always made it a point to avoid a scuffle if it can possibly be done.
But sometimes there comes an occasion when a man must take his own part.
This was one of them. I couldn't stand by and see that hulking bully
knocking Poeskop about. My idea is that every decent Englishman, or
English boy, should be able to defend himself when compelled to, and for
that reason I believe in every lad being taught to box. My old boxing
lessons stood me in good stead just now. I suppose the Boer was at
least a couple of stone heavier than myself; but he knew no more about
fighting than a baby, and he paid the penalty."
He soused his face in cold water, washed his hands, and with the two
lads and Poeskop went off to the magistrate's office. The upshot of the
affair was that Karl Engelbrecht was proved to be entirely in the wrong.
It was shown that he had persistently maltreated Poeskop, and that he
had seldom if ever paid him his rightful wages. Other natives in the
town, who were under Portuguese rule, but who had served with
Engelbrecht, could speak to these facts. In the end the Boer was fined
for assaulting the Bushman, and ordered to pay him a further sum of
money due for unpaid wages. The Dutchman paid the money with a wry
face, and it was clear that he was yet more inflamed with hatred against
Poeskop and his English supporters than he had been before.
But for the most part the people of Mossamedes, including the governor
of the town and other officials, were delighted at the punishment
inflicted on the big Boer. He was known and feared as a quarrelsome
bully, and now some one had been found to check his blustering career
and cut his comb. Mr. Blakeney was advised privately, after these
occurrences, to keep his eyes open. Karl Engelbrecht was a man of evil
reputation, who would not be likely to stop at trifles in the
achievement of revenge, and revenge he was known to have vowed. In the
town nothing would be attempted, but in the veldt such a ruffian might
very well try to do mischief. However, Mr. Blakeney treated the matter
very coolly. He was well able to take care of himself, he said; and
having wide experience of the veldt and veldt ways, he felt perfectly
competent to set at naught the blusterings of Karl Engelbrecht and his
followers. The big Dutchman, having got over the effects of the fight,
was having a good time in Mossamedes. For some time past the Portuguese
Government had been employing the Trek Boers settled in their territory
as mercenaries in their warfare against any tribes that happened to give
trouble. The Boers took their payment chiefly in cattle, raided from
the defeated tribesfolk; and Engelbrecht, who had been lately leading a
commando against some unfortunate natives, had returned with much
plunder in oxen and goats. These he had sold for good prices; his
pockets were full of money, and he and his freebooting associates were
bent on having a high time at the various bars and canteens of the
place.
It is perhaps necessary to explain here, in a few words, how it came
about that Boers were thus to be found in Portuguese territory, so far
away from the homes of the South African Dutch stock settled in the
Transvaal. Nearly twenty years before, many families of Boers, disgusted
with the anarchy and bad government of the Transvaal Republic, and
embittered yet more at the English taking over the country, as they had
done in 1877, had quitted the Transvaal and trekked north-westward
across the desert in search of a new Promised Land, which they believed
to exist somewhere in the far interior. These ignorant and misguided
folk found in their long wanderings no land of Canaan, flowing, as they
had fondly hoped, with milk and honey. Their trek extended over several
years; they endured almost unexampled privations and troubles from
thirst, fevers, and the attacks of natives; scores of them died; they
lost the greater portion of their stock, and abandoned many wagons; some
turned back, and only a comparatively small remnant emerged from the
perils of this unparalleled trek. After wandering about the western
regions of the Kalahari, the Okavango country, and Ovampoland, they
crossed the Cunene River and entered Portuguese territory.
Here they were well treated. They were allotted farms and encouraged to
colonize the country, and many families did actually settle down at
Humpata. Since that time--about the beginning of 1881--these Trek Boers
and their descendants had accepted their lot in the new country and
become Portuguese subjects. They tilled the ground, ranched cattle,
sheep, and goats, rode transport (that is, carried goods) to and from
Mossamedes and Benguela, hunted elephants for their ivory, and other
kinds of game for their skins and flesh. Latterly, as we have seen,
they had been assisting the Portuguese in native wars. For this kind of
warfare they were excellently well adapted, being good shots and riders,
and well versed in every trick and circumstance of veldt fighting. The
Portuguese had, in fact, found them highly satisfactory auxiliaries, and
the unfortunate natives--too often treated with the grossest unfairness
and trickery by all parties--terrible enemies.
