DEDICATION
Ditchingham, 1912.
My dear Sir Henry,—
Nearly thirty-seven years have gone by, more than a generation, since
first we saw the shores of Southern Africa rising from the sea. Since
then how much has happened: the Annexation of the Transvaal, the Zulu
War, the first Boer War, the discovery of the Rand, the taking of
Rhodesia, the second Boer War, and many other matters which in these
quick-moving times are now reckoned as ancient history.
Alas! I fear that were we to re-visit that country we should find but
few faces which we knew. Yet of one thing we may be glad. Those
historical events, in some of which you, as the ruler of Natal, played
a great part, and I, as it chanced, a smaller one, so far as we can
foresee, have at length brought a period of peace to Southern Africa.
To-day the flag of England flies from the Zambesi to the Cape. Beneath
its shadow may all ancient feuds and blood jealousies be forgotten. May
the natives prosper also and be justly ruled, for after all in the
beginning the land was theirs. Such, I know, are your hopes, as they
are mine.
It is, however, with an earlier Africa that this story deals. In 1836,
hate and suspicion ran high between the Home Government and its Dutch
subjects. Owing to the freeing of the slaves and mutual
misunderstandings, the Cape Colony was then in tumult, almost in
rebellion, and the Boers, by thousands, sought new homes in the
unknown, savage-peopled North. Of this blood-stained time I have tried
to tell; of the Great Trek and its tragedies, such as the massacre of
the true-hearted Retief and his companions at the hands of the Zulu
king, Dingaan.
But you have read the tale and know its substance. What, then, remains
for me to say? Only that in memory of long-past days I dedicate it to
you whose image ever springs to mind when I strive to picture an
English gentleman as he should be. Your kindness I never shall forget;
in memory of it, I offer you this book.
Ever sincerely yours,
H. RIDER HAGGARD.
To Sir Henry Bulwer, G.C.M.G.
PREFACE
The Author hopes that the reader may find some historical interest in
the tale set out in these pages of the massacre of the Boer general,
Retief, and his companions at the hands of the Zulu king, Dingaan. Save
for some added circumstances, he believes it to be accurate in its
details.
The same may be said of the account given of the hideous sufferings of
the trek-Boers who wandered into the fever veld, there to perish in the
neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay. Of these sufferings, especially those
that were endured by Triechard and his companions, a few brief
contemporary records still exist, buried in scarce works of reference.
It may be mentioned, also, that it was a common belief among the Boers
of that generation that the cruel death of Retief and his companions,
and other misfortunes which befell them, were due to the treacherous
plottings of an Englishman, or of Englishmen, with the despot, Dingaan.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The following extract explains how the manuscript of “Marie,” and with
it some others, one of which is named “Child of Storm,” came into the
hands of the Editor.
It is from a letter, dated January 17th, 1909, and written by Mr.
George Curtis, the brother of Sir Henry Curtis, Bart., who, it will be
remembered, was one of the late Mr. Allan Quatermain’s friends and
companions in adventure when he discovered King Solomon’s Mines, and
who afterwards disappeared with him in Central Africa.
This extract runs as follows:—
“You may recall that our mutual and dear friend, old Allan Quatermain,
left me the sole executor of his will, which he signed before he set
out with my brother Henry for Zuvendis, where he was killed. The Court,
however, not being satisfied that there was any legal proof of his
death, invested the capital funds in trustee securities, and by my
advice let his place in Yorkshire to a tenant who has remained in
occupation of it during the last two decades. Now that tenant is dead,
and at the earnest prayer of the Charities which benefit under
Quatermain’s will, and of myself—for in my uncertain state of health I
have for long been most anxious to wind up this executorship—about
eight months ago the Court at last consented to the distribution of
this large fund in accordance with the terms of the will.
“This, of course, involved the sale of the real property, and before it
was put up to auction I went over the house in company of the solicitor
appointed by the Court. On the top landing, in the room Quatermain used
to occupy, we found a sealed cupboard that I opened. It proved to be
full of various articles which evidently he had prized because of their
associations with his early life. These I need not enumerate here,
especially as I have reserved them as his residuary legatee and, in the
event of my death, they will pass to you under my will.
“Among these relics, however, I found a stout box, made of some red
foreign wood, that contained various documents and letters and a bundle
of manuscripts. Under the tape which fastened these manuscripts
together, as you will see, is a scrap of paper on which is written, in
blue pencil, a direction signed ‘Allan Quatermain,’ that in the event
of anything happening to him, these MSS. are to be sent to you (for
whom, as you know, he had a high regard), and that at your sole
discretion you are to burn or publish them as you may see fit.
“So, after all these years, as we both remain alive, I carry out our
old friend’s instructions and send you his bequest, which I trust may
prove of interest and value. I have read the MS. called ‘Marie,’ and
certainly am of the opinion that it ought to be published, for I think
it a strange and moving tale of a great love—full, moreover, of
forgotten history.
“That named ‘Child of Storm’ also seems very interesting as a study of
savage life, and the others may be the same; but my eyes are troubling
me so much that I have not been able to decipher them. I hope, however,
that I may be spared long enough to see them in print.
“Poor old Allan Quatermain. It is as though he had suddenly reappeared
from the dead! So at least I thought as I perused these stories of a
period of his life of which I do not remember his speaking to me.
“And now my responsibility in this matter is finished and yours begins.
Do what you like about the manuscripts.”
“George Curtis.”
As may be imagined, I, the Editor, was considerably astonished when I
received this letter and the accompanying bundle of closely-written
MSS. To me also it was as though my old friend had risen from the grave
and once more stood before me, telling some history of his stormy and
tragic past in that quiet, measured voice that I have never been able
to forget.
The first manuscript I read was that entitled “Marie.” It deals with
Mr. Quatermain’s strange experiences when as a very young man he
accompanied the ill-fated Pieter Retief and the Boer Commission on an
embassy to the Zulu despot, Dingaan. This, it will be remembered, ended
in their massacre, Quatermain himself and his Hottentot servant Hans
being the sole survivors of the slaughter. Also it deals with another
matter more personal to himself, namely, his courtship of and marriage
to his first wife, Marie Marais.
Of this Marie I never heard him speak, save once. I remember that on a
certain occasion—it was that of a garden fête for a local charity—I was
standing by Quatermain when someone introduced to him a young girl who
was staying in the neighborhood and had distinguished herself by
singing very prettily at the fête. Her surname I forget, but her
Christian name was Marie. He started when he heard it, and asked if she
were French. The young lady answered No, but only of French extraction
through her grandmother, who also was called Marie.
“Indeed?” he said. “Once I knew a maiden not unlike you who was also of
French extraction and called Marie. May you prove more fortunate in
life than she was, though better or nobler you can never be,” and he
bowed to her in his simple, courtly fashion, then turned away.
Afterwards, when we were alone, I asked him who was this Marie of whom
he had spoken to the young lady. He paused a little, then answered:
“She was my first wife, but I beg you not to speak of her to me or to
anyone else, for I cannot bear to hear her name. Perhaps you will learn
all about her one day.” Then, to my grief and astonishment, he broke
into something like a sob and abruptly left the room.
After reading the record of this Marie I can well understand why he was
so moved. I print it practically as it left his hands.
There are other MSS. also, one of which, headed “Child of Storm,”
relates the moving history of a beautiful and, I fear I must add,
wicked Zulu girl named Mameena who did much evil in her day and went
unrepentant from the world.
Another, amongst other things, tells the secret story of the causes of
the defeat of Cetewayo and his armies by the English in 1879, which
happened not long before Quatermain met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain
Good.
These three narratives are, indeed, more or less connected with each
other. At least, a certain aged dwarf, called Zikali, a witch-doctor
and a terrible man, has to do with all of them, although in the first,
“Marie,” he is only vaguely mentioned in connection with the massacre
of Retief, whereof he was doubtless the primary instigator. As “Marie”
comes first in chronological order, and was placed on the top of the
pile by its author, I publish it first. With the others I hope to deal
later on, as I may find time and opportunity.
But the future must take care of itself. We cannot control it, and its
events are not in our hand. Meanwhile, I hope that those who in their
youth have read of King Solomon’s Mines and Zuvendis, and perhaps some
others who are younger, may find as much of interest in these new
chapters of the autobiography of Allan Quatermain as I have done
myself.
CHAPTER I.
ALLAN LEARNS FRENCH
Although in my old age I, Allan Quatermain, have taken to writing—after
a fashion—never yet have I set down a single word of the tale of my
first love and of the adventures that are grouped around her beautiful
and tragic history. I suppose this is because it has always seemed to
me too holy and far-off a matter—as holy and far-off as is that heaven
which holds the splendid spirit of Marie Marais. But now, in my age,
that which was far-off draws near again; and at night, in the depths
between the stars, sometimes I seem to see the opening doors through
which I must pass, and leaning earthwards across their threshold, with
outstretched arms and dark and dewy eyes, a shadow long forgotten by
all save me—the shadow of Marie Marais.
An old man’s dream, doubtless, no more. Still, I will try to set down
that history which ended in so great a sacrifice, and one so worthy of
record, though I hope that no human eye will read it until I also am
forgotten, or, at any rate, have grown dim in the gathering mists of
oblivion. And I am glad that I have waited to make this attempt, for it
seems to me that only of late have I come to understand and appreciate
at its true value the character of her of whom I tell, and the
passionate affection which was her bounteous offering to one so utterly
unworthy as myself. What have I done, I wonder, that to me should have
been decreed the love of two such women as Marie and that of Stella,
also now long dead, to whom alone in the world I told all her tale? I
remember I feared lest she should take it ill, but this was not so.
Indeed, during our brief married days, she thought and talked much of
Marie, and some of her last words to me were that she was going to seek
her, and that they would wait for me together in the land of love, pure
and immortal.
So with Stella’s death all that side of life came to an end for me,
since during the long years which stretch between then and now I have
never said another tender word to woman. I admit, however, that once,
long afterwards, a certain little witch of a Zulu did say tender words
to me, and for an hour or so almost turned my head, an art in which she
had great skill. This I say because I wish to be quite honest, although
it—I mean my head, for there was no heart involved in the matter—came
straight again at once. Her name was Mameena, and I have set down her
remarkable story elsewhere.
To return. As I have already written in another book, I passed my youth
with my old father, a Church of England clergyman, in what is now the
Cradock district of the Cape Colony.
Then it was a wild place enough, with a very small white population.
Among our few neighbours was a Boer farmer of the name of Henri Marais,
who lived about fifteen miles from our station, on a fine farm called
Maraisfontein. I say he was a Boer, but, as may be guessed from both
his Christian and surname, his origin was Huguenot, his forefather, who
was also named Henri Marais—though I think the Marais was spelt rather
differently then—having been one of the first of that faith who
emigrated to South Africa to escape the cruelties of Louis XIV. at the
time of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
Unlike most Boers of similar descent, these particular Marais—for, of
course, there are many other families so called—never forgot their
origin. Indeed, from father to son, they kept up some knowledge of the
French tongue, and among themselves often spoke it after a fashion. At
any rate, it was the habit of Henri Marais, who was excessively
religious, to read his chapter of the Bible (which it is, or was, the
custom of the Boers to spell out every morning, should their learning
allow them to do so), not in the _taal_ or _patois_ Dutch, but in good
old French. I have the very book from which he used to read now, for,
curiously enough, in after years, when all these events had long been
gathered to the past, I chanced to buy it among a parcel of other works
at the weekly auction of odds and ends on the market square of
Maritzburg. I remember that when I opened the great tome, bound over
the original leather boards in buckskin, and discovered to whom it had
belonged, I burst into tears. There was no doubt about it, for, as was
customary in old days, this Bible had sundry fly-leaves sewn up with it
for the purpose of the recording of events important to its owner.
