They rode merrily along, or rather two of them did, for ever and anon
Allen's steed would drop behind, and its sorry pace wax slower and
slower, till at length, taking advantage of its rider's abstraction, it
would stop and snatch up a tuft of grass here and there by the way-side.
"What the deuce has become of that fellow again?" exclaimed Armitage for
the fifth time since their start, as he rose in his stirrups and turned
to look back. "Hi--Allen. Come on, man, we shan't get there to-night!"
he bawled.
"All right," echoed feebly from afar; and the white top of a pith
helmet, which had escaped its owner's immersion, hove in sight over the
scrub like a peripatetic mushroom, as the laggard came trotting up.
"Come on! We thought you had got another bee in your bonnet," was
Armitage's salutation. "Hi--Bles you _schelm_--hold up!" This to his
horse, which started violently as something sprang up at its very feet;
something lithe and red, with curious pointed ears, which darted away
over the ground with lightning speed. "A _rooi-cat_ [lynx], by Moses!"
he went on, "after some of the late lambs. Hicks, _where is_ that old
shooting-iron of yours?" and thinking that though powerless to hurt the
objectionable feline, at any rate he could frighten it, Armitage opened
his mouth and gave vent to a true Kafir war yell, which certainly had
the desired effect.
"Didn't bring it. Sunday, you know; must respect people's prejudices,"
replies Hicks.
"Oh, Lord! and I would have liked to have peppered that chap's hide,"
groaned Armitage.
They rode on over hill and dale. Suddenly the rasping cry of the wild
guinea-fowl brought Hicks' heart into his mouth, and he certainly did
not bless the good old-world prejudice in deference to which he had left
his beloved gun at home on the first day of the week, and as a cloud of
those splendid game birds rose from a grassy bottom within a few yards
of them and winged away with their chattering note, poor Hicks fairly
groaned.
"Look at that. Only look at that!" he exclaimed in tones of wrathful
disgust. "Such a chance; did you ever see them rise like that! When a
fellow has his gun and is all ready for them, blest if they won't run
hundreds of yards before they'll get up, whereas--"
"I suppose they know it's Sunday," put in Allen, with a feeble attempt
at chaff.
The other turned from him impatiently, without replying. Good-natured
as he was habitually, there were moments when even Hicks felt
justifiably cantankerous. This was one of them.
They continued their way without event, and, cresting the last ridge,
descended into the long valley, at whose head stood the old farmhouse.
"Hallo! some one's turned up," said Armitage, indicating the white tent
of a Cape cart, which stood outspanned before the stable-door, with the
harness lying beside the swingle bars.
"Looks like Naylor's trap," said Hicks.
"Good. The more the merrier," rejoined Armitage, as they cantered up
and dismounted.
An air of perfect rest and peace seemed to enshroud the place, as though
nature would supply the absence of all outward signs of the Sabbath.
The gates of the empty kraals stood open, and save for a sickly sheep or
two feeding about near the homestead, there was not a sign of animal
life. Here and there a long rakish-looking hornet flitted beneath the
leaves of a trellised vine, or sought the entrance of his pendulous
paper-like nest in the verandah. In the garden a few butterflies
disported, vying with the flowers in their bright colours; and big
bumble-bees boomed in the burning glow of the noonday sun. There was
that about the sultry stillness which warned of thunder in the air, a
presage not unlikely to be borne out towards evening, judging from the
great solid bank of clouds which loomed up blackly from behind the
distant mountains.
Hicks was right as to the identity of the visitors, whose conveyance
they had descried. Edward Naylor, Mr Brathwaite's son-in-law, a jolly
bluff frontiersman, whose weather-tanned face heavily bearded, was the
soul of geniality, was seated on the disselboom of a waggon, discoursing
on the state of the country with his host. His wife, a pretty,
fair-haired woman of about thirty, was sitting with Ethel and Laura in
the verandah, and was at that moment arbitrating, amid much laughter, in
an argument which the former had started with Claverton, by way of
passing the time.
"Hallo, Armitage," said that worthy, as the new arrivals drew nigh. "I
was expecting to be summoned to your funeral."
"My funeral! What the dev--er--what d'you mean?"
"Well, you see, it's such a time since I beheld the light of your
countenance that I began to think you must be dead."
"Wheuw! That's what I call a cheerful greeting," replied Armitage,
shaking hands with the rest of the party.
