We trekked as usual next morning at about three o’clock, and it must have been some time in the dark hours of the early trek that Bobbie spoke to Soltké. Whatever it was he said, it relieved the awkwardness, and restored Soltké to something of his old self; but he was never quite the same again, and for some days we did not get over the look in his eyes and the feeling of guiltiness it left in us.
Robbie did not speak of that early morning scene, but later in the day remarked incontinently:
“By God! he is white, is Soltké—white all through.”
Soltké kept a diary, and kept it with the most marvellous fidelity and unflagging industry, and he also learned to shoot, and shot cockyolly birds occasionally, and was pleased to know their sporting and scientific names. There is a sort of bastard cockatoo in those parts which is commonly known as the “Go way” bird, on account of its cry, which closely resembles these words, and of a habit it is supposed to have of warning game of the approach of man. In Soltké’s diary there should be an elaborate essay on the ancestry and personal habits of this bird, and the wonderful traditions of its family. He took these things down faithfully and laboriously from the Judge’s own lips. The Judge had a copious mythology. Poor Soltké tried to stuff some of his dicky-birds, labelling them with such names as Key could always supply at a moment’s notice. The result was unpleasant, as Soltké took to bestowing these ill-preserved relics in the side-pockets of the tents, in the waggon-boxes, and in a dozen other unlikely spots. It was only now and then that we could actually find them; but there was a constant suggestion of their proximity, nevertheless.
We took to calling Soltké the Professor, as it was a title which, we told him, seemed better to suggest an all-round efficiency than any other we could think of, and therefore suited him more than such purely departmental distinctions as Leather-stocking, the Engineer, or the Ornithologist.
I had forgotten to say that there was one thing on which we did not chaff poor Soltké. He played the zither. I do not know if he played it well or not, for he was the only one whom I have heard play that instrument. To us, lying round a bright thornwood fire, in which the big logs burnt into solid glowing coals—to us, who lay back smoking or gazing up into the infinite depths of silent, cloudless sky, watching millions and millions of stars twinkling busily and noiselessly down at us, the music was a kind of dream.
As Soltké sat in the glow of the fire, and the unsteady flicker of shooting and dying flames threw lights and shadows on his face, it sometimes looked as though he was not quite what we took him for. His was a bright, intelligent face, lit up by quick, eager blue eyes; in fact, though it was a thing that we took no stock in, Soltké was really a very good-looking boy, and one naturally thought of him as some “mother’s hope and pride;” and the look of worry and grief that I sometimes fancied I saw was put down to home-sickness brought out by music. However good or bad his music was, he seemed to feel it, and we—well, we never talked much after he began to play; and when he stopped, we generally knocked our pipes out with a sort of half-sigh, and turned in for the night. It used to make me think of home as I remembered it when I was still externally respectable—before I took to flannel shirts and moleskins, and ways that were not home ways; and I expect the others felt that too.
We had passed the Crocodile River and the belt of ‘Tsetse Fly’ country. We had passed Josikulus, where Hart was murdered by the niggers, and we told Soltké the story of the dead man’s sentry-go. We passed Ship Mountain, and pointed out the bush that hid the haunted cave, and told him the weird tradition of the old witch-doctor imprisoned by the rock slide, handling still as a skeleton the implements of magic he used in life.
All these things were noted in Soltké’s voluminous diary; and a curious medley it must have contained, with the embroidered facings of Key and the solid square facts of Gowan intermingled with the author’s own original remarks and reflections. Soltké, to do him justice, was clearly a person of some purpose. He had placed before himself an ideal, and he never lost sight of it. He was eternally qualifying for that pursuit which he called “de prospect.” He would eat from choice the charred and blackened crust of an overbaked loaf or a steak that had slipped the gridiron and got well sanded; he also seemed to prefer the dregs of the coffee billy, which he swallowed black and unsweetened; he scorned to use a fork; and he always slept on the lumpiest ground; and all this was to fit him for the hardships and emergencies he promised himself as a full-blown prospector. His eagerness for knowledge of the flora and fauna was equally remarkable: he had compiled a sort of dictionary of plants and animals, describing their virtues, medicinal or culinary, and I am sure that towards the end of our trip Soltké would have set out into the Bush with a light heart, armed only with his book, and fortified by a confidence which was absolutely phenomenal.
Looking back on it all, it seems a mean shame ever to have played on his credulity; and, indeed, most of us were, even at this time, keenly alive to this; but there were times when his eager questioning and intense earnestness about commonplace trifles made temptation irresistible, and seemed even to inspire one with ridiculous notions suited to Soltké’s undiscriminating appetite.