Touching these same relics, which have proved undoubtedly to have once belonged to Prince Maurice of the Rhine, they now adorn the collection of a great personage, and are greatly treasured.
As for the descent of poor Mapana—whether she and her forefathers truly sprang, as she claimed, from Prince Maurice himself—that is a mystery dead with her dead self, never to be clearly explained on this side the dark portals.
Chapter Eight.
The Tapinyani Concession.
At the hour of noon the straggling main street of Vryburg, the village capital of British Bechuanaland, lay bare and shadeless beneath the merciless glare of a February sun. The few straggling saplings in front of the corrugated-iron shanty known as the Criterion Hotel, and a forlorn blue gum-tree here and there in other parts of the place, served but to accentuate the utter nakedness and lack of shade. Notwithstanding the sun’s fierce assault, the air was crisp and nimble, for the plains here lie high—nearly four thousand feet above sea-level. There had been recent rain, and the sea of grass stretching everywhere beyond the village had now assumed a garb of fresh green in lieu of the wearisome pall of pale yellow which for months had masked the red soil. Two Boer horses stood with drooping heads tarrying patiently for their masters, now shopping inside a store on either side of the broad street; and a span of oxen lying and standing on the left hand, waiting for a load to the wagon behind them, were the only indications of life in the centre of the Bechuanaland capital. Beyond and behind these, however, north and south, the two hotels—canteens one might rather call them—at either end of the street showed, by noisy laughter and a gentle flow of humanity, that there the place was alive, and, as was its wont, cheerful.
The click of billiard balls from either inn gave further tone to the somewhat scant air of civilisation.
Lounging in a corner of the Criterion bar were two men equipped in veldt dress of cord breeches and coats, pigskin gaiters, brown boots, spurs, flannel shirts, and broad-brimmed felt hats. They were youngish men—both on the better side of thirty—and looked bronzed, full of health, and hard as nails. Both had come out to the country with Methuen’s Horse, and, after serving in Warren’s expedition, had drifted into the Bechuanaland Border Police, from which they had some time since retired. The elder, darker and taller, Hume Wheler, after a fairly successful public school and university career, and a short and briefless period at the Bar, had found the active and open-air life of the South African interior far more to his liking than two years of weary expectancy in gloomy chambers. In reality a man of action, the languid and somewhat cynical air which he affected in times of quiet greatly belied him. His friend, Joe Granton, shorter and more strongly knit than his fellow, wore habitually a far more cheerful aspect. His broad, bright countenance, clear blue eyes, fair hair and moustache, and transparent openness, combined to render him quickly welcome wherever he appeared. Joe had migrated to South Africa after five years’ experience of a City office. London-bred though he was, his yearnings were irresistibly athletic; and, after mastering the early troubles of horsemanship, he had settled down to veldt life, with its roughs and tumbles, with a zest that never faded.