[JOHN ORDERED HIS ASKARIS TO FIRE AMONG THE NEGROES ON THE LEFT BANK.]
MAPS
[CHAPTER THE FIRST--The Emigrants]
The train was steaming over Mombasa Island, and Mr. David Halliday, ejaculating "Now we're off!" settled himself in his corner and comfortably fell asleep. Age has its weaknesses--or its privileges, according as you look at it. Not that Mr. Halliday was aged, or even old. He was nearly fifty, and might have passed for younger. His son, at any rate, was neither old nor sleepy. He was, in fact, but a few months past his seventeenth year; and being possessed of an average curiosity and a healthy interest in novel scenes, he looked with delight on the groves of lofty cocoa-nut palms, the wide-spreading mangoes and baobabs filled with chattering monkeys, and the long stretches of park-like glades, brilliant with flowers, through which runs the Uganda railway in the first stage of its long course to the shores of Victoria Nyanza.
Mr. Halliday, son of a Scots farmer who had emigrated from Ayrshire thirty years before, had been for many years agent--or "factor," as he, being a Scotsman, preferred to call himself--on the estates of Lord Sussex, who, as everybody knows, owns half the county from which his title is derived. He had managed to save some money during his stewardship, but having entrusted the greater part of it for investment to a bland London solicitor of his acquaintance, he had the misfortune to learn one day from the newspaper that the lawyer had absconded, leaving defalcations to the tune of some £50,000. A few weeks afterwards another calamity befell Mr. Halliday. His employer, a bachelor, died; the estates passed into the hands of a distant relative; and the new peer, taking alarm at the large sums demanded of him in the shape of death duties, announced his intention of cutting down expenses, and employing a younger man to steward his estates, at a lower salary. Luckily Mr. Halliday had a thousand or two safely invested, apart from what he had lost through the lawyer's rascality; and being disinclined, at his time of life, to seek similar employment, he cast about, during his six months' notice of the termination of his engagement, to find some new outlet for his energies and some secure channel for the use of his little capital.
The problem was complicated by the necessity of starting his son in life. He had intended David for one of the professions, and put him to a good school; but the boy had not shown any particular aptitude for book work, except in the one subject that interested him--natural history. He was never so happy as when he was with dogs and horses; he read with avidity every book about animals on which he could lay hands; and once, when his career was being talked about, he said bluntly that he knew he couldn't stand work at a desk in stuffy London, and implored his father to let him go out to Canada or Australia. Mr. Halliday merely grunted at the time; he was a man of few words; but he thought the matter out very carefully, and his attention having been called to the opening up of East Africa consequent upon the completion of the Uganda railway, he quietly made inquiries, obtained information about the country, its climate, soil, and prospects in regard to stock-raising, and one day startled his son with the news that he was going out in a few months to settle. Having once made up his mind he let no grass grow under his feet. One May day father and son left London in a Peninsular and Oriental Liner, transhipped at Aden into a vessel of the British India Steam Navigation Company, landed at Mombasa, and after spending a fortnight there in preliminary preparations, took tickets for Nairobi, three hundred and thirty miles down the line, whence they proposed to strike up country and select the ground for their settlement.
They travelled by the intermediate class--the third of the four classes into which passengers on the Uganda railway are divided. Mr. Halliday, as he said, had not come out to Africa for the fun of it and having spent considerably over £100 already in travelling expenses, he was not inclined to spend more was absolutely necessary now. By travelling intermediate, unusual though it was, they saved nearly a hundred rupees (the currency of British East Africa) on the first-class fare, and twenty-five on the second, and every rupee they could save would be of importance when they came to stock their ranch. "And I haven't taken return tickets, John," said Mr. Halliday.
Since the boy had been named David after his father, and had no other name, it is necessary to explain how he came to be called John. At school, his name being David, on the principle of association of ideas he was immediately dubbed Jonathan, though he might just as reasonably have been called Saul. Jonathan being too long was cut down to Johnny, and finally to John; and when one of his school-fellows, on a visit in the holidays, addressed him by this simple monosyllable, the name was laughingly accepted by his parents as an excellent means of distinguishing between the two Davids. People who knew him only as John were puzzled when he signed himself "D. Halliday," and one matter-of-fact lady was not quite pleased when he said gravely that, Prince Edward being known in the family circle as David, it was only right that David Halliday should be known as John. "I am glad I am not your godmother," she replied grimly.