Bertram Mitford

"The Fire Trumpet"

"A Romance of the Cape Frontier"

Volume One—Chapter One.

A Queer Legacy.

“To my valued friend, Arthur Claverton, I bequeath the sum of nine thousand pounds.”

He to whom this announcement was made could not repress a start of surprise. The only other occupant of the room paused and laid down the document from which he had been reading. The room was a solicitor’s office.

“You hardly expected to be remembered, then?” said the latter.

“No. At least I won’t say that, exactly; but nothing like to such an extent. I thought poor Spalding might have left me some trifle to remember him by—his pet breechloader, or something of the kind; but, candidly, I never expected anything like this!”

“Yet you saved his life, once.”

“Pooh! Nothing at all. The weather was hot, and the swim did me good. If I hadn’t gone in, the nearest Jack Tar would have, and have thought nothing of it; nor do I. Poor Spalding!”

The speaker is a man of about thirty to all appearance. His face, which is a handsome and a refined one, wears a look of firmness, not unmixed with recklessness. It is the countenance of one who has seen a good deal of the world, and knows thoroughly well how to take care of himself. The other man is more than twice his age, and looks what he is—every inch the comfortable, well-preserved family solicitor.

“I don’t know about that, Mr Claverton,” answered the latter. “The story our poor friend told me was something very different. The vessel was going at thirteen knots, the night being pitch dark, and a heavy sea running. And no one saw him fall overboard but yourself.”

The other laughed in a would-be careless way. “Oh, well, I think you are making too much of it. But the job was a risky one, I admit, and at one time I did think we should never be picked up. And now, Mr Smythe, I’m going to ask you a question that you may think queer. First of all, you knew my poor friend intimately for a good many years?”

“I did. When first I made his acquaintance, Herbert Spalding was a little chap in Eton jackets. I’ve known him tolerably intimately ever since.”

“Well, then, didn’t it strike you that latterly he had something on his mind?”

“Yes, it did. And I happen to know he had. The old story. He was jilted; and being one of those sensitive men with a high-strung nervous organisation, he took it to heart too much. I believe it shortened his life. Poor fellow.”

“Well, whoever did it, has something to answer for, or would have had, at least; for, between ourselves, that time he went overboard he went of his own free will.”

“I had suspected as much,” said the lawyer, quietly. “That was on the voyage out, wasn’t it?”

“It was. We first became acquainted on board ship, you know. He hardly spoke to any one on board till, all of a sudden, he took a violent fancy to me. We occupied the same cabin. In fact, I soon began to suspect there was a petticoat in the case, the poor chap was so down on his luck; but he didn’t tell me in so many words, and it wasn’t for me to pry into another fellow’s private affairs. One evening I came into the cabin, and found him loading a revolver. There was nothing very astonishing in that, you know, because fellows often go in for revolver practice at sea—shooting bottles from the yard-arm, and all that sort of thing; but it was the way in which it was done. He hid the thing, too, when he saw me, and that looked fishy. However, I managed to get hold of it, unknown to him, and stuck it right away, and made up my mind to keep an eye on him. That very night, or rather morning, for it was in the small hours, I was awoke by something moving in the cabin. I sung out, but got no answer. Then I went over to Spalding’s bunk, and, by Jove, it was empty. When a fellow has been kicked about the world as much as I have, he don’t take long to think; consequently I was on deck in about a second, with precious little on but my nightshirt, and luckily so as it happened. It was pitch dark, and blowing half a gale. I didn’t want to sing out if I could help it—wanted to avoid a fuss, you understand; so I peered about for Spalding. At last I made out a dark figure standing behind the wheel, looking astern. They don’t use the rudder wheel, you know—steer from the bridge. I was just going to sing out quietly, when the figure disappeared, and I heard a splash that there was no mistaking. Then, you bet, I gave a war-whoop loud enough to wake the dead, as I went over the side after it. Fortunately for Spalding—for it was him all right—fortunately for us both, the quarter-master had his wits about him, and pitched over one of those fire-buoys that are kept handy for these occasions; but there was a heavy, lamping sea on that nearly knocked the breath out of one. I wasn’t long reaching Spalding; but he could hardly swim a stroke at the best of times, and at that time was simply helpless. But I can tell you I had my work cut out for me. By the time the ship was brought round to us again, and we were picked up, we had been nearer half an hour in the water than twenty minutes, and not many seconds more would have done for us. I was all right again next day, and, by way of explanation, I gave out that Spalding was given to somnambulism. The idea took; and no one suspected anything, or, if they did, never said so, and the affair created a deuce of a sensation on board.”

“I should rather imagine it did,” said the lawyer, who had been vividly interested in the other’s narrative. “But you were with him when he died, weren’t you—I mean at the moment?”

“Yes and no. After the affair I’ve been telling you about we became greater chums than ever. He seemed to pick up in health and spirits, and I began to think the poor chap was going to forget all about his troubles. We stayed in Sydney a little while, and then went up country, where we spent three or four months, knocking about from station to station, for Spalding had no end of letters of introduction. At last, as ill luck would have it, the mail—that curse of existence—overtook us even away up in the bush. I don’t know what news he got; but poor Spalding became worse than ever. Nothing would satisfy him but we must return home to England immediately. I say ‘we,’ because I’ll be hanged if I could make him see that I, at any rate, hadn’t come to Australia for fun, but to try and find a means of livelihood. No; I must go back with him. He had influence and abundant means, and could get me a much better berth in England than I should ever find out there, he argued. He wanted my company on the voyage home, and was determined to have it; I shouldn’t be out of pocket by it, and so on. We nearly had a tremendous row over it; but at last I yielded, partly to sentiment, for we were great chums and the poor fellow seemed utterly cut up at the prospect of my leaving him to go back alone, partly to carelessness, for, I reasoned, I should be no worse off than when I left England, and could always pick up some sort of a living anywhere. So we sailed by the first vessel we could catch, and a precious slow old tub she was. Before we had been a week at sea, Spalding got a notion into his head that he would never see England again, and all I could say or do to cheer him was of no use. Well, to cut the matter short, one evening about half an hour before sundown, we were sitting aft smoking our weeds. I left him, wanting to do a constitutional before dinner. I hadn’t been gone five minutes when the quarter-master came to say that my chum didn’t seem well. Back I went like a shot. There was Spalding sitting in his deck-chair just as I left him with his book in front of him. But his head hung forward queerly. I had only to take one look at him to know what was up. The poor chap was stone dead.”

“Dear me—dear me!” said the lawyer.

Claverton paused a little—moved by the recollection. He had never told the story so circumstantially before.

“We carried him to the cabin, and the doctor made an official examination and all that sort of thing. Then the captain sealed up his effects, and the next evening our poor friend was buried. It was in the tropical seas, you know, where they don’t delay funerals longer than they can help. And, curiously enough, it could not have been far from the spot where the poor fellow made his nocturnal plunge on the voyage out. Yes; whoever she is, she’ll have something to answer for. The doctor called it heart disease; but heart-break would have been nearer the mark, I believe.”

There was silence for a few moments. It was at length broken by the lawyer.

“And you actually knew nothing of that codicil?”

“Nothing whatever. Hadn’t the faintest suspicion of anything of the kind. It’s all right, I suppose; can’t be disputed or upset—eh?”

“No. It’s perfectly in order—adequately witnessed and everything. If Spalding had been a solicitor in busy practice, he couldn’t have added that codicil more correctly. And he did it at sea, too!”

“What did he die worth?”

“It’s hard to say at present. Most of his property was landed—very extensive, but all entailed. He has bequeathed to yourself nearly all that it was in his power to bequeath to anybody; but—”

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking of that,” interrupted the other impatiently, and somewhat annoyed. “I merely asked out of curiosity. And, as I told you before, I never expected anything at all.”

“But, I was going to say, there’s a queer stipulation attached to your bequest. I don’t quite know what you’ll think of it,” went on Mr Smythe, with a dry smile. “You only profit by the bequest—which is funded—provided you remain single until the age of thirty-five. Should you marry before then you forfeit the whole, which, in that case, would pass to a distant relative. But I should think you will not have very long to wait. Three or four years, perhaps?” and he looked inquiringly at the other. “Of course you draw the interest from now,” he added.

“More likely eight years.”

“You don’t say so. I declare you look much older!”

“The conditions are queer, certainly,” said the legatee, with a smile. “I think I can see through it, though. Poor Spalding was played the mischief with so severely by a woman, that he thought the best kindness he could do me was to offer a counter inducement to me against making a fool of myself in that line. And, look, thirty-five is the age stipulated—his own age at the time of his death.”

“It’s singular, certainly,” said Smythe; “but there seems to be method in it. Probably he thought that he, not having arrived at years of discretion at that time of life, neither would you. As if a man ever does arrive at years of discretion where the sex is concerned! But I congratulate you heartily—at least, I suppose I must; for you look heart-whole enough at present, anyhow. But you are young—you are young.”

