Hammond dressing leisurely in his hut looked out through his open door and the beauty and promise of the day seemed to take him by the throat, for he turned away from it with a face darkened and convulsed.
“God! What a day!” he groaned as a man might groan who has had a knife jabbed into him. For it is thus that Nature hunts and hurts those who loving her are yet a law unto themselves. Since he had lost Diane, all beautiful things struck at him with wounding, hurtful hands.
He had a sudden longing to let work go to the deuce for that day, to take horse and his desolate heart away to some lonely wild place where he could be absolutely alone, unobliged to speak or be spoken to by any; but he knew that it was impossible to think of such a thing. Girder and he were the only white men in the camp, and he could not leave all the work to Girder. The Mine Manager had been laid low by fever, and the sub-manager had taken the Cape cart and driven off with him the night before to Salisbury Hospital. As for Carr, he had been away on business for some days in the Lomagundi district.
It behoved Hammond to get his breakfast over and start for the native compound. There was a matter of three hundred boys or so to round up and hustle to their labours down the shaft. He threw a glance round for his boots, a special pair he kept for negotiating the wet sloppy clay at the bottom of the mine, and, seeing them nowhere, whistled for his body servant.
“My mine boots, Pongo,” he jerked in the vernacular at the sleek-eyed Mashona who answered his signal. It transpired that the boots had been forgotten and were still in the saddle-hut covered with the dust and mud of yesterday! After receiving Hammond’s comments on the subject, Pongo disappeared in a hurry to fulfil his neglected task.
“And tell Candle to rustle with my breakfast,” roared Pongo’s lord like a lion in pain, and Candle at the sound did not need telling, but rustled to such good effect that in five minutes breakfast stood steaming on the rough wooden table that was pitched under a tree in the middle of the clearing. Girder very spick and span in white moleskins emerged from another hut, and Hammond, dressed all but his boots, and impatient of waiting, thrust his feet into a pair of silk slippers sent him at Christmas by his sister (and brought out by accident to the camp) and strolled out to join his friend at the table.
The three partners had been in camp for nearly six weeks. After that night on the Gymkhana Ground, Salisbury had no further hold for Hammond and he left the next morning, accompanied by Carr, grave and unquestioning, and followed a day or two later by Girder. He had never opened his lips on the subject of his changed plans, and he did not need to. Carr knew that the trouble was deep, and guessed the cause. Later, Girder brought the news of the broken engagement as briefly announced by Jack Heywood with whom Hammond had encompassed a short interview before leaving.
With the exception of a remark or two on the subject of the storm during the night, the two men took their breakfast in silence. Girder was at no time a talkative fellow, and, of late, Hammond’s mood seldom invited gaiety. This morning he had not yet recovered from the savage misery that had smitten him in his hut, and still preoccupied was not his usual observant self, or he would have noticed something unnatural in the atmosphere of the camp.
About three hundred yards off from where they were sitting, a construction of heavy beams forming a rough hauling gear marked the mine’s mouth, with the power-house and a number of small shanties grouped beside it. Beyond, and almost hidden by this group of buildings was the kraal or compound occupied by the natives who worked the mine. It was merely the usual collection of fifty or more rough dagga huts with thatched roofs drooping almost to the ground and lop-sided like a lot of old battered straw hats, surrounded by a high dagga wall; and from it came the usual morning sound peculiar to Kaffir kraals—a low humming sing-song of voices, with an occasional tap or boom on a vessel of metal or skin. What Hammond should have noticed and did not, was that his natives were humming a war-song—one of those monotonous chants, flat and unmusical, yet full of some hidden power to stir the blood of a savage to dreams of reeking assegai and the crashing thud of knobkerry upon skull. The few “boys” loitering among the white men’s huts, all personal servants, cast furtive glances tinged with surprise at the indifferent faces of the white men. Certainly Inkos Girder was but a new hand—only a year or two in Africa; but Inkos Hammond was an induna (Chief; captain) who knew all things, and had fought in many Kaffir wars! Clk! Surely he must hear that song in the kraal and know its meaning!
Hammond indeed would probably have waked in a moment to a sense of something wrong, but, as it happened, his attention was suddenly averted by the sight of a man on horseback tearing full-tilt towards the camp.