The predominating impulse in the mind of Roden Musgrave when he awoke
the next morning in Darrell's tent, in the Main Camp, was to saddle up
his horse, and betake himself back to Doppersdorp as quickly as his
steed could convey him thither; and as he stepped forth, and his eye
wandered over the array of tents, and waggons, and fires, and cooking
pots, and accoutrements, and men of all sorts and sizes, Dutch burghers
and town volunteers, and Fingo and Hottentot levies, the impulse grew
stronger still. Here was a huge mass of different phases of humanity,
hundreds strong, and now that he was here the associations of the place
failed to interest him, for he was familiar with them all. The sort of
adventure which held any fascination for him was of the nature of that
which he had gone through the day before; but all this organised crowd
under arms was devoid of attraction for him. He had seen it all before.
Darrell, whose tendency never inclined to minimising any exploit in
which he had borne a part, had spread the account of the day's scrimmage
far and wide; and how Roden had saved the position, and shot down
half-a-dozen Kaffirs in less than that number of minutes. This soon
grew to a full dozen, and so on, which to Roden himself was mightily
distasteful. For, the affair over, and he and his comrades in safety,
his wish was, if anything, that he had not shot anybody at all. He
would gladly have brought back the slain Kaffirs to life again, if that
were possible; but anyhow, he saw nothing to brag about in the fact of
having shot them. He was thoroughly sick of all reference to the
matter.
Conquering, however, his homing impulses, he suffered Darrell to
persuade him into taking part in a two days' patrol, which turned out a
deadly monotonous affair; for no sign of an enemy did they see, and a
cold, drizzling rain fell the whole time. Mightily glad was he when it
was over, and they returned to the Main Camp, and more than ever was he
resolved to start back for Doppersdorp on the following morning.
"Where on earth did you pick up your ideas of arranging a fight,
Musgrave?" said Darrell, as, having finished their supper of ration beef
and Boer brandy, they and two or three others were taking it easy in the
tent of the former, their pipes in full blast. "Any fool could see you
were no new hand at that sort of thing, by the way in which you grasped
the ins and outs of the position the other day."
"Oh, I saw something of the Indian wars out West a few years ago. By
the way, Darrell, what was the name of that lunatic we picked up the
other day, armed with only a quince switch?"
"Bolton. He's a law-agent, and broker, at Barabastadt. And, confound
him, he forgot to give me back the revolver I lent him."
"Serves you right for being such a fool as to lend it him. Now that's a
thing I'd never do. I'd see him hanged first. If the fellow had lost
his gun by accident, it would be another thing; but to go about without
one, out of mere swagger and bounce, and then come down on the first
sensible cuss he meets, to rig him out with his! No, no. It's a little
too thin."
"That's how fellows come to grief in war-time," struck in another man.
"They get so confoundedly careless, and at last they do it once too
often. It always happens. I say, Musgrave, tell us something about
that Indian business. Are the redskins as good at a fight as Jack
Kaffir?"
"They're just as good at one as any fellow need wish. But now, if you
don't mind, I'm most confoundedly sleepy, and would as soon turn in as
not." And in a very few minutes, in spite of the talk and discussion
going on around him, he was fast asleep.
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Roden held to his resolve and, notwithstanding all persuasion to the
contrary, he started soon after sunrise. To many a man, not more timid
than his kind, that return journey of seventy or eighty miles, the bulk
of it over the hostile ground, might well have seemed a formidable
undertaking, the more so that it was a solitary journey. This one,
however, entered upon it with no great concern. He had brought off
riskier things than that, he said in his casual way, in reply to
misgivings more than once expressed by Darrell and the rest. As for the
solitary side of the matter, he rather preferred it. Fighting was out
of the question. It would be a case of leg-bail entirely, and that was
a game at which one could play better than two. Again, the presence of
one was more likely to pass unnoticed than that of two.
"You keep your weather eye skinned, Musgrave, and a particularly bright
look-out for small gangs," was Darrell's last injunction having ridden a
few miles out from camp with him. "Sandili is trying to slip through
into the Amatola at one rush, but sending that, he's sending his chaps
through in driblets. Shouldn't wonder if you fell in with a patrol or
two. But if you're spotted by the niggers, no matter how few, leg it;
do you hear? leg it; for you never know how many more are close by."
"Pho! They ain't mounted, and if they were, wouldn't know now to ride.
I've raced a whole day in front of a wild, mad, yelling war-party of
Sioux devils; and if your John Kaffir can make things warmer than that,
Darrell, he's welcome to try."
"Eh? The deuce you have!" said Darrell in amazement. "Here, I'll come
a mile or two farther, and let's have the yarn."
"No, no. I don't feel like yarning--anyway just now. Well, so long.
No fear about me. I'm not going to turn up missing."