“Not too young to know the value of nine thousand pounds and its yearly interest, I can tell you, Mr Smythe,” said the other, with a laugh. And then he took his leave.

Volume One—Chapter Two.

The Legatee.

If there is one quality in this world which its fortunate possessor is to be envied the enjoyment of, it is that of absolute insouciance. I don’t mean the spurious article known as “putting a bold face on things,” though this is a gift by no means to be despised; but that downright, thorough, devil-may-care way of taking the vicissitudes of life, in such wise as these interfere neither with the appetite, sleep, nor temper, which is well-nigh as rare—at any rate among us Englishmen—as the Little Bustard.

When Claverton entered Mr Smythe’s office, he owned barely enough sovereigns in the world to make a creditable jingle in his breeches pocket; when he left the lawyer he walked out into the street a man of independent means. Yet the change, welcome and wholly unexpected as it was, in no wise disturbed his mental equilibrium. He was conscious of an increased feeling of complacency as he contemplated the world at large by the light of his own improved prospects; but he would permit himself no elation. While going through the hardest times he had known—and he had known some very hard ones indeed—he had cultivated the severest philosophy; and now it had become second nature to him. “Bad luck—no use growling, won’t last; good luck—no use crowing, may not last,” was his self-invented and favourite maxim.

At the time when we first make his acquaintance, Arthur Claverton stood absolutely alone in the world. I don’t mean to say that he had no relatives, but they cold-shouldered him. A few of them were near relatives, others very distant; but the nearer they were, the more they cold-shouldered him. He was an only child and an orphan; his mother having died at his birth, and his father being killed in a railway accident sortie four years later, leaving him to the care of a guardian, one of the near relatives aforesaid. Near, too, in another sense of the word; for, though very comfortably off, and indeed wealthy, this conscientious and benevolent guardian impounded the scanty substance left for the orphan’s start in life, on the ground that his family was a large one, and he could not afford the addition of his dead brother’s child.

His family certainly was a large one, which is to say that it was a supremely disagreeable and discordant one. The boys, rough and unruly, worried the girls and their father. The girls, underhand and spiteful, tormented the boys and their mother. Wrangling and mischief-making was the order of the day. After this it will not be surprising to learn that it was a pious family, which is to say, that much attention was given to morning and evening prayers; and that Sunday, jocosely termed the day of rest, was to be employed getting up epistles and gospels by heart, with a slice of catechism or so thrown in, what time the whole master was not pent up in a square box undergoing edification at the lips of a prolix and Geneva-clad Boanerges, who seldom said “And now to” within an hour and a quarter from the enunciation of his text. By an odd coincidence, the day on which this exemplary piety had its full scope—notably in the tabooing of all secular literature or any approach to levity of demeanour—the reign of strife, squabble, and jar seemed to reach its acme.

Such was the amiable family circle among which young Arthur’s earlier lot was cast. But somehow he never assimilated. He was a species of Ishmael when “at home,” which, by the way, was not often, for he spent most of his holidays at school. All things considered, a good thing for him? No. For it was not a nice school where his educational lines were cast. It was a very cheap and a very nasty school; one in which he learnt nothing but the art of getting into serious scrapes, and—perhaps the only useful thing he did learn—the art of getting out of them. A bringing up of this kind would have been the ruin of most boys; but it was not so with Arthur. He came of a splendid stock, and the wretched associations of his boyhood and youth, instead of destroying his character, had the effect of forming it. They hardened him. True, they rendered him cynical at an age when one looks for impulsiveness and generosity, and if they had inspired him with a disgust for religion, his mind was absolutely clear of cant. They had taught him utterly to despise sentiment, while leaving him capabilities of generosity and even geniality. And if any one showed him a kindness, he never forgot it.

One day, when he was seventeen, the second master of his school, the clever son of an army Scripture reader, had the unwisdom to strike him. In about ten seconds that ill-advised pedagogue was picking himself up in a corner with a bleeding nose and otherwise in receipt of grievous bodily harm. Expulsion was imminent; but Arthur did not wait for it. He took the first train, went straight to his guardian and told him he wanted to emigrate.

His guardian looked acidly at the tall, handsome stripling before him, and began a severe lecture. He also looked uneasily; for it was evident that Arthur had somehow got to learn that his father had not left him absolutely penniless, which meant that no appeal on the grounds of gratitude would lie—for the expenses of the orphan’s bringing up and education, such as it was, had by no means exhausted the sum which the dead man had left. Of this Arthur had gained a very shrewd idea; but he merely asked for sufficient to pay his passage and a small sum towards a necessary outfit, for he intended to go to one of our colonies.

Then his guardian, unlocking a desk, handed Arthur the sum of thirty-five pounds, and told him—metaphorically, of course, good pious man that he was, yet very plainly—to go to the devil.

He did not go to the devil; he went to the Cape.

Some of my readers may think this a distinction without a difference. Well, that is a matter of opinion. He turned his hand first to one thing, then another; but nothing seemed to answer for long, possibly because he was young and restless. At last a small “coup” at the Diamond Fields set him up with a few hundreds. But fortune changed round again; and, in disgust, he resolved to return to England previous to trying his luck in some other colony.

He landed in his native country after several years of a hard, adventurous life; but there was not a soul to welcome him. Not long did he stay; but, by the time he had taken his passage to Australia, not much remained of the proceeds of his Diamond Fields’ enterprise. Then on that eventful voyage he fell in with Herbert Spalding, and the rest of his experiences we have heard from his own lips.

A few mornings after his interview with the lawyer, a card was brought up to Claverton as he sat in his rooms.

“Rev. George Wainwright,” reading the name. “Now, who the deuce is the Rev. George Wainwright? Certainly not one of my kinsfolk or acquaintance.”

There entered an elderly man with stiff, iron-grey hair, a very red face and fierce brown eyes, peering aggressively from beneath a pair of bushy brows. He wore clerical attire, and in his hand carried a tall hat like unto a stove-pipe. There was aggressiveness in his whole aspect, especially in the short, stiff bow with which he greeted Claverton. Farther, there was aggressiveness even in the knock and ring which had heralded his arrival.

“A country rector,” mused our friend, mentally reading off his visitor. “In earlier life of the sporting order, now gouty and addicted to port. Domineering in his parish, tyrant in domestic circle. I know the breed. What the deuce can he want with me?” Then, aloud: “Pray be seated. Cold morning, isn’t it?” and he drew a chair to the fire for his visitor.

“No doubt, Mr—er—Claverton, you will readily guess the object of my visit,” began the other, brusquely, leaning both, hands on the knob of his umbrella, and staring his interlocutor straight in the face.

“Excuse me, but I hardly do.”

“What! You don’t? Why, about this will—this will of Spalding’s?”

“Spalding’s will! My dear sir, I am afraid you have come to me by mistake. My poor friend’s solicitor is Smythe of Chancery Lane. I’ll give you his address in full.”

“No mistake at all—no mistake at all,” rejoined the other, abruptly. “I’ve just come from Smythe, it was he who referred me to you. I want to know about that preposi—er—that bequest—the bequest to you. Do you intend to avail yourself of it, may I ask?”

“Well, really, that is a most astonishing question—”

“You don’t. No—of course you don’t,” came the angry interruption. “No young man with any independence of spirit, could possibly take the money under such conditions. It would be preposterous if he did—preposterous.”

“But, Mr Wainwright, I do intend to take the money.”

“You do?”

“Every farthing of it—bar probate and succession dues.”

The wrath struggling for suppression exhibited in the old man’s countenance beggars description.

“Well, well,” he jerked out at last, “the case is a strange one—a very strange one. Wills have been upset on less fishy grounds than this. Here you take this unfortunate man across the world and come back without him, but profiting substantially by his death. Putting it mildly, what will be said? Eh, sir, what will people say—what will they say?” and, throwing out his hand, he glared at his interlocutor as if awaiting a reply.

“I don’t know what they’ll say. Equally certain is it that I don’t care. As you remark, Mr Wainwright, wills have been upset, but I hardly imagine there’s any chance of this one being so dealt with. Anyhow, I’m ready to take what chance there is. However, you have no doubt made yourself familiar with the conditions under which I inherit,” he went on good-humouredly, but with a wicked twinkle in his eyes. “Don’t you know, for instance, of some young woman attractive enough to induce me to pay forfeit? She must be very attractive, mind; not too young either—’teens mean selfishness; nor too passée—that carries temper. I incline to the dark style of beauty, or something between the two. And I should be sure to capitulate at discretion, if only because it would be in a sense forbidden fruit.”

The other sat speechless with anger. At last he exploded.

“I did not come here to trifle, sir. But, I tell you, this will bring you no good. Ill-gotten gains never do. Ill-gotten gains, I say.” And, with a final glare, he bounced out of the room.

