“Impossible. You must not think of coming up here at present. Country very unsettled. May be trouble with the natives at any time.”
That was ridiculous, of course. If his wife could be up there, why couldn’t I? And if he couldn’t fetch me, well, it was quite simple to buy a ticket for the coach journey and go up by myself. There was nothing monstrous in that! What did it matter about the country being unsettled if one had a revolver and was an excellent shot?
Certainly twenty pounds was an amazing price for a coach ticket. But the coach agent never said a word about its being a dangerous journey, or tried to dissuade me in any way. On the contrary he told me that it was a beautiful country, and that he was sure I should have a very agreeable time. That was something for my twenty pounds.
When I showed the ticket to Madame von Stohl she expostulated more bitterly than ever, and said she should cable to Aunt Betty, failing that, to Mr Rhodes, the Governor of Natal, Dr Jameson, and the Bishop of Grahamstown. On my suggestion that the King of Timbuctoo might also be a good man to consult she turned dark blue. Afterwards she made a gesture like the washing of hands and said that I might go my ways, for which I was very much obliged to her. And I did go them two days later behind eight prancing mules, in company with a cheerful telegraphist for Tuli, and a missionary who travelled in dancing pumps and a mackintosh. Since then the magnificent red four-wheeled coach we had set out in had been changed for “cart, carriage, wheel-barrow, and donkey-cart”; drawn sometimes by mules, sometimes by oxen; driven by men sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes yellow, but always profane.
At Tuli we had shed the telegraphist, with regret, for he was a merry and ingenious soul, full of plots for the commissariat and the general comfort. At Palapchwe the missionary got off to call on Khama, the King of the Bechuanas, who likes missionaries, though not to eat. The poor man was minus his dancing pumps, having left them unwillingly in a mud-hole where the cart had been stuck for several hours and we had been obliged to flee for our lives from a horde of mosquitoes as large as quail.
From Palapchwe I had travelled alone, but always in the care of reliable drivers, and wherever there were telegraph stations I found that Dick, (who had come round, once he knew I was well en route) had wired to people to meet me and do all they could for me, and I had experienced nothing but kindness and hospitality from the settlers, and storekeepers and the officers at the police camps. On the third day out from Palapchwe, however, my good driver had broken his arm, and been hastily replaced by a man whom the coach agent did not know so well but hoped would be reliable. This was my friend of the oystery eyes who so vociferously bellowed—Hirrrr... rrr... rrie-yoh doppers!... Slaagte eiseltjies!
Night was on us at last. The pace of the mules grew slacker and slacker: they were reaching the end of their run, and obviously the end of their endurance. The rush of water could be plainly heard on the still air, and close ahead loomed the denser, taller bush that on the veldt invariably outlines the banks of a river.
I began to think rather wistfully of the little tin hotel or thatched store I knew must be near, where we would outspan for the night. The travellers’ bedrooms in such “hotels” were the most amazing and extraordinary places I had ever met, but they were nevertheless an improvement on my present confined quarters. I should at least be able to stretch my cramped limbs, and there would be lights and perhaps a cup of tea, and hot water to wash off the suffocating dust. These things had never yet failed me at the various halting places, and there was nearly always a woman of some kind to do her best for me.
The driver presently got down from his seat, lighted a lantern, and going to the head of the team began to guide his tired mules along the broken road. This was now little more than a wide foot-path, waggon-rutted and holed-out by the hoofs of the beasts of burden that had gone before. The stumps of trees chopped down by the axes of the Pioneers were still green and sappy in the track, and the wheels of the cart jarred against rocks that traffic had not worn down, and crushed through the houses of white ants who had not yet acquired the wisdom to build elsewhere than on the road leading to the country of Cecil Rhodes.