He lit his pipe by instinct, and was lost in veldt and kloof among the big game until the strange glamour of the chase, from which no man is free, was upon him, and he was soon sitting with his uncle’s favourite rifle in his hands, examining its rich brown barrels, and the polished stock of almost black walnut, bound about the hand-grip with the skin of a puff-adder. He brought the butt to his shoulders, his cheek against the stock, and began sighting at small objects on the wall. The gun was heavy, but he had not been at Oxford for two years for nothing, and his muscles were those of an athlete.
He rose up to replace the gun tenderly in its rack, and then, going to his uncle’s desk, took out the pocket-book—a much-worn leather case, bound round with a length of braided buckskin.
Folded up in an inner pocket was a frayed piece of paper. This he carefully spread out on an open book, and, with a faint smile about his lips, carefully examined the roughly-drawn outlines of river and mountains. This was not the first time he had seen the sketch. His uncle had, on his last visit, with much gravity, taken the paper from its hiding-place, and had told the story connected with it—a story which had impressed the young undergraduate, chiefly on account of the moving adventures related, the real heart of the thing taking but an insignificant place in his thoughts.
Yet he vividly remembered how the old hunter, usually so cool, had worked himself into a pitch of excitement, and how, placing his withered finger on one spot, he had, sinking his voice to a whisper, said impressively:
“There, my lad, is your fortune. Your fortune; the fortunes of a hundred men.”
What was the story? Was there a fortune there, or had his uncle been, like many a lonely wanderer, the victim of a hallucination? He pored over the map, and in imagination listened again to the slow, grave words of the old hunter, whose eyes had flashed under the glow recalled by the memory of that expedition. His uncle had struck north through the Transvaal, and after crossing the Crocodile, had turned to the east for an unknown land, whence rumours had come of great herds of elephants. Entering a bush country too thick for the waggon to continue, he had gone on afoot with a score of boys for a big vlei, where there was, indeed, a happy hunting-ground. There, after bagging some fine tusks, he had heard from an old black of a strange rock to the west, which shone bright in the sun, and had struggled to reach the spot. A week he spent amid the tangle of reeds about the river, and in the gorges of a wild and lofty chain of mountains; and then, one day, in the early morning, he had, from the Place of the Eye in a singular rocky profile of a human face, seen shine out, from the great plain below, a blaze of light which glowed for the space of an hour while the rays were level, and then went out. He had seen the Golden Rock, the shining stone of the natives, the eye of the morning, the place of bloodshed, as the old man related, and he marked the spot where he had stood, for he could go no further then. Several days he had spent returning to the huts at the vlei, where he listened much to the old man, hearing more about the rock, and of the glistening ornaments that were made from it whenever a new chief arose. He learnt about the tribe who lived at the feet of the mountains and in the great forests, and he planned how he would reach the rock, when news came that his waggon had been burnt by the natives, and the next day he himself was attacked. Escaping to the river, where he lurked in the reeds, he at last fashioned a hollow tree to his purpose, and floated down the Limpopo, enduring twenty-five days of fearful suffering before he reached the month, where he was picked up by a Portuguese trader and landed at Delagoa Bay. In that trip he had lost everything—waggon, oxen, ivory, skins and stores, and before he could plan another expedition to the mysterious rock he felt he had entered the shadows, and the craving for the home of his forefathers would not be denied.
“My lad, that is your fortune. I have seen it, and you must find it. Will you promise?”
“Yes, uncle, I promise,” Frank had said, laughing at what he thought was a joke.
“That’s all right,” the old hunter had replied. “When a Hume makes a promise he means to keep it—or die.”
Frank now remembered those words and all they implied, and they spoke to him now with greater force than when he had heard them.