“Poor old man,” thought Claverton, watching him from the window. “Dare say he’s rather sore, and it was a sin to chaff him. But then he brought it upon himself by his bumptiousness. Likely I’m going to cut my own throat for his benefit. The man must be a fool.”

Had he but known it, his late visitor was at that very moment of the same opinion, as, jolting along in the ’bus he had just hailed, a sudden idea struck him.

“By Jingo! What an ass I am! He thought I was the one who would benefit. I’ll go back. Hi! Conductor—stop—stop! No use, though. The fellow has no sense of honour. Still, if I hadn’t lost my confounded temper, I might have induced him to yield. No, I shouldn’t. The man’s a scamp any way—an utter scamp.”

Wherein the old gentleman was wrong. Had he entered upon the interview with a clear head and courteous manner, it is highly probable that the whole course of this not uneventful narrative would have been changed.

Having got rid of his choleric visitor, Claverton went out. His face was turned Citywards, and, as he walked, he pondered.

“Nine thousand pounds contingent on eight years of single blessedness. Well, the terms oughtn’t to be difficult. Why, many a fellow would give away double the amount for the same privilege, if I know anything of my world. But as I told that old parson in chaff just now—forbidden fruit is what attracts. Poor Spalding! What on earth made him clog the concern with such a condition? The only thing is to turn the lot over—capitalise and double it as soon as possible; and, fortunately, I’m not particular how. Grand thing, a careful training in a pious family.”

An hour’s walking, and he is in the heart of the City. Turning down a little lane out of Fenchurch Street, he looks about him carefully. Through a doorway, then a couple of flights of stairs, and he is hammering at a door labelled “Mr Silas B. Morkum.”

“Boss engaged,” said the sharp boy who appeared.

“Of course he is. Take that pasteboard in at once.”

Almost immediately the boy returned and ushered Claverton into an inner office. A thin, wiry-looking man, with a hooked nose and very keen grey eyes; advanced with outstretched hand.

“Well, Claverton, my boy,” he began, with a slight Yankee drawl. “Thought you’d turn up again some day. Devilish cold? Yes. Here’s some stuff, though, to counteract that,” and he produced a wicker-covered bottle and glasses. “Fill up—that’s right. Here’s to old times. Now what can I do for you?”

Claverton laughed drily.

“That’s so like you, Morkum. Can’t you imagine any fellow looking you up purely for the fun of the thing?”

“Well, not many do—not many,” answered the American in an apologetic tone. “But—”

“But this time you’ve hit the right nail on the head. There is something you can do for me, if any one can. You can put me in the way of doubling a given sum in the shortest possible time.”

“That all?” answered the other, almost disappointedly. “Reckon I can—and I’d do more than that for you—as you know. Silas B. Morkum ain’t the boy to forget—well, we know what. Now let’s hear all about it.”

Claverton told him. The tie of gratitude to which Morkum had referred went back to the time of the former’s earlier wanderings, when our friend had by the merest chance been able to do him a most important service, and the American had never forgotten it. He was a curious unit. By profession broker, money-lender, and half-a-dozen other things; in reality, such of his dealings as were most remunerative were known only to himself and to those immediately concerned.

“Well, then,” he said, reflectively, lighting up a long Havana and pushing the box across to his companion, “well, then—you want to turn over this sum and ain’t particular how?”

“Not in the least.”

“Then I can lay you on to something. But you are open to putting your hide pretty considerably in pawn?”

“Quite open. What is it? Mines in Sonora?”

“No. ’Tain’t that. Two years ago I sent a party on that lay. Twenty-three Western men, all well armed and mounted. Game chickens all round.”

“What then?”

“They are there yet. No one ever saw or heard of them again. Beckon the Apaches wiped ’em out. No. This is less risky; still, it is risky—tarnation so.”

“What is it?”

The other fixed his keen grey eyes upon Claverton for a moment. Then he delivered himself of just three words.

“The devil!” exclaimed Claverton, astonished, “I thought that game was played out long ago.”

“No, it ain’t; not a bit of it. And it’s sure profits, quick returns; but-all-fired risk.”

“Well, let’s hear all about it.”

The other left the papers which he had been sorting, and, drawing his chair to the fire, began to lay out his scheme. And at last the dingy office grew shadowy, and the boy came in to know if he shouldn’t lock up.

“Yes,” assented Morkum. “Come along and dine somewhere, Claverton, and you shall tell me what you’ve been doing all this time. We can talk business to-morrow.”

The clocks were chiming a quarter to twelve as they separated at King’s Cross Station.

“Going to walk home, are you?” said the American, reflectively. “Queer city, this. Many a man disappears, and is never more heard of by his inquiring relatives.”

“It would be a precious risky job for any enterprising spirits to try and conceal my whereabouts. They’d get hurt,” answered Claverton, with a meaning laugh.

“That’s right,” said the other, approvingly. “Never have your hand far from your coat-pocket, and you’ll do. Good-night.”

The wind howls dismally round a cosy old country rectory on this gloomy March evening, but, within, all is snugness and warmth. From one well-lighted room comes a sound of many cheerful voices; but passing by this, let us take a look into the library, where sits a girl all alone. She is a lovely girl, as far as we can see by the uncertain firelight, and may be nineteen or twenty. Her well-shaped head is crowned with an abundance of soft, dark hair, tinted with strange lights as the flickering glow plays upon it. Her sweet, lustrous eyes are gazing pensively at the clock on the mantelpiece, while the rain rolls in gusts against the old-fashioned casement.

“Past six. Uncle George should be back by now. The train must be late. Ah, there he is!” as the sound of wheels is audible on the gravel outside.

She hears the occupants of the other room rush to the front door to welcome their father; but with a hasty kiss all round, the rector goes straight to the library.

“Here I am, Uncle George,” says the girl, meeting him in the doorway, for she heard him inquiring for her. “But do go and change first, you must be very wet.”

“No, I’m not, my dear; not in the least. Come in here and shut the door; I want to tell you about this.”

Then he hesitates, clears his throat, manages to knock down the tongs with a hideous clatter, and jerks out:

“I could do nothing.”

His niece waits for him to continue.

“Nothing. He says he intends to stick to the money, every penny of it. Why, when I put it to him fairly, he laughed in my face; made some ill-chosen jest about it being only a question of time. He’s a scamp, a downright scamp, and will come to no good. Mark my words.”

“Who is he, Uncle George? What’s his name?”

“Some adventurer. I was going to say low adventurer, but he isn’t that; the man’s a gentleman by birth, unmistakably. Name! Why, bless my soul, I’ve quite forgotten. What is it again? Clinton—Emerson—something like that—I forget exactly.”

The girl stood silently gazing into the fire, with one arm on the old man’s shoulder. She was an orphan niece, whom he had welcomed to his home, nominally until it could be decided what should be done with her; actually he had already decided this, and his decision was that that home should be a permanent one. He was a very soft-hearted man, was the Rev. George Wainwright, in spite of his quick temper and aggressive exterior. But the girl, for her part, was equally determined in her own mind not to remain a burden on him. He had a large family of his own, and she must manage to earn her own livelihood. Then came the news of the death of her distant cousin, Herbert Spalding, and of the legacy which would revert to her, contingent upon the nuptials of a stranger. The rector, with characteristic hot-headedness, had voted the contingency absolutely monstrous. No man of honour, he had said, could possibly accept a bequest subject to it, especially as by doing so he would be robbing a penniless orphan—and had started for town there and then with the intention of inducing the legatee to forego his claim. In which laudable mission he had signally failed, as we have seen—a failure due in no small measure to his own hot temper and want of tact.

“Never mind, Uncle George; we are only where we were before, you see, and I think I shall get that situation I advertised for.”

“No you won’t, my dear. We shan’t let you go away from us.”

She kisses him affectionately. She is determined to carry her point, but does not press it to-night. “Now you must go and talk to the others, Uncle George; I’ve been keeping you from them quite long enough.” And with her arm still on the old man’s shoulder she leads him to the door, and they join the family circle in the cheerful lamplight.

Volume One—Chapter Three.

The Slave Settlement.

“Idiot! Don’t you see that the poor devil can’t move an inch further to save his wretched life. Leave him alone. You’re the greatest brute even in this bestial land?”

“Am I? And if I am, what’s that to you?” is the defiant reply.

The first speaker is a young Englishman, whose face, tanned to a coppery brown by exposure to a torrid sun, bears a stamp of recklessness and determination. His bearded lips are set firm as he confronts the other, a powerful, savage-looking mulatto, and his eyes are ablaze with wrathful contempt. Around stretches a wide, sun-baked desert in Central Africa. A few palms, dotted about here and there, throw a faint pretence of a shadow, and not far from the cloudless horizon hangs the now declining sun. A gang of black men and women, weary and emaciated, and a few of them tied together, are standing wearily contemplating one of their number who lies prone upon the earth, sick, footsore, and unable to move another step. It is a slave-gang on the march.