Among the Trek Boers of Humpata and the neighbouring country were many
decent, deserving, and well-conducted people, who were only anxious to
make a fair and honest living out of the country. A leaven of them,
however, were mere filibusters and adventurers, cruel, cunning, and
deceitful, ready to overreach and rob any man, especially if he had a
black skin, and always prepared to use their rifles on small
provocation. Among these was to be reckoned Karl Engelbrecht, who, even
among these lawless spirits, had acquired a sinister reputation. Most
of these Dutch settlers were fine, big, upstanding men, strong, bold,
hardy, and athletic--as indeed they might well be; for they and their
families represented the survival of the fittest, after one of the most
trying and adventurous passages on record. Their seven years of
wandering had, in truth, weeded out all the weak ones, and left alive
only the toughest and hardiest of a tough and hardy race.
For the next few days Mr. Blakeney and his party were busied in pushing
on their preparations for the trek. They filled the lower part of the
wagon with various stores and provisions--meal, coffee, sugar, tinned
provisions, jams, vegetables, and other small luxuries. They laid in
also dried onions, always useful on an expedition of this kind, where
green vegetables are unprocurable, as well as a bag or two of potatoes.
They carried also sacks of mealies and Kaffir corn (the latter a kind of
millet) with which to feed the horses. They anticipated a good deal of
hunting; and you cannot pursue game on horseback, and run down giraffe,
eland, and other fleet creatures, unless your nags are well fed and in
good condition. This fact Guy had already become aware of during his
stay in British Bechuanaland. Their saddlery, ammunition, guns and
rifles had come round with them from Cape Town. Juno, their invaluable
pointer, was also of the party. Juno seemed to be getting keener and
keener as each day passed; she watched anxiously the loading of the
wagon, and was evidently only too desirous to have the whole party out
in the veldt. A good light tent had been procured, and Mr. Blakeney's
kartel fixed up in the wagon. All was now ready for the trek, which
they hoped to begin next day.
During these preparations they necessarily, moving as they did freely
about the small seaport of Mossamedes, passed Karl Engelbrecht and his
boon companions in close proximity. After his severe lesson the Boer,
who was a coward at bottom, did not dare to attempt any further
liberties with the Englishmen or their servants; but he scowled evilly
as he passed, and had always some savage remark to make to his
friends--delivered carefully in an undertone--as they went by. Mr.
Blakeney and the two lads, for their part, took not the slightest notice
of the freebooters; even Poeskop, strong in his reliance upon his
English protectors, held his head well in the air, and assumed an air of
supercilious indifference, which perhaps in his secret heart he felt was
not altogether justified. For Poeskop, undoubtedly, knowing his former
master and his evil ways so well, still retained within his soul certain
secret quakings as he thought of or set eyes upon Karl Engelbrecht.
"My young baas," he would say to Guy, as they sighted the big, burly
ruffian, "he is _slim_, and he is strong, and he is cruel. And he will
try to make us suffer for his black eyes, which he still carries, the
_schelm!_ and his bleeding nose. _Maghte!_ but it was good as a sackful
of honey[#] to see Karl Engelbrecht floored by Baas Blackenny" (he
always mispronounced the word), "and it does me good still to see his
battered face."
[#] Honey is often carried by the natives in skin bags.
Then he would croon to himself in his croaking voice: "But we shall
suffer, we shall suffer; Karl Engelbrecht is planning something; Poeskop
knows it, ay, he knows it. Well, Poeskop will look out. He sleep
always like the _muishond_ [a kind of weasel], with one eye open."
On the last night before the trek Mr. Blakeney was with the two lads in
their bedroom, having a chat with them, and helping them to complete
their packings. They talked on many subjects, including the treasure
hunt which lay before them. Then they bade one another good night, and
Mr. Blakeney retired to his own room.
Next morning early Guy knocked at his door and aroused him. Guy was
always the early bird of the party: earlier even than his uncle, who was
always out and about before six.
"Uncle," he said, "I want you to come and look at something in our
room."
"All right, Guy," was the reply. "What is it?"
"Something rather odd, I think," returned Guy, as they went down the
passage. They entered the double-bedded room where the cousins slept,
and Guy took his uncle across to the wall against which Guy's bed stood.
