"I know what we must do this afternoon, father," said Edala, when dinner
was nearly over. "We'll take Mr Elvesdon to the top of Sipazi."
Elvesdon looked puzzled.
"Do you mean on to the roof, Miss Thornhill?" he said.
The girl went off into another merry peal; the point of the joke being
that the farm was so named, after a certain striking mountain which
stood opposite, but this their visitor did not know.
"I don't believe you meant that seriously," she said.
"But I did. Why not?"
"When you come to know your own district a little better, Mr Elvesdon,"
she pronounced with mock severity, "you will know that that flat topped
mountain over there beyond the kloof--the one with that splendid red
krantz at the top--is called Sipazi-pazi, on account of the glimmer
which seems to set it on fire when the sun gets on to it at a certain
angle."
"Good name that," he answered, looking at the stately pile with renewed
interest. "But then, unfortunately, I have only just come into my `own
district' and haven't quite had time to `know' everything."
"Well then, this place is named after the mountain," she went on,
loftily ignoring the retort. "But the doubled word is too much of a
mouthful, so we cut it down, and call both just Sipazi. In fact so do
the natives themselves."
"I shall be delighted to make the acquaintance of its summit. When
shall we start?"
"Oh, not yet. When it's cooler. It doesn't take long to go up, and the
sunsets from there are simply indescribable."
Throughout dinner Edala had seemed quite outside of herself. She had
descanted volubly on all her favourite topics; had bantered, and argued,
and pretended to disagree for the sake of arguing again. Her father was
not a little astonished. He had never seen her as animated as this for
years--certainly not since she had been grown up. Elvesdon was amusing,
and talked well, but Thornhill would never have suspected him of being
able to draw Edala out of her shell as he had succeeded in doing.
Dinner was over at last, and an uncommonly good one it had been; so much
so as to move Elvesdon to congratulate his host on the excellence of his
cook.
"Oh, he's a coolie," answered Thornhill. "He's a great rascal, and was
kicked out of one of the hotels in Maritzburg for boozing. I take jolly
good care he gets no chance of that here, but he must have been bad if
they had to get rid of him, for he _can_ cook."
[Coolie: In Natal all natives of India, of whatever occupation or
profession, are so called. It is an absurd misnomer of course; about as
much so as to talk about a `Boer Judge' or a `Boer engineer'--but it
sticks, and always will.]
"By Jingo he can!" assented Elvesdon emphatically. "Those sasaatjes
were simply divine."
"Mr Elvesdon clearly appreciates good `skoff'," said Edala. "Great
minds skip together, for so do I."
"I appreciate good everything, I believe," he answered as they got up,
"especially good singing. Won't you give us a song, Miss Thornhill? I
haven't heard you yet."
"Immediately after dinner? Why, I should positively croak. No, that's
no time for vocal exercise. To-night perhaps--you will stay the night,
won't you? Well, so long. I am going to take it easy in private life
until it gets cooler. Meanwhile I'll leave you to exchange _official_
news," she added maliciously, over her shoulder.
"I can't think what you've done to that child, Elvesdon," remarked his
host, when they were sitting alone together on the stoep. "I never saw
her so lively before, or anything like it; certainly not since she was a
little girl. Yet you managed to `draw' her most effectually."
Elvesdon was human, and at this profuse anointment of his self-esteem he
mentally purred. Yet he did not know what the very deuce to answer. He
could not, for instance, tell his host that this sort of life must be
rather a monotonous one for a girl, and therefore anyone from outside,
he supposed would make a welcome change.
"I don't know how it was done," he said, with a deprecatory laugh.
"Your daughter evidently has very artistic instincts, Thornhill. I
can't say I have, but I've been a bit among people who cut in for that
sort of thing, and may have absorbed some of their jargon. I suppose
that is what interested her."
"Heard any more about that suspicious stranger I came over to tell you
about the other day?" said Thornhill, characteristically changing the
subject without any sort of prelude.
"Yes, I have. As you supposed, he's a Zulu from beyond the river, one
of Mehlo-ka-zulu's chief men. He's got no business at all in these
locations, but you know as well as I do that it's sometimes sound policy
to shut one eye. To interfere with him just now would do more harm than
good; the tax-collecting time is coming on, and the people want
smoothing down, not brushing up."
"That's so," said the other, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "Oh he
belongs to Mehlo-ka-zulu does he? M'yes. Mehlo-ka-zulu's a fine fellow
but a bit of a firebrand. If anything went wrong here it wouldn't be
long before he had a finger in the pie. At least--so _I_ predict."