“Here, you two,” goes on the first speaker, addressing a couple of the strongest-looking among the slaves, “pick him up and carry him along.”

The two fellows designated pause, and look hesitatingly from one to the other of their drivers. They stand in mortal fear of the ruffianly mulatto, and prefer to chance the wrath of the Englishman.

“Do you hear what I say? Let him alone, Sharkey,” repeats the latter in a warning tone.

For all answer the ruffian addressed advances upon the fallen slave, and with a frightful grin, disclosing two pointed, shark-like teeth—whence his hideous sobriquet—curls his raw-hide lash round the naked body of the emaciated wretch. But a terrific blow full in the face sends him reeling half-a-dozen paces.

“There! Won’t you listen?” And the Englishman stands between the miserable wretch and his smiter. With a growl like a wild beast, the latter springs up.

“Stand off, Sharkey!” cries his companion in a firm, warning tone. Too late. With features working in fury, and foaming at the mouth, the other rushes upon him knife in hand.

“Stand off, I say, or—”

Crack!

The savage makes one spring and rolls over and over at his slayer’s feet, digging his knife into the hard earth in his death-throes.

“Dog! You would have it!” observes the Englishman, calmly reloading the discharged chamber of his still smoking revolver. “You won’t bite again. Now then, you fellows, do as I told you just now—pick up that chap and—march.”

They obey apathetically; and, with many a furtive glance backward, the slaves move wearily on, leaving the body of their late oppressor to the vultures and jackals of the desert.

And now, after a march of several miles further, the melancholy cortège arrives at its destination. In a natural clearing, surrounded by dense jungle, stand a few thatched shanties. In the centre is a large barracoon, and into this the miserable human herd is turned. The last rays of the sun have disappeared, and here and there in the open space a fire glows redly. Several men are standing about; awful-looking cut-throats, villainy personified. Half-a-dozen of them are Portuguese, the rest Arabs and negroes. They crowd up to inspect the slaves.

“Well, Lidwell,” says one of the first nationality in good English, addressing the new arrival. “You’ve brought in a poor-looking lot. How many did you lose?”

“Two. Both died.”

“And Sharkey—wasn’t he with you? Where’s he?”

“Dead.”

“Dead? Nonsense! What killed him?” And the first speaker stares in amazement.

“A pistol ball, regulation calibre.”

A gleam of triumphant malice flits across the other’s swarthy features. He is young, and by no means bad-looking but for a chronic scowl.

“Comrade,” he replies, “you have done a good thing in ridding us of that beast.” But the man addressed as Lidwell has marked that exultant expression, and he knows that it means mischief. Sharkey has relatives in the camp who will certainly do their utmost to revenge his death, and it is doubtful whether the ruffianly European element will have either the strength or resolution to stand out against these should they clamour for his slayer’s blood. It is more than doubtful if they have the will; for this Englishman is both hated and feared by them. His coolness and daring in the pursuit of their lawless traffic has not only been the means of quadrupling their gains, but has twice saved the whole party from capture red-handed, for of late the Union Jack has been—to them—unpleasantly active in Zanzibar waters. Yes, they hate him bitterly. He has won largely from them at play, for they are great gamblers, and can they once get him into their power they are fully determined to make him yield up—by torture if necessary—the large sums which they know him to keep concealed somewhere. But then, his revolver is ever ready, and they are most of them cowards at heart.

Sternly he now looks the young Portuguese in the face.

“Juarez,” he says, in a very significant tone. “Do you know, I always think I can never have enough revolver practice. It makes a man invulnerable, does this little bit of wood and iron.”

The other turns away with an oily smile. He has his own reasons for not being fond of the Englishman.

The latter strolls leisurely into one of the huts, keeping his eyes about him, though, unobtrusively. Arrived there, he sits down for a few minutes to rest and think out his plans. For he is determined to take leave of his repulsive surroundings; and the sooner the better. Nearly two years of his life have been spent in this detestable traffic, and how sick he is of it, he himself hardly knows. He has amassed wealth with a rapidity little short of marvellous; but not for the ransom of an empire would he go through the experiences of those two years over again. Many and many a scene of human suffering has it been his lot to witness during that period—for he is a slave-dealer, a trafficker in human flesh. But he is guiltless of any single act of brutality or wanton oppression towards the unfortunate wretches who have passed through his hands. In his eyes mere cattle, yet he would never allow them to be tortured or ill-treated. More than once has he stood between the victim and the lash, occasionally at the risk of his life—as we have seen—or interfered to save some worn-out wretch from being abandoned to the beasts of the desert. More than once, even, during a long desert march when water was worth its weight in gold, has he shared his scanty stock of the priceless fluid with some toiling, parched, and exhausted slave, who, with tongue swollen and protruding, could hardly drag one foot after the other. Yet, what is he but a hard-hearted, self-seeking slave-dealer, coining money out of suffering flesh and blood?

The gloom deepens. Lidwell, sitting there in his hut, can make out a knot of his rascally confederates talking earnestly together by one of the fires. A strange instinct warns him. Unless he leaves this place to-night he will never leave it alive. Quickly he stows away a flask and some biscuits in his pockets. Already his gains are secured about his person, carefully sewn up in his clothes—a large sum, partly in gold, partly in the paper currency of several nationalities. For some time past he has been prepared for a sudden flight, and he has a canoe snugly concealed in a convenient place on the river bank. To-night he will cut the whole concern for ever, and woe betide the man who shall try to stop him.

He looks out of the doorway, carelessly. All seems quiet enough, and it is now quite dark. His sheath-knife is ready to his hand in case of need; so, too, is the brace of revolvers without which he never moves.

“Now for a start,” he muses; “but—hang it—I must go round and say good-bye to Anita. Can’t leave without seeing the little one again.”

Down a narrow path through the shadowy forest a few hundred yards, and he reaches a small thatched dwelling, more substantially built than the rest. Within all is silence. But for a lamp burning in one of the windows the place would seem deserted. He imitates the cry of a jackal twice. A moment, and then a dark figure glides swiftly round the corner of the house and stands beside him.

“At last! I wondered when you were coming to see me. You have been back hours, and never came near me.” The voice is low, soft, and musical; but there is resentment in it.

“Didn’t I? Well, I came as soon as I could. Don’t scold me to-night, little one.”

And he looks down at her with a queer expression. Every moment lost is a nail in his coffin; yet he is wasting those precious moments gazing into a pair of dark eyes.

She nestles close to his side. “I hate it so when you are away. And I am always afraid you may get killed, or catch that terrible fever over there, and never come back to me at all.”

“Listen now, Anita,” he says, gravely. “I must go away again—now—to-night, or my life is not worth a pebble, and I don’t feel inclined to throw it away for the benefit of those brutes.” Then he tells her about the fate of Sharkey, and the unmistakable signs he had read among his associates of their deadly intentions towards him.

The girl trembles with horror and apprehension as she listens.

“You must indeed go, and immediately. You can do nothing against them, and there are so many of them; and—Ah, I may as well die,” she breaks off in a wail of despair.

“Don’t say that, little one. You will soon learn to do without me; but I am afraid you will forget all your English. And you were getting on with it so nicely, too.”

The girl is silent; but looks up at him with a stricken, hopeless expression that goes to his heart. She is very lovely, standing there in the starlight, lovely in the rich, southern, voluptuous type. She is quite young—barely sixteen—but the delicate arched features are fully formed. As regards education or mental culture, Anita de Castro is a wild flower indeed. Her father is the head of this slave-dealing colony. Formerly a merchant in the Portuguese settlement of Delagoa Bay, his rascalities have landed him in outlawry, and he has taken his daughter with him into exile. Such is the girl who had attracted the attention of the Englishman Lidwell, who in her had found the one redeeming feature in his present reckless life. He had to a certain extent, and in a desultory sort of way, educated this girl; at any rate had moulded her into something better than a mere mental blank; and the process had been to him a real recreation, a refuge from the disgust which he increasingly felt for his cold-blooded and lawless occupation. And she? Here, on the threshold of budding womanhood, this stranger, who looked upon her as a mere plaything, possessed her whole heart. How it was she could not tell, even had she asked herself the question. Juarez, her sworn admirer, was softer of speech and far more deferential; whereas Lidwell sometimes seemed to ignore her very existence. Yet she would with a heavy heart anticipate the absence of the latter on long and perilous expeditions, and look forward so anxiously and so joyfully to his return. And now he has returned only to leave again immediately, and well she knew that she would see him no more. Suddenly she throws herself on his breast in a fit of passionate weeping.

“Ah, love! I shall never see you again. Never—never.”

A wave of wild temptation sweeps over the man. Why should he not take her with him? She is beautiful enough in face and form, and it suddenly strikes him that she is not the child he has hitherto been wont to consider her. She is in his arms now. He has only to say the word and she will stay there. But Lidwell is gifted with a cool head, and a strong one. He knows the world well enough, and he also knows his own nature. He will not sacrifice this girl to a passing impulse, however powerful. So he resists the momentary temptation, and—it is the saving of his life.

