apathy. He climbed quickly to the waggon, and in his turn gazed
intently at the game. "Yes, that's right enough, Hermannus," he said;
"they're hartebeest--they must have slept behind those bushes last
night--and they're coming straight this way. Ah! see, they have got our
wind." Even as he spoke the troop of game, some thirty in number,
suddenly halted, turned in their tracks, and cantered in that heavy,
loping fashion, which these fleet antelopes adopt in their slower paces,
towards the heart of the plain.
Calling to the two Kaffir servants still remaining to him to bring in
the horses, just now feeding, knee-haltered, upon the veldt a hundred
yards away, Van Driel and his son looked to their saddles and bridles,
filled a water bottle, reached down their Westley-Richards rifles and
bandoliers from the waggon hooks, and buckled on a rusty spur apiece.
"We shall be back before sunset, wife," said Van Driel. "I think, after
all, the Heer God means us to have a right good dinner." And so,
mounting, he rode off with Hermannus.
"The Heer God be with you both," echoed Vrouw Van Driel, "and may you
bring meat--we want it badly enough." The three younger children cried
luck after their father and brother, and waved their hands, and so,
watching the horsemen cantering away, gazed and gazed until the two
forms presently faded from mere specks into absolute oblivion, and were
swallowed up in the immensity of the great plain.
Meanwhile the two hunters rode steadily upon the spoor of the
hartebeest. It was a good troop, and although the chase might be a long
one the Boers were so accustomed to bagging the game they followed that
they looked confidently to a dead buck or two before afternoon. Surely,
they thought, as half-hour after half-hour they followed steadily upon
the footprints, now clear in the firm sand, now amid the long grass,
hardly to be distinguished, even by the wonderful instinct of these sons
of the veldt, the hartebeest will presently stand and rest, or feed
again. But no. The antelopes had secured a good start and had long
since cantered at that deceptive pace of theirs clean out of sight; and
the tell-tale spoor indicated, as mile after mile was reeled off, that
they were still moving briskly and that their point was some far distant
one.
The two ponies, rough and unkempt, and angular as they were, were
perhaps in better condition than the rest of the camp--whether human
beings or stock--put together. Their well-being was absolutely
necessary to the safety of the party; without them game would be
desperately hard to come at; they had, therefore, been fed pretty
regularly on Kaffir corn, and still retained condition. Moreover, they
came of that hardy Cape breed which produces some of the toughest, most
courageous, and most serviceable horseflesh in the world. The nags were
all right, and hour after hour they cantered steadily on.
It was now twelve o'clock, the sun was desperately hot, they had ridden
nearly five hours, with but one short off-saddle, and it was absolutely
necessary to give the horses another rest. Father and son, therefore,
off-saddled at a patch of thin bush, knee-haltered the nags, which at
once rolled and began to feed, and themselves rested under the scant
shadow of the brush. For nearly an hour Arend smoked in silence.
Meanwhile the lad lay prone upon his stomach, gazing straight in front
of him in the direction in which the game still headed. Out there now
rose before the two hunters, swelling solidly from the plain of
yellowish-green grass, the low chain of hill, which, as they viewed it
from the waggon-box that morning, had seemed so far away. But they had
ridden eighteen good miles since breakfast; the hill stood now but four
miles away, and each cleft, krantz, and precipice of its scarred and
weather-worn sides, each dark patch of bush and undergrowth, now showed
plain and naked before their eyes.
"That's where the hartebeest have made for, father," said the lad, at
last; "shall we catch them there, think you?"
"Yes," answered the big Boer, cocking his tattered, broad-brimmed hat
yet more over his eyes, and looking very hard at the line of hill.
"They've gone in there, right enough, Hermannus; in by that dark kloof
yonder. But whether the kloof leads right through the hill to the
country beyond I can't tell. If it does, we shall have a long hunt and
be out all night on the spoor; if it doesn't we shall catch them in a
trap, I hope. Maghte! But my stomach aches for a bit of good flesh,
and your mother and the children want soup and meat badly, poor souls.
Fetch in the horses, lad. They've had rest, and we must push on again."
