“No, no; you express it wrongly. My way is your way. We have room for you and you must come.”
“But I have just come from Barberton, and I live in—in the Swazie country.” And his voice dropped to nothing on the last words.
“Now, Mr Nairn, I know you are afraid of overcrowding us. You have to come for your horse, so that excuse won’t do; and since you compel me to tell the whole truth, Jack says you know the road best, and we want you to come because we are just a tiny little bit afraid of those horrid rivers. Now I’ve told you.”
Nairn submitted; but as they drove along in the dark more than once the thought occurred that even the best of women will stoop to the most unfair means to gain their points.
After many years it was all fresh to him again.
They spun along the smooth soft road, slowing up in places for the dongas—those deeply-worn furrows in Nature’s face, the result of many a heavy storm. They passed the huge old fig-tree standing sentinel where the waters meet, and crossed the Fig-tree Creek, which, to the experienced ear of the men, had a fuller and angrier tone than was its wont. They passed “Clothier’s” in silence. To the girls the grass shanty leaking candle-light at every pore in its misshapen sides, the shouts of laughter, the half-heard songs, the glimpse of the interior as they passed the door, showing the rough gin-case counter, backed by shelves laden with “square face,” and the bare-armed, bearded man craning over to dodge the glare of guttering candles and see who or what was passing by—all made a picture unique and indelible.
They wound slowly round the bend and over the big smooth rocks down to the Fourth Drift.
The water ran silently over the sandy bottom, and when the horses were in breast-high and their movements no longer caused a splash, the absolute stillness begat a feeling of awe and fear of the black-looking water that is so silent, so strong, and so treacherous.
To everyone there comes a sense of strain relieved and spirits reviving on coming through a bad river, and to the young girls, whose first experience it was, the splashing of the leaders’ feet in shallow water, and the rising up the sandy bank, brought an ecstasy of relief.
Driving up the valley of the Lampogwana, Nairn and Heron cheered them with tales of the gold-fields and of the country, and ignored the river and the coming storm; but the steep rush into the Third Drift, and the tossing and jolting over the boulders, and the angry racing of the water and the more distinct roll of the thunder, were features in a first experience which were not to be talked away, and if Nairn felt his conversational powers disparaged by very evident non-attention, perhaps this was compensated for by occasional graspings of his arm—mute appeals for protection which men take as compliments.