He strokes back the soft hair from her forehead. “Anita, child—you must not grieve like this for me—I don’t say forget the times we have spent together. What I do say is, you are, made for something better than this kind of life; leave it as soon as you are able, and—”

“Hush!”

She has heard something. With a quick gesture she draws herself from him, and stands erect and listening intently. A glow suffuses the sky, and the golden moon peeps above the tree-tops. And now the sound of stealthy footsteps and smothered voices may be heard approaching.

“Go!” exclaims the girl, imprinting a shower of kisses upon his lips. “Go—quick. They are coming. You shall not die here. Good-bye, love. I shall never see you again. Go.” And, as she pushes him from her, the advancing voices are very near indeed. She has barely time to regain the house before several men are knocking at the door. Feigning to be half asleep, she opens.

“Well, father, what has gone wrong?”

“Oh, nothing, Anita. Has Lidwell been here? We want him down at the camp. He promised to help us through with the wine,” answers De Castro.

“The Englishman? No, he hasn’t been here. He must be in his own hut.”

A glance goes round the group.

“But he must have been here, señorita,” replies Juarez. “He was seen to come in this direction.”

A thought strikes the girl. She must gain time. So with an admirably-feigned glance of uneasiness at a side door leading into another room, she reiterates that she has not seen him.

“Ah, well, comrades, I have some old wine in here,” says her father, advancing towards this door. “We will try it.” He turns the handle; but the door is locked. “The key, Anita, the key!”

“The key? Oh, here it is,” and after a pretended search she finds the key. They throw open the door suddenly, and stand staring in stupid surprise into an empty room.

“Juarez,” said the girl, calling him apart from the rest—“keep quiet now. Do you want the Englishman? You shall take him.”

The other started, and his eyes lit up with savage triumph.

“How? Where? Where is he?”

“You shall have him. Listen, Juarez. He has been here, but if you try to find him now you will fail. I promised to meet him two hours after midnight at the corner of the cane planting. He thinks I love him, but I hate him,” she went on, working herself into a state of admirably-feigned fury. “He laughed at me and treated me as a plaything—now I shall have revenge. But listen. Go back to the camp. He is suspicious of you already; but he will come to me two hours after midnight. Then be in waiting, and you shall take him as easily as a leopard in a net. Don’t tell the others about it until the time comes, only get them away now.”

If Juarez felt a qualm of suspicion, she acted her part so well, that he fell headlong into the trap. With difficulty, he persuaded his fellow ruffians to abandon their quest for the present. He trusted Anita implicitly; and, full of elation at the speedy vengeance which would overtake his rival, he returned with the others to their carousals.

The hours drag their length, and silence reigns in the tropical forest. A damp, unwholesome mist rises from the river and spreads over the tree-tops. Now and again the shout of the revellers breaks upon the silence, or the deep bass of a bloodhound is raised in dismal bay at the moon. Still Anita sits there, gazing out upon the forest, and following in spirit every step of him whose life she has saved, further and further as each step takes him from her. At last she falls fast asleep, worn out with the excitement and tension of the past few hours. Then comes a loud, angry knocking at the door.

Opening it, she is confronted with her father. He is shaking with wrath, and behind him are nine or ten others all armed to the teeth.

“Where is the Englishman?” he roared. “Have you fooled us? It is nearly daybreak—and two hours after midnight we were to take him! Where is he?”

“Where is he?” echoed Anita, her voice as clear as a bell. “Where is he? Safe. Far away—leagues and leagues. You will never see him again. He is safe.” And her large eyes flashed upon the enraged and astonished group in scornful defiance as she stood in the doorway.

With the yell of a wild beast baffled of its prey, the old ruffian sprang at his daughter. She never moved. But his clenched hand was seized in a firm grasp before it could descend.

“Softly—softly, patron!” said Juarez. “You would not strike the señorita!”

De Castro struggled in the grasp of the younger man and yelled the most awful curses upon Lidwell, his daughter, and all present; but Juarez was firm. He was not all bad, and a glow of admiration went through him at Anita’s daring, and the shrewd way in which she had outwitted them. Moreover, rivalry apart, he had rather liked Lidwell. The latter they would never see again, for had not Anita herself said as much. On the whole, therefore, it was just as well that he had escaped, and saved them the necessity of killing a former brave comrade. So he tried to pacify the old man.

“Patron,” he said, “be reasonable. We are well rid of this English devil. Certainly, he has won a lot of our dollars; but then he will lose his share in the profits of the last expedition.” Then, in a low tone: “And he has rid us of that turbulent beast, Sharkey. He is a determined devil, and while he was with us he served us well. Let him go.”

The old slave-dealer fumed and raved, then fell in with things as they were. “Ah well,” he said at last, “what is—is, and we can’t help it. We will empty another skin of wine.” Then they withdrew to drown their discomfiture in drink, though some of the party, less easily pacified, would fain have started in pursuit of the fugitive, but that they knew it would be useless.

Six weeks later the mail steamer from Zanzibar was securely docked in the port of London, and Lidwell, bidding farewell to a few fellow passengers, stepped ashore, and in a moment was lost among the busy crowd in the great restless city. He was now in easy circumstances for life.

Volume One—Chapter Four.

Seringa Vale.

One round, black speck high up yonder on the stony hillside. There he sits—the large old baboon; wary sentinel that he is, keeping jealous watch over the safety of the nimble troop under his charge, which, scattered about amid the bush, is feasting upon succulent roots and other vegetable provender afforded by its native wilds. And from his lofty perch he can descry something unwonted immediately beneath—danger possibly, intrusion at any rate—and he lifts up his voice: “Baugch-m! Baugch-m?” The sun blazes in a blue, cloudless sky, darting down his beams with a fierceness and vigour somewhat premature this lovely afternoon of an early South African spring day, and all nature is at rest in the drowsy stillness now broken by that loud, harsh cry. A cliff rears its perpendicular face from amid the bush-covered slopes, which, meeting at its base, form a triangular hollow. From the brow of the cliff rises a rugged steep, thickly grown with dark prickly aloes, whose bristling shapes, surmounted by bunches of red blossom, sprout upwards from the dry, stony soil. The tiniest thread of a streamlet trickles down the face of the rock, losing itself in a pool beneath, which reflects, as in a mirror, cliff, and overhanging bushes, and blue sky. A faint cattle track leading down to the water betokens that in a land of droughts and burning skies even this reservoir, remote and insignificant, is of account at times; but to-day here are no cattle. The long-drawn piping whistle of a spreuw (of the starling species) echoes now and again from the cool recesses of the rock; the hum of bees among the blossoming spekboem and mimosa; the twittering of the finks, whose pear-shaped pendulous nests sway to and fro over the water as the light-hearted birds fly in and out—all tell of solitude and of the peace of the wilderness. Here a big butterfly flits lightly on spotted wings above the flowering bushes; there, stalking solemnly among the stones, an armour-plated tortoise seems to be in rivalry with a horny and long-legged beetle as to which of them shall be the first to reach the other side of the small open space.

“Baugch-m! Baugch-m!”

Two round black specks high up there on the stony hillside. The resounding call is answered, and the two guardians of the troop sit there, a couple of hundred yards apart, looking down into the sequestered nook below.

The sleeper moves, then rolls over on his back and draws his broad-brimmed hat right over his face.

Clearly he does not intend rousing himself just yet. The sun’s beams strike full upon him, but he feels them not; evidently he is indisposed to let even the monarch of light interfere with his siesta. A few minutes more, and, with a start, he raises himself on his elbow and looks around.

“By Jove, how hot it is! I must have been doing the sluggard trick to some purpose, for the cliff was full in the sun when first I pricked for the softest plank here, and now it’s throwing out a shadow as long as an attorney’s bill of costs. Past four!” looking at his watch. “Now for a pipe; then a start.”

He picks himself up out of the pass, yawns and stretches. The tortoise, which had already stood motionless, its bright eye dilated with alarm, now subsides into its shell, hoping to pass for one of the surrounding stones; its scarabean competitor likewise is equal to the occasion, after its own manner, and falling over on its side, with legs stiff and extended, feigns death industriously. Meanwhile the aloe-dotted steep overhead is alive with the loud warning cries of the disturbed baboons, whose ungainly but nimble shapes—some fifty in number—may be seen making off helter-skelter up the hill, to disappear with all possible despatch over the brow of the same.

“Noisy brutes!” grumbles the wayfarer, shading his eyes to watch them. “But for your unprincipled shindy I could have done a good hour’s more snooze with all the pleasure in life. If only I had a rifle here—even a Government Snider—it would go hard but that one or two of you would learn the golden art of silence.”