Thus they talked on, airing official matters even as Edala had declared
they would. Elvesdon for his part rejoiced at finding a man such as
this, right at his very door, so to say; from the well of whose
shrewdness and experience he could draw at will. Then they went round
to the stables, and soon the slant of the sunbeams told that the heat of
the day was passed.
"Well, are we ready for Sipazi? The sun is going off the valley, and we
shall have it splendidly cool."
They turned. Edala was looking fresh, and even, for her, rosy, after
her nap. Elvesdon almost started. This dash of colour was all that was
needed to render the face absolutely a lovely one.
"Look, Mr Elvesdon," she went on. "Now is the time when the sun gets
on the big krantz, and makes it gleam like fire. Look."
He did look. The majestic mountain towered up from the sombre moist
depths of the now shaded valley below, its slopes striped with tongues
of dark bush, shooting up to where they culminated in a sheer wall of
cliff, smooth, absolutely perpendicular where not overhanging. Upon
this now, the slanting rays of the westering sun were striking at an
angle, and the whole face of the gigantic rock wall, scarcely less than
three hundred feet sheer, was glowing and sparkling as though it had
suddenly burst into flame.
"_Wo! Sipazi-pazi_!" exclaimed Edala, shading her eyes, in laughing
imitation of the natives. "Now, haven't we got something to be proud
of, Mr Elvesdon? Fancy owning such a fragment of the globe as that--
you see, I can't help bragging about it. Now come along and let's get
to the top. Here are the horses."
Those useful quadrupeds were being driven in by a mounted boy, and soon
the saddles were on them and the three were in the saddles. In about
half an hour they had dived down through the broad, shaded valley
beneath, now delightfully cool, and stumbling up a rugged bush path had
gained the tree-lined ridge, or saddle, which connected the splendid
mountain with the opposite range.
"We'll leave the horses here," said Edala. "You can ride to the top by
the other side but it's an awful long way round, nearly an hour, whereas
here we can climb up by a cleft in the rock in about a quarter of an
hour. Can you climb, Mr Elvesdon?"
"I believe I can do most things when I'm put to it."
"Well then come along," she cried, taking the lead. "There are such
jolly maidenhair ferns, too, all the way up."
"I think I'll wait for you here and smoke a pipe," said Thornhill.
"No, no, father. You must come up too."
"Well, I will then. By the way Elvesdon. Take care how you move about
when you're on top. There are some rock crevices there, hidden away in
the long grass, and if you got into some of them we should have to send
round to about ten farms before we could get hold of enough combined
length of reims to get you out, even if we could then."
"By Jove, are there?"
"Never mind. I'll take care of you," called Edala. "Come on after me."
And in her lithe agility she drew herself up from rock to rock, now
poising for a moment on one foot, then springing higher to another point
of vantage.
The place they were now in was a very steep, chimney-like rock gully,
such as would be known in Alpine parlance as a `couloir.' To those of
weak nerve or dizzily inclined heads it would have looked formidable
enough, for, besides its own height, from a little way up it seemed as
if it overhung the whole depth of the valley. Above, too, craggy
jutting rocks, shooting forth savagely against the sky, looked as though
about to fall on and overwhelm the invaders of their mountain solitude.
In hard fact it was safe enough, being indeed a gigantic natural
stairway thickly coated with oozy moss, while the sides were festooned
with masses of beautiful maidenhair fern.
"Here we are at last," cried Edala as they gained the summit. "Confess.
Doesn't this repay any amount of trouble?"
"I should think it did," answered Elvesdon, "or would, rather; for
getting here has been no trouble at all."
It was as though they were poised in mid-air. Beneath, the homestead
lay, like a group of tiny toy buildings. Around, everywhere billowing
masses of mountain, dark recesses of forest grown kloofs, gleaming
cliffs now catching the westering sun's parting kiss; the roll of the
mimosa strewn plains seeming absolutely flat from this altitude. Here
and there too the circle of a native kraal surmounted by its inevitable
thread of blue smoke, and far-away in the distance the dim peaks of the
Drakensberg range.
"Come and look over the Sipazi krantz," said Edala, at length, when the
awed silence with which this stupendous panorama could not fail to
strike a newcomer, had been broken.
"Look over it!" echoed Elvesdon. "Why it seems to me that the ground
slopes down to its brink at a pretty steep angle. You can't lie flat
there. You'd tilt over head first."