"Look at this, uncle," he said, kneeling on his bed and pointing to the
wall. "What do you make of it?"
The wall was in fact nothing more than a fairly stout partition of
varnished wood. Mr. Blakeney knelt beside Guy, and looked closely at
the spot where the lad's finger rested. He saw at once that a neat hole
had been bored through the partition from the other side, and a hollow
left big enough to thrust the point of his little finger into.
"Well, what do you think it means, Guy?" he asked, screwing up his mouth
with an odd expression.
"I think, uncle, it means," returned Guy, "that that fellow in the next
room has been spying on us for some reason or other."
"Who has the next room?" queried Mr. Blakeney, manifestly with some
anxiety.
"Why, that Portuguese brute who is always about with Karl
Engelbrecht--Minho, his name is."
"Whew!" whistled Mr. Blakeney. "I wish I had known this earlier. What
time does he leave his room?"
"Not for another hour yet," broke in Tom; "and he always locks his door
and takes his key with him."
"Well, Tom," said his father, "you stay behind while Guy and I go out to
the wagons and start the trek. Then we'll come back to breakfast, and
afterwards ride out together and overtake the wagons by the mid-day
outspan. Meanwhile if, by hook or crook, you can get into this fellow
Minho's room, and see what this hole means, do so. Be careful, though,
and don't get into any unpleasantness with the man. If you can't get in
without trouble, leave it alone. I'll see the landlord about it."
They returned in an hour and a half's time, and were met by Tom with a
smiling face.
"I've done the Sherlock Holmes business," he said quietly. "Minho went
out and locked his door. I tried his window, which like ours opens on
to the veranda, and found that the artful beggar had fastened it in such
a way that, while the top sash is open, you can't pull up the lower
part. It was impossible to climb in through the top without running the
risk of breaking the glass. Well, I waited impatiently half an hour,
and then Maria--the native woman who cleans the rooms up, and has
evidently a second key--went in and did up the room. While she was gone
with a bundle of clothes for the wash I nipped in, and had a good look
round at the partition on that side. I found that a hole had been
neatly bored with an auger, and the cavity filled up with a round piece
of wood, which had been painted to look just like a knot in the
pinewood. This, with a little coaxing of the finger nail, comes out, and
then you have a view into our room, and I have no doubt can hear quite
well everything that is said in here. I put the bit of wood back, and
slipped out again before old Maria had got back from her errand."
"The brute!" ejaculated Mr. Blakeney. "He has evidently been spying on
us. And when he bored that hole he must have got into this room and
cleared away any traces of his work." He knelt on Guy's bed and
examined the aperture carefully again. "He has even taken the trouble
to put on some dark paint round this side of the hole," he added, "so
that the place looks just like a pine knot from this side. I wonder you
spotted it, Guy."
"Well, I noticed it from the bed this morning," said Guy, "just before I
got up. It was a mere chance. The place looked uneven, and when I
examined it I found I could just get the tip of my little finger inside
the hole. Then I saw that the place wasn't natural."
"Well, the mischief's done now," said Mr. Blakeney. "I have half a mind
to tell the landlord--in fact, I think I will straight away."
Senhor Jose Moseles, whom Mr. Blakeney at once interviewed, was no
friend of Antonio Minho. He knew the man to be a shady character, and a
friend of the filibustering Boer, Engelbrecht. But in Mossamedes such
characters were not uncommon, and landlords had to put up with them, if
they paid their bills. Minho was just now flush of money, and indeed
was usually well supplied with that commodity. But Senhor Moseles would
look after him. It was not Mr. Blakeney's plan to arouse the man's
suspicions just then. Moseles therefore arranged to take measures
concerning the peep-hole a week or two later; which, Minho having left
the hotel, he did. The hole was plugged and varnished, and the matter,
so far as he was concerned, ended.