Look at him as he stands there just six foot high in his boots—well-proportioned, broad-shouldered, straight as a dart. The face is of a very uncommon type, with character and determination in its regular, clear-cut features; but a look of insouciance in the eyes—which are neither grey nor blue, but sometimes one, sometimes the other—neutralises what would otherwise be an energetic and restless expression. The mouth is nearly hidden by a drooping, golden-brown moustache. In the matter of age the man would have satisfied a census collector by the casual reply, “Rising nine-and-twenty.”

Colonial born you would certainly not pronounce him. Yet not a touch of the “rawness” of the greenhorn or “new chum” would you descry, even if the serviceable suit of tancord and the quality of the saddle and riding gear lying on the ground did not betoken a certain amount of acquaintance with colonial life on the part of their owner.

He draws a rough cherrywood pipe from his pocket, fills and lights it, sending forth vigorous blue puffs which hang upon the drowsy air. He stands for a moment looking at the sun, and decides that it is time to start.

“Now, I wonder what has become of Sticks. The old scamp is given to erring and straying afar just when wanted. When I don’t require his services he’ll fool about the camp by the hour.”

Sticks was his horse. That estimable quadruped had at one time been addicted to “sticking,” an inconvenient vice of which his present owner had thoroughly cured him.

Our wayfarer strolls leisurely to the ridge which shuts in the hollow, and looks around. Then a reddish object amid the green bush, some hundreds of yards further down, catches his eye. It is the object of his search; and, with one hand thrust carelessly into a pocket, he makes for the errant nag and returns leading his steed to the waterhole, where clouds of yellow finks scatter right and left, vociferously giving vent to their indignation at being thus invaded.

And now, having saddled up, he is on his way. Steeper and steeper grows the ascent; the bush meets here and there over the narrow path, nearly sweeping the rider from his saddle, and the horse, blinded now and then by a thick branch of spekboem flying back in his eyes, makes an approach to a stumble, for which he is not to blame, for the track is rugged enough in all conscience. At length the narrow path comes to an end, merging into a broad but stony waggon road.

But—excelsior! The bay steps out at a brisk walk, ascending ever the rough road which winds round the abrupt spurs of the hills like a ledge, mounting higher and higher above the long sweep of bush-covered slope, where, among the recesses of many a dark ravine, thickets of “wait-a-bit” thorn, and mimosa, and tangled underwood, afford retreat to the more retiring denizens of the waste—the sharp-horned bushbuck and the tusked wild pig, the hooded cobra, and the deadly puff-adder. And beneath those shades, too, in the still gloom, the spotted leopard creeps stealthily upon its prey, and the howl of the hyena and the shrill yelping bay of the jackal resound weirdly through the night.

“It’s waxing chilly. Up, old Sticks!” ejaculates the traveller, with a light tap of his riding-crop. The horse picks up his head and scrambles along with new zest. A few minutes more and he is standing on the top of the randt (the high ground or ridge overlooking the valley of a river) for a brief blow after his exertions, which his heaving flanks proclaim to have been of no mean order, while his rider is contemplating the fresh scene which opens out before his gaze. For the wooded country has been left, and now before him lies spread a panorama of broad and rolling plains, dotted capriciously here and there with clumps of bush. A lovely sweep of country stretches away in many undulations to the wooded foothills of a beautiful mountain range which forms a background to the whole view, extending, crescent-like, far as the eye can travel. The snow-cap yet resting on the lofty peak of the Great Winterberg flushes first with a delicate tinge and then blood-red; many a jutting spur and grey cliff starts forth wondrously distinct, while the forest trees upon a score of distant heights stand soft and feathery, touched with a shimmer of green and gold from the long beams of the sinking sun as he dips down and down to the purpling west.

The stranger rides on, enjoying the glorious beauty of this fair landscape—never fairer than when seen thus, in the almost unearthly lustre of a perfect evening. A steinbuck leaps out of the grass, and after a brief run halts and steadily surveys the intruder. Down in the hollow a pair of blue cranes utter their musical note of alarm, and stalk rapidly hither and thither, as though undecided about the quarter whence danger threatens, and the cooing of doves from yon clump of euphorbia blends in soft harmony with the peaceful surroundings as in a vesper chant of rest.

And now a strange group appears over the rise in front. It is a Kafir trek. Two men, three women, and some children, driving before them their modest possessions in live stock, consisting of three cows (one with a calf), and a few sheep and goats. The men wear an ample blanket apiece thrown loosely round their shoulders, but other clothing have they none, with the exception of a pair of boots, which however, each carries slung over his shoulder, preferring to walk barefoot. The women are somewhat less scantily clad, with nondescript draperies of blanketing and bead-work falling around them. Each has her baby slung on her back, and carries an enormous bundle on her head, containing pots and pans, blankets and matting—the household goods and chattels; for her lord disdains to bear anything but his kerries, or knobsticks, and marches along in front looking as if the whole world belonged to him. Some of the elder children are laden with smaller bundles, and even the cows are pressed into the service as porters, each having a long roll of mats fastened across her horns, and two or three mongrel curs slink behind the group. All Kafir garments are plentifully bedaubed with red ochre, an adornment frequently extended to their wearers, giving them the appearance of peripatetic flower-pots.

“Naand, Baas!” (Note 1) sing out the men as they meet the traveller, and then continue in their own tongue, “Nxazéla.” (Tobacco.)

No bad specimens of their hardy and supple race are these two fellows as they stand there, their well-knit, active figures glistening like bronze in the setting sun. They hold their heads well up, and each of their shrewd and rather good-looking countenances is lighted by a pair of clear, penetrating eyes. The stranger chucks them a bit of the coveted plant, and asks how much further it is to Seringa Vale.

“Over there,” replies one of the Kafirs, pointing with his stick to the second rise in the ground, about two miles off. With a brief good-night the horseman touches up his nag and breaks into a gentle canter, while the natives, collecting their stock—which has taken advantage of the halt to scatter over the veldt and pick up a few mouthfuls of grass—resume their way.

The sun has gone down, and the white peak of the Great Winterberg towers up cold and spectral to the liquid sky, as the horseman crests the ridge indicated, and lo—the broad roof of a substantial farmhouse lies beneath. Around, are several thatched outbuildings, and the whole is charmingly situated, nestling in a grove of seringas and orange trees. There is a fruit-garden in front of the house, or rather on one side of it, though it may almost be said to have two fronts, for the verandah and the stoep run round the two sides which command the best and widest view, while another and a larger garden, even more leafy and inviting-looking, lies down in the kloof. Close to the homestead are the sheep and cattle kraals, with their prickly thorn-fences, into one of which a white, fleecy flock is already being counted, while another, preceded by its voerbok (Note 2) is coming down the kloof, urged on by the shout and whistle of its Kafir shepherd. The cattle enclosure is already alive with the dappled hides of its denizens, moving about among whom are the bronzed forms of the cattle-herd and his small boys, who are busily employed in sorting out the calves and shutting them up in their pen for the night, away from their mothers, so that these may contribute their share towards filling the milk-pails in the morning. Behind the kraals stand the abodes of the Kafir farm servants, eight or ten beehive-shaped huts to wit, and stepping along towards these, calabash on head, comes a file of native women and girls who have been to draw water from the spring. They sing, as they walk, a monotonous kind of savage chant, stopping now and then to bawl out some “chaff” to the shepherd approaching with his flock as aforesaid, and going into shrill peals of laughter over his reply.

The traveller draws rein for a little while, till the counting-in process is accomplished, then rides down to the kraal gate and dismounts. A man turns away from giving some final directions to the Kafir who is tying up the gate—an old man, over whose head at least seventy summers must have passed, but yet stalwart of body and handsome of feature, with hair and beard like silver. He is dressed in the rough cord suit and slouch hat of the ordinary frontier farmer, and in his hand he carries a whip of plaited raw-hide. His clothes have a timeworn appearance, and his hands are large and hard-looking; but, in spite of the roughness of his aspect and attire, you need only look once into Walter Brathwaite’s face to know that you were confronting a man of gentle blood.

“Good evening,” he says, heartily, advancing with outstretched hand towards the stranger. But a curious smile upon the tatter’s face causes him to pause with a half mystified, hesitating air, as if it were not unfamiliar to him. “Why, no. It can’t be. Bless my soul, it is, though. Why, Claverton, how are you, my boy? Glad to see you back again in Africa,” and he enclosed the younger man’s hand in a strong grip. “But come in; the wife’ll be delighted. Here, Jacob,” he shouted, in stentorian tones which brought a young Hottentot upon the scene in a twinkling, “take the Baas’s horse and off-saddle him.”

Passing through a hall, garnished with trophies of the chase, bushbuck horns, and tusks of the wild pig, and a couple of grinning panther-heads, they entered the dining-room, a large, homelike apartment, plainly but comfortably furnished.

“Here, Mary, I’ve brought you a visitor,” said the settler, as they entered. “You remember Arthur Claverton?”