The first entries were made by the original Henri Marais, and record
how he and his compatriots were driven from France, his father having
lost his life in the religious persecutions. After this comes a long
list of births, marriages and deaths continued from generation to
generation, and amongst them a few notes telling of such matters as the
change of the dwelling-places of the family, always in French. Towards
the end of the list appears the entry of the birth of the Henri Marais
whom I knew, alas! too well, and of his only sister. Then is written
his marriage to Marie Labuschagne, also, be it noted, of the Huguenot
stock. In the next year follows the birth of Marie Marais, my Marie,
and, after a long interval, for no other children were born, the death
of her mother. Immediately below appears the following curious passage:
“_Le 3 Janvier, 1836. Je quitte ce pays voulant me sauver du maudit
gouvernement Britannique comme mes ancêtres se sont sauvés de ce
diable—Louis XIV._
“_A bas les rois et les ministres tyrannique! Vive la liberté!_”
Which indicates very clearly the character and the opinions of Henri
Marais, and the feeling among the trek-Boers at that time.
Thus the record closes and the story of the Marais ends—that is, so far
as the writings in the Bible go, for that branch of the family is now
extinct.
Their last chapter I will tell in due course.
There was nothing remarkable about my introduction to Marie Marais. I
did not rescue her from any attack of a wild beast or pull her out of a
raging river in a fashion suited to romance. Indeed, we interchanged
our young ideas across a small and extremely massive table, which, in
fact, had once done duty as a block for the chopping up of meat. To
this hour I can see the hundreds of lines running criss-cross upon its
surface, especially those opposite to where I used to sit.
One day, several years after my father had emigrated to the Cape, the
Heer Marais arrived at our house in search, I think, of some lost oxen.
He was a thin, bearded man with rather wild, dark eyes set close
together, and a quick nervous manner, not in the least like that of a
Dutch Boer—or so I recall him. My father received him courteously and
asked him to stop to dine, which he did.
They talked together in French, a tongue that my father knew well,
although he had not used it for years; Dutch he could not, or, rather,
would not, speak if he could help it, and Mr. Marais preferred not to
talk English. To meet someone who could converse in French delighted
him, and although his version of the language was that of two centuries
before and my father’s was largely derived from reading, they got on
very well together, if not too fast.
At length, after a pause, Mr. Marais, pointing to myself, a small and
stubbly-haired youth with a sharp nose, asked my father whether he
would like me to be instructed in the French tongue. The answer was
that nothing would please him better.
“Although,” he added severely, “to judge by my own experience where
Latin and Greek are concerned, I doubt his capacity to learn anything.”
So an arrangement was made that I should go over for two days in each
week to Maraisfontein, sleeping there on the intervening night, and
acquire a knowledge of the French tongue from a tutor whom Mr. Marais
had hired to instruct his daughter in that language and other subjects.
I remember that my father agreed to pay a certain proportion of this
tutor’s salary, a plan which suited the thrifty Boer very well indeed.
Thither, accordingly, I went in due course, nothing loth, for on the
veld between our station and Maraisfontein many _pauw_ and _koran_—that
is, big and small bustards—were to be found, to say nothing of
occasional buck, and I was allowed to carry a gun, which even in those
days I could use fairly well. So to Maraisfontein I rode on the
appointed day, attended by a Hottentot after-rider, a certain Hans, of
whom I shall have a good deal to tell. I enjoyed very good sport on the
road, arriving at the stead laden with one _pauw_, two _koran_, and a
little _klipspringer_ buck which I had been lucky enough to shoot as it
bounded out of some rocks in front of me.
There was a peach orchard planted round Maraisfontein, which just then
was a mass of lovely pink blossom, and as I rode through it slowly, not
being sure of my way to the house, a lanky child appeared in front of
me, clad in a frock which exactly matched the colour of the peach
bloom. I can see her now, her dark hair hanging down her back, and her
big, shy eyes staring at me from the shadow of the Dutch _kappie_ which
she wore. Indeed, she seemed to be all eyes, like a _dikkop_ or
thick-headed plover; at any rate, I noted little else about her.
I pulled up my pony and stared at her, feeling very shy and not knowing
what to say. For a while she stared back at me, being afflicted,
presumably, with the same complaint, then spoke with an effort, in a
voice that was very soft and pleasant.
“Are you the little Allan Quatermain who is coming to learn French with
me?” she asked in Dutch.
“Of course,” I answered in the same tongue, which I knew well; “but why
do you call me little, missie? I am taller than you,” I added
indignantly, for when I was young my lack of height was always a sore
point with me.
“I think not,” she replied. “But get off that horse, and we will
measure here against this wall.”
So I dismounted, and, having assured herself that I had no heels to my
boots (I was wearing the kind of raw-hide slippers that the Boers call
_veld-shoon_), she took the writing slate which she was carrying—it had
no frame, I remember, being, in fact, but a piece of the material used
for roofing—and, pressing it down tight on my stubbly hair, which stuck
up then as now, made a deep mark in the soft sandstone of the wall with
the hard pointed pencil.
“There,” she said, “that is justly done. Now, little Allan, it is your
turn to measure me.”
So I measured her, and, behold! she was the taller by a whole
half-inch.
“You are standing on tiptoe,” I said in my vexation.
“Little Allan,” she replied, “to stand on tiptoe would be to lie before
the good Lord, and when you come to know me better you will learn that,
though I have a dreadful temper and many other sins, I do not lie.”
I suppose that I looked snubbed and mortified, for she went on in her
grave, grown-up way: “Why are you angry because God made me taller than
you? especially as I am whole months older, for my father told me so.
Come, let us write our names against these marks, so that in a year or
two you may see how you outgrow me.” Then with the slate pencil she
scratched “Marie” against her mark very deeply, so that it might last,
she said; after which I wrote “Allan” against mine.
Alas! Within the last dozen years chance took me past Maraisfontein
once more. The house had long been rebuilt, but this particular wall
yet stood. I rode to it and looked, and there faintly could still be
seen the name Marie, against the little line, and by it the mark that I
had made. My own name and with it subsequent measurements were gone,
for in the intervening forty years or so the sandstone had flaked away
in places. Only her autograph remained, and when I saw it I think that
I felt even worse than I did on finding whose was the old Bible that I
had bought upon the market square at Maritzburg.
I know that I rode away hurriedly without even stopping to inquire into
whose hands the farm had passed. Through the peach orchard I rode,
where the trees—perhaps the same, perhaps others—were once more in
bloom, for the season of the year was that when Marie and I first met,
nor did I draw rein for half a score of miles.
But here I may state that Marie always stayed just half an inch the
taller in body, and how much taller in mind and spirit I cannot tell.
When we had finished our measuring match Marie turned to lead me to the
house, and, pretending to observe for the first time the beautiful
bustard and the two _koran_ hanging from my saddle, also the
_klipspringer_ buck that Hans the Hottentot carried behind him on his
horse, asked:
“Did you shoot all these, Allan Quatermain?”
“Yes,” I answered proudly; “I killed them in four shots, and the _pauw_
and _koran_ were flying, not sitting, which is more than you could have
done, although you are taller, Miss Marie.”
“I do not know,” she answered reflectively. “I can shoot very well with
a rifle, for my father has taught me, but I never would shoot at living
things unless I must because I was hungry, for I think that to kill is
cruel. But, of course, it is different with men,” she added hastily,
“and no doubt you will be a great hunter one day, Allan Quatermain,
since you can already aim so well.”
“I hope so,” I answered, blushing at the compliment, “for I love
hunting, and when there are so many wild things it does not matter if
we kill a few. I shot these for you and your father to eat.”
“Come, then, and give them to him. He will thank you,” and she led the
way through the gate in the sandstone wall into the yard, where the
outbuildings stood in which the riding horses and the best of the
breeding cattle were kept at night, and so past the end of the long,
one-storied house, that was stone-built and whitewashed, to the stoep
or veranda in front of it.
On the broad stoep, which commanded a pleasant view over rolling,
park-like country, where mimosa and other trees grew in clumps, two men
were seated, drinking strong coffee, although it was not yet ten
o’clock in the morning.
Hearing the sound of the horses, one of these, Mynheer Marais, whom I
already knew, rose from his hide-strung chair. He was, as I think I
have said, not in the least like one of the phlegmatic Boers, either in
person or in temperament, but, rather, a typical Frenchman, although no
member of his race had set foot in France for a hundred and fifty
years. At least so I discovered afterwards, for, of course, in those
days I knew nothing of Frenchmen.
His companion was also French, Leblanc by name, but of a very different
stamp. In person he was short and stout. His large head was bald except
for a fringe of curling, iron-grey hair which grew round it just above
the ears and fell upon his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a
tonsured but dishevelled priest. His eyes were blue and watery, his
mouth was rather weak, and his cheeks were pale, full and flabby. When
the Heer Marais rose, I, being an observant youth, noted that Monsieur
Leblanc took the opportunity to stretch out a rather shaky hand and
fill up his coffee cup out of a black bottle, which from the smell I
judged to contain peach brandy.
In fact, it may as well be said at once that the poor man was a
drunkard, which explains how he, with all his high education and great
ability, came to hold the humble post of tutor on a remote Boer farm.
Years before, when under the influence of drink, he had committed some
crime in France—I don’t know what it was, and never inquired—and fled
to the Cape to avoid prosecution. Here he obtained a professorship at
one of the colleges, but after a while appeared in the lecture-room
quite drunk and lost his employment. The same thing happened in other
towns, till at last he drifted to distant Maraisfontein, where his
employer tolerated his weakness for the sake of the intellectual
companionship for which something in his own nature seemed to crave.
Also, he looked upon him as a compatriot in distress, and a great bond
of union between them was their mutual and virulent hatred of England
and the English, which in the case of Monsieur Leblanc, who in his
youth had fought at Waterloo and been acquainted with the great
Emperor, was not altogether unnatural.
Henri Marais’s case was different, but of that I shall have more to say
later.
“Ah, Marie,” said her father, speaking in Dutch, “so you have found him
at last,” and he nodded towards me, adding: “You should be flattered,
little man. Look you, this missie has been sitting for two hours in the
sun waiting for you, although I told her you would not arrive much
before ten o’clock, as your father the _prédicant_ said you would
breakfast before you started. Well, it is natural, for she is lonely
here, and you are of an age, although of a different race”; and his
face darkened as he spoke the words.
“Father,” answered Marie, whose blushes I could see even in the shadow
of her cap, “I was not sitting in the sun, but under the shade of a
peach tree. Also, I was working out the sums that Monsieur Leblanc set
me on my slate. See, here they are,” and she held up the slate, which
was covered with figures, somewhat smudged, it is true, by the rubbing
of my stiff hair and of her cap.
Then Monsieur Leblanc broke in, speaking in French, of which, as it
chanced I understood the sense, for my father had grounded me in that
tongue, and I am naturally quick at modern languages. At any rate, I
made out that he was asking if I was the little _cochon d’anglais_, or
English pig, whom for his sins he had to teach. He added that he judged
I must be, as my hair stuck up on my head—I had taken off my hat out of
politeness—as it naturally would do on a pig’s back.
This was too much for me, so, before either of the others could speak,
I answered in Dutch, for rage made me eloquent and bold:
“Yes, I am he; but, mynheer, if you are to be my master, I hope you
will not call the English pigs any more to me.”
“Indeed, _gamin_” (that is, little scamp), “and pray, what will happen
if I am so bold as to repeat that truth?”
“I think, mynheer,” I replied, growing white with rage at this new
insult, “the same that has happened to yonder buck,” and I pointed to
the _klipspringer_ behind Hans’s saddle. “I mean that I shall shoot
you.”
“_Peste! Au moins il a du courage, cet enfant_” (At least the child is
plucky), exclaimed Monsieur Leblanc, astonished. From that moment, I
may add, he respected me, and never again insulted my country to my
face.