This little matter attended to, the three Englishmen breakfasted. Then,
having put together their small kits, their horses were brought round,
and they quitted Mossamedes. Their route lay along the main road
running from the seaport to Humpata, and there was no difficulty in
finding their way. The road, if road it could be called, was rough and
uneven, and the country parched, hilly, and uninteresting. They
overtook the wagon at one o'clock, and found it outspanned till the heat
of the day was past. At four they trekked, and made fair progress till
nine, when they outspanned again. For nearly a week the expedition
pushed on steadily eastward, through sterile and mountainous country,
until they had reached the Trek Boer settlement at Humpata, by the
Portuguese sometimes called San Januario. Here they halted for a couple
of days to rest the oxen and take in some further stores, including
poultry, meal, and other produce grown by the Boers in this
neighbourhood.
The Dutch people of this curious little settlement, so remote from the
Transvaal, whence they had trekked years before, interested Mr. Blakeney
and the boys not a little. They knew the pathetic history of these
people: of their long wanderings, and of the terrible sufferings they
had sustained before attaining this region. They found them, as a rule,
kindly and hospitable folk, if rough and primitive. So soon as the Trek
Boers discovered that the newcomers spoke Cape Dutch, and came from
Bechuanaland, so near to the Transvaal border, they were only too
anxious to render them hospitality, and make inquiries about the country
they themselves had quitted years before. The English travellers, on
their part, had many little returns to make for such kindnesses as were
thus shown them. They had Cape and Transvaal papers to give away; a
spare bag of excellent coffee to exchange; and they won the hearts of
several families by the gift of tins of Morton's jams, marmalade, and
ginger, which to the sweet-toothed Dutch, who seldom met with such rare
luxuries, were as manna in the desert.
"_Alle wereld!_" said Mevrouw Van der Merwe, a stout, good-natured old
Boer dame, living in one of the best houses in the little settlement.
"'Tis a pleasure to set eyes on fresh-looking folk again from South
Africa, with news of the Transvaal, and the Free State, and the Old
Colony. One gets tired of seeing nothing but these little yellow-faced
Portuguese, who to my mind are, after all, no better than Griquas and
Bastards. I always say to our people here, 'There are English and
English, just as there are Boers and Boers. You get good and bad of
every race of mankind.' For my part, I have met many good English, and
have received many kindnesses from them, just as I have from you,
Menheer Blakeney, and your son and nephew. And so they are getting more
gold than ever out of the Transvaal?"
"Yes," answered Mr. Blakeney. "They are getting enormous
quantities--something like thirteen millions of pounds sterling during
the year."
"Is it possible!" ejaculated the vrouw, pushing the tobacco canister
over to Mr. Blakeney, and pouring him out another cup of coffee. "Ah,
well! I always say that gold will be the ruin of the Dutch in the
Transvaal; and Paul Kruger is a great fool to allow so much mining. If
I were president I would close down every gold mine, and let the country
be used only for farming. The Heer Gott never meant people to dig and
claw into the bowels of the earth after gold, like a lot of greedy
baboons after ground nuts. But I knew Paul Kruger well in the old days.
He was a greedy fellow always; greedy for power, greedy for money. I
hear he is rich as a Jew man, and spends L400 a year in coffee money,
for which the burghers pay him--entertaining a pack of useless folk that
come flattering and fawning about him. But it will be his downfall. I
know it, I know it. I always told him so. Love of money, love of
power. He had better have stuck to his farming, as his old father did
before him.
"Your Jameson raid," she went on, "is a bad sign. It means that Paul
Kruger is successful a second time. But you English can never forgive
that or Majuba; and there will be a big row some day, and then Oom Paul
will have to go, and we Transvaalers shall lose our country. I know it,
and my husband knows it, though every one else here declares that the
Boers can always beat the English. But, you see, I remember as a girl
Zwart Kopjes and Boomplaats, when your folk beat ours; and I say that
you have more men than we, and your turn will come some day."
"Well," rejoined Mr. Blakeney, after the old lady had finished her
tirade, "your people are very warlike now. I'm sorry the raid happened.
It was an idiotic business, and has done a good deal of mischief. I
don't like the feeling that is rising between the two races in South
Africa. I fear, with you, that it will come to a big fight some day;
and when it does, the English will never rest till they have made all
South Africa theirs. The Free State Boers say openly now that they will
take part with the Transvaal if a struggle comes; and the gold-mining
folk at Johannesburg, and Rhodes and the rest of them, are bent on
forcing on a war, which I am afraid now will have to come."
"Yes," said the old lady. "It's just like a couple of boys who have bad
blood between them. They will go on growling and being unpleasant to
one another, and then all at once the fight begins and the blood flows.