"You'll see," was the answer. And the speaker proceeded to climb down,
face to the mountain, a very steep grass slope indeed, so steep as to be
almost a precipice. Tough roots, however, grew here, strong enough to
afford a securer hold than might have been expected; then where the
slope ended she stopped. A stunted tree grew here on the very edge of
the abyss, and horizontally over the same, shooting first slightly
downwards and then up, the bend of its trunk forming a seat. And into
this seat did the girl by a deft movement, and without the slightest
hesitation, quickly glide.
"This is how you look over the Sipazi krantz," she laughed up at him,
her blue eyes dancing. "It's the only way in which you can look over it
at all. _What_ a drop!"
Holding on to the bough above her shoulder with one hand she sat there,
gazing down, her feet dangling over the ghastly abyss. Elvesdon seemed
to feel his blood freeze within him, and his knees knocked together.
Even the tree shook and trembled beneath her weight.
"Isn't it rather dangerous?" he called out, striving to master the
tremulous anxiety of his voice. "The tree might give way, you know."
"It never has yet, which of course is not to say it never will--as you
were about to remark," she laughed back. "Well, I'll come up."
"Yes do," he said, bending over the brow of the grass-roll as though to
help her. But she needed no help. She sprang up, lithe, agile as a
cat, and in a moment was beside him.
"Would you like to try it?" she said eagerly, as if the feat was the
most ordinary one in the world. "Would you like to look over Sipazi? I
can tell you it's worth it. It feels like flying. But don't if you
think you can't," she added, quick to take in the not to be concealed
momentary hesitation.
That challenge settled it; yet the words were not meant as a challenge
at all, but as sheer practical warning. She would not have thought an
atom the worse of him if he had laughingly declined, but Elvesdon did
not know this. Was he going to shrink from a feat which a girl could
perform--had often performed? Not he.
"Yes. I think I should," he answered. "I should like to be able to
brag of having looked over Sipazi."
Yet as he let himself down over the grass and root-hung brow which led
to the actual brink, he owned to himself that by no possibility could he
ever tell a bigger he, and further, that at that moment he would
cheerfully have forfeited a year's pay to find himself standing safe and
sound on the summit again. Well, he would not look down. He would get
through the performance as quickly as possible, and return.
He was out on the tree, grasping the branch her hand had held on by.
Yet why did the confounded trunk tremble and sway so, and--horror! it
seemed to be giving way, actually sinking under him. The ghastly
thought darted through his mind that there was all the difference in
their weight--that that which would carry her would break down with him.
His nerve was tottering. His face grew icy cold, and the hand which
held the bough trembled violently. He was perched over that awful
height even as she had been. He was not unused to heights, but to be
suspended thus between heaven and earth in mid-air--no, to that he was
not used. Beneath him the face of the great rock wall sloped away
_inwards_. Anyone falling from here would strike the ground about
thirty feet from its base. All the world seemed going round with him--
not even the thought that Edala had just done the same thing availed to
pull him together. He must go--must hurl himself off and end this agony
of nightmare--when--
"You down there, Elvesdon? Well, come up, because it's getting late,
and it's time to think of getting back."
The calm, strong, matter of fact tones of Thornhill broke the spell like
magic. This was an everyday performance after all, was the effect they
conveyed. Elvesdon's nerve had returned. He was himself again.
"Let's see. What's the best way of getting off?" he asked, trying to
suppress the tremor in his voice.
"Same as you got on. Grab hold of that root above, there under the
stone, and--don't look down. Look up. That's all right," as Elvesdon,
panting somewhat, stood once more on the summit beside them.
"Well done," cried Edala enthusiastically. "You are the only one
besides myself who has ever looked over the Sipazi krantz. Several have
tried but none of them had the nerve to get as far as the tree. Some
wouldn't even go at all."
"The only sensible ones of the lot," said Thornhill shortly. "It's a
fool's trick, anyway."
"Have you done it yourself, Thornhill?" asked Elvesdon. "I suppose you
have?"
"Not any. Anyone could see that the thing wouldn't stand my weight for
a minute: even if I were such a--" He checked himself, remembering that
his guest had just qualified for the uncomplimentary substantive he had
been on the point of defining. "But I'm going to have a charge of
dynamite brought up here and the thing blown to blazes. It's too silly
risky."
Elvesdon was rather astonished. Thornhill was undergoing the process
known as `working himself up.' Yet when he himself was down there, his
host's tone had been absolutely level. And Thornhill himself was making
up his mind to talk very seriously to Edala on the subject, little
thinking that before any opportunity of doing so should come round, that
might occur which should put any such idea clean out of his mind.