A tall old lady, whose kindly and still handsome face bore unmistakable signs of former beauty, rose from a sewing-machine at which she had been working, with a start of surprise.

“What! Arthur? Why, so it is. But I should never have known you, you’re so altered. Ah, I always said we should see you out here again,” she continued, shaking his hand cordially.

The stranger smiled, and a very pleasant smile it was.

“Well, yes, so you did, Mrs Brathwaite; but at least I have the faculty of knowing when and where I am well off,” he said, really touched by the genuine warmth of his reception.

“So you’ve been all over the world since we saw you last—to Australia and back?” she went on. “And then the last thing we heard of you was that you had gone to America.”

“I attempted to; but Providence, or rather the blunder-headed lookout on board a homeward-bound liner, willed otherwise.”

“How do you mean?”

“Why! that the said idiotically-handled craft collided with ours, two days out, cutting her down to the water’s edge and sinking her in thirteen minutes. I and twenty-four others were picked up, but the rest went to Davy Jones’s locker. There weren’t many more of them, though, for it was a small boat, and I was nearly the only passenger.”

“Oh! And you didn’t try the voyage again?” said Mrs Brathwaite, in subdued tones. She was colonial born, and in her own element as brave a woman as ever stepped. In the earlier frontier wars she had stood by her husband’s side within the laager and loaded his guns for him, while the conflict waxed long and desperate, and the night was ablaze with the flash of volleys, and the air was heavy with asphyxiating smoke, and the detonating crash of musketry and the battle-shouts of the savage foe, and had never flinched. But she had a shuddering horror of the sea, and would almost have gone through all her terrible experiences again rather than trust herself for one hour on its smiling, treacherous expanse.

“Well, no; I didn’t,” he answered. “I took it as an omen, and concluded to dismiss the Far West in favour of the ‘Sunny South.’ So here I am.”

“Ah! well,” put in the old settler. “Perhaps we’ll be able to find you something in the way of excitement here, if that’s what you were in search of, and that before very long, too. All isn’t so quiet here as they try to make out. I’ve lived on the frontier, man and boy, all my life, and I can see pretty plainly that there’s mischief brewing.”

“Is there? I did hear something of the sort on my way up, now I think of it; but I had an idea that the days of war were over, and that Jack Kafir had got his quietus.”

“Ha! ha! Had you really, now? Why, bless my soul, the Kafirs are far more numerous than ever; they outnumber us by fifty to one. They hate us as much as ever they did, and for some time past have been steadily collecting guns and ammunition. Now, what do they want those guns and that ammunition for? Not for hunting, for there’s next to no game in all Kafirland. No, it is to put them on an equal footing with us; and then, with their numbers, they think to have it all their own way. There’s mischief brewing, mark my words.”

“It wouldn’t mean a scrimmage among themselves, would it? They might be anxious to exterminate each other,” ventured Claverton.

The other smiled significantly, and was about to reply, when the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of supper and—Hicks.

The latter was one of those young Englishmen often met with on colonial farms, learning their business in the capacity of assistant, or general factotum; and who may be divided into two categories: those who take kindly to the life and throw themselves thoroughly into it and its interests, and those who don’t, and leave it after a trial. Our friend Hicks may be placed in the former of these. He was a strong, energetic, good-tempered fellow, who loved his calling, and was a favourite with everybody. He had served three years in the Frontier Mounted Police, and had been two with Mr Brathwaite, and, by virtue of so much hard, healthy, open-air life, was twice the man he had been when he left his father’s Midlandshire parsonage five years previously.

“You were asking if the Kafirs might not be preparing for a fight among themselves?” resumed the old settler as they took their places at the supper-table, which looked cheerful and homelike in the extreme. He had got upon a favourite hobby, and was not to be diverted from a congenial ride. “There isn’t the slightest chance of it, because they know very well we shan’t let them. We prefer encouraging them to hammer away at us.”

“Pickling a rod for our own backs?” remarked Claverton.

“Just so. By patching up their tribal disputes we check just so much salutary blood-letting, and foster hordes of lazy, thieving rascals right on our border. Even if the sham philanthropy, under which we groan, obliges us to sit still while the savages grow fat on our stolen cattle and laugh at us, the least it could do would be to allow them to cut a few of each other’s throats when they have a mind to.”

“The Home Government, I suppose?”

“That’s it. A parcel of old women in Downing Street, ruled by Exeter Hall and the Peace Society. What do they know about the Colony, and what do they care? After British subjects have been murdered and plundered all along the border, an official is sent to inquire into it. Of course the chiefs all pretend ignorance, and throw the blame on somebody else. Then follows great palaver and buttering over. The chiefs are told to be good boys and not do it again, and are given waggon-loads of presents—and a treaty is made. A treaty! With savages—savages whose boast is that they are a nation of liars. Can’t you imagine the wily rascals sniggering in their blankets, and wondering how much longer they are going to allow themselves to be governed by such a race of milksops!”

His listeners could not forbear a laugh.

“I can tell you it’s no laughing matter to be burned out of house and home three times as I have been,” went on the old man, “and that through the sentimental cant of our rulers. No; coddling savages doesn’t do—never did do, and never will. Treat them fairly and with the strictest justice; but, if you are to rule them at all, you must do so with a strong hand.”

Walter Brathwaite had, as he said, lived on the frontier, man and boy, all his life; for he was a mere child when his father, tempted by the inducement of free grants of land, had transferred the family fortunes to the shores of Southern Africa in the early days of the settlement of the Cape Colony. His youth and earlier manhood were passed amid the hardships and obstacles of an emigrant’s life. And also its dangers—for the tribes infesting the rugged and difficult country which then was Kafirland, were wont to lay marauding hands on the settler’s flocks and herds—nor did the savages scruple about adding murder to pillage. Still the emigrants throve; for those were the days of good seasons and healthy flocks and herds—when pasturage was plentiful and succulent, droughts were infrequent, and disease almost unknown. Three successive wars at short intervals swept away the fruits of the unfortunate settlers’ toil; but they managed to pick up again, and now, at this period of our narrative, it is twenty years since the last of these, and there are once more the same signs of restlessness among the tribes which the experienced remember to have heralded former outbreaks. So if Walter Brathwaite expresses strong distrust of his barbarous neighbours, it is not without ample justification. He has done good service, too, in the time of need; has fought valiantly and ungrudgingly on behalf of his adopted country, and whether in peace or in war has ever enjoyed the respect and good opinion of his fellows. In truth, right justly so. Gifted with strong, practical common sense; his straightforward nature abhorring anything in the shape of humbug or meanness; of a thoroughly kind-hearted, genial disposition and open-handed to a degree, he is a splendid specimen of the colonist who is also by birth and tradition a true English gentleman; and now in the latter years of his long, useful, and honourable life, he is an object of esteem and affection to all who know him—and they are many.

Note 1. Dutch, “Evening, master.” Dutch is nearly always employed in the Cape Colony for intercourse with the natives, comparatively few frontiersmen, even, being well versed in the Kafir language.

Note 2. “The goat which goes before.”—A goat is always used instead of a bell-wether on the Cape sheep farms, and so accustomed do the flocks become to their leader that it is a hard and toilsome business to induce them to enter their fold without it.

Volume One—Chapter Five.

The Biter Bitten.

It was early when Claverton awoke on the following morning; but, early as it was, the occupant of the other bed had disappeared. He had “shaken down” in Hicks’ room, and the two had talked and smoked themselves to sleep; and, early as it was, there were plenty of sounds outside, which told of the day’s doings having begun.

The most epicurean of late sleepers will find it hard to keep up his usual luxurious habit in a frontier house. There is a something which seems to preclude late lying—possibly the consciousness of exceptional laziness, or a sneaking qualm over taking it easy in bed when every soul on the place has long been astir; but even the most inveterate sluggard will hardly find it in his conscience to roll over again, especially if a companion’s long since vacated conch is staring him reproachfully in the face from the other side of the room.

Claverton, who was in no sense an epicurean, felt something of this, and lost no time in turning out. The sun had risen, but was unable to pierce the heavy mist which hang over the earth in opaque folds. He found his host busy at the sheep kraals, the thorn-fence dividing which had been broken through in the night, with the result of mixing the flocks. Three Kafirs were hard at work sorting them out again, and the dust flew in clouds as the flock rushed hither and thither within the confined space—the ground rumbling under their hoofs.

“Pleasure of farming!” remarked the old man, with a smile, after greetings had been exchanged. Both turned away their faces a minute as a pungent and blinding cloud swept past them. “The rascals might have avoided all this by simply putting a thorn tack or two in its place last night. You can’t trust them, you see—have to look to everything yourself.”

“Suppose so,” replied Claverton, slipping out of his jacket. “I’m going to give your fellows a hand. The brand, though, is rather indistinct. Which come out?”

“All branded B, with the double ear mark.”

