They reached the cart again. Peetsi, with beaming face, exclaimed in smooth Bechuana at the kori, and fastened the great bird up at the back of the cart, under the shade of the hood. Then they resumed their journey. Half an hour farther on, Mr. Blakeney got down from the cart, shot-gun in hand this time. He had noticed a koorhaan, one of the lesser bustards, go down at a certain spot in the veldt on the left-hand side of the road. In approaching the place where the bird lay concealed, he executed a circling movement. Smaller and smaller became the circle, and then, suddenly, without a cry of warning, a biggish bird flushed from the long grass and flew off. In an instant the sportsman's gun was at his shoulder. Then came the crisp report of a Schultz cartridge, and the bird instantly fell to the shot. Mr. Blakeney walked forward to pick it up. As he did so a second bird, the hen, rose almost from under his feet. Giving her twenty-five yards law, again the gunner pulled the trigger, and the second game-bird hit the earth. It was a pretty scene--the wide yellow plain; the gunner standing knee deep in grass; the stricken bird, outlined clear against the hot sky. Giving the reins to Peetsi once more, Guy sprang out of the cart and ran to meet his uncle.
"Well, that was a pretty bit of shooting, uncle!" he cried joyfully. "I'm glad I saw it. I shall know what to do when I see a koorhaan go down and squat as that one did."
"That's a blue-necked koorhaan," answered his uncle; "one of our most beautiful bustards. Look at its lovely colouring and plumage--the bright rufous back, marked with black; the bluish tinge on the neck; and the tints, rufous, ash-colour, white and black, of the head and neck. And how splendidly the black wing feathers and the white underparts contrast with the rest of the plumage."
Guy took the two birds, which were each about the size of a blackcock, and walked with his uncle back to the cart. They drove on now, with a couple more outspans to rest the horses, until at length, turning a corner of some bush, Mr. Blakeney suddenly pointed with his whip and said, "There's Bamborough!"
Guy looked, and saw at the top of a gentle slope, which rose above a well-bushed river valley, a long, low, square-built house, having a raised veranda, or stoep as it is called in South Africa, running all round it. In a mile they had crossed the dry river-bed, ascended the slope, and driven up to the place. It was just upon two o'clock. Mrs. Blakeney, a pleasant, comely-looking matron, came out of the house, and greeted her nephew so soon as he descended. She had not seen him since he was a small child.
"Of course, I should not have known you, Guy," she said. "What a giant you have grown! I shall be very proud of my good-looking nephew."
Then the cousins had to be introduced--Tom, the eldest boy, a fine-looking lad of eighteen, like his father, lean, dark, and wiry; two pretty, fresh-looking girls of fifteen and thirteen, Ella and Marjory; and Arthur, the youngest of the group, a sharp-looking boy of eleven. The greetings over, Mrs. Blakeney took them at once into dinner, which she had kept back, trusting to her husband's invariable speed and punctuality, even on a forty-mile drive.
In the afternoon they sauntered round the place, and Guy was shown everything there was to be seen. Bamborough was a typical South African homestead of the better sort. It consisted of a large single-story building, thatched by natives with grass, the exterior rough-cast and white-washed. There were ten good-sized rooms, which served for all the needs of the family and left a couple of spare beds for those not infrequent occasions when visitors or wayfarers turned up. A governess, who resided with the family, looked after the education of the girls and Arthur. Tom, who had just finished his schooling at Grahamstown, in Cape Colony, was now home for good. His father, who farmed twelve thousand morgen of land, or rather more than twenty-four thousand acres, needed assistance, and was glad to have his son about with him. Tom knew a good deal of the mysteries of stock-farming already, and was, his father declared, almost as good a judge of an ox as he was himself. A first-rate rider, a good shot, and a keen sportsman, Tom was just the kind of cousin Guy had hoped for. The two, who had many points in common, quickly understood one another, and struck up a strong friendship.
Guy was shown everything--the trellised vine, leading from the front door to the gate; the fruit orchard at the side of the house, in which grew peaches, apricots, nectarines, quinces, apples, and pears; the orange trees down by the "lands," where the arable crops, oats and mealies, were grown; the stables and compounds; the cattle and goat kraals; and the ostrich camp, a vast enclosure, where stalked a number of these great birds. He was shown the deep-bore well and windmill pump, which supplied the station with water; the big dam, which looked like a lake, with its fringe of willow and blue gums; and many other things pertaining to the headquarters of a large South African cattle ranch. Altogether, what with the morning drive, the meeting with his new cousins, and the long afternoon of sightseeing, Guy was not sorry for bed at ten o'clock. His head had not been two minutes on the snow-white pillow, scented like the rest of the spotless bed linen with some fragrant veldt herb, before he was sound asleep.
Chapter III,