Hermannus rose, walked out on to the veldt, drove up the nags, and once
more they saddled up and mounted. They went very warily now, looking
keenly along the base of the little range of kopjes, to see that the
hartebeests were not feeding quietly among the scattered bush that grew
about the lower slopes. But no; the spoor still held straight ahead,
and in half an hour they were at the entrance of the kloof. It was a
narrow ravine, which appeared to have been violently rent by nature
right into the heart of the hills, but which, doubtless, the action of
water, erosion, and ages of time had worn slowly and with infinite
quiet, century after century, deep into the hard rocks. After two
hundred yards of this narrow ravine, the kloof suddenly turned at a
right angle and then broadened out into an open valley about half a mile
long. The spoor had told the hunters very plainly that the antelopes
had entered the kloof. But it was not yet evident why they had
travelled all that way thither. Father and son now settled upon a plan
of action. It was clear, upon looking up the valley, that no exit was
to be found at the far end. If, however, they rode straight up the
kloof they would probably drive the game right over the hills, where to
follow would be difficult and shooting not easy.
"I cannot make out why the buck have come in here," whispered Van Driel,
meditatively, as they stood beside their horses, and, well screened by
bushes, gazed up the valley. "It's not like hartebeest ground at all.
There must be water or new grass, or some such attraction at the head of
the kloof. We will leave the nags here fastened to the bush." He took
up a handful of sand and let it fall lightly through his fingers. "The
wind is right enough, it blows fair down the kloof. There is plenty of
cover along the bottom here. If we leave the nags and creep very
quietly among the bush we shall probably get a fair shot or two each.
The game here is seldom hunted, and as far as we can judge the place is
never visited by man. Come along!"
The two crept slowly up the valley, moving, from bush to bush, with
infinite care and caution, their soft, home-made velschoons of
water-buck hide making little or no noise as they pressed forward. Now
and again they crossed the neat spoor of the antelopes, imprinted deep
in the smooth, red, sandy soil. Then they looked at one another and
their eyes gleamed responsively. It was clear that the game had fed
slowly and carelessly towards the head of the kloof; their rifles were
loaded and cocked; the time of action was very near.
In a quarter of an hour, or a little more, they were drawing very close
to the end of the valley; the bush grew thicker, which was all the
better for their purpose. With extraordinary pains they picked their
way, the spoor still guiding them. Suddenly Arend Van Driel, stretching
back his hand in warning, dropped from his stooping walk down upon one
knee. Hermannus instantly followed his example. Van Driel motioned his
son very softly forward, and, creeping up, the lad saw through a small
opening in the bush what had arrested his father's progress.
It was a glorious sight, truly. The end of the valley, bounded on three
sides by the steep and rough hill, lay before them. The ground was
nearly open, and in the centre of the rich, dark red soil flowed, over a
rocky bed, a sparkling stream of the clearest water, which issued from
the hillside to the right, and disappeared, apparently, beneath a litter
of rocks on the left. Close to the stream, within sixty to eighty yards
of where the hunters were concealed, were the hartebeests, most of them
lying down; some few standing with heads down in sleepy fashion; others,
again, plucking lazily at some green young grass, which here and there
masked the good red soil. Only one of them, a knowing-looking old cow,
was really on the alert. The long, black faces, corrugated horns, and
bright bay coats of the big antelopes united, with the fair surrounding
scenery, to form a striking picture of feral life.
Attracted by the pleasantness of this green, charming, and well-watered
spot, numbers of birds, many of them of brilliant plumage, were flitting
hither and thither, crying, some sweetly, some vociferously, one to
another. Here were gorgeous emerald cuckoos on their way south, honey
birds, kingfishers, and bee-eaters of the most resplendent plumage, and
various finches and small birds. Seldom had the two Dutchmen set eyes
on a more lovely scene.
But the aesthetic charm of the place was not for the Boers, gaunt with
hunger and privations. A look and a nod from father to son; the rifles
were levelled; the targets selected, and the loud reports rang out,
terrifying the wild life of this gem-like oasis, and rattling from
krantz to krantz along the rough hill sides. Two hartebeests instantly
went down and lay struggling in their death agonies. One of these
staggered to its feet again; but Hermannus had shoved another cartridge
into his breech, and a second shot finally stretched the animal upon the
earth again, this time for good. Meanwhile, as the terrified troop
sprang to their feet and tore frantically past his right front, Arend
Van Driel rose quickly, slewed half round, and fired another shot. The
bullet sped home, raking obliquely the lungs of another antelope, which
was later on found dead two or three hundred yards down the kloof.
