"Ou ka! (Oh no)," cried the Black Antelope, springing to her feet,
for she began to think the bird was talking; she could see no umfana
(child) or umdanda (boy) anywhere.
Her frantic gesticulations, her wild cries, set Jack off laughing. She
began to tear her hair, declaring it was a spook (a bogle) that was
mocking her.
Up rose Vickel with a screaming hiss, leaving Jack tumbling in the
sand. The next minute he found himself half hugged to death in the
fervid embraces of the Kafir nurse.
"You did not expect to meet a six-foot hen with a two-handed chick, now
did you?" asked Jack, kissing her fondly, as he felt her bony arm.
How sorry Jack was he had eaten all the food Mr. Wilton and his
passengers had given him, for he was certain the poor girl was really
starving. Like Vickel, she had been eating rosemary leaves. But her
delight at finding Jack made her forget her own sufferings.
Yet, yet, she asked, why was her pet-lamb straying on the veldt? It was
well they had met, for the homeless dog, as she called herself, could
guard the lost lamb and save him from destruction. She drew him to a
safer spot, and sitting down beside him, watched the parting clouds,
for the lightning had not altogether ceased, and the thunder still
rumbled behind the low sand-hills. Overhead the sky was clearing, and
the arching rainbow shone with brightened hues.
Jack leaned against his Kafir friend, while Vickel strutted about,
drying her feathers in the transient gleams of the returning sun. The
air grew fresh and reviving. The sleep the postman had so earnestly
recommended to Jack fell upon him unawares.
The Black Antelope had noticed at the first glance that her lamb
had been shorn of his wavy curls, and now she perceived the traces
of recent illness in his pale lips and hollow eyes. So she waited
patiently beside him, flapping away the stinging flies with a long tuft
of grass, that his sleep might be unbroken; and so the weary hours
passed by.
When Jack at length awakened, the darkness of night had gathered around
them. Vickel was roosting in the sand at their feet; but the glorious
stars of the southern hemisphere were shining forth in all their
splendour.
"There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard,"
thought Jack as he looked into the Kafir's eyes and then pointed
upwards to their glittering light, and began to sing,—
"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!"
Oh, how she listened. The solemn stillness of the night oppressed them
both. Jack was almost afraid to think, and altogether too proud to cry;
yet in spite of himself a something rising in his throat choked his
voice.
"Have I done wrong to venture here alone?" he asked. "I almost wish—but
no—" He checked himself. "I won't mind, for I've done it. The letter is
safe on its way to grandfather. Oh, if I could only have asked father
what I had better do."
Then the sweet words of his hymn came back to him; and kneeling down
amid the eerie, lonesome waste, he took the Black Antelope's hand in
his, and coaxed her to kneel beside him as he repeated aloud,—
"Our Father."
Yes, her Father as well as his, if she but knew it. Yet his prayer was
for them both, as she dimly felt.
Jack had poured forth all his troubles, and his heart was lightened.
They could do nothing but keep just where they were until daylight.
"And then," thought Jack, "I shall see the tracks of the post-cart, and
I'll take the poor Black Antelope home to Tottie; for all her trouble
came through her kindness to me. It is hard when trouble comes through
trying to do right."
Then sleep came slowly back again, and Jack was dreaming of the home he
could not find.
At the peep of dawn he rose and began searching diligently for the
track of the post-cart. Alas, alas! He could not find it. How was
it? Had they wandered unconsciously from the spot? Or had the storm
obliterated the deep wheel-ruts? He could not tell.
Jack tried to explain to his companion what it was that he was
searching for, by drawing lines with his finger in the sand.
Both were faint for want of breakfast, and soon grew tired. The
eagerness with which Jack had started on his fruitless search had
dwindled to a lagging walk; but not one vestige of a cart-track could
be discovered.