Then Marais broke out, speaking in Dutch that I might understand:
“It is you who should be called pig, Leblanc, not this boy, for, early
as it is, you have been drinking. Look! the brandy bottle is half
empty. Is that the example you set to the young? Speak so again and I
turn you out to starve on the veld. Allan Quatermain, although, as you
may have heard, I do not like the English, I beg your pardon. I hope
you will forgive the words this sot spoke, thinking that you did not
understand,” and he took off his hat and bowed to me quite in a grand
manner, as his ancestors might have done to a king of France.
Leblanc’s face fell. Then he rose and walked away rather unsteadily; as
I learned afterwards, to plunge his head in a tub of cold water and
swallow a pint of new milk, which were his favourite antidotes after
too much strong drink. At any rate, when he appeared again, half an
hour later, to begin our lesson, he was quite sober, and extremely
polite.
When he had gone, my childish anger being appeased, I presented the
Heer Marais with my father’s compliments, also with the buck and the
birds, whereof the latter seemed to please him more than the former.
Then my saddle-bags were taken to my room, a little cupboard of a place
next to that occupied by Monsieur Leblanc, and Hans was sent to turn
the horses out with the others belonging to the farm, having first
knee-haltered them tightly, so that they should not run away home.
This done, the Heer Marais showed me the room in which we were to have
our lessons, one of the _sitkammer_, or sitting chambers, whereof,
unlike most Boer steads, this house boasted two. I remember that the
floor was made of _daga_, that is, ant-heap earth mixed with cow-dung,
into which thousands of peach-stones had been thrown while it was still
soft, in order to resist footwear—a rude but fairly efficient
expedient, and one not unpleasing to the eye. For the rest, there was
one window opening on to the veranda, which, in that bright climate,
admitted a shaded but sufficient light, especially as it always stood
open; the ceiling was of unplastered reeds; a large bookcase stood in
the corner containing many French works, most of them the property of
Monsieur Leblanc, and in the centre of the room was the strong, rough
table made of native yellow-wood, that once had served as a butcher’s
block. I recollect also a coloured print of the great Napoleon
commanding at some battle in which he was victorious, seated upon a
white horse and waving a field-marshal’s baton over piles of dead and
wounded; and near the window, hanging to the reeds of the ceiling, the
nest of a pair of red-tailed swallows, pretty creatures that,
notwithstanding the mess they made, afforded to Marie and me endless
amusement in the intervals of our work.
When, on that day, I shuffled shyly into this homely place, and,
thinking myself alone there, fell to examining it, suddenly I was
brought to a standstill by a curious choking sound which seemed to
proceed from the shadows behind the bookcase. Wondering as to its
cause, I advanced cautiously to discover a pink-clad shape standing in
the corner like a naughty child, with her head resting against the
wall, and sobbing slowly.
“Marie Marais, why do you cry?” I asked.
She turned, tossing back the locks of long, black hair which hung about
her face, and answered:
“Allan Quatermain, I cry because of the shame which has been put upon
you and upon our house by that drunken Frenchman.”
“What of that?” I asked. “He only called me a pig, but I think I have
shown him that even a pig has tusks.”
“Yes,” she replied, “but it was not you he meant; it was all the
English, whom he hates; and the worst of it is that my father is of his
mind. He, too, hates the English, and, oh! I am sure that trouble will
come of his hatred, trouble and death to many.”
“Well, if so, we have nothing to do with it, have we?” I replied with
the cheerfulness of extreme youth.
“What makes you so sure?” she said solemnly. “Hush! here comes Monsieur
Leblanc.”
CHAPTER II.
THE ATTACK ON MARAISFONTEIN
I do not propose to set out the history of the years which I spent in
acquiring a knowledge of French and various other subjects, under the
tuition of the learned but prejudiced Monsieur Leblanc. Indeed, there
is “none to tell, sir.” When Monsieur Leblanc was sober, he was a most
excellent and well-informed tutor, although one apt to digress into
many side issues, which in themselves were not uninstructive. When
tipsy, he grew excited and harangued us, generally upon politics and
religion, or rather its reverse, for he was an advanced freethinker,
although this was a side to his character which, however intoxicated he
might be, he always managed to conceal from the Heer Marais. I may add
that a certain childish code of honour prevented us from betraying his
views on this and sundry other matters. When absolutely drunk, which,
on an average, was not more than once a month, he simply slept, and we
did what we pleased—a fact which our childish code of honour also
prevented us from betraying.
But, on the whole, we got on very well together, for, after the
incident of our first meeting, Monsieur Leblanc was always polite to
me. Marie he adored, as did every one about the place, from her father
down to the meanest slave. Need I add that I adored her more than all
of them put together, first with the love that some children have for
each other, and afterwards, as we became adult, with that wider love by
which it is at once transcended and made complete. Strange would it
have been if this were not so, seeing that we spent nearly half of
every week practically alone together, and that, from the first, Marie,
whose nature was as open as the clear noon, never concealed her
affection for me. True, it was a very discreet affection, almost
sisterly, or even motherly, in its outward and visible aspects, as
though she could never forget that extra half-inch of height or month
or two of age.
Moreover, from a child she was a woman, as an Irishman might say, for
circumstances and character had shaped her thus. Not much more than a
year before we met, her mother, whose only child she was, and whom she
loved with all her strong and passionate heart, died after a lingering
illness, leaving her in charge of her father and his house. I think it
was this heavy bereavement in early youth which coloured her nature
with a grey tinge of sadness and made her seem so much older than her
years.
So the time went on, I worshipping Marie in my secret thought, but
saying nothing about it, and Marie talking of and acting towards me as
though I were her dear younger brother. Nobody, not even her father or
mine, or Monsieur Leblanc, took the slightest notice of this queer
relationship, or seemed to dream that it might lead to ultimate
complications which, in fact, would have been very distasteful to them
all for reasons that I will explain.
Needless to say, in due course, as they were bound to do, those
complications arose, and under pressure of great physical and moral
excitement the truth came out. It happened thus.
Every reader of the history of the Cape Colony has heard of the great
Kaffir War of 1835. That war took place for the most part in the
districts of Albany and Somerset, so that we inhabitants of Cradock, on
the whole, suffered little. Therefore, with the natural optimism and
carelessness of danger of dwellers in wild places, we began to think
ourselves fairly safe from attack. Indeed, so we should have been, had
it not been for a foolish action on the part of Monsieur Leblanc.
It seems that on a certain Sunday, a day that I always spent at home
with my father, Monsieur Leblanc rode out alone to some hills about
five miles distant from Maraisfontein. He had often been cautioned that
this was an unsafe thing to do, but the truth is that the foolish man
thought he had found a rich copper mine in these hills, and was anxious
that no one should share his secret. Therefore, on Sundays, when there
were no lessons, and the Heer Marais was in the habit of celebrating
family prayers, which Leblanc disliked, it was customary for him to
ride to these hills and there collect geological specimens and locate
the strike of his copper vein. On this particular Sabbath, which was
very hot, after he had done whatever he intended to do, he dismounted
from his horse, a tame old beast. Leaving it loose, he partook of the
meal he had brought with him, which seems to have included a bottle of
peach brandy that induced slumber.
Waking up towards evening, he found that his horse had gone, and at
once jumped to the conclusion that it had been stolen by Kaffirs,
although in truth the animal had but strolled over a ridge in search of
grass. Running hither and thither to seek it, he presently crossed this
ridge and met the horse, apparently being led away by two of the Red
Kaffirs, who, as was usual, were armed with assegais. As a matter of
fact these men had found the beast, and, knowing well to whom it
belonged, were seeking its owner, whom, earlier in the day, they had
seen upon the hills, in order to restore it to him. This, however,
never occurred to the mind of Monsieur Leblanc, excited as it was by
the fumes of the peach brandy.
Lifting the double-barrelled gun he carried, he fired at the first
Kaffir, a young man who chanced to be the eldest son and heir of the
chief of the tribe, and, as the range was very close, shot him dead.
Thereon his companion, leaving go of the horse, ran for his life. At
him Leblanc fired also, wounding him slightly in the thigh, but no
more, so that he escaped to tell the tale of what he and every other
native for miles round considered a wanton and premeditated murder. The
deed done, the fiery old Frenchman mounted his nag and rode quietly
home. On the road, however, as the peach brandy evaporated from his
brain, doubts entered it, with the result that he determined to say
nothing of his adventure to Henri Marais, who he knew was particularly
anxious to avoid any cause of quarrel with the Kaffirs.
So he kept his own counsel and went to bed. Before he was up next
morning the Heer Marais, suspecting neither trouble nor danger, had
ridden off to a farm thirty miles or more away to pay its owner for
some cattle which he had recently bought, leaving his home and his
daughter quite unprotected, except by Leblanc and the few native
servants, who were really slaves, that lived about the place.
Now on the Monday night I went to bed as usual, and slept, as I have
always done through life, like a top, till about four in the morning,
when I was awakened by someone tapping at the glass of my window.
Slipping from the bed, I felt for my pistol, as it was quite dark,
crept to the window, opened it, and keeping my head below the level of
the sill, fearing lest its appearance should be greeted with an
assegai, asked who was there.
“Me, baas,” said the voice of Hans, our Hottentot servant, who, it will
be remembered, had accompanied me as after-rider when first I went to
Maraisfontein. “I have bad news. Listen. The baas knows that I have
been out searching for the red cow which was lost. Well, I found her,
and was sleeping by her side under a tree on the veld when, about two
hours ago, a woman whom I know came up to my camp fire and woke me. I
asked her what she was doing at that hour of the night, and she
answered that she had come to tell me something. She said that some
young men of the tribe of the chief Quabie, who lives in the hills
yonder, had been visiting at their kraal, and that a few hours before a
messenger had arrived from the chief saying that they must return at
once, as this morning at dawn he and all his men were going to attack
Maraisfontein and kill everyone in it and take the cattle!”
“Good God!” I ejaculated. “Why?”
“Because, young baas,” drawled the Hottentot from the other side of the
window, “because someone from Maraisfontein—I think it was the Vulture”
(the natives gave this name to Leblanc on account of his bald head and
hooked nose)—“shot Quabie’s son on Sunday when he was holding his
horse.”
“Good God!” I said again, “the old fool must have been drunk. When did
you say the attack was to be—at dawn?” and I glanced at the stars,
adding, “Why, that will be within less than an hour, and the Baas
Marais is away.”
“Yes,” croaked Hans; “and Missie Marie—think of what the Red Kaffirs
will do with Missie Marie when their blood is up.”
I thrust my fist through the window and struck the Hottentot’s
toad-like face on which the starlight gleamed faintly.
“Dog!” I said, “saddle my mare and the roan horse and get your gun. In
two minutes I come. Be swift or I kill you.”
“I go,” he answered, and shot out into the night like a frightened
snake.
Then I began to dress, shouting as I dressed, till my father and the
Kaffirs ran into the room. As I threw on my things I told them all.
“Send out messengers,” I said, “to Marais—he is at Botha’s farm—and to
all the neighbours. Send, for your lives; gather up the friendly
Kaffirs and ride like hell for Maraisfontein. Don’t talk to me, father;
don’t talk! Go and do what I tell you. Stay! Give me two guns, fill the
saddle-bags with powder tins and _loopers_, and tie them to my mare.
Oh! be quick, be quick!”
Now at length they understood, and flew this way and that with candles
and lanterns. Two minutes later—it could scarcely have been more—I was
in front of the stables just as Hans led out the bay mare, a famous
beast that for two years I had saved all my money to buy. Someone
strapped on the saddle-bags while I tested the girths; someone else
appeared with the stout roan stallion that I knew would follow the mare
to the death. There was not time to saddle him, so Hans clambered on to
his back like a monkey, holding two guns under his arm, for I carried
but one and my double-barrelled pistol.