The two Boers walked forward to the stream, surveyed for a minute or two
their dead game, a fat cow and a young bull, both in high condition, and
then kneeling at the water, drank long and deep, and laved their faces,
arms, and hands. The lad was now despatched at once to the bend of the
kloof for the horses, which could not only drink and feed here, but were
to be freighted with as much meat as they could carry for the camp.
Before setting to work to skin the game. Van Driel walked along the
margin of the stream to the spot whence it issued--a natural fountain
among the rocks. Here, casting about, he came upon a discovery that
electrified him--first the whitened bones of a man and a pair of spurs,
afterwards an old weather-worn percussion gun, rotten and rusty, a
powder-horn, and a good-sized and very heavy metal box. Opening this
metal box with great difficulty, the Boer found it full of what he
recognised instantly as gold nuggets, many of them of considerable size.
Searching yet further among the rocks, the Boer discovered, just as
Hermannus rode up with the led horse, a carefully laid pile of much
bigger nuggets, worth manifestly a large sum of money. Who was the man
whose poor remains lay bleaching in the sand there? When had he entered
the kloof? How had he died? These were questions impossible to answer.
Van Driel could only surmise, from the make and shape of the old
percussion smooth-bore and powder-horn, that the owner must have died
there thirty or forty years before. Looking again closely at the
powder-horn, Hermannus discovered the initials "H.D.," carved neatly
upon the side. But H.D.'s life and death and history lay hidden among
these pathetic relics, mysteries impenetrable, insoluble. That sweet
and secret valley alone knew the truth of them.
They turned out the box of nuggets, counting up their treasure. At the
very bottom, half hidden among sand and rubble, lay a scrap of paper,
yellow, faded, and discoloured. Hermannus, who could read, eagerly
opened it. Inside, in a tottering hand, were a few lines scrawled in
pencil. But the writing was not in Dutch, and, spell at the sentences
as he might, Hermannus could make nothing of them.
Setting to work with a will, father and son rapidly skinned and cut up
as much of the hartebeest meat as their nags could carry; the rest of
the carcases they carefully covered up from the vultures and wild
beasts. It was now dusk, darkness would be swiftly upon them. They
determined to camp for the night and ride back to their waggon with the
first streak of dawn. They made a roaring fire, tied up their horses to
a tree close at hand, cooked some meat, enjoyed a hearty meal, and then
smoked their pipes with stolid contentment. Then, making pillows of the
inner parts of their saddles, and with their feet to the fire, they sank
into profound sleep.
It must have been towards midnight that Arend Van Driel was awakened
suddenly by the movement of his horse, which was tugging nervously at
the branch to which its head-reim was fastened, as if startled by some
prowling beast of prey. "Lions!" muttered the Boer to himself. He
stirred the fire, threw on more wood, and, rising, patted and reassured
his horse, which, with dilated nostrils, snuffed at the night air and
stared with wild eyes out into the darkness.
Van Driel picked up his rifle, lit his pipe, and sat by the fire,
watching and waiting. It was very eerie in this far and remote valley,
but the Trek Boer is a man used to solitude and a wild life, and his
nervous system is, happily for himself, not very highly developed. All
the man troubled himself about was his horseflesh. Horses are scarce in
the far recesses of the interior, and Arend had no intention of losing
either of his nags by the attack of lion or leopard. Suddenly his horse
snorted at the breeze again and pulled fiercely at his reim. Something
approached--something that scared intensely the nervous animal. With
ears and eyes strained, the Boer looked out into the darkness, beyond
the ring of firelight. Hark! what was that? And then something--Van
Driel could not make out what--moved past some twenty paces away on the
other side of the fire. It looked about the height and size of a lion.
The Boer's rifle went to his shoulder, he took rapid aim, and fired.
The report of the Westley-Richards rattled out from the rocks behind
them, and, mingled with the sound, rose a strange, wild, shuddering cry,
half human, half bestial. It was no lion's or leopard's cry, as Van
Driel knew instantly. What in God's name could it be? A baboon
perhaps?
Hermannus, at the rattle of the fire arm, had sprung up from his deep
slumber, and, rifle in hand, was now glaring about him. They listened.