Then he sprang upon Vickel, who had made her breakfast on the scrubby
grass as she loitered after them. Jack arranged her hood and bridle,
and then invited the Black Antelope to mount beside him. Vickel was now
so strong she could have carried a man on each shoulder with ease. She
thought nothing of her added burden, and ran off as gaily as on the
preceding day. She, at least, was in her native element, and every now
and then turned a loving look to her master's face as she took a wider
sweep, scouring the mighty plain in every direction.
At last the Kafir girl's quick eye detected the welcome lines ridging
the wavy sand. She pointed them out to Jack with a cry of joy. The
track of the post-cart at last, thought Jack, as he dropped the hood
over Vickel's eyes and jumped off. But the Kafir was before him,
running swiftly between the two deep ruts, which nothing smaller than
the broad wheels of a heavily-laden waggon could have made.
Jack was thinking only of the way home; but the Black Antelope, with
her larger experience of all the ups and downs a life on the veldt
embraces, knew that the tracks could only be a few hours old, for the
hoof-marks of the oxen were not yet effaced. She noticed them carefully
to find out which way the waggon had gone; not that she wished to
follow it, but she shrewdly conjectured that a few miles the other way
they should find the spot where the waggon-driver had out-spanned for
the night. Perhaps a waste crust or a half-picked bone might be dropped
beside the ashes of his fire. She beckoned Jack to follow her; for he
had paused, waiting for Vickel, who seemed wonderfully busy scratching
about in the sand. At last she sat down in it.
So unlike her, Jack thought, as he went back to call her. The fear of
losing his ostrich over-mastered every other feeling.
But for once in her life she refused to answer to his call. Would
his Vickel grow wild and forsake him if they kept on wandering about
the veldt? At last she got up with an air of importance, and began
scratching up the sand vehemently.
He went close up to her before he could rouse her. Then he saw she was
covering something up. Oh, joy, joy! His Vickel had laid her first egg!
He ran and picked it up. What a jolly egg it was! Almost as big as
Jack's head, now he had lost his hair. He was certain it must weigh
nearly two pounds and a half. He thought she might have chosen a better
colour, for it was a dirty white marbled over with yellow. Jack took it
up very carefully and held it up on high to show it to his companion.
Jack never forgot the cry with which she bounded towards him and
pounced upon the egg.
Snatching up a sharp stone, she made a small hole in the shell, and
began to suck the rich nutritious yolk. Then remembering herself, she
held it to Jack's lips, with a look so deprecating that it stopped his
reproachful "Don't, don't!" For he saw that she was famishing. He took
a sip. The welcome nourishment revived his spirits.
It was life to them both. They shared it between them, each trying to
make the other take the lion's share. Hungry as they were, there was
more than enough to satisfy them.
"My best and sweetest! My ownie and good!" cried Jack, as he kissed the
breast of his snow-feathered queen, who walked beside him with added
dignity.
The Black Antelope was right. An hour's walk brought them to the
smoking ashes of a dying fire. She raked these carefully together with
a bit of charred stick; and after signing to Jack to lie down and rest
under the nearest bush, she began to search about for fuel—a difficult
matter on an African plain; an almost hopeless quest now, for the
waggoner who lit the fire had been before her. A few dead leaves under
a bush that had been struck by the lightning, and a twig or two, were
all that she could find.
She returned to Jack, who was dozing in the sunshine, and made up the
fire, little dreaming that it was his own father who had lighted it
on his return journey. She wandered forth a second time in search of
water, confident that she should find it somewhere in the neighbourhood
of the traveller's fire. Vickel's egg-shell served her for a cup when
she found a tiny runlet, glistening like a silver braid amidst the
scorching sand. A dead bird lay on the ground, another victim of last
night's tempest. Her cry of joy brought Jack to her side to taste the
delights of a cup of sun-warmed water in the burning heat of an African
noon.
Then she roasted the bird in the ashes for their dinner, content to
let the morrow take care for itself; whilst poor Jack grew every hour
more uneasy. He knew now they had lost their way. The track they had
found was not the track of the post-cart; for he too had noticed the
foot-prints of the oxen, so different from the mark of the horse-shoes.
His only hope was in Vickel's sagacity. She might yet find her way back
to Tottie's hut.