The two who had been talking shop now appeared on the scene.
"How do, Armitage? Hallo, Allen, who's your outrigger?" said Naylor,
eyeing the unwonted garb of that luckless youth, which garb bore
unmistakable appearance of makeshift from head to foot.
"Er--I stumbled into the river, and--"
"What; boots and all?" There was a joke about Allen's jack-boots, which
he was seldom seen without.
"`What is good for a bootless bene?'" quoted Claverton. "Never mind,
Allen, don't you let them chaff you."
Naylor was an inveterate joker. When he and Armitage got together the
same room would hardly hold them, and when the two got Allen between
them, then, Heaven help Allen. Now this is precisely what happened, for
at that moment the dinner-bell rang, and all adjourned to the festive
board, when, as luck would have it, the unfortunate youth found
himself--partly owing to that curious practice which is, or was, so
often found in frontier houses, of all the men hanging together on one
side of the table, leaving the other to the fair sex--in the
neighbourhood of his tormentors; but he was a good-natured fellow, and
took chaff very equably.
"I say," began Armitage, "here's a riddle--a regular Sunday one."
"Is there? Roll it up this way," said Claverton, from the other end of
the table, where he was seated between Mrs Naylor and Ethel, for he
resolutely defied the dividing custom above mentioned.
"Here you are, then. Why is Allen like Moses?" asked Armitage.
"Oh, villainous!" laughed Claverton. "Don't anybody attempt it. I
really think you might trot out something a little more original,
Armitage."
Of course, every one then and there tried hard to solve the conundrum,
and, of course, half of them gave it up, and, of course, the reply came
even as was to be expected: "Because he was drawn out of the water."
"Oh-h!" groaned the whole party; while the object of the aqueous jest
sat and grinned placidly, and made play with his knife and fork as
though he were the perpetrator of it instead of its butt.
"I say, Allen," put in Naylor, on the other side, "has that shooting
match between you and Hicks come off yet?"
"What are the conditions?" asked Armitage.
"Dollar a side--Target, the shearing-house door--Distance, five yards--
Hicks to be allowed four yards on account of his want of practice. I'll
bet on Hicks;" and the speaker roared at his own sorry wit.
"Eh! what's that about me?" called out Hicks from the other end of the
table, which was longer than usual, by reason of the advent of the
Naylors with their five olive-branches. He had just caught his name.
"Nothing, old man, nothing; we were only talking of those three
guinea-fowl you shot this morning, coming up," replied Armitage,
grinning mischievously.
"But bother it, I had no gun," said Hicks, thrown off his guard for the
moment by this bare-faced accusation of Sabbath-breaking, and fairly
losing his head as he caught a reproachful glance from Laura, which
seemed to say: "Didn't you promise me you'd leave your gun at home when
you went out this morning?" For he had confidentially imparted to her
his intention to take the trusty shooting-iron, as he was starting so
early that there would be no one about to be scandalised; and Laura, who
had her own ideas of right and wrong, had peremptorily forbidden his
doing anything of the kind.
"I say!" exclaimed Armitage, with admirably-feigned amazement. He had
taken in the other's look of confusion, and, incorrigible joker as he
was, resolved to turn it to his own mischief-loving account.
"But, confound it!" began Hicks, wrathfully; for that mute upbraiding
glance made him really savage with his tormentor, who he thought was
carrying the joke too far. Chaff was all very well, but this kind of
thing went beyond chaff, and he would give him a piece of his mind
by-and-by.
"Er--n-no--of course--you hadn't a gun--I forgot--er--I--was thinking of
yesterday," rejoined Armitage, with the well-simulated air of a man who
has "put his foot in it," and is endeavouring to withdraw that unlucky
member--and endeavouring deucedly badly, too.
"I say, Jack, what about the scorpion fight, eh?" and Hicks proceeded to
narrate how he had found that unscrupulous joker in the thick of the
useful and intellectual little amusement at which we saw him in the last
chapter, thus drawing upon him the laughter and sallies of the
assemblage, under cover of which he said quietly to Laura: "I didn't
really take the gun this morning, 'pon my word of honour I didn't; it's
only that fellow's lies. He might draw the line somewhere; chaff's all
very well, you know, but hang it, that's beyond a joke."