The ride, though lonely, was a delightful one. The day was of unclouded
loveliness and the air fresh and exhilarating as a cordial. Away on
either hand stretched the grand open country, rolling in wide grassy
plains, heaving up into rugged and stony ranges, here and there
deepening into a bush-grown river-valley. The life of the wild veldt
was never still--the cheery whistle of spreews, glinting from spray to
spray in sheeny flashes of light, and the metallic, half-grating note of
the yellow thrush; the soft shout of the hoopoe, echoing from the
distance, mingling with the softer voices of doves, which were dashing
alarmed from the grotesque heads of the plumed euphorbia, disturbed by
the horse's tread. Great webs lay spread from bush to bush, each
containing several huge spiders, black and horny; and of these the
horseman would now and again receive a shower right in his face--not
being always able to guide his horse so as to clear them. But the
insects, though hideous, were quite innocuous, and, relishing the
encounter as little as the human party to the same, dropped off
immediately upon contact. Buck, too--the wary bushbuck and dainty
little duiker--would rustle up with a mighty disturbance, to bound away
in the scrub or long grass, flashing a white flag of defiance.
"Game lies close--that's a good sign," meditated the horseman. "But it
goes like the devil once it is up--that's a bad one. Well, it may be a
good one too, meaning only that this section has been well patrolled."
It was tantalising, very, as he watched the animals bound away in
gracefully flying leaps, affording the sweetest of shots from the
saddle. But he who now rode there dared not pull a trigger, for it
might easily cost him his life, and that was a possession he did not
want to lose just then.
It was an exciting ride withal--keenly so; for every turn of the way
might bring him face to face with an enemy. If he topped a rise of the
ground, might he not run right into the teeth of a hostile band on the
other side? As he rode along the slope of a bush-clad hill, for he
avoided the bottom of defile or ravine, he more than half expected the
"whizz" of missiles from the ambushed savage lurking concealed above.
Yes, it was an exciting ride, a perilous ride, yet he travelled at an
easy pace, knowing better than to fall into the blunder of pressing his
steed in order that it might the more quickly be got over.
At first he enjoyed the exciting possibilities of the journey--the
strong dash of peril--as, keenly on the alert, he urged his steed
forward. It reminded him of old times. But each and every excitement
has its limits, and as the hours went by the tension relaxed, the strain
upon his nerves subsided. He began to think upon other matters than
potential danger. That last farewell under the stars--the recollection
of it coursed sweet and warm through his being; his pulses bounded with
the very gladsomeness of living. Soon they would meet again, and--what
a meeting!
For this voluntary absence of his had borne its fruit. But a few days;
yet it had seemed to need only this to consolidate and weld this
strange, bewildering love of his latter-day life. In the rough duties
he had voluntarily undertaken during that brief period--the patrolling,
the tireless bivouac under the stars; the shots exchanged with the
lurking enemy; the jovial, but not very boisterous revelry of camp
life--that image was ever-present, sweet, smiling, radiant-eyed; and try
as he might, he could not banish it.
Now the shadow of a cloud swept across his path, together with a gleam
of blue lightning. Creeping stealthily up, their jagged outlines
gradually obliterating the blue arch, leaden cloud-piles were spreading,
and puffs of hot wind set the grasses singing. In sharp, staccato boom,
the electric voice spoke overhead, but no rain fell. It was a dry
thunderstorm, often the most perilous.
He was riding just beneath the apex of a long, sparsely-bushed ridge.
Already, as he began to descend, the lightning was darting down upon the
height in vivid streams, which the sharp, startling thunder-crack seemed
to accompany rather than to follow.
"This is getting a trifle sultry, and the veldt here is crusted with
ironstone," he said to himself. Then turning his horse, he held ever
downward. Half-darkened, the scene was now desolate enough--the long
slopes of the kloof, and the ridges cut clear against the livid
thundercloud. Down in the hollow several "bromvogels," the great black
hornbill of South Africa, were strutting amid the grass, uttering their
drumming bass note. These flapped away heavily on the near approach of
the horseman, and rising high overhead, were soon winging their aerial
course seemingly to the thundercloud itself.
Suddenly the horse stopped short, and, with ears cocked forward, stood
snorting, with dilated eyes gazing upon the dark line of bush in front.
Roden's meditations took to themselves wings, and drawing his revolver,
as more convenient at close quarters than the rifle, shifted the latter
into his bridle hand, and sat for a moment intently listening.
Not a sound.
It was a nerve-trying moment. The savage war-shout, the crash of
firearms, the "whiz" of assegais--that was what it would only too likely
bring forth. Still silence, save for the bass grumblings of the
thunder.
Then there was a winnowing of wings, and a huge bird arose. Roden knew
it for a vulture, of the black and non-gregarious kind. A vulture!
That meant the presence of death.