“Right?” And he dived into the thick of the fun, with all the energy and more than the dexterity of the Kafirs, who paused for a moment with a stare of astonishment and a smothered “Whouw!” They did not know who the strange Baas was, but he was evidently no greenhorn.

Another hour’s hard work and the flocks are separate again; but it is rather too early to turn them out to grass. So the two stroll round to the cattle kraal, whose denizens stand patiently and ruminatingly about for the most part, though some are restless and on the move, recognising with responsive “moo” the voices of their calves in the pen. Nearly all the cows are of good breed—the serviceable and hardy cattle of the country, crossed with imported stock, though now and again among them can be descried the small head and straight back of an almost thorough-bred Alderney. Milking is going on. There sits the old cattle-herd beneath a wild young animal properly secured, milking away and gossiping with his satellites as fast as he fills his pail—for Kafirs are awful gossips. Then he turns the frightened young cow loose, and, removing the foaming pail out of the way of a possible upset, proceeds in search of a fresh victim. He salutes his master in passing, and, with a rapid, keen glance at the stranger, extends his greeting to him.

Mr Brathwaite is very proud of his choice and well-bred animals. He knows every hoof of them like ABC, almost every hair; and as they walk about among the beasts he entertains his companion with the history of each, and where it came from, and the events of its career in life.

“Hullo! Who’s this?” said Claverton suddenly, as two horsemen appeared on the brow of the opposite hill. “One’s Hicks, the other looks like, uncommonly like, Jim.”

“Yes, it is Jim,” assented Mr Brathwaite. “What’s brought him over this morning, I wonder?” The said Jim was his eldest son. He was a married man, and lived on a farm of his own some fifteen or sixteen miles off. A few minutes more, and the two horsemen drew rein in front of the cattle kraal.

“Hullo, Arthur!” sang out Jim, jumping to the ground. “Here we are again! Hicks told me I should find you here, of all people. Morning, father! Have Ethel and Laura arrived yet?”

“I believe so. I saw Jeffreys’ trap coming over the hill about an hour ago, and he was to bring them. I was busy and couldn’t go in then. My brother’s children, Arthur,” he explained, noting a surprised look in his guest’s face. “They have come from Cape Town to stay a couple of months while their father is away up the country.”

“Come to enliven us up a bit,” said jovial Jim. “Ethel will lead you a life of it, or I’m a Trojan.”

Jim Brathwaite was a fine, handsome fellow of thirty-five, over six feet in height, strong as a bull and active as a leopard. His bronzed and bearded countenance was stamped with that air of dashing intrepidity with which a genial disposition usually goes hand in hand. He was a quick-tempered man, and his native dependents stood in considerable awe of him, for they knew—some of them to their cost—that he would stand no nonsense. Of untiring energy, and with all his father’s practical common sense, he had prospered exceedingly in good times, and had managed to hold his own against bad ones. Shrewd and clear-headed, he was thoroughly well able to look after his own interests; and any one given to sharp practice or rascality—whether cattle dealer or Dutchman, Kafir or Hottentot—would have to get up very early indeed to reach the blind side of him.

Claverton had been on very intimate terms with the Brathwaites some years previously. They had been good friends to him in the earlier days of his wandering life, and he had a warm regard for them. It was more than pleasant, he thought, being among them again, laughing over many a reminiscence evoked by the jest-loving Jim as they strolled towards the house.

The long, low dining-room looked invitingly cool after the glare and heat outside. Mrs Brathwaite, who was seated at the table, scolded them playfully for keeping breakfast waiting. Beside her sat a girl—a beautiful creature, with large blue eyes fringed with curling lashes, and a sparkling, dimpled rosebud of a face made for capriciousness and kisses. The masses of her golden hair, drawn back from the brows, were allowed to fall in a rippling shower below her waist, and a fresh, cool morning-dress set off her neat little figure to perfection.

“Arthur. This is my niece, Ethel,” said Mrs Brathwaite.

Claverton started ever so slightly and bowed. He was wondering where on earth this vision of loveliness had suddenly dropped from in this out-of-the-way place. And Mr Brathwaite had said, “My brother’s children.”

The girl shot one glance at him from under the curling lashes as she acknowledged the introduction, and a gleam of merriment darted across the bright face. Each had been trying to read off the other, and each had detected the other in the act. She turned away to greet her cousin.

“Why, what in the world has brought you here?” cried that jovial blade in his hearty voice. “We weren’t expecting you for ever so long. Where’s Laura?”

“The Union Company’s steamer Basuto. Cobb and Co, and Mr Jeffreys’ trap. Laura’s in the next room. One question at a time, please.”

Jim roared with laughter as he took his seat at the table. Between himself and Ethel much sparring took place whenever the pair got together.

“Sharp as ever, by Jingo,” he cried. “I say, Ethel, I wonder you haven’t been quodded for bribery and corruption. They say Uncle George only gets returned by sending you round to tout for votes.”

The point of this joke lay in the fact that her father was a fervid politician and a member of the Legislative Assembly. Before Ethel could retort, a diversion was created by the entrance of Mr Brathwaite and his other niece. Laura was her sister’s junior by a year, and as unlike her as it was possible to be. She was a slight, graceful girl, with dark hair and eyes, and as quiet and demure in manner as the other was merry and impulsive; and though falling far short of her sister in actual beauty, yet when interested her face would light up in a manner that was very attractive. So thought, at any rate, our friend Hicks, on whom, during her last visit at Seringa Vale, Laura had made an impression. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Hicks was very hard hit indeed.

“Really, those two are too bad,” said Mrs Brathwaite. “Beginning to fight before they have been five minutes together. Isn’t it too bad of them, Arthur?”

He appealed to, looked up just in time to catch Ethel’s glance of defiance which said as plainly as words: “You mind your own business.” She was not going to defer to the opinions of this stranger, and did not see why he should be called upon to decide in the matter. No doubt he had come out there with the notion that they were a mere set of half-civilised, ignorant colonials whom it was his business to set right. Those new arrivals from England always gave themselves such airs, and expected to have everything their own way. That might do with the old people and good-natured Jim, but it would not go down with her, Ethel Brathwaite, aged nineteen, and she intended to let him know it. She had taken a dislike to this new arrival, which he saw at once, and the idea rather entertained him.

“Uncle, I declare Jim gets worse and worse as he grows older. Yes—older, Jim, for you’re quite grey since I saw you last, you know. How are you, Mr Hicks?” she continued, as that tardy youth entered the room. “Have you shot your twenty backs yet? You know we said last year we should vote you out of our good opinion unless you could show as twenty pairs of horns fairly killed by your own gun when next we met?”

“Well, not yet,” was the answer, somewhat reluctantly given.

“As you are strong, be merciful,” put in Claverton, thereby drawing down upon himself another indignant glance.

Our friend Hicks, like many a greater man, had his weaknesses. One of these was a passion for sport. He would lay himself out to the most arduous labours in the heat of the day, and forego many an hour of well-earned rest at night, in the pursuit of his favourite pastime. Not that his efforts were always crowned with the success they deserved—indeed, it was the exception rather than the rule if they were so—but the mere pleasure of having his gun in his hand, expecting, Micawber-like, something to turn up, satisfied him. When he first came to Seringa Vale he had been in the habit of starting off in quest of game at times when by no possibility could he have obtained a shot, and under such circumstances had been known to empty his gun at such small fry as spreuws or meercats rather than not discharge it at all. But whatever he let off his gun at, it didn’t make the least difference to the object under fire. He never hit anything, and much good-humoured chaff was habitually indulged in at his expense. “He couldn’t hit a house, couldn’t Hicks,” Mr Brathwaite was wont to observe jocosely, “unless he were put inside and all the doors and shutters barred up.” Which witticism Jim would supplement by two or three of his own. But the subject of this rallying was the very essence of good humour. He didn’t mind any amount of chaff, and devoted himself to the pursuit of ferae naturae with a perseverance which was literally as laid down by the copy-books—its own reward.

“I move that we all go down and look at the ostriches,” suggested Ethel, ever anxious to be on the move.

“Who seconds that?” said Jim, looking around. “Now, then, Arthur!”

“As junior member my innate modesty forbids,” was the reply.

“That is meant satirically, Mr Claverton,” cried Ethel. “You deserve to be voted out of the expedition, and if you don’t apologise you shall be.”

“Then I withdraw the innate modesty. What—that not enough? Then there’s nothing for it but a pistol or a pipe. Of the two evils here goes for the pipe. Hicks, we haven’t blown our cloud this morning.” He saw how the land lay.

“Er—well, you see—er—that is—er—I mean,” stammered Hicks, who, good-natured fellow, shrank from refusing outright. “Er—the fact is, I’ve got to go down and feed the ostriches some time, so I may as well go now.”

“Well, I am surprised at you, Mr Hicks,” said Ethel. “So the pleasure of our company counts as nothing. You deserve to be put on the stool of repentance too.”