“Oh, here you are, Edala! Shall we start? I feel ever so much refreshed now. But you, child—have you had some sleep?”
“Yes—no,” was the half-absent reply. “Start? Yes, as soon as you’re ready. Wait though. I’ll go and get some supplies for the way. Later on you’ll find it no joke walking thirteen miles across the veldt on nothing but air.”
She was all material and practical again now. In a marvellously short space of time she returned with a well packed wallet stored with provisions.
“You sling this on,” handing the other a vulcanite water bottle. “I’ll carry the skoff—and the gun. It’s a pity you couldn’t learn to shoot, Evelyn, or you might have carried another. As it is we’ll hide the other two—inside the piano. No Kafir would think of looking for them there.”
This was done, then having carefully extinguished the lights and being well wrapped up, for the nights were fresh; and in dark attire, for safety’s sake, they went forth.
“I wonder if we shall ever see the old house again,” said Edala bitterly. “It’ll probably be burned to the ground, and all father’s treasured books,”—she added, with the catch of a sob. “These brutes—who have known you all your life, and then even they fall away from you! They’ll stick at nothing.”
There was silence then as they started upon their long tramp. The bodies of the poor dogs lay where they had been slain, plainly outlined under the cold moon, whose light glared down too upon that other mangled human relic, which, fortunately they could not see. High in the air invisible plover wheeled and whistled, and down in the blackness of the kloofs, right across their way, the answering bay of hunting jackals, and the deeper voice of the striped hyena, echoed eerily upon the night. Evelyn shuddered.
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Edala. “Nothing to be afraid of there—quite the contrary. It means that our way is clear, or no animal would be kicking up all that row. That’s just what we want. Hallo—here’s our friend back again,” she broke off, as a trample of hoofs, and a quick shrill bellow, told that the bull had returned. Again Evelyn shuddered.
“Will he attack us?” she said.
“I hope not, because this time I shall have to shoot. A charge of Treble A. at ten yards’ll split even his tough skull. But the last thing I want to do is to loose off a shot at all. By the way, that’s old Blue Hump. He must have got cut off from the herd when they drove it off—or cleared on his own. He’s a vicious old brute, anyway.”