"Yes, I think it's really too bad of him. I oughtn't to have thought
you did what you told me you wouldn't do," she replied, with an almost
imperceptible stress on "me," and a glance which Hicks thought fully
compensated for the former doubt. Leave we them beneath the friendly
shelter of the noise at the other end of the table, and turn to the
rest.
"Don't care, I won my bet," Armitage was saying.
"What! And so you were betting on it, too--and on Sunday! I think it's
disgraceful of you," said Ethel.
"He's come up here to be reformed," put in Allen.
"Oh, you needn't talk," said Armitage, turning off the attack on to the
last speaker. "Miss Brathwaite, what do you think of a fellow who comes
down to my place on a Sunday, and bothers me to take out a bees' nest;
on a Sunday, too!"
There was a great laugh at this. The notion of Allen bothering any one
to take out a bees' nest, Sunday or any other day, struck them all as
ineffably rich. He would rather travel twenty miles than embark
knowingly in that lively enterprise. And then the joke about the
stings, and the plunge into the river came out, and poor Allen was
roasted unmercifully on the strength of it, and the fun grew apace, when
a vivid flash darting in upon them, and playing upon the knives and
glasses with a blue steely gleam, brought the conversation up with a
round turn.
"We shall have a storm," said Mr Brathwaite, glancing at the window.
The deep azure of the heavens had become dark and overcast, and even as
he spoke there pealed forth a long, angry roll of thunder.
A general move from the table now took place, and every one adjourned to
the verandah, which looked out on the wide sweep of country constituting
the great charm of the situation of the house. But now the joyous
sunlight had disappeared, and the earth slept in a dread and boding
stillness. Tall pillars of cloud, black as night, moved steadily on,
their jagged edges taking the forms and faces of hideous and
open-mouthed monsters. All nature seemed waiting for the battle of the
forces of the air, the discharge of the pent-up cloud artillery which
was to strike the awed surface of earth with its blasting fire. Then,
athwart the hot, listening deadness of the atmosphere comes a dazzling
flash, bathing the valley in a sea of flame; and a roll of thunder,
long, loud, and close at hand, makes the expectant group, which is
standing on the verandah to watch the storm, involuntarily start, and
the silence is more intense than before. And now a great chain of fire
shoots from the blackness immediately overhead, and before you could
count one, an appalling crash shakes the solid old house to its very
foundations, while the windows rattle like castanets.
"Let's go inside," suggested Ethel; "I don't like this."
"It's getting wicked," said Armitage. "It was just such a shot as this
that killed old Simmonds. That was up in Kaffraria, where the storms
are about as bad as anywhere. He and I were standing in the doorway
watching the fun; I went in to light my pipe, and while I was fumbling
about for the matches something knocked me clean over, and I heard a
bang and a crash enough to wake the dead. At first I thought I had
upset the crockery shelf on top of me; but no, there it stood; then my
head felt queer, and there was a smell of burning about the place. Then
I remembered, and got up and went to the door. There lay poor Simmonds,
half in and half out, as dead as a log. The lightning had caught him
bang on the head, burnt his coat and waistcoat to rags, and mauled him
about horribly. I can tell you it wasn't a nice thing for a fellow to
see, having just narrowly escaped the same luck himself--Ah!"
Again a sheet of flame darts down, and a roar and a crash as of the
discharge of a dozen eighty-one-ton guns follows upon it. This time
they beat a retreat indoors; and when they had a little recovered from
the momentary shock, Armitage goes on.
"Well, as I was saying, poor Simmonds was so knocked about, that his
early sepulture became a matter of necessity; besides, the first thing
to do was to get him into the house. He was enormously heavy, and I
couldn't get a Kafir on the place to give me a hand. Not for the cattle
upon a thousand hills will they so much as touch anything that has been
killed by lightning with the end of their little fingers, and the
nearest neighbour was twenty miles off. However, I managed to lug the
poor fellow in, and the next day we buried him."
"That's a cheerful old yarn of yours, Jack, and well calculated to
reassure Miss Brathwaite," struck in Claverton.
"I believe he's only trying to frighten us," said Ethel.
"'Pon my word of honour, every word of what I told you's true,"
protested Armitage; and with that love for the horrific implanted in the
human breast, one story led to another, and the storm raved and flashed
without, and a few preliminary hailstones rattled at intervals upon the
roof.