I looked at the list. In the cost-price column, against the item "span
of donkeys and a waggon" was set L160.
I got no fun out of the sale at all. Fernie bought everything, bidding
cost price for everything. The total, I think, came to just three
hundred pounds.
"Black, I owe you a hundred and fifty, and here you are."
Black took the bundle of notes, counted them with practised finger and
thumb, nodded, and handed a receipt to Fernie. The queer pair then
shook hands, grinned at each other sheepishly, and thanked me for
settling their little difference.
The three of us had lunch together, and during the meal Fernie told me
as much of their story as he thought fit.
It appears that on their way up to the Zambesi friction arose between
them; nothing serious, but just enough to make them feel a little tired
of one another's company. Fernie considered that he should boss the
outfit; Black wanted a say in matters, too. In Black's opinion Fernie
was too dictatorial. Fernie thought that Black butted in too much and
always unnecessarily--fatuously. So they sat down one day and discussed
the situation calmly and decided that Fernie should buy Black's share
and that Black should become a passenger, paying Fernie so much weekly.
This arrangement was so simple and complete that I wondered why it was
necessary to bring me into the matter at all. I suspect it was the
ex-clerk's passion for regularity and record, for immediately after the
sale he had drawn up a formal statement of dissolution of partnership.
When he and Fernie had signed this document, they asked me to
countersign it.
After luncheon we sat for a while discussing guns and rifles. By we, I
mean Fernie and I, for Black possessed no firearms of any sort and
appeared to take little interest in them.
Fernie set so much store by the Martini-Henry rifle and the old hammer
shot-gun that I correctly guessed these made up his battery. Presently
he produced the weapons for my opinion.
The shot-gun had been a good one in its far-off day, but the spring of
the right-hand lock had gone, so only the left barrel was serviceable.
The Martini was so old and the rifling so worn that I wondered how
Fernie ever hit anything at which he aimed. But he did. He said he had
got to know the old gas-pipe.
That evening the pair left me and went North.
From time to time I came across these men; now and again one or the
other wrote to me; later, their waggon boys told me much; I gathered
more from the natives of the district in which they aimlessly wandered;
finally, Black's sister entrusted her brother's diary to me. The entries
in this book were made in shorthand. I had the whole transcribed. I told
her I had lost the book; I lied. I have the book still. She died
peacefully without an inkling of its contents.
From these various sources of information I have put together a few
yarns, which I now tell for the first time. For instance, there was a
curious adventure with a lion.
Fernie had been out shooting most of the day: shooting for the pot, as
the party had been without meat for some time. Black, as usual, remained
in camp writing up his diary. He also mended a boot.
He concluded that Fernie was having very good sport because of the
number of shots he fired during the afternoon. With an inexperienced man
like Fernie, armed with a rifle such as his, it was not wise to jump at
conclusions.
Late in the evening Fernie came back to camp very hot and tired. He was
evidently in a bad temper, for when Black asked him if he would like
some tea, he rudely said: "Tea, you bloomin' grandmother," and opened a
bottle of whisky.
Then he called the driver and said he wanted a couple of donkeys to
bring in the meat of a hartebeest which he had killed. The driver
brought two and followed Fernie into the bush. They didn't return until
eleven o'clock at night. Black had become anxious as time went on. He
heard Fernie shooting again at about ten o'clock and wondered how he
could see to take aim in the dark. He had, of course, never heard of the
common practice of firing a shot in the air if you are not quite sure of
your whereabouts and then listening for a guiding shot from the camp.
It wouldn't have helped much if he had known, for he had never fired a
gun in his life. It did not occur to the second waggon boy, who had also
remained in camp, to ask Black why he didn't reply to the signals of
distress; he very naturally concluded that Black did not do so for
reasons of his own, not through ignorance or inability.
It is only fair to Black to say that Fernie had not previously heard of
this manner of signalling either. The waggon boy put him up to it when
they thought they were lost.
At eleven o'clock the wanderers found their way back to camp. Fernie was
in a worse temper than ever.
"Why the hell didn't you answer my shots?"
"Your shots?"
"Is the fellow deaf as well as a brainless idiot?"
"I did hear you shooting, but I thought you had come across some more
hartebeest."
"How the devil do you suppose I could see to shoot in this pitch
darkness?"
"I don't know; I wondered."
"Oh, so you wondered, did you?"
"Well, what did you want me to do?"
"Sing, or any damn thing. But how could an ex-ink-slinger be expected to
have any horse-sense to do anything requiring a glimmer of intelligence?
Oh, don't talk; of course, it's not your fault, it's your Maker's."
Black felt keenly the coarse injustice of this attack and sat silently
looking into the fire. The truth of the matter was that Fernie had lost
his way. He couldn't find the dead hartebeest. He cursed the waggon boy
for a fool, which he wasn't; and beat him, which he didn't deserve.
"Off-load those chunks of meat near the fire and get to hell out of
this," said Fernie roughly to the waggon boy. The fellow relieved the
donkeys of their load and slouched away.