“Send off the messengers,” I shouted to my father. “If you would see me
again send them swiftly, and follow with every man you can raise.”
Then we were away with fifteen miles to do and five-and-thirty minutes
before the dawn.
“Softly up the slope,” I said to Hans, “till the beasts get their wind,
and then ride as you never rode before.”
Those first two miles of rising ground! I thought we should never come
to the end of them, and yet I dared not let the mare out lest she
should bucket herself. Happily she and her companion, the stallion—a
most enduring horse, though not so very swift—had stood idle for the
last thirty hours, and, of course, had not eaten or drunk since sunset.
Therefore being in fine fettle, they were keen for the business; also
we were light weights.
I held in the mare as she spurted up the rise, and the horse kept his
pace to hers. We reached its crest, and before us lay the great level
plain, eleven miles of it, and then two miles down hill to
Maraisfontein.
“Now,” I said to Hans, shaking loose the reins, “keep up if you can!”
Away sped the mare till the keen air of the night sung past my ears,
and behind her strained the good roan horse with the Hottentot monkey
on its back. Oh! what a ride was that!
Further I have gone for a like cause, but never at such speed, for I
knew the strength of the beasts and how long it would last them. Half
an hour of it they might endure; more, and at this pace they must
founder or die.
And yet such was the agony of my fear, that it seemed to me as though I
only crept along the ground like a tortoise.
The roan was left behind, the sound of his foot-beats died away, and I
was alone with the night and my fear. Mile added itself to mile, for
now and again the starlight showed me a stone or the skeleton of some
dead beast that I knew. Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so
suddenly, that a springbok, unable to stop itself, leapt right over me.
Once the mare put her foot in an ant-bear hole and nearly fell, but
recovered herself—thanks be to God, unharmed—and I worked myself back
into the saddle whence I had been almost shaken. If I had fallen; oh!
if I had fallen!
We were near the end of the flat, and she began to fail. I had
over-pressed her; the pace was too tremendous. Her speed lessened to an
ordinary fast gallop as she faced the gentle rise that led to the brow.
And now, behind me, once more I heard the sound of the hoofs of the
roan. The tireless beast was coming up. By the time we reached the edge
of the plateau he was quite near, not fifty yards behind, for I heard
him whinny faintly.
Then began the descent. The morning star was setting, the east grew
grey with light. Oh! could we get there before the dawn? Could we get
there before the dawn? That is what my horse’s hoofs beat out to me.
Now I could see the mass of the trees about the stead. And now I dashed
into something, though until I was through it, I did not know that it
was a line of men, for the faint light gleamed upon the spear of one of
them who had been overthrown!
So it was no lie! The Kaffirs were there! As I thought it, a fresh
horror filled my heart; perhaps their murdering work was already done
and they were departing.
The minute of suspense—or was it but seconds?—seemed an eternity. But
it ended at last. Now I was at the door in the high wall that enclosed
the outbuildings at the back of the house, and there, by an
inspiration, pulled up the mare—glad enough she was to stop, poor
thing—for it occurred to me that if I rode to the front I should very
probably be assegaied and of no further use. I tried the door, which
was made of stout stinkwood planks. By design, or accident, it had been
left unbolted. As I thrust it open Hans arrived with a rush, clinging
to the roan with his face hidden in its mane. The beast pulled up by
the side of the mare which it had been pursuing, and in the faint light
I saw that an assegai was fixed in its flank.
Five seconds later we were in the yard and locking and barring the door
behind us. Then, snatching the saddle-bags of ammunition from the
horses, we left them standing there, and I ran for the back entrance of
the house, bidding Hans rouse the natives, who slept in the
outbuildings, and follow with them. If any one of them showed signs of
treachery he was to shoot him at once. I remember that as I went I tore
the spear out of the stallion’s flank and brought it away with me.
Now I was hammering upon the back door of the house, which I could not
open. After a pause that seemed long, a window was thrown wide, and a
voice—it was Marie’s—asked in frightened tones who was there.
“I, Allan Quatermain,” I answered. “Open at once, Marie. You are in
great danger; the Red Kaffirs are going to attack the house.”
She flew to the door in her nightdress, and at length I was in the
place.
“Thank God! you are still safe,” I gasped. “Put on your clothes while I
call Leblanc. No, stay, do you call him; I must wait here for Hans and
your slaves.”
Away she sped without a word, and presently Hans arrived, bringing with
him eight frightened men, who as yet scarcely knew whether they slept
or woke.
“Is that all?” I asked. “Then bar the door and follow me to the
_sitkammer_, where the baas keeps his guns.”
Just as we reached it, Leblanc entered, clad in his shirt and trousers,
and was followed presently by Marie with a candle.
“What is it?” he asked.
I took the candle from Marie’s hand, and set it on the floor close to
the wall, lest it should prove a target for an assegai or a bullet.
Even in those days the Kaffirs had a few firearms, for the most part
captured or stolen from white men. Then in a few words I told them all.
“And when did you learn all this?” asked Leblanc in French.
“At the Mission Station a little more than half an hour ago,” I
answered, looking at my watch.
“At the station a little more than half an hour ago! _Peste!_ it is not
possible. You dream or are drunken,” he cried excitedly.
“All right, monsieur, we will argue afterwards,” I answered. “Meanwhile
the Kaffirs are here, for I rode through them; and if you want to save
your life, stop talking and act. Marie, how many guns are there?”
“Four,” she answered, “of my father’s; two _roers_ and two smaller
ones.”
“And how many of these men”—and I pointed to the Kaffirs—“can shoot?”
“Three well and one badly, Allan.”
“Good,” I said. “Let them load the guns with _loopers_”—that is, slugs,
not bullets—“and let the rest stand in the passage with their assegais,
in case the Quabies should try to force the back door.”
Now, in this house there were in all but six windows, one to each
sitting-room, one to each of the larger bedrooms, these four opening on
to the veranda, and one at either end of the house, to give light and
air to the two small bedrooms, which were approached through the larger
bedrooms. At the back, fortunately, there were no windows, for the
stead was but one room deep with a passage running from the front to
the back door, a distance of little over fifteen feet.
As soon as the guns were loaded I divided up the men, a man with a gun
at each window. The right-hand sitting-room window I took myself with
two guns, Marie coming with me to load, which, like all girls in that
wild country, she could do well enough. So we arranged ourselves in a
rough-and-ready fashion, and while we were doing it felt quite
cheerful—that is, all except Monsieur Leblanc, who, I noticed, seemed
very much disturbed.
I do not for one moment mean to suggest that he was afraid, as he might
well have been, for he was an extremely brave and even rash man; but I
think the knowledge that his drunken act had brought this terrible
danger upon us all weighed on his mind. Also there may have been more;
some subtle fore-knowledge of the approaching end to a life that, when
all allowances were made, could scarcely be called well spent. At any
rate he fidgeted at his window-place cursing beneath his breath, and
soon, as I saw out of the corner of my eye, began to have recourse to
his favourite bottle of peach brandy, which he fetched out of a
cupboard.
The slaves, too, were gloomy, as all natives are when suddenly awakened
in the night; but as the light grew they became more cheerful. It is a
poor Kaffir that does not love fighting, especially when he has a gun
and a white man or two to lead him.
Now that we had made such little preparations as we could, which, by
the way, I supplemented by causing some furniture to be piled up
against the front and back doors, there came a pause, which, speaking
for my own part—being, after all, only a lad at the time—I found very
trying to the nerves. There I stood at my window with the two guns, one
a double-barrel and one a single _roer_, or elephant gun, that took a
tremendous charge, but both, be it remembered, flint locks; for,
although percussion caps had been introduced, we were a little behind
the times in Cradock. There, too, crouched on the ground beside me,
holding the ammunition ready for re-loading, her long, black hair
flowing about her shoulders, was Marie Marais, now a well-grown young
woman. In the intense silence she whispered to me:
“Why did you come here, Allan? You were safe yonder, and now you will
probably be killed.”
“To try to save you,” I answered simply. “What would you have had me
do?”
“To try to save me? Oh! that is good of you, but you should have
thought of yourself.”
“Then I should still have thought of you, Marie.”
“Why, Allan?”
“Because you are myself and more than myself. If anything happened to
you, what would my life be to me?”
“I don’t quite understand, Allan,” she replied, staring down at the
floor. “Tell me, what do you mean?”
“Mean, you silly girl,” I said; “what can I mean, except that I love
you, which I thought you knew long ago.”
“Oh!” she said; “_now_ I understand.” Then she raised herself upon her
knees, and held up her face to me to kiss, adding, “There, that’s my
answer, the first and perhaps the last. Thank you, Allan dear; I am
glad to have heard that, for you see one or both of us may die soon.”
As she spoke the words, an assegai flashed through the window-place,
passing just between our heads. So we gave over love-making and turned
our attention to war.
Now the light was beginning to grow, flowing out of the pearly eastern
sky; but no attack had yet been delivered, although that one was
imminent that spear fixed in the plaster of the wall behind us showed
clearly. Perhaps the Kaffirs had been frightened by the galloping of
horses through their line in the dark, not knowing how many of them
there might have been. Or perhaps they were waiting to see better where
to deliver their onset. These were the ideas that occurred to me, but
both were wrong.
They were staying their hands until the mist lifted a little from the
hollow below the stead where the cattle kraals were situated, for while
the fog remained they could not see to get the beasts out. These they
wished to make sure of and drive away before the fight began, lest
during its progress something should happen to rob them of their booty.
Presently, from these kraals, where the Heer Marais’s horned beasts and
sheep were penned at night, about one hundred and fifty of the former
and some two thousand of the latter, to say nothing of the horses, for
he was a large and prosperous farmer, there arose a sound of bellowing,
neighing, and baaing, and with it that of the shouting of men.
“They are driving off the stock,” said Marie. “Oh! my poor father, he
is ruined; it will break his heart.”
“Bad enough,” I answered, “but there are things that might be worse.
Hark!”
As I spoke there came a sound of stamping feet and of a wild war chant.
Then in the edge of the mist that hung above the hollow where the
cattle kraals were, figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro,
looking ghostly and unreal. The Kaffirs were marshalling their men for
the attack. A minute more and it had begun. On up the slope they came
in long, wavering lines, several hundreds of them, whistling and
screaming, shaking their spears, their war-plumes and hair trappings
blown back by the breeze, the lust of slaughter in their rolling eyes.
Two or three of them had guns, which they fired as they ran, but where
the bullets went I do not know, over the house probably.
I called out to Leblanc and the Kaffirs not to shoot till I did, for I
knew that they were poor marksmen and that much depended upon our first
volley being effective. Then as the captain of this attack came within
thirty yards of the stoep—for now the light, growing swiftly, was
strong enough to enable me to distinguish him by his apparel and the
rifle which he held—I loosed at him with the _roer_ and shot him dead.
Indeed the heavy bullet passing through his body mortally wounded
another of the Quabies behind. These were the first men that I ever
killed in war.
As they fell, Leblanc and the rest of our people fired also, the slugs
from their guns doing great execution at that range, which was just
long enough to allow them to scatter. When the smoke cleared a little I
saw that nearly a dozen men were down, and that the rest, dismayed by
this reception, had halted. If they had come on then, while we were
loading, doubtless they might have rushed the place; but, being unused
to the terrible effects of firearms, they paused, amazed. A number of
them, twenty or thirty perhaps, clustered about the bodies of the
fallen Kaffirs, and, seizing my second gun, I fired both barrels at
these with such fearful effect that the whole regiment took to their
heels and fled, leaving their dead and wounded on the ground. As they
ran our servants cheered, but I called to them to be silent and load
swiftly, knowing well that the enemy would soon return.
