After breakfast they saddled up the horses, and Dawes having given Sintoba some final instructions, they started. The ride was a pleasant enough one, though somewhat hot. Their way lay mostly at the bottom of a long winding valley with great bush-clad slopes shooting up on either hand, and the sunny air was alive with the piping whistle of spreuws and the cooing of innumerable ringdoves.
“There’s the house,” said Dawes, as a curl of blue smoke rose from the bush-clad hillside about a mile ahead. “And—there’s Kingsland himself,” he added, as a shout from a little way off their road drew their attention to a horseman who was riding towards them.
“Hallo, John Dawes!” cried the latter, as he joined them. “Where have you dropped from now—and who have you got with you? Why, it’s young Ridgeley. Well, Ridgeley, I’m glad to see you, my boy. What have you been doing with yourself all this time? By-the-by, didn’t you get my letter?”
“Letter? No,” echoed Gerard, in some astonishment.
“Why, I wrote to you at Anstey’s about a fortnight ago. Found out you were there through the papers. That affair with the Zulu and the Umgeni Fall went the round of the papers. Didn’t you see it?”
“No,” answered Gerard, still lost in astonishment. “I’m very sorry. I don’t know what you must have thought of me, Mr Kingsland, but—I never had that letter. It must have come after I left, and—the fact is, Anstey and I didn’t part on very good terms.”
“So? The paragraph said you were in his employ. Couldn’t you get on with him, or wasn’t the work to your taste?”
“Anstey swindled him out of every shilling he had,” put in Dawes, seeing Gerard hesitate and look a trifle embarrassed. “Biggest blackguard in this colony, is Anstey.”
“So?” said Mr Kingsland again. “Well, we must hear all about your experiences by-and-by, Ridgeley. Here we are at the house now—and here’s my little housekeeper come to see who I’m bringing home to dinner,” he added lovingly, as the figure of a girl appeared at the door and came down the steps to meet them. “Ridgeley, this is my daughter May,” he went on, when they had dismounted. “May, you’ve heard me talk of this young man—we were shipmates on board the Amatikulu. Why, what’s the matter?”
For Gerard was staring in astonishment, and the girl’s blue eyes were opening wide with the same emotion, while a slight colour came into her face. And in those blue eyes Gerard recognised the identical pair which had beamed approval on the deft manner in which he had reduced the odds against the sorely beset Zulu.