Drip, drip, drip, in one unbroken downpour falls the rain. Scuds of
floating wrack are wreathing the tree-tops and boulders higher up the
bush-grown slopes, and the grey, opaque, lowering sky renders the
desolate waste yet more gloomy and forbidding. Floundering, splashing,
stumbling, even the team of four serviceable nags appears to experience
some difficulty in drawing its load, a two-wheeled Cape cart to wit,
crammed pretty nearly to the full measure of its carrying capacity; for
the whole well of the cart is filled up. Even the seats cannot be
turned to their original purpose, for they too are loaded up with sacks;
and upon this irregular pile are three human beings, who are under the
necessity of holding on as best they may, insecurely perched upon a sort
of dome of rough and uneven surface. Some _reims_, or rawhide thongs,
have been lashed across the top of this perch for them to hold on to, a
concession to human weakness for which they are expected to feel
jubilantly grateful; for they are only passengers, and--as those who
have gone through the experience can certify, to their cost--the
comfort, well-being, and safety of mere passengers are held by every
self-respecting colonial post contractor in the profoundest contempt.
For the vehicle is a post-cart, and the sacks upon which a limited
number of Her Majesty's lieges are graciously permitted to travel--if
haply they can hold on--contain Her Majesty's mails.
Some of the oft-detailed horrors of post-cart travelling seem to have
fallen to the lot of the occupants of this one. Apart from the
insecurity of their perch already mentioned, they are shelterless, and
it has been raining hard and unintermittently for about seven hours.
Swathed in theoretical waterproofs--for no waterproof displays a
practical side when put to such a test--they grovel upon the lumpy and
uneven surface of the sacks, jolted, shaken, bruised, the beat of the
rain in their faces, varied from time to time by a copious splash of
rich, red liquid mud--lately dust--thrown up from the road. All are
wet, cramped and uncomfortable; sore and aching from the jolting and
constrained position.
Of this luckless trio, one is a female. Another is a small
wiry-looking, stolid-faced man, who might be a farmer or a transport
rider, and is very likely both. The third is our newly formed
acquaintance, Roden Musgrave.
We have referred to three occupants of this luxurious vehicle. It
boasted a fourth. He, however, was not in like pitiable case. He was
the proud occupier of a seat--a tolerably secure one. Likewise was he
able to indulge in the use of his limbs, and occasional strong
language--this, however, in subdued tone, in deference to the presence
of the lady passenger--untrammelled by the dire necessity of clinging on
for dear life. He was, in fact, the driver. To him the colonial-born
passenger:
"How are our chances of getting through the drift to-night, Henry? The
river must be rolling yards high."
"Chances!" echoed the man--a stalwart fellow whose yellowish skin
betrayed just a strain of native blood, notwithstanding his ruddy and
slightly grizzled beard. "Chances? Ha-ha! No chance at all--no damn
chance. There's nothing to keep you from going _over_ it though."
"How are we going to poll that off?" struck in Roden.
"There's a very good box. Swing you across in no time," replied the
driver, with a grin, and a wink at the colonial man.
"Mercy on us!" exclaimed the lady passenger, showing a very white face
beneath the hood of her mackintosh. "I'll never be able to do it.
Those horrible boxes! I know them."
"You've got to do it, Missis, or stay this side!" returned the driver,
with a fiendish grin.
And now as the cart crests another rise, a dull rumbling sound is
audible through splash of hoof and wheel, which, as they draw nearer,
breaks into a booming roar. It is the voice of the swollen river. The
clouds hang low above the scrub, lying, an opaque veil, against the
slopes of the opposite heights; and ever, without a break, the rain
falls steadily down. The colonial man has managed to light a pipe, and,
with characteristic philosophy, smokes steadily and uncomplainingly; an
example Roden Musgrave would fain follow, but that he finds his fair
companion in adversity literally such a handful, that he cannot even get
at his pipe, let alone fill and light it: the fact being that he is
obliged to devote all his energies to holding the latter on her perch,
for so exhausted is the poor thing with fatigue and discomfort that,
were it not for his support, her insecure place would promptly know her
no more.
Another rise is topped, and now the river-bed lies before and beneath
them; and in truth the spectacle is enough to make the heart of the
timid or inexperienced traveller feel somewhat small. The stream is
indeed rolling yards high--a red, turbid flood coursing along some fifty
feet below, in the bottom of its bed--rearing its mighty masses up in
great hissing, crashing waves, rolling over tree-trunks and all kinds of
driftwood, with here and there a drowned bullock, whose branching horns
and ghastly staring eyes leap weirdly into view, immediately to be drawn
in and sucked under by the flood. And this wild, roaring, seething
horror--this crashing resistless current whose thunderous voice alone is
deafening, appalling--has to be crossed somehow.
