Poor Fitje snatched it up, and remembering that, while outspanning at the vley, May had indicated a certain spot as a pit-fall for wild beasts, she crawled thither with all speed, while the savages were intent on rifling the wagon. She crept into the welcome covert—there was the skeleton of a wolf in the pit; but “misery makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows,” and so poor Fitje thought little of her ghastly neighbour, but lay in dread of being dragged out, stifling poor Ellen’s screams as well as she could, till the glad sound of Spry’s shrill bark told her help was near.
She sat up, listened in agony, lest the enemy should still be lurking about; the wagon was yet burning, and her fears increased as she remembered that one of the packages especially commended to her care was a case of gunpowder. Careful May, however, always in doubt or dudgeon about Piet the obstinate, had that very morning removed it to safer keeping; but for this precaution, it would have fallen into the hands of the enemy, or, by exploding, destroyed the lives of all near it.
She took heart on hearing May’s low whistle near her, for he soon guessed the hiding-place of his keen-witted vrouw, and, descending beside her, set her fears at rest.
The ladies of the household were standing at the gateway, watching for the return of the party with no little anxiety. The distance was short, the plains open, and commanded by a mound behind the settlement, on which a vidette had been placed; but still, after the shock their nerves had sustained the night before, they trembled for the safety of the reconnoitring party as soon as it was out of sight. No reason will subdue a woman’s fears for others, and Captain Ledyard talked in vain. They listened anxiously for shots, and felt certain the vidette could not reach Mr Daveney’s people in time, if attacked, never thinking of their own critical position in such a case. Marion—bright-eyed Marion—saw them first. “Safe, mother, safe; and there is a little creature on foot with the Fingoes, and a woman, and—” she gazed intently on the coming horsemen, whose pace was slackened for poor Fitje’s sake—“oh, mother! Eleanor! some one is leading a horse, and—” she clasped her hands together in a convulsion of terror—“something is slung across it—a human creature—a man—he must be dead!”
Captain Ledyard shaded his eyes from the sun, and said nothing; Mrs Daveney stood tranquil, but with lips white and quivering; Eleanor opened the gateway, and stepped out to have a clearer view across the plains.
“I see my father,” said she, “in advance—I know the horse’s pace.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed Mrs Daveney; Marion burst into an hysterical fit of weeping upon Eleanor’s bosom; and, this great terror removed from their overcharged hearts, there was space for more rational thoughts.
“It may be the unhappy driver Piet,” said Eleanor, and as she looked again, she recognised Frankfort with her father. He took a handkerchief from his breast, and waved it. It was a good sign, she felt, and as soon as the pedestrians were within safe range of the settlement—for they had to pass the mouth of the kloof—Daveney and his guests galloped forward. Eleanor’s conjecture, as the reader guesses, was right. The old Hottentot had laid the body of the murdered man across his horse, and brought it to the settlement.
Frankfort was still in some doubt as to the fate of one of the foreloupers, but May had a notion “the little bavian (monkey) had escaped;” and, on taking the horses to their stables, sure enough there was the imp, leaning idly and unconcernedly against a gate, with a hunch of bread in his hand, and a broad grin on his black shining face.
At sunset, the herdsmen having dug a grave, May and Griqua Adam buried the miserable old Piet, and piled some stones above him, to save his remains from the wolves; but when the farm-servants ventured out next morning, they found the grave had been rifled, and, by chance, casting their eyes, in the course of the day, on a jutting krantz, lit by the sun, they discovered the wretched creature’s body impaled on a scathed oak, round which the asphogels were sweeping, eager for their hateful meal.