The Terror in the Sanctuary.
A CHRISTMAS STORY FROM NATAL.
By Mrs. K. Compton.
A lady’s account of the fearful ordeal she underwent as a young girl on an estate in Natal—locked up in a tiny church, whither she had gone to practise a Christmas voluntary, with a huge python!
It was Christmas Eve, and one of the hottest days I remember during my sojourn in Natal. The recollection of that day, spite of the many years that have since passed, is so vividly imprinted on my mind that I can still see the heated atmosphere as it danced and shimmered over the cotton bushes and the rows of beans down the hillside.
The last stroke of the twelve o’clock gong summoning the gangs of Kaffirs to their midday repast and siesta had died away, and never a sound broke the stifling noontide stillness save the booming of the surf on the lonely sea-shore, three miles distant from my father’s plantation—the Beaumont Estate, as it is now called. The eye ached as it travelled over the glaring, sun-dried landscape that lay stretched before me, and sought grateful relief in the shady depth of the dark orange grove and spreading loquat trees that sheltered the veranda on which I lounged on my luxurious cane couch.
My father was a retired Anglo-Indian officer, who, having won distinction during the Indian Mutiny, had taken up a “military grant” of about two thousand acres of land in the Colony of Natal. He judged this to be an excellent opening for my brother Malcolm, who, although showing a strong desire to follow in his father’s military footsteps, lacked the capability and application requisite to pass the competitive examinations for the Army.
We had been, by this time, about three years in the Colony, and had half the estate under cultivation. Whether father was satisfied with the results I do not know. But, drowsily reviewing the situation on this particular afternoon, I came to the conclusion that a man who has spent the best years of his life in the Army cannot metamorphose himself immediately into an agricultural success.
I was aroused from my cogitations by Malcolm’s voice exclaiming: “Why, Jessie, I do believe you were asleep!”
“I was, very nearly,” I confessed. “This heat makes the physical exertion of unclosing my eyelids a task to which I do not feel equal.”