"Nay, what! Can't even swim the horses through that!" says the driver,
Henry, as he descends from his seat, while a couple of Hottentot boys,
who have emerged from a squalid shanty by the roadside, are busy
outspanning. "We shall have to send over passengers and mails in the
box."
"Oh heavens!" faintly ejaculates the distressed fair one; "I can never
do it!"
"Oh yes you can!" says Roden, who has assisted her to alight. "It's
perfectly safe if you sit still and keep your head. Don't be in the
least afraid; I'll see you across all right."
She gives him a grateful glance, and answers that she will try. Seen as
she stands up she is a good-looking woman of about thirty, with light
brown hair and blue eyes. She is rather above the middle height, and
there is a piteous look in her white and travel-worn face, half
expressive of a consciousness of looking her worst, half of the mingled
apprehension and discomfort born of the situation.
"Go on up to the box, lady and gentlemen," says Henry, the post driver.
"I'll bring along your traps, and send 'em over with the mail-bags."
Roden recognises that if he is to get his charge, for such she has now
become, to cross at all, the less time she has to think about it the
better; wherefore he seconds this proposition, and accordingly they get
under way.
The bed of the river is some sixty feet deep by nearly twice that
distance in width, and, like that of most South African streams, in
ordinary weather is threaded by a comparative trickle. Such rivers,
however, after a few hours of heavy rain, or even one of those deluging
thunder showers which are at certain times of the year of frequent and
momentous occurrence, are wont to roll down in a furious, raging flood,
and that with scant warning, if any; and now the bottom of this one is
covered with at least ten feet of foaming, swirling water, coming down
with a velocity and power against which the strongest of swimmers would
stand not the ghost of a chance.
High in mid-air, looking like the mere gossamer thread of a spider's web
spanning the abyss, is a rope of galvanised iron, and swung on this,
dependent on a couple of pulleys, is the "box." It is literally a box,
a low-sided, flat concern, seven feet long, and just wide enough for a
human being to sit in, and when it is remembered that occupants of this,
for it will carry two at a time, are under the strictest necessity of
keeping carefully in the centre, under pain of capsizal, and must also
lower their heads to avoid the rope, it follows that, to a nervous
person, the process of being swung out over a very abyss of boiling,
seething waters, and gradually hauled across to the other side, is an
ordeal which verges upon the terrific. And, as if to enhance the
effect, the spot chosen for this particular apparatus to be hung is the
highest point of the steep, well-nigh precipitous bank; the real reason
being, of course, that such point is the clearest from which to work it.
"I had better take the lady across first," suggests Roden to his other
travelling companion. The latter nods, and proceeds to fill a fresh
pipe with the utmost unconcern, an example followed by a brace of
stolid-faced Boer transport-riders, who stand watching the proceeding
with characteristic phlegm. Two grinning Kaffirs stand prepared to work
the rope.
But at sight of the rolling flood, whirling its load of tree-trunks and
driftwood right beneath her feet, the frightened woman utters a piteous
cry and draws back. She would rather wait for days, she protests, than
be swung in mid-air over that horrible river. What if anything were to
give way; what if the box or even the iron rope were to break, for
instance! "There isn't a chance of anything of the sort," urges her
self-constituted protector; "I've been over far shakier concerns than
this. Come now, jump in. We have only to sit opposite each other, and
talk, and they'll have us over in a twinkling. Only be careful and sit
well in the middle, and keep perfectly still."
He makes as though he would help her in, but she shrinks back in terror,
then turns a wild stare upon him and upon the river, then sways,
staggers, and would fall but that he has caught her. She has swooned.
"Now, mister, now's your time," says the other man. "If you feel equal
to taking her across, now's the time to do it. Don't try to bring her
round. She'll go easier that way."
The idea is a good one. Roden, prompt to act, takes his seat in the
"box," which is drawn up upon the bank, and the post driver having now
come up, the two men raise the limp form of the unconscious woman, and
place it so that she lies, her head and back resting against him as
though they were tobogganing. In this attitude he has her under perfect
control, even should she regain consciousness during the transit.
"Ready!" he says. "Lower away now!"
Their shout having met with a response on the other side, the two
Kaffirs carefully launch the box, and, with a whirring, creaking
accompaniment of the pulleys, down it goes, to stop suddenly as it
reaches the utmost droop of the iron cord on which it runs. Then those
on the other side start hauling, and slowly and laboriously it ascends.
