claim to cut in to the penalty.”
“Right you are,” cried the other, with a jolly laugh. “What’s it to be—‘French’—Whisky? All right. Here, Sims, whisky and soda for these gentlemen here; Hennessy for me,” and then followed much discussion and questioning among the rest as to what they would take, one rather surly fellow coming near to having his head punched for curtly declining to benefit by the general “treat.”
The hotel-keeper, a thin, wiry-looking man, with grey whiskers and a sharp face, now came forward.
“Where might you be from?” he began. “Want to off-saddle? You see I’m pretty busy just now,” he went on, as if apologising for the delay.
“We might be from the bottom of the river, thanks to this fellow, and we don’t want to off-saddle, because we have,” growled Thorman. He was determined, characteristically, to make the worst of the situation, and resented having been made a fool of, as he phrased it, by Hicks.
“Why, it can’t be that you’ve come across the river?” cried the landlord in amazement.
“The devil it can’t! We have, though, unless we’ve gone down it and got into hell,” fiercely replied the other, with a contemptuous glance around; but the sulky rejoinder was received with a loud laugh by the boisterous but good-natured crew as a capital joke.
“Come through the river?” exclaimed a rough-looking fellow sitting close by. “Here, Mister, you and your friend must have a drink with me. What’s it to be?”