Volume Two—Chapter One.
“Is it Peace or War? Better War.”
George Payne rode slowly away from the village of Komgha.
The air was warm and balmy, for the time of the southern winter was past, and on this September day not even the lightest of feathery clouds flecked the sky above the sunny plains of British Kaffraria. Now and again on the brow of one of the rolling eminences, which, smooth grassy, and round, alternated with mimosa-dotted vales, the rider might feel a puff of fresh air from the bine Indian Ocean thirty miles away, and which he was leaving further and further behind him with every tread of his steed. On his left front rose the round tops of the Kabousie hills, while beyond them a ridge of wooded heights slept in the golden haze of the early afternoon.
But he had little thought to spare for beauties of scenery, had this man, as he mechanically urged on his steed—a compact, well-stepping roadster—now at a long easy canter, now subsiding into a fast walk; for all his reflections were at that moment concentrated on the leading question of the day, a question which for weeks past had been in the mind of every dweller on that restless line of frontier, a question which to them was fraught with weighty apprehension—Peace or War?
And this topic, which was in everybody’s month, had it any foundation to rest upon, or was it merely a recurrence of one of those periodical scares which, with more or less reason, had of late years seriously disturbed the border districts? Ministers and legislators might, from their places in the Assembly, deny all grounds for it; merchants and snug citizens of the western capital might deride it; the pseudo-philanthropic party, likewise at safe distance, might decry it as a libel upon and a plot against the native population, to despoil them of their lands, and what not. Yet Cape Town was many hundred miles from the unprotected border, and it is so very easy at a safe distance to ridicule the apprehensions of those to whom the fulfilment of their fears would mean ruin and death. For ignore it as some would, the fact remained that a cloud, at first no bigger than a man’s hand, but already of sufficiently alarming proportions, was gathering beyond the Kei, to roll on and on till it should overwhelm all within reach—unless stopped in time, that is. And such check the country’s rulers apparently deemed it their special mission not to facilitate.
This, then, was the topic whereon George Payne’s thoughts were fixed as he rode over those grassy Kaffrarian plains in the direction of his home; and some additional rumours which he had heard that morning, had gone far towards seriously disquieting him.
He was a broad-shouldered, strongly-built man, about five feet ten in his shoes, though a slight stoop made him look shorter. He had a quiet, sensible face, and was sparing and deliberate of speech; this on first acquaintance might lead one to pronounce him “slow,” were it not for an occasional satiric burst, accompanied by a twinkle in the keen grey eyes, which alone would suffice to show that he was very far from being a fool. And, though quiet and reserved on first acquaintance, he had a sunny geniality of manner which was very taking—in fact, was as good-natured a fellow as ever lived. He was thirty-six years of age, and of colonial birth; and though he had made a couple of visits to the mother country he seldom spoke of it. When he did, his audience, who had settled in its own mind that he had never been out of the colony, would be mightily taken aback by his shrewd insight into men and things.