So far reassured, for the bird would not have been there had the scrub
concealed living men, he cautiously made his way between the bushes to
the spot whence he had seen the funereal scavenger arise, and again the
horse started and shied, spinning half round where he stood. One
glance, and the secret was out. In the long grass lay the body of a
man--a Kaffir.
It had been that of a savage of splendid proportions--tall, broad,
thick-set, and muscular. It lay upon its back, staring upward with
lacerated eyeless sockets, their contents torn out by the black vulture.
Otherwise it was untouched.
Stay--not quite. From a great jagged hole in the chest a very lake of
blood had welled, staining the long grass. It was a bullet hole; the
sort of gap made by a heavy Snider missile. The man had been shot. But
how? when?
The body was quite naked, and whatever it might have owned in life, in
the shape of weapons or other requisites, had disappeared. From its
aspect, not many days could have elapsed since death. It was a ghastly
find, this black, rigid corpse, with its eyeless sockets and teeth bared
and set; a ghastly find in the subdued gloom of the shadowing
thundercloud, with the blue lightning playing down upon the lonely
veldt. But there was worse to follow.
For, exploring farther, Roden came with equal suddenness upon several
corpses, half a dozen at least. All were contorted as in the agonies of
a violent death, and all were riddled more or less with bullet wounds.
What was the secret of this conflict here, he wondered? Who had been
engaged in it? Whose the victory? Would he next come upon the bodies
of those of his own colour? Looking up suddenly his eyes fell upon a
most melancholy object. It was the charred remnant of a burned house.
Now the mystery stood explained. Those whose remains he had found had
been shot down by the inmates; slain in self-defence. But, those
inmates! Clearly the savages had been victorious; and--what of the
inmates?
The walls stood, the dirty whitewash showing livid in contrast to the
black, charring action of the names. The roof had fallen in, and the
empty apertures, where the windows had been, gaped wide like the
staring, sightless sockets of the corpse. The house had been of no
great dimensions, and was clearly the dwelling of some small farmer. A
low, crumbling sod wall shut in a sorry-looking "land," containing now
only a few trampled cornstalks; and hard by were the broken-down fences
of a sheep kraal.
Strong-nerved as he was, Roden Musgrave could not repress a quickening
of the pulses, a shrinking of the heart, as he drew near to explore the
interior of the ruin. What further dread secret was he about to light
upon? The mangled corpses of the white inmates, entombed beneath their
own roof-tree, a prey to the devouring assegai of the savage? He
expected nothing less.
But a very few minutes' search convinced him that the place contained no
human remains. He was puzzled. What had become of the unfortunate
settlers? That there had been a fierce and sanguinary battle was
evident, but it was impossible that the savages could have been beaten
off, else would the house not have been fired. Herein was a mystery.
The situation of the place was gloomy and forbidding to the last degree,
the black rain standing deep within that lonely kloof, and, lying
around, the grim earthly remains of those who had assailed it. Opposite
rose a rugged cliff, whose brow was crowned with a grove of
fantastically plumed euphorbia; and then as his eye caught a stealthy
movement amid the gloom of the straight stems, Roden gave a slight
start, and immediately was as ready for action as ever he had been in
his life.
Yes, something was stirring up there. The moment was rather a tense
one, as standing amid those weird ruins he bent his gaze long and
eagerly upon the darkness of the straight euphorbia stems, round,
regular as organ pipes. Shadowy figures were flitting in and out. Were
others creeping up to assail him in the rear, signalled by these? Was
he in a trap, surrounded? Then he laughed--laughed aloud; for there
went up from the euphorbia clump a strong, harsh, resounding bark:--
"Baugh-m! Baugh-m!"
"Only baboons after all!" he cried, feeling more relieved than he cared
to own. And seeing nothing to be gained by further lingering, by
extended investigation, he once more mounted his horse and took his way
out of this valley of desolation and of death.
And as he gained the opposite ridge, he found that the storm was
clearing away, or rather travelling onward. Before him lay a series of
grassy flats, fairly open, but dotted with _clompjes_ of bush here and
there. The sun had broken forth again, and, the cloud curtain now
removed, was flooding the land with dazzling light. The change was a
welcome one, and had the effect of restoring the traveller's spirits,
somewhat depressed by the grim and gruesome scene he had just left. And
now, as the sun wanted but an hour to his setting, Roden decided to
off-saddle for that space of time. Then his steed, rested and
refreshed, would carry him on bravely in the cool night air, and but a
very few hours should see him safely over the hostile ground, if not
among inhabited dwellings once more. So, choosing a sequestered hollow,
Roden off-saddled and knee-haltered his steed, and then betook himself
to a little clump of bush which grew around a stony _kopje_, and which
afforded him a secure hiding-place and a most serviceable watch-tower,
for it commanded a considerable view of the surrounding veldt.