For a time, however, nothing happened, although we could hear them
talking somewhere near the cattle kraal, about a hundred and fifty
yards away. Marie took advantage of this pause, I remember, to fetch
food and distribute it among us. I, for one, was glad enough to get it.
Now the sun was up, a sight for which I thanked Heaven, for, at any
rate, we could no longer be surprised. Also, with the daylight, some of
my fear passed away, since darkness always makes danger twice as
terrible to man and beast. Whilst we were still eating and fortifying
the window-places as best we could, so as to make them difficult to
enter, a single Kaffir appeared, waving above his head a stick to which
was tied a white ox-tail as a sign of truce. I ordered that no one
should fire, and when the man, who was a bold fellow, had reached the
spot where the dead captain lay, called to him, asking his business,
for I could speak his language well.
He answered that he had come with a message from Quabie. This was the
message: that Quabie’s eldest son had been cruelly murdered by the fat
white man called “Vulture” who lived with the Heer Marais, and that he,
Quabie, would have blood for blood. Still, he did not wish to kill the
young white chieftainess (that was Marie) or the others in the house,
with whom he had no quarrel. Therefore if we would give up the fat
white man that he might make him “die slowly,” Quabie would be content
with his life and with the cattle that he had already taken by way of a
fine, and leave us and the house unmolested.
Now, when Leblanc understood the nature of this offer he went perfectly
mad with mingled fear and rage, and began to shout and swear in French.
“Be silent,” I said; “we do not mean to surrender you, although you
have brought all this trouble on us. Your chance of life is as good as
ours. Are you not ashamed to act so before these black people?”
When at last he grew more or less quiet I called to the messenger that
we white folk were not in the habit of abandoning each other, and that
we would live or die together. Still, I bade him tell Quabie that if we
did die, the vengeance taken on him and all his people would be to wipe
them out till not one of them was left, and therefore that he would do
well not to cause any of our blood to flow. Also, I added, that we had
thirty men in the house (which, of course, was a lie) and plenty of
ammunition and food, so that if he chose to continue the attack it
would be the worse for him and his tribe.
On hearing this the herald shouted back that we should every one of us
be dead before noon if he had his way. Still, he would report my words
faithfully to Quabie and bring his answer.
Then he turned and began to walk off. Just as he did so a shot was
fired from the house, and the man pitched forward to the ground, then
rose again and staggered back towards his people, with his right
shoulder shattered and his arm swinging.
“Who did that?” I asked through the smoke, which prevented me from
seeing.
“I, _parbleu!_” shouted Leblanc. “_Sapristi!_ that black devil wanted
to torture me, Leblanc, the friend of the great Napoleon. Well, at
least I have tortured him whom I meant to kill.”
“Yes, you fool,” I answered; “and we, too, shall be tortured because of
your wickedness. You have shot a messenger carrying a flag of truce,
and that the Quabies will never forgive. Oh! I tell you that you have
hit us as well as him, who had it not been for you might have been
spared.”
These words I said quite quietly and in Dutch, so that our Kaffirs
might understand them, though really I was boiling with wrath.
But Leblanc did not answer quietly.
“Who are you,” he shouted, “you wretched little Englishman, who dare to
lecture me, Leblanc, the friend of the great Napoleon?”
Now I drew my pistol and walked up to the man.
“Be quiet, you drunken sot,” I said, for I guessed that he had drunk
more of the brandy in the darkness. “If you are not quiet and do not
obey me, who am in command here, either I will blow your brains out, or
I will give you to these men,” and I pointed to Hans and the Kaffirs,
who had gathered round him, muttering ominously. “Do you know what they
will do with you? They will throw you out of the house, and leave you
to settle your quarrel with Quabie alone.”
Leblanc looked first at the pistol, and next at the faces of the
natives, and saw something in one or other of them, or in both, that
caused him to change his note.
“Pardon, monsieur,” he said; “I was excited. I knew not what I said. If
you are young you are brave and clever, and I will obey you,” and he
went to his station and began to re-load his gun. As he did so a great
shout of fury rose from the cattle kraal. The wounded herald had
reached the Quabies and was telling them of the treachery of the white
people.
CHAPTER III.
THE RESCUE
The second Quabie advance did not begin till about half-past seven.
Even savages love their lives and appreciate the fact that wounds hurt
very much, and these were no exception to the rule. Their first rush
had taught them a bitter lesson, of which the fruit was evident in the
crippled or dying men who rolled to and fro baked in the hot sun within
a few yards of the stoep, not to speak of those who would never stir
again. Now, the space around the house being quite open and bare of
cover, it was obvious that it could not be stormed without further
heavy losses. In order to avoid such losses a civilised people would
have advanced by means of trenches, but of these the Quabies knew
nothing; moreover, digging tools were lacking to them.
So it came about that they hit upon another, and in the circumstances a
not inefficient expedient. The cattle kraal was built of rough,
unmortared stones. Those stones they took, each man carrying two or
three, which, rushing forward, they piled up into scattered rough
defences of about eighteen inches or two feet high. These defences were
instantly occupied by as many warriors as could take shelter behind
them, lying one on top of the other. Of course, those savages who
carried the first stones were exposed to our fire, with the result that
many of them fell, but there were always plenty more behind. As they
were being built at a dozen different points, and we had but seven
guns, before we could reload, a particular _schanz_, of which perhaps
the first builders had fallen, would be raised so high that our slugs
could no longer hurt those who lay behind it. Also, our supply of
ammunition was limited, and the constant expenditure wasted it so much
that at length only about six charges per man remained. At last,
indeed, I was obliged to order the firing to cease, so that we might
reserve ourselves for the great rush which could not now be much
delayed.
Finding that they were no longer harassed by our bullets, the Quabies
advanced more rapidly, directing their attack upon the south end of the
house, where there was but one window, and thus avoiding the fire that
might be poured upon them from the various openings under the veranda.
At first I wondered why they selected this end, till Marie reminded me
that this part of the dwelling was thatched with reeds, whereas the
rest of the building, which had been erected more recently, was slated.
Their object was to fire the roof. So soon as their last wall was near
enough (that is, about half-past ten of the clock) they began to throw
into the thatch assegais to which were attached bunches of burning
grass. Many of these went out, but at length, as we gathered from their
shouts, one caught. Within ten minutes this part of the house was
burning.
Now our state became desperate. We retreated across the central
passage, fearing lest the blazing rafters should fall upon our natives,
who were losing heart and would no longer stay beneath them. But the
Quabies, more bold, clambered in through the south window, and attacked
us in the doorway of the larger sitting-room.
Here the final fight began. As they rushed at us we shot, till they
went down in heaps. Almost at our last charge they gave back, and just
then the roof fell upon them.
Oh, what a terrible scene was that! The dense clouds of smoke, the
screams of the trapped and burning men, the turmoil, the agony!
The front door was burst in by a flank onslaught.
Leblanc and a slave who was near him were seized by black, claw-like
hands and dragged out. What became of the Frenchman I do not know, for
the natives hauled him away, but I fear his end must have been
dreadful, as he was taken alive. The servant I saw them assegai, so at
least he died at once. I fired my last shot, killing a fellow who was
flourishing a battle-axe, then dashed the butt of the gun into the face
of the man behind him, felling him, and, seizing Marie by the hand,
dragged her back into the northernmost room—that in which I was
accustomed to sleep—and shut and barred the door.
“Allan,” she gasped, “Allan dear, it is finished. I cannot fall into
the hands of those men. Kill me, Allan.”
“All right,” I answered, “I will. I have my pistol. One barrel for you
and one for me.”
“No, no! Perhaps you might escape after all; but, you see, I am a
woman, and dare not risk it. Come now, I am ready,” and she knelt down,
opening her arms to receive the embrace of death, and looked up at me
with her lovely, pitiful eyes.
“It doesn’t do to kill one’s love and live on oneself,” I answered
hoarsely. “We have got to go together,” and I cocked both barrels of
the pistol.
The Hottentot, Hans, who was in the place with us, saw and understood.
“It is right, it is best!” he said; and turning, he hid his eyes with
his hand.
“Wait a little, Allan,” she exclaimed; “it will be time when the door
is down, and perhaps God may still help us.”
“He may,” I answered doubtfully; “but I would not count on it. Nothing
can save us now unless the others come to rescue us, and that’s too
much to hope for.”
Then a thought struck me, and I added with a dreadful laugh: “I wonder
where we shall be in five minutes.”
“Oh! together, dear; together for always in some new and beautiful
world, for you do love me, don’t you, as I love you? Maybe that’s
better than living on here where we should be sure to have troubles and
perhaps be separated at last.”
I nodded my head, for though I loved life, I loved Marie more, and I
felt that we were making a good end after a brave fight. They were
battering at the door now, but, thank Heaven, Marais had made strong
doors, and it held a while.
The wood began to give at last, an assegai appeared through a shattered
plank, but Hans stabbed along the line of it with the spear he held,
that which I had snatched from the flank of the horse, and it was
dropped with a scream. Black hands were thrust through the hole, and
the Hottentot hacked and cut at them with the spear. But others came,
more than he could pierce, and the whole door-frame began to be dragged
outwards.
“Now, Marie, be ready,” I gasped, lifting the pistol.
“Oh, Christ receive me!” she answered faintly. “It won’t hurt much,
will it, Allan?”
“You will never feel anything,” I whispered; as with the cold sweat
pouring from me I placed the muzzle within an inch of her forehead and
began to press the trigger. My God! yes, I actually began to press the
trigger softly and steadily, for I wished to make no mistake.
It was at this very moment, above the dreadful turmoil of the roaring
flames, the yells of the savages and the shrieks and groans of wounded
and dying men, that I heard the sweetest sound which ever fell upon my
ears—the sound of shots being fired, many shots, and quite close by.
“Great Heaven!” I screamed; “the Boers are here to save us. Marie, I
will hold the door while I can. If I fall, scramble through the
window—you can do it from the chest beneath—drop to the ground, and run
towards the firing. There’s a chance for you yet, a good chance.”
“And you, you,” she moaned. “I would rather die with you.”
“Do what I bid you,” I answered savagely, and bounded forward towards
the rocking door.
It was falling outward, it fell, and on the top of it appeared two
great savages waving broad spears. I lifted the pistol, and the bullet
that had been meant for Marie’s brain scattered that of the first of
them, and the bullet which had been meant for my heart pierced that of
the second. They both went down dead, there in the doorway.
I snatched up one of their spears and glanced behind me. Marie was
climbing on to the chest; I could just see her through the thickening
smoke. Another Quabie rushed on. Hans and I received him on the points
of our assegais, but so fierce was his charge that they went through
him as though he were nothing, and being but light, both of us were
thrown backwards to the ground. I scrambled to my feet again,
defenceless now, for the spear was broken in the Kaffir, and awaited
the end. Looking back once more I saw that Marie had either failed to
get through the window or abandoned the attempt. At any rate she was
standing near the chest supporting herself by her right hand. In my
despair I seized the blade end of the broken assegai and dragged it
from the body of the Kaffir, thinking that it would serve to kill her,
then turned to do the deed.
But even as I turned I heard a voice that I knew well shout: “Do you
live, Marie?” and in the doorway appeared no savage, but Henri Marais.
Slowly I backed before him, for I could not speak, and the last
dreadful effort of my will seemed to thrust me towards Marie. I reached
her and threw my hand that still held the gory blade round her neck.
Then as darkness came over me I heard her cry:
“Don’t shoot, father. It is Allan, Allan who has saved my life!”
After that I remember no more. Nor did she for a while, for we both
fell to the ground senseless.