Still even that is better than perpetual miscalling and swearing at one
another, for all the world like a pair of tom-cats. Better, I say, have
the fight over and have done with it."
They spent two very pleasant days at Humpata, and then trekked. Before
they left, Mevrouw Van der Merwe sent for Guy and Tom, and presented
them with a quantity of dried fruits, peaches, quinces, and apricots.
She added some of her precious apricot komfit, by which the Boers set
much store. She had taken a great fancy to the two lads; they reminded
her, she said, of two of her own sons, whom she had lost of fever at
Debra and Vogel Pan on the trek thither. Guy and his cousin were
perhaps not greatly flattered at being compared to Boer boys, for whom
they cherished, like most English lads, a secret disdain. But the old
lady was very kind, and they thanked her heartily for her gifts. They
left her sawing through a big koodoo marrow bone with a hand saw. Her
husband had lately come in from the veldt, and had brought her a
quantity of _biltong_ (dried flesh) and this dainty, of which she was
inordinately fond.
"Farewell," she said again, pausing from her task and puffing hard for
breath. "And, Tom, mind and tell your father once more to be on the
lookout for Karl Engelbrecht. I am sorry they have had blows--though
Karl was well served out, and your father was a right stark fellow to
give him a thrashing. But Karl is a bitter bad enemy, and he will not
forget. Be on the lookout, all of you, and if he comes troubling
you"--here she lowered her voice to a tragic whisper--"don't be afraid
to shoot! Tell your father that, and say that is my last word--Karl is
a _schepsel_ and a dangerous foe. Farewell."
The various trophies lying about the Boer settlement and in the
primitive habitations had greatly fired the ambition of the two cousins,
who were now longing to reach the game veldt and begin shooting. At
Humpata there had been indications of many kinds of wild animal: horns
of buffalo, koodoo, roan antelope, water-buck, eland, and many other
antelopes; and the hides of lions, giraffes, hippos, and other heavy
game were abundant. Here, too, were tusks of elephant and hippopotamus,
and the formidable horns of the black rhinoceros. It was manifest that
they were on the outskirts of a wonderful game country. As the lads
approached each day nearer to this land of wonder and of bliss, their
spirits became more and more high, their suppressed excitement more
uncontrollable. For three weeks Poeskop guided the expedition steadily
towards the north-east. Then, one evening, as they sat round the camp
fire, he came up to the group.
"Baas," he said, pointing to the grim range of mountains which towered
in front of them in massy outline, dim beneath the starlit sky,
"to-morrow we shall pass the berg. Beyond is the game country, and the
young baases will then have shooting to their hearts' content."
Already the lads had shot some few head of game, reedbuck and impala and
springbuck. They had heard the roar of lions and seen the spoor of
buffalo. Their hearts leapt within them at Poeskop's news. That night
their dreams were chiefly of glorious adventures, in which elephants,
giraffes, buffaloes, and lions played, with themselves, the leading
parts.
*Chapter VI.*
*THE SHADOWERS AND THE SHADOWED.*
Antonio Minho, at eleven o'clock on the morning on which the Englishmen
had quitted Mossamedes, was to be seen with Karl Engelbrecht in the
coolest corner of the billiard-room in a well-known canteen in the town,
engaged in earnest conversation. The two men had long glasses of
cooling drinks in front of them, and looked thoroughly comfortable.
Antonio Minho was a Madeira-born Portuguese, who, some six years before,
having found that lovely island somewhat too hot to hold him, had made
his way to Benguela and thence to Mossamedes. He was a clever rascal,
who spoke English and Spanish as well as his own language, and in a
year's time had found no difficulty in acquiring a fair knowledge of
Boer Dutch. He had many transactions with the Trek Boers, and, having
opened a general store, managed to extract from these farmers and
hunters of the wilderness a good deal of profit. Karl Engelbrecht was
one of his best customers, and the two had done much business together,
the bulk of it of an exceedingly doubtful character. Each man had found
the other useful to him, and a strong alliance, offensive and defensive,
had been struck up between them.
"Well, Karl," said Minho, as he took a pull at his gin tonic and lit a
cigar, "I have more news for you."
"What is it, my friend?" asked the Boer, in his thick guttural voice.