Still Roden's charge remains blissfully unconscious. Ten yards--five--
the bank is nearly reached--when--there is a snap, a jerk; and with a
suddenness and velocity which nearly overbalances it, away goes the
thing back again over the centre of the stream. The hauling line has
given way. The box with its human freight hangs helplessly over the
seething, roaring abyss.
The volley of curses attendant upon this mishap having subsided, those
on the further bank are heard in loud discussion as to what shall be
done next. The simplest plan will be to haul the box back again, but
Roden does not want this. Having embarked on the enterprise, he feels
an obligation to carry it through; and then as the situation strikes
him, he laughs queerly over the absurdity and unexpectedness of the
same. Here he is, swung in mid-air like a bale of goods in a crate,
hanging above a furious torrent, supporting the unconscious form of a
fair stranger, who leans against him as heavily as if she belonged to
him. Yes, the situation is ridiculous, and supremely uncomfortable; for
he is cramped and dead tired, and it is beginning to get dark.
"Heave a fresh line!" he shouts. "I'll catch it if you throw straight."
"All right, mister," answers the voice from the bank. "But you be darn
careful not to move from the middle. Now--_Pas op_!"
The line whistles out into the air. Roden, keeping a careful watch upon
his balance, catches it deftly, for it has been noosed. Then, planting
his feet firmly against the end plank, to do which necessitates that he
shall lie almost flat and still preserve the balance both of himself and
his charge, he shouts to them to haul away.
In vain. In his constrained position he cannot support the tension. It
is a case of letting go or being dragged bodily from the receptacle. So
he sings out to them to slacken out again, and the box drops back to the
centre of the iron rope. The only thing to be done now is to be hauled
back, where those on the bank he has just left can fasten the line
securely to its bolt.
No sooner is this done than his charge shows signs of returning
consciousness.
"Where am I?" she ejaculates, wildly striving to sit up, an effort
which, did he not forcibly repress, would result in their prompt
capsizal.
"Sit still! sit still! We shall be across directly!" he says.
But as the box shoots down and dangles motionless for a moment above the
centre of the flood, then moves forward in jerky tugs as it is hauled to
the opposite side, the terrified woman gives vent to a series of
hysterical shrieks, struggling wildly to tear herself from his grasp, so
utterly lost are all her capabilities of reason in the mad frenzy of her
terror. It is a perilous moment, for now darkness has set in, and the
bellowing, seething rush of the great flood adds an indescribable
element of horror to the situation.
"Sit still, and don't be so idiotically foolish. Do you hear?" he
shouts angrily into her ear as he realises that her frantic struggles
almost succeed. "You are perfectly safe; but if you go on at this rate
you will upset us both."
The loud, almost brutal tone is entirely successful. It turns her
thoughts into a new channel, and seems to quiet her. Then, before she
has time to relapse, the bank is reached, and the box, grasped by
half-a-dozen pairs of hands, is dragged up into safety.
"Better take her up to the hotel, mister," says one of the men who is
working the box apparatus.
The whitewashed walls of a house standing back from the river bank some
two hundred yards are just visible above the low mimosa bushes. It is a
roadside inn, and thither Roden half leads, half carries, his fainting
charge. She, it turns out, is known to the landlady, to whom, nothing
loth, Roden now consigns her, and hurries back to witness the crossing
of the others. The colonial man is the first to arrive, half-buried in
mail-bags, and smoking his pipe as philosophically as ever. Then the
inanimate contents of the cart being sent over, Henry, the driver,
follows.
"Well, gentlemen," is the first thing he says. "Better get dinner as
soon as possible. We must start soon as the new cart's inspanned."
"The devil!" says Roden. "Why, it's going to be the beastliest night on
record."
"Can't help that; I've got to get on, or get the sack. So on it is."
"But the lady! She won't be fit to travel as soon as that."
"Can't help that either, mister. If she can't travel she must stay
here. I can't wait for nobody."
And so eventually it turns out. On reaching the hotel they find that
their fellow-traveller is unable to proceed. They find, too, that she
is known to the people who run the place, and will be well cared for.
So Roden and the colonial man, having got outside a good dinner and a
few glasses of grog, take their places in the new cart which has been
inspanned--now more comfortable, for some of the mail-bags have been got
rid of here, and with a crack of the driver's whip, away they go
careering into the night, under the pitiless pelting rain--to meet with
more adventures and mishaps or not, according as luck befriends them.
For luck has a great deal to say to the safety, or otherwise, of
post-cart travellers in South Africa.