Strange moaning wails came to them on the soft night air from the
blackness beyond the fire there. They were terribly human. The men
looked at one another with scared faces, but uttered no word.
The sounds grew fainter and fainter and presently ceased.
"What was it, father?" asked the lad at last.
"Naam van de drommel! I cannot say," returned the Boer. "I thought it
was a lion. It is no lion, surely; it may be a baboon."
They sat waiting, listening intently, for another ten minutes. Then
Hermannus sprang to his feet. "Whatever it was," he exclaimed, "the
thing is dead. I shall see what it is."
He plucked a big brand from the fire, and, grasping his rifle, stepped
forward. His father followed his example, and with great caution they
moved out beyond the flickering circle of the firelight. Thirty paces
away their torches showed them something. It rested on the veldt there,
silent, completely motionless. Again they advanced and stood over the
thing.
It lay there at their feet, naked, hairy, something on the figure of a
man, yet surely not a man. Blood was oozing softly from a big wound in
the back, where Van Driel's bullet had entered.
"An ape of some kind, father," queried Hermannus, "but not a baboon.
What do you make of it?"
"Alas, no ape, I fear," returned Van Driel, with a shudder. "This is a
bad night's work. 'Tis a wild man. I have heard of such things, but
never yet have I set eyes upon one. Pick it up by the legs there, we
will carry it to the fire."
At the firelight they examined with repugnance and even fear the thing
that had met its death. It was a man! Nay. It had once been a man; it
was now but a travesty of mankind. Deeply tanned all over; with its
shock of dark hair and beard, now going grey, and a shaggy growth almost
covering the loathsome body, it looked a mere beast of the field. The
thing had gone mostly upon hands and knees--or upon hands and feet--and
the parts that touched the soil were thickened and callous. How many
years this poor terrible relic of humanity had lived here alone; how it
had gained its living; how escaped the fierce carnivora of the desert,
were mysteries that no man could answer. The silent rocks, the grass,
the trees, the air--these were the only witnesses, and they were for
ever unite.
There was no more sleep for the Van Driels that night. They sat talking
in low, subdued tones until dawn, and then, taking up the spoor of the
wild man, ran the trail down to a cavern among the rocks, where the poor
creature had made its lair. Here were bones; the remains of animals, of
lizards, birds, locusts, even fish, upon which, with berries, bulbs, and
wild roots, the thing had existed for all these years!
Returning to the fire, they picked up the now stiff form, more hideous
and loathsome than ever by broad daylight, and carried it to its den.
This they sealed from the wild beasts with heavy rocks and stones.
Then they saddled up and rode off for the waggon, which was reached by
mid-day. They and their bountiful supply of meat were received with a
chorus of welcome from the starved and ailing family, and in that lone
and distressful wilderness they presently enjoyed together a right
hearty meal.
Next morning Arend Van Driel had settled upon a plan of action. He
despatched his native "boys" on a month's journey, far back to one of
the standing camps of the Trek Boers, upon the Okavango. So soon as
they were out of the way, he trekked with his family for Hartebeest
Fontein, as they now called the place of mystery. Arend had seen
something of gold mining at Lydenburg, in the Eastern Transvaal, and,
from the discoveries he had already made, he guessed that the valley was
rich in alluvial gold. He was not mistaken. In less than a month's
search in the rich alluvial soil at the head of the kloof and along the
bed of the stream, he and his family picked up many a good nugget; so
that, with the store already gathered by their dead predecessors, they
trekked away, carrying with them enough gold to set themselves up in a
fair way for the rest of their lives. They were not sorry to quit the
valley, with its grim secrets, and presently, after much hard and
toilsome travel, reached Transvaal soil again.
The Dutch Afrikanders are a secretive race and keep their own counsel.
Moreover, they are the last people in the world to trumpet forth gold
discoveries for the benefit of the detested Britisher, who threatens in
time to over-run the whole of South Africa. Arend Van Driel is now one
of the wealthiest farmers in the Transvaal. His son, Hermannus, who is
married and lives on an excellent farm near, is just as comfortably off.