When my senses returned to me I found myself lying on the floor of the
wagon-house in the back yard. Glancing from my half-opened eyes, for I
was still speechless, I saw Marie, white as a sheet, her hair all
falling about her dishevelled dress. She was seated on one of those
boxes that we put on the front of wagons to drive from, _voorkissies_
they are called, and as her eyes were watching me I knew that she
lived. By her stood a tall and dark young man whom I had never seen
before. He was holding her hand and looking at her anxiously, and even
then I felt angry with him. Also I saw other things; for instance, my
old father leaning down and looking at _me_ anxiously, and outside in
the yard, for there were no doors to the wagon-house, a number of men
with guns in their hands, some of whom I knew and others who were
strangers. In the shadow, too, against the wall, stood my blood mare
with her head hanging down and trembling all over. Not far from her the
roan lay upon the ground, its flank quite red.
I tried to rise and could not, then feeling pain in my left thigh,
looked and saw that it was red also. As a matter of fact an assegai had
gone half through it and hit upon the bone. Although I never felt it at
the time, this wound was dealt to me by that great Quabie whom Hans and
I had received upon our spears, doubtless as he fell. Hans, by the way,
was there also, an awful and yet a ludicrous spectacle, for the Quabie
had fallen right on the top of him and lain so with results that may be
imagined. There he sat upon the ground, looking upwards, gasping with
his fish-like mouth. Each gasp, I remember, fashioned itself into the
word _Allemachte!_ that is “Almighty,” a favourite Dutch expression.
Marie was the first to perceive that I had come to life again. Shaking
herself free from the clasp of the young man, she staggered towards me
and fell upon her knees at my side, muttering words that I could not
catch, for they choked in her throat. Then Hans took in the situation,
and wriggling his unpleasant self to my other side, lifted my hand and
kissed it. Next my father spoke, saying:
“Praise be to God, he lives! Allan, my son, I am proud of you; you have
done your duty as an Englishman should.”
“Had to save my own skin if I could, thank you, father,” I muttered.
“Why as an Englishman more than any other sort of man, Mynheer
prédicant?” asked the tall stranger, speaking in Dutch, although he
evidently understood our language.
“The point is one that I will not argue now, sir,” answered my father,
drawing himself up. “But if what I hear is true, there was a Frenchman
in that house who did not do his duty; and if you belong to the same
nation, I apologise to you.”
“Thank you, sir; as it happens, I do, half. The rest of me is
Portuguese, not English, thank God.”
“God is thanked for many things that must surprise Him,” replied my
father in a suave voice.
At that moment this rather disagreeable conversation, which even then
both angered and amused me faintly, came to an end, for the Heer Marais
entered the place.
As might have been expected in so excitable a man, he was in a terrible
state of agitation. Thankfulness at the escape of his only, beloved
child, rage with the Kaffirs who had tried to kill her, and extreme
distress at the loss of most of his property—all these conflicting
emotions boiled together in his breast like antagonistic elements in a
crucible.
The resulting fumes were parti-coloured and overpowering. He rushed up
to me, blessed and thanked me (for he had learnt something of the story
of the defence), called me a young hero and so forth, hoping that God
would reward me. Here I may remark that _he_ never did, poor man. Then
he began to rave at Leblanc, who had brought all this dreadful disaster
upon his house, saying that it was a judgment on himself for having
sheltered an atheist and a drunkard for so many years, just because he
was French and a man of intellect. Someone, my father as a matter of
fact, who with all his prejudices possessed a great sense of justice,
reminded him that the poor Frenchman had expiated, or perchance was now
expiating any crimes that he might have committed.
This turned the stream of his invective on to the Quabie Kaffirs, who
had burned part of his house and stolen nearly all his stock, making
him from a rich man into a poor one in a single hour. He shouted for
vengeance on the “black devils,” and called on all there to help him to
recover his beasts and kill the thieves. Most of those present—they
were about thirty in all, not counting the Kaffir and Hottentot
after-riders—answered that they were willing to attack the Quabies.
Being residents in the district, they felt, and, indeed, said, that his
case to-day might and probably would be their case to-morrow. Therefore
they were prepared to ride at once.
Then it was that my father intervened.
“Heeren,” he said, “it seems to me that before you seek vengeance,
which, as the Book tells us, is the Lord’s, it would be well,
especially for the Heer Marais, to return thanks for what has been
saved to him. I mean his daughter, who might now very easily have been
dead or worse.”
He added that goods came or went according to the chances of fortune,
but a beloved human life, once lost, could not be restored. This
precious life had been preserved to him, he would not say by man—here
he glanced at me—but by the Ruler of the world acting through man.
Perhaps those present did not quite understand what he (my father) had
learned from Hans the Hottentot, that I, his son, had been about to
blow out the brains of Marie Marais and my own when the sound of the
shots of those who had been gathered through the warning which I left
before I rode from the Mission Station, had stayed my hand. He called
upon the said Hans and Marie herself to tell them the story, since I
was too weak to do so.
Thus adjured, the little Hottentot, smothered as he was in blood, stood
up. In the simple, dramatic style characteristic of his race, he
narrated all that had happened since he met the woman on the veld but
little over twelve hours before, till the arrival of the rescue party.
Never have I seen a tale followed with deeper interest, and when at
last Hans pointed to me lying on the ground and said, “There is he who
did these things which it might be thought no man could do—he, but a
boy,” even from those phlegmatic Dutchmen there came a general cheer.
But, lifting myself upon my hands, I called out:
“Whatever I did, this poor Hottentot did also, and had it not been for
him I could not have done anything—for him and the two good horses.”
Then they cheered again, and Marie, rising, said:
“Yes, father; to these two I owe my life.”
After this, my father offered his prayer of thanksgiving in very bad
Dutch—for, having begun to learn it late in life, he never could really
master that language—and the stalwart Boers, kneeling round him, said
“Amen.” As the reader may imagine, the scene, with all its details,
which I will not repeat, was both remarkable and impressive.
What followed this prayer I do not very well remember, for I became
faint from exhaustion and the loss of blood. I believe, however, that
the fire having been extinguished, they removed the dead and wounded
from the unburnt portion of the house and carried me into the little
room where Marie and I had gone through that dreadful scene when I went
within an ace of killing her. After this the Boers and Marais’s
Kaffirs, or rather slaves, whom he had collected from where they lived
away from the house, to the number of thirty or forty, started to
follow the defeated Quabie, leaving about ten of their number as a
guard. Here I may mention that of the seven or eight men who slept in
the outbuildings and had fought with us, two were killed in the fight
and two wounded. The remainder, one way or another, managed to escape
unhurt, so that in all this fearful struggle, in which we inflicted so
terrible a punishment upon the Kaffirs, we lost only three slain,
including the Frenchman, Leblanc.
As to the events of the next three days I know only what I have been
told, for practically during all that time I was off my head from loss
of blood, complicated with fever brought on by the fearful excitement
and exertion I had undergone. All I can recall is a vision of Marie
bending over me and making me take food of some sort—milk or soup, I
suppose—for it seems I would touch it from no other hand. Also I had
visions of the tall shape of my white-haired father, who, like most
missionaries, understood something of surgery and medicine, attending
to the bandages on my thigh. Afterwards he told me that the spear had
actually cut the walls of the big artery, but, by good fortune, without
going through them. Another fortieth of an inch and I should have bled
to death in ten minutes!
On this third day my mind was brought back from its wanderings by the
sound of a great noise about the house, above which I heard the voice
of Marais storming and shouting, and that of my father trying to calm
him. Presently Marie entered the room, drawing-to behind her a Kaffir
karoos, which served as a curtain, for the door, it will be remembered,
had been torn out. Seeing that I was awake and reasonable, she flew to
my side with a little cry of joy, and, kneeling down, kissed me on the
forehead.
“You have been very ill, Allan, but I know you will recover now. While
we are alone, which,” she added slowly and with meaning, “I dare say we
shall not be much in future, I want to thank you from my heart for all
that you did to save me. Had it not been for you, oh! had it not been
for you”—and she glanced at the blood stains on the earthen floor, put
her hands before her eyes and shuddered.
“Nonsense, Marie,” I answered, taking her hand feebly enough, for I was
very weak. “Anyone else would have done as much, even if they did not
love you as I do. Let us thank God that it was not in vain. But what is
all that noise? Have the Quabies come back?”
She shook her head.
“No; the Boers have come back from hunting them.”
“And did they catch them and recover the cattle?”
“Not so. They only found some wounded men, whom they shot, and the body
of Monsieur Leblanc with his head cut off, taken away with other bits
of him for medicine, they say to make the warriors brave. Quabie has
burnt his kraal and fled with all his people to join the other Kaffirs
in the Big Mountains. Not a cow or a sheep did they find, except a few
that had fallen exhausted, and those had their throats cut. My father
wanted to follow them and attack the Red Kaffirs in the mountains, but
the others would not go. They said there are thousands of them, and
that it would be a mad war, from which not one of them would return
alive. He is wild with grief and rage, for, Allan dear, we are almost
ruined, especially as the British Government are freeing the slaves and
only going to give us a very small price, not a third of their value.
But, hark! he is calling me, and you must not talk much or excite
yourself, lest you should be ill again. Now you have to sleep and eat
and get strong. Afterwards, dear, you may talk”; and, bending down once
more, she blessed and kissed me, then rose and glided away.
CHAPTER IV.
HERNANDO PEREIRA
Several more days passed before I was allowed out of that little
war-stained room of which I grew to hate the very sight. I entreated my
father to take me into the air, but he would not, saying that he feared
lest any movement should cause the bleeding to begin again or even the
cut artery to burst. Moreover, the wound was not healing very well, the
spear that caused it having been dirty or perhaps used to skin dead
animals, which caused some dread of gangrene, that in those days
generally meant death. As it chanced, although I was treated only with
cold water, for antiseptics were then unknown, my young and healthy
blood triumphed and no gangrene appeared.
What made those days even duller was that during them I saw very little
of Marie, who now only entered the place in the company of her father.
Once I managed to ask her why she did not come oftener and alone. Her
face grew troubled as she whispered back, “Because it is not allowed,
Allan,” and then without another word left the place.
Why, I wondered to myself, was it not allowed, and an answer sprang up
in my mind. Doubtless it was because of that tall young man who had
argued with my father in the wagon-house. Marie had never spoken to me
of him, but from the Hottentot Hans and my father I managed to collect
a good deal of information concerning him and his business.
It appeared that he was the only child of Henri Marais’s sister, who
married a Portuguese from Delagoa Bay of the name of Pereira, who had
come to the Cape Colony to trade many years before and settled there.
Both he and his wife were dead, and their son, Hernando, Marie’s
cousin, had inherited all their very considerable wealth.
Indeed, now I remembered having heard this Hernando, or Hernan, as the
Boers called him for short, spoken of in past years by the Heer Marais
as the heir to great riches, since his father had made a large fortune
by trading in wine and spirits under some Government monopoly which he
held. Often he had been invited to visit Maraisfontein, but his
parents, who doted on him and lived in one of the settled districts not
far from Cape Town, would never allow him to travel so far from them
into these wild regions.
Since their death, however, things had changed. It appeared that on the
decease of old Pereira the Governor of the Colony had withdrawn the
wine and spirit monopoly, which he said was a job and a scandal, an act
that made Hernando Pereira very angry, although he needed no more
money, and had caused him to throw himself heart and soul into the
schemes of the disaffected Boers. Indeed, he was now engaged as one of
the organisers of the Great Trek which was in contemplation. In fact,
it had already begun, into the partially explored land beyond the
borders of the Colony, where the Dutch farmers proposed to set up
dominions of their own.
That was the story of Hernando Pereira, who was to be—nay, who had
already become—my rival for the hand of the sweet and beautiful Marie
Marais.
One night when my father and I were alone in the little room where he
slept with me, and he had finished reading his evening portion of
Scripture aloud, I plucked up my courage to tell him that I loved Marie
and wished to marry her, and that we had plighted our troth during the
attack of the Kaffirs on the stead.
“Love and war indeed!” he said, looking at me gravely, but showing no
sign of surprise, for it appeared that he was already acquainted with
our secret. This was not wonderful, for he informed me afterwards that
during my delirium I had done nothing except rave of Marie in the most
endearing terms. Also Marie herself, when I was at my worst, had burst
into tears before him and told him straight out that she loved me.
“Love and war indeed!” he repeated, adding kindly, “My poor boy, I fear
that you have fallen into great trouble.”
“Why, father?” I asked. “Is it wrong that we should love each other?”
“Not wrong, but, in the circumstances, quite natural—I should have
foreseen that it was sure to happen. No, not wrong, but most
unfortunate. To begin with, I do not wish to see you marry a foreigner
and become mixed up with these disloyal Boers. I hoped that one day, a
good many years hence, for you are only a boy, Allan, you would find an
English wife, and I still hope it.”
“Never!” I ejaculated.
“Never is a long word, Allan, and I dare say that what you are so sure
is impossible will happen after all,” words that made me angry enough
at the time, though in after years I often thought of them.
“But,” he went on, “putting my own wishes, perhaps prejudices, aside, I
think your suit hopeless. Although Henri Marais likes you well enough
and is grateful to you just now because you have saved the daughter
whom he loves, you must remember that he hates us English bitterly. I
believe that he would almost as soon see his girl marry a half-caste as
an Englishman, and especially a poor Englishman, as you are, and unless
you can make money, must remain. I have little to leave you, Allan.”
“I might make money, father, out of ivory, for instance. You know I am
a good shot.”
“Allan, I do not think you will ever make much money, it is not in your
blood; or, if you do, you will not keep it. We are an old race, and I
know our record, up to the time of Henry VIII. at any rate. Not one of
us was ever commercially successful. Let us suppose, however, that you
should prove yourself the exception to the rule, it can’t be done at
once, can it? Fortunes don’t grow in a night, like mushrooms.”
“No, I suppose not, father. Still, one might have some luck.”
“Possibly. But meanwhile you have to fight against a man who has the
luck, or rather the money in his pocket.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting up.
“I mean Hernando Pereira, Allan, Marais’s nephew, who they say is one
of the richest men in the Colony. I know that he wishes to marry
Marie.”
“How do you know it, father?”
“Because Marais told me so this afternoon, probably with a purpose. He
was struck with her beauty when he first saw her after your escape,
which he had not done since she was a child, and as he stopped to guard
the house while the rest went after the Quabies—well, you can guess.
Such things go quickly with these Southern men.”
I hid my face in the pillow, biting my lips to keep back the groan that
was ready to burst from them, for I felt the hopelessness of the
situation. How could I compete with this rich and fortunate man, who
naturally would be favoured of my betrothed’s father? Then on the
blackness of my despair rose a star of hope. I could not, but perchance
Marie might. She was very strong-natured and very faithful. She was not
to be bought, and I doubted whether she could be frightened.
“Father,” I said, “I may never marry Marie, but I don’t think that
Hernando Pereira ever will either.”
“Why not, my boy?”
“Because she loves me, father, and she is not one to change. I believe
that she would rather die.”
“Then she must be a very unusual sort of woman. Still, it may be so;
the future will tell to those who live to see it. I can only pray and
trust that whatever happens will be for the best for both of you. She
is a sweet girl and I like her well, although she may be Boer—or
French. And now, Allan, we have talked enough, and you had better go to
sleep. You must not excite yourself, you know, or it may set up new
inflammation in the wound.”
“Go to sleep. Must not excite yourself.” I kept muttering those words
for hours, serving them up in my mind with a spice of bitter thought.
At last torpor, or weakness, overcame me, and I fell into a kind of net
of bad dreams which, thank Heaven! I have now forgotten. Yet when
certain events happened subsequently I always thought, and indeed still
think, that these or something like them, had been a part of those evil
dreams.
On the morning following this conversation I was at length allowed to
be carried to the stoep, where they laid me down, wrapped in a very
dirty blanket, upon a rimpi-strung bench or primitive sofa. When I had
satisfied my first delight at seeing the sun and breathing the fresh
air, I began to study my surroundings. In front of the house, or what
remained of it, so arranged that the last of them at either end we made
fast to the extremities of the stoep, was arranged an arc of wagons,
placed as they are in a laager and protected underneath by earth thrown
up in a mound and by boughs of the mimosa thorn. Evidently these
wagons, in which the guard of Boers and armed natives who still
remained on the place slept at night, were set thus as a defence
against a possible attack by the Quabies or other Kaffirs.
During the daytime, however, the centre wagon was drawn a little on one
side to leave a kind of gate. Through this opening I saw that a long
wall, also semicircular, had been built outside of them, enclosing a
space large enough to contain at night all the cattle and horses that
were left to the Heer Marais, together with those of his friends, who
evidently did not wish to see their oxen vanish into the depths of the
mountains. In the middle of this extemporised kraal was a long, low
mound, which, as I learned afterwards, contained the dead who fell in
the attack on the house. The two slaves who had been killed in the
defence were buried in the little garden that Marie had made, and the
headless body of Leblanc in a small walled place to the right of the
stead, where lay some of its former owners and one or two relatives of
the Heer Marais, including his wife.
Whilst I was noting these things Marie appeared at the end of the
veranda, having come round the burnt part of the house, followed by
Hernan Pereira. Catching sight of me, she ran to the side of my couch
with outstretched arms as though she intended to embrace me. Then
seeming to remember, stopped suddenly at my side, coloured to her hair,
and said in an embarrassed voice:
“Oh, Heer Allan”—she had never called me Heer in her life before—“I am
so glad to find you out! How have you been getting on?”
“Pretty well, I thank you,” I answered, biting my lips, “as you would
have learnt, Marie, had you come to see me.”
Next moment I was sorry for the words, for I saw her eyes fill with
tears and her breast shake with something like a sob. However, it was
Pereira and not Marie who answered, for at the moment I believe she
could not speak.
“My good boy,” he said in a pompous, patronising way and in English,
which he knew perfectly, “I think that my cousin has had plenty to do
caring for all these people during the last few days without running to
look at the cut in your leg. However, I am glad to hear from your
worthy father that it is almost well and that you will soon be able to
play games again, like others of your age.”
Now it was my turn to be unable to speak and to feel my eyes fill with
tears, tears of rage, for remember that I was still very feeble. But
Marie spoke for me.
“Yes, Cousin Hernan,” she said in a cold voice, “thank God the Heer
Allan Quatermain will soon be able to play games again, such bloody
games as the defence of Maraisfontein with eight men against all the
Quabie horde. Then Heaven help those who stand in front of his rifle,”
and she glanced at the mound that covered the dead Kaffirs, many of
whom, as a matter of fact, I had killed.
“Oh! no offence, no offence, Marie,” said Pereira in his smooth, rich
voice. “I did not want to laugh at your young friend, who doubtless is
as brave as they say all Englishmen are, and who fought well when he
was lucky enough to have the chance of protecting you, my dear cousin.
But after all, you know, he is not the only one who can hold a gun
straight, as you seem to think, which I shall be happy to prove to him
in a friendly fashion when he is stronger.”
Here he stepped forward a pace and looked down at me, then added with a
laugh, “Allemachte! I fear that won’t be just at present. Why, the lad
looks as though one might blow him away like a feather.”
Still I said nothing, only glanced up at this tall and splendid man
standing above me in his fine clothes, for he was richly dressed as the
fashion of the time went, with his high colouring, broad shoulders, and
face full of health and vigour. Mentally I compared him with myself, as
I was after my fever and loss of blood, a poor, white-faced rat of a
lad, with stubbly brown hair on my head and only a little down on my
chin, with arms like sticks, and a dirty blanket for raiment. How could
I compare with him in any way? What chance had I against this opulent
bully who hated me and all my race, and in whose hands, even if I were
well, I should be nothing but a child?
And yet, and yet as I lay there humiliated and a mock, an answer came
into my mind, and I felt that whatever might be the case with my
outward form; in spirit, in courage, in determination and in ability,
in all, in short, that really makes a man, I was more than Pereira’s
equal. Yes, and that by the help of these qualities, poor as I was and
frail as I seemed to be, I would beat him at the last and keep for
myself what I had won, the prize of Marie’s love.
Such were the thoughts which passed through me, and I think that
something of the tenor of them communicated itself to Marie, who often
could read my heart before my lips spoke. At any rate, her demeanour
changed. She drew herself up. Her fine nostrils expanded and a proud
look came into her dark eyes, as she nodded her head and murmured in a
voice so low that I think I alone caught her words:
“Yes, yes, have no fear.”
Pereira was speaking again (he had turned aside to strike the steel of
his tinder-box, and was now blowing the spark to a glow before lighting
his big pipe).
“By the way, Heer Allan,” he said, “that is a very good mare of yours.
She seems to have done the distance between the Mission Station and
Maraisfontein in wonderful time, as, for the matter of that, the roan
did too. I have taken a fancy to her, after a gallop on her back
yesterday just to give her some exercise, and although I don’t know
that she is quite up to my weight, I’ll buy her.”
“The mare is not for sale, Heer Pereira,” I said, speaking for the
first time, “and I do not remember giving anyone leave to exercise
her.”
“No, your father did, or was it that ugly little beast of a Hottentot?
I forget which. As for her not being for sale—why, in this world
everything is for sale, at a price. I’ll give you—let me see—oh, what
does the money matter when one has plenty? I’ll give you a hundred
English pounds for that mare; and don’t you think me a fool. I tell you
I mean to get it back, and more, at the great races down in the south.
Now what do you say?”
“I say that the mare is not for sale, Heer Pereira.” Then a thought
struck me, or an inspiration, and, as has always been my fashion, I
acted on it at once. “But,” I added slowly, “if you like, when I am a
bit stronger I’ll shoot you a match for her, you staking your hundred
pounds and I staking the mare.”
Pereira burst out laughing.
“Here, friends,” he called to some of the Boers who were strolling up
to the house for their morning coffee. “This little Englishman wants to
shoot a match with me, staking that fine mare of his against a hundred
pounds British; against me, Hernando Pereira, who have won every prize
at shooting that ever I entered for. No, no, friend Allan, I am not a
thief, I will not rob you of your mare.”
Now among those Boers chanced to be the celebrated Heer Pieter Retief,
a very fine man of high character, then in the prime of life, and of
Huguenot descent like Heer Marais. He had been appointed by the
Government one of the frontier commandants, but owing to some quarrel
with the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Andries Stockenstrom, had recently
resigned that office, and at this date was engaged in organizing the
trek from the Colony. I now saw Retief for the first time, and ah! then
little did I think how and where I should see him for the last. But all
that is a matter of history, of which I shall have to tell later.
Now, while Pereira was mocking and bragging of his prowess, Pieter
Retief looked at me, and our eyes met.
“Allemachte!” he exclaimed, “is that the young man who, with half a
dozen miserable Hottentots and slaves, held this stead for five hours
against all the Quabie tribe and kept them out?”
Somebody said that it was, remarking that I had been about to shoot
Marie Marais and myself when help came.
“Then, Heer Allan Quatermain,” said Retief, “give me your hand,” and he
took my poor wasted fingers in his big palm, adding, “Your father must
be proud of you to-day, as I should be if I had such a son. God in
Heaven! where will you stop if you can go so far while you are yet a
boy? Friends, since I came here yesterday I have got the whole story
for myself from the Kaffirs and from this _mooi meisje_” (pretty young
lady), and he nodded towards Marie. “Also I have gone over the ground
and the house, and have seen where each man fell—it is easy by the
blood marks—most of them shot by yonder Englishman, except one of the
last three, whom he killed with a spear. Well, I tell you that never in
all my experience have I known a better arranged or a more finely
carried out defence against huge odds. Perhaps the best part of it,
too, was the way in which this young lion acted on the information he
received and the splendid ride he made from the Mission Station. Again
I say that his father should be proud of him.”