Their Rustenburg neighbours have puzzled for years--and still puzzle--
over the return of this family from the Mossamedes trek and their great
and inexplicable accession of wealth. But Van Driel and his good vrouw,
who started on that terrible expedition strong and hearty people on the
right side of six-and-thirty, without a grey hair between them, and came
back lined and grey, and apparently far on into middle age, are never
likely to yield up their secret. Nor is Hermannus, nor are the rest of
the family. The quiet valley of Hartebeest Fontein, with its strange
discoveries and uncanny inhabitant, remain mysteries locked safely
within the breasts of each one of them.
Hermannus, by the way, soon after their arrival in the Transvaal, got,
from an Englishman at a Klerks-dorp store, a translation of the writing
upon that pathetic bit of paper found in the box of nuggets. The
translation ran thus:
"I am camped here, with my little son, on my way prospecting from
Namaqualand. My comrade, John Finch, died at Fish River. Waggon looted
by Namaqua Hottentots. Found my way here, but horse dead of sickness
and can go neither forward nor back. Plenty of gold, but no present
chance of escape. What will become of my boy James, nine years old?
God help us, I am very ill and doubt how things may end. Henry Dursley.
August, 1847."
That poor stained letter, which contains the secret of Hartebeest
Fontein, old Arend Van Driel, strangely enough, still cherishes in its
battered metal box, locked up securely in the dark recesses of his
ancient waggon-chest, which itself rests beside the big family bed.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
CHARLIE THIRLMERE'S LION.
On a March morning Charlie Thirlmere and his wife were at breakfast in
their pretty flat near Park Lane. A cloud sat on Charlie's fresh,
good-looking face. He looked at his wife curiously, and then launched
into the business that worried him.
"Sybil," he said, "we must pull up. I want to have a serious talk with
you."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, don't begin business at this unearthly period,"
replied Sybil. "I am going out riding in less than an hour, and I
haven't time."
"You can spare ten minutes, old girl," he said; "and things are getting
into such a hobble that we must pull up and make an alteration. If we
don't, another year or two will see us stony, so far as I am concerned."
"Well, go on," returned Sybil, putting her red lips to a cup of tea,
"and do compress your lecture. At eleven Cecil Cloudesley will be here
with a new pony we want to look at."
Charlie's brows knitted into a little frown. "Oh! hang Cecil Cloudesley
and his ponies!" he exclaimed. "Three years ago when we married," he
went on, "we had sixteen hundred a year between us. You had seven
hundred, I had nine hundred. Well, I've often told you we've been going
the pace far too much--it's been my fault, I admit, quite as much as
yours--and now this is how we stand. I've had to break into my
capital--four times in three years, as Jesson and Fosbery remind me--and
now my income is reduced to something over four hundred. Your money,
thank goodness, is tied up. Eleven hundred would do us passably well,
living quietly in the country; and to that we shall have to make up our
minds. I've given up my nags, as you know. After July we must sell
off, give up the flat, and retrench seriously. I've had enough of this
sort of thing, and I'm getting heartily sick of it. I'm getting soft
and hipped, and I loathe this incessant keeping up appearances, and
living beyond one's means. And there's the baby. Poor little chap, he
sees precious little of us, living as we do. We must give him a chance.
I'm sure he needs fresh air and a country life far more even than we
do!"
This reference to her two-year-old child was rather a sore subject for
Sybil. She knew that in the whirling life she led, she had really
neglected the youngster. But her spirit rose instantly to combat the
suggestion.
"Oh, Arthur's all right," she returned with some sharpness. "He was at
the mater's for a month at Christmas, and he'll be there again in May or
June. But we can't live on a thousand a year, that's certain. I
suppose you can get something to do. I can't--I really can't--be buried
alive in the country."
"Well," returned her husband, a little hot at the cool way in which she
had met his advance. "I've been thinking over things. I shall sell out
another thousand or so and go off to Rhodesia, and try and pick up some
mining claims or town lots. You must live on 900 pounds a year somehow,
and I'll do the best I can to pick up some oof. Anyhow I'm tired of
this sort of life. I see very little of you, and you can put up with my
absence for a year, I suppose."
"I might perhaps even exist for two years without the light of your
countenance, Charlie, if I tried _very_ hard!" retorted Sybil.
A little flush had risen to her cheeks, and a rebellious sparkle flashed
in her dark eyes. She had not reckoned upon this proposition. Charlie
was useful, nay, necessary to her in a hundred little ways, and she
hated the idea of parting from him. She was angry with herself and with
him.