“Well, if it comes to that, I am, mynheer,” said my father, who just
then joined us after his morning walk, “although I beg you to say no
more lest the lad should grow vain.”
“Bah!” replied Retief, “fellows of his stamp are not vain; it is your
big talkers who are vain,” and he glanced out of the corner of his
shrewd eye at Pereira, “your turkey cocks with all their tails spread.
I think this little chap must be such another as that great sailor of
yours—what do you call him, Nelson?—who beat the French into frothed
eggs and died to live for ever. He was small, too, they say, and weak
in the stomach.”
I must confess I do not think that praise ever sounded sweeter in my
ears than did these words of the Commandant Retief, uttered as they
were just when I felt crushed to the dirt. Moreover, as I saw by
Marie’s and, I may add, by my father’s face, there were other ears to
which they were not ungrateful. The Boers also, brave and honest men
enough, evidently appreciated them, for they said:
“_Ja! ja! das ist recht_” (That is right).
Only Pereira turned his broad back and busied himself with relighting
his pipe, which had gone out.
Then Retief began again.
“What is it you were calling us to listen to, Mynheer Pereira? That
this Heer Allan Quatermain had offered to shoot you a match? Well, why
not? If he can hit Kaffirs running at him with spears, as he has done,
he may be able to hit other things also. You say that you won’t rob him
of his money—no, it was his beautiful horse—because you have taken so
many prizes shooting at targets. But did _you_ ever hit a Kaffir
running at _you_ with an assegai, mynheer, you who live down there
where everything is safe? If so, I never heard of it.”
Pereira answered that he did not understand me to propose a shooting
match at Kaffirs charging with assegais, but at something else—he knew
not what.
“Quite so,” said Retief. “Well, Mynheer Allan, what is it that you do
propose?”
“That we should stand in the great kloof between the two _vleis_
yonder—the Heer Marais knows the place—when the wild geese flight over
an hour before sunset, and that he who brings down six of them in the
fewest shots shall win the match.”
“If our guns are loaded with loopers that will not be difficult,” said
Pereira.
“With loopers you would seldom kill a bird, mynheer,” I replied, “for
they come over from seventy to a hundred yards up. No, I mean with
rifles.”
“Allemachte!” broke in a Boer; “you will want plenty of ammunition to
hit a goose at that height with a bullet.”
“That is my offer,” I said, “to which I add this, that when twenty
shots have been fired by each man, he who has killed the most birds
wins, even if he has not brought down the full six. Does the Heer
Pereira accept? If so, I will venture to match myself against him,
although he has won so many prizes.”
The Heer Pereira seemed extremely doubtful; so doubtful, indeed, that
the Boers began to laugh at him. In the end he grew rather angry, and
said that he was willing to shoot me at bucks or swallows, or
fireflies, or anything else I liked.
“Then let it be at geese,” I answered, “since it is likely to be
sometime before I am strong enough to ride after buck or other wild
things.”’
So the terms of the match were formally written down by Marie, as my
father, although he took a keen sporting interest in the result, would
have nothing to do with what he called a “wager for money,” and, except
myself, there was no one else present with sufficient scholarship to
pen a long document. Then we both signed them, Hernan Pereira not very
willingly, I thought; and if my recovery was sufficiently rapid, the
date was fixed for that day week. In case of any disagreement, the Heer
Retief, who was staying at Maraisfontein, or in its neighbourhood, for
a while, was appointed referee and stakeholder. It was also arranged
that neither of us should visit the appointed place, or shoot at the
geese before the match. Still we were at liberty to practise as much as
we liked at anything else in the interval and to make use of any kind
of rifle that suited us best.
By the time that these arrangements were finished, feeling quite tired
with all the emotions of the morning, I was carried back to my room.
Here my midday meal, cooked by Marie, was brought to me. As I finished
eating it, for the fresh air had given me an appetite, my father came
in, accompanied by the Heer Marais, and began to talk to me. Presently
the latter asked me kindly enough if I thought I should be sufficiently
strong to trek back to the station that afternoon in an ox-cart with
springs to it and lying at full length upon a hide-strung _cartel_ or
mattress.
I answered, “Certainly,” as I should have done had I been at the point
of death, for I saw that he wished to be rid of me.
“The fact is, Allan,” he said awkwardly, “I am not inhospitable as you
may think, especially towards one to whom I owe so much. But you and my
nephew, Hernan, do not seem to get on very well together, and, as you
may guess, having just been almost beggared, I desire no unpleasantness
with the only rich member of my family.”
I replied I was sure I did not wish to be the cause of any. It seemed
to me, however, that the Heer Pereira wished to make a mock of me and
to bring it home to me what a poor creature I was compared to himself—I
a mere sick boy who was worth nothing.
“I know,” said Marais uneasily, “my nephew has been too fortunate in
life, and is somewhat overbearing in his manner. He does not remember
that the battle is not always to the strong or the race to the swift,
he who is young and rich and handsome, a spoiled child from the first.
I am sorry, but what I cannot help I must put up with. If I cannot have
my mealies cooked, I must eat them green. Also, Allan, have you never
heard that jealousy sometimes makes people rude and unjust?” and he
looked at me meaningly.
I made no answer, for when one does not quite know what to say it is
often best to remain silent, and he went on:
“I am vexed to hear of this foolish shooting match which has been
entered into without my knowledge or consent. If he wins he will only
laugh at you the more, and if you win he will be angry.”
“It was not my fault, mynheer,” I answered. “He wanted to force me to
sell the mare, which he had been riding without my leave, and kept
bragging about his marksmanship. So at last I grew cross and challenged
him.”
“No wonder, Allan; I do not blame you. Still, you are silly, for it
will not matter to him if he loses his money; but that beautiful mare
is your ewe-lamb, and I should be sorry to see you parted from a beast
which has done us so good a turn. Well, there it is; perhaps
circumstances may yet put an end to this trial; I hope so.”
“I hope they won’t,” I answered stubbornly.
“I dare say you do, being sore as a galled horse just now. But listen,
Allan, and you, too, prédicant Quatermain; there are other and more
important reasons than this petty squabble why I should be glad if you
could go away for a while. I must take counsel with my countrymen about
certain secret matters which have to do with our welfare and future,
and, of course they would not like it if all the while there were two
Englishmen on the place, whom they might think were spies.”
“Say no more, Heer Marais,” broke in my father hotly; “still less
should we like to be where we are not wanted or are looked upon with
suspicion for the crime of being English. By God’s blessing, my son has
been able to do some service to you and yours, but now that is all
finished and forgotten. Let the cart you are so kind as to lend us be
inspanned. We will go at once.”
Then Henri Marais, who was a gentleman at bottom, although, even in
those early days, violent and foolish when excited or under the
influence of his race prejudices, began to apologise quite humbly,
assuring my father that he forgot nothing and meant no offence. So they
patched the matter up, and an hour later we started.
All the Boers came to see us off, giving me many kind words and saying
how much they looked forward to meeting me again on the following
Thursday. Pereira, who was among them, was also very genial, begging me
to be sure and get well, since he did not wish to beat one who was
still crippled, even at a game of goose shooting. I answered that I
would do my best; as for my part, I did not like being beaten at any
game which I had set my heart on winning, whether it were little or
big. Then I turned my head, for I was lying on my back all this time,
to bid good-bye to Marie, who had slipped out of the house into the
yard where the cart was.
“Good-bye, Allan,” she said, giving me her hand and a look from her
eyes that I trusted was not seen. Then, under pretence of arranging the
kaross which was over me, she bent down and whispered swiftly:
“Win that match if you love me. I shall pray God that you may every
night, for it will be an omen.”
I think the whisper was heard, though not the words, for I saw Pereira
bite his lip and make a movement as though to interrupt her. But Pieter
Retief thrust his big form in front of him rather rudely, and said with
one of his hearty laughs:
“Allemachte! friend, let the _missje_ wish a good journey to the young
fellow who saved her life.”
Next moment Hans, the Hottentot, screamed at the oxen in the usual
fashion, and we rolled away through the gate.
But oh! if I had liked the Heer Retief before, now I loved him.
CHAPTER V.
THE SHOOTING MATCH
My journey back to the Mission Station was a strange contrast to that
which I had made thence a few days before. Then, the darkness, the
swift mare beneath me rushing through it like a bird, the awful terror
in my heart lest I should be too late, as with wild eyes I watched the
paling stars and the first gathering grey of dawn. Now, the creaking of
the ox-cart, the familiar veld, the bright glow of the peaceful
sunlight, and in my heart a great thankfulness, and yet a new terror
lest the pure and holy love which I had won should be stolen away from
me by force or fraud.
Well, as the one matter had been in the hand of God, so was the other,
and with that knowledge I must be content. The first trial had ended in
death and victory. How would the second end? I wondered, and those
words seemed to jumble themselves up in my mind and shape a sentence
that it did not conceive. It was: “In the victory that is death,”
which, when I came to think of it, of course, meant nothing. How
victory could be death I did not understand—at any rate, at that time,
I who was but a lad of small experience.
As we trekked along comfortably enough, for the road was good and the
cart, being on springs, gave my leg no pain, I asked my father what he
thought that the Heer Marais had meant when he told us that the Boers
had business at Maraisfontein, during which our presence as Englishmen
would not be agreeable to them.
“Meant, Allan? He meant that these traitorous Dutchmen are plotting
against their sovereign, and are afraid lest we should report their
treason. Either they intend to rebel because of that most righteous
act, the freeing of the slaves, and because we will not kill out all
the Kaffirs with whom they chance to quarrel, or to trek from the
Colony. For my part I think it will be the latter, for, as you have
heard, some parties have already gone; and, unless I am mistaken, many
more mean to follow, Marais and Retief and that plotter, Pereira, among
them. Let them go; I say, the sooner the better, for I have no doubt
that the English flag will follow them in due course.”
“I hope that they won’t,” I answered with a nervous laugh; “at any
rate, until I have won back my mare.” (I had left her in Retief’s care
as stakeholder, until the match should be shot off.)
For the rest of that two and a half hours’ trek my father, looking very
dignified and patriotic, declaimed to me loudly about the bad behaviour
of the Boers, who hated and traduced missionaries, loathed and
abominated British rule and permanent officials, loved slavery and
killed Kaffirs whenever they got the chance. I listened to him
politely, for it was not wise to cross my parent when he was in that
humour. Also, having mixed a great deal with the Dutch, I knew that
there was another side to the question, namely, that the missionaries
sometimes traduced them (as, in fact, they did), and that British rule,
or rather, party government, played strange tricks with the interests
of distant dependencies. That permanent officials and im-permanent ones
too—such as governors full of a little brief authority—often
misrepresented and oppressed them. That Kaffirs, encouraged by the
variegated policy of these party governments and their servants,
frequently stole their stock; and if they found a chance, murdered them
with their women and children, as they had tried to do at
Maraisfontein; though there, it is true, they had some provocation.
That British virtue had liberated the slaves without paying their
owners a fair price for them, and so forth.
But, to tell the truth, it was not of these matters of high policy,
which were far enough away from a humble youth like myself, that I was
thinking. What appealed to me and made my heart sick was the reflection
that if Henri Marais and his friends trekked, Marie Marais must
perforce trek with them; and that whereas I, an Englishman, could not
be of that adventurous company, Hernando Pereira both could and would.
On the day following our arrival home, what between the fresh air,
plenty of good food, for which I found I had an appetite, and liberal
doses of Pontac—a generous Cape wine that is a kind of cross between
port and Burgundy—I found myself so much better that I was able to hop
about the place upon a pair of crutches which Hans improvised for me
out of Kaffir sticks. Next morning, my improvement continuing at a
rapid rate, I turned my attention seriously to the shooting match, for
which I had but five days to prepare.