"It works in me like madness, dear,
To bid me say good-bye,
For the seas call and the stars call,
And oh! the call of the sky."
Hour after hour Zeederberg's post-cart and all that therein was
straggled deviously across the landscape, bumping along the rutty road,
creaking and craking, swaggling from side to side behind the blocky
hoofs of eight mules.
At five o'clock in the afternoon the heat was intense, but the sun lay
in the west at last, and tiny flecks of cloud in the turquoise sky were
transforming themselves into torn strips of golden fleece. The bare
bleak kops of Bechuanaland were softened by amethystine tints, and the
gaunt bush took feathery outlines against the horizon.
The driver of the post-cart, a big yellow Cape boy with oystery eyes,
took a long swig from a black bottle which he was ready to affirm
contained cold tea, though the storekeepers who filled it at every
stopping place referred to its contents variously as _dop_, Cape smoke,
and greased lightning. Afterwards he lovingly bestowed the bottle under
his seat, cracked his whip, and shouted in a ferocious voice:
_Hirrrrie-yoh doppers_!
I sat behind the driver, on the floor of the cart crammed amongst
cushions and rugs and parcels and mail-bags and luggage, aching
passionately in every bone, deadly weary, and very cross. For when you
are extremely tall it is not all rapture to sit for hour after hour with
your length hunched beneath you like an idol of Buddha. And when you
are thin, not bonily thin but temperamentally slender, you don't care
for parcels bumping into your curves as if you were made of wood, and
mail-bags apparently stuffed with flints and jagged rocks piercing
through the thickest cushions into your very marrow.
_Hirrrrie-yoh doppers!... Slaagte... Verdommeder skepsels_!...
Heaven knows what terrible significance was contained in these
cabalistic words, but the eight mules immediately broke into a shambling
run, the post-cart swaggled from side to side, the mail-bags hit me and
stabbed me, and clouds of fine dust arose, wrapping us round in a
smothering fog. Five minutes later the mules resumed their usual
slouch, the fog subsided into a feathery mist, and all was as before.
Slowly and deviously we straggled across the landscape. I tried for the
hundredth time to arrange my rugs into the semblance of a nest, and for
the hundredth time failed to do anything of the kind. There was no rest
or comfort anywhere in that post-cart. In spite of my chiffon veil I
could feel the fine road-dust powdering thickly on to my charming face.
Mosquitoes sped down silently from strongholds in the hooped tent of the
cart and without even a warning serenade took long draughts of my nice
young blood through the linen sleeves of my blouse. A hundred grass
ticks having at various times of outspan made convenient entry through
open-work brown silk stockings, chewed at my ankles causing exquisite
irritation not to be assuaged by a violent application of finger-nails.
The breeze, if heavy turgid masses of air displaced by the movement of
the cart might be so called, conveyed to my face the steam arising from
the mules and the extraordinarily pungent odour of native that emanated
from the driver. It was something to be thankful for that the latter
was so busy with the mules and his black bottle that he did not often
turn his big _cafe-au-lait_-coloured countenance to me, for when he did
there was something so revolting in the spirituous odour of his breath
and the expression of his oystery eyes that I could feel my scalp
stirring as though my hair had suddenly been brushed the wrong way. At
such moments I was extremely glad that I had a small but business-like
Colt slung conspicuously from my waist-belt, and that in the boudoir of
a little old hunting-box in Meath there were to be found three rather
nice silver cups (probably all filled with late roses) awarded to me by
various ladies' shooting clubs for making the highest aggregate of
bulls-eyes. It was at such moments too that, good shot or not, I
realised that I had been utterly foolish and reckless to adventure forth
alone and unprotected upon this wild journey into Mashonaland.
At six o'clock the heat was still intense, and the western sky resembled
a vast frameless picture daubed in primitive colours, slashed and gashed
with reds and yellows. An hour later the sun shot past the horizon like
a red-hot cannon-ball aimed at the other side of the world, and for a
short time the land was suffused in wilder lights of orange, and the
skies seemed streaked with blood. Then suddenly the heat was over, the
flare died out of the picture, the far-off kops turned a faint pink
colour, and the grimness of the bush was blurred in a drapery of purple
chiffon. At once night unsheathed her velvet wings, and darkness fell
in dim purple veils embroidered with silver stars. Some subtle scent as
of flowering trees growing by a river blew through the tent of the cart.
The world seemed filled with gracious dimness and made up of
illimitable lovely space. An indescribable feeling of happy freedom
filled my heart. It seemed to me that the lungs of my soul drew breath
and expanded as they had never done in any land before. It was a
sensation that came to me every morning when I saw the sun turn a gaunt
country into a blue and golden world; and every evening when the sun
fell and the land was wrapt in purple and silver vestments. It seemed
to me then to be possible to disregard the discomforts of the day, and
to forget what terrors the night might hold, by just succumbing to the
charm and the magic of this wonderful great empty land. I was content
to be in Africa!
Leaning back, my head against a mail-bag, my eyes half closed, I found
myself suddenly remembering a brown-faced man with vivid blue eyes, with
whom I had once danced at the Viceregal Lodge on the night of my
"coming-out," and who had talked to me about the lure of Africa, saying
that it was worse than the call of the East. He had spoken of Africa as
_she_, and with a mingled hatred and love that conjured up to my mind a
vision of some false, beautiful vampire, who dragged men to her and
fastened her claws into their hearts for ever.
"It's a brute of a country!" he said. "Quite unfit to live in. Thank
God to be back to civilisation again." But a moment later he was
talking of the veldt as tenderly as a lover might talk of the woman he
loves. I remembered being intensely interested and fascinated at the
time, but it was in the middle of my first real ball, and it was also my
eighteenth birthday and the occasion of my first serious proposal, and I
had had, very naturally, a great many other absorbing things to think
about. Moreover, the dance with the blue-eyed man had come to an end, I
had been whirled off by some one else, and had never seen him again.
Such blue burning eyes, set in such a dark burnt face! What added more
strangely to his vivid appearance were two tiny blue points of turquoise
stuck in his ears.
"Shades of George Washington!" I said to myself. "Can the man be an
Indian--or a Hindoo?" But who ever heard of an Indian or a Hindoo
having blue eyes? Just as I was going to ask him, in the frank way that
always seemed to me to be the best and simplest method of getting to the
heart of things, why he wore them, I found him looking with such a deep,
strange glance at me, that, most unaccountably, my lids fell over my
eyes as though weighted with little heavy stones, and for a few moments
I could not lift them again. Also, my gift for airy conversation
suddenly deserted me and I became tongue-tied. I remember feeling glad
that I was so charming to look at or he might have thought me a fool.
For I had not a word to say; I could only listen eagerly to him talking
about Africa like a lover. At least I felt that was the way I should
like my lover to speak of me. Perhaps it was because Herriott could not
talk like that that I refused him that night, though I had always
intended to take him, and I knew I should vex both my people and his by
not fulfilling what had been almost an accepted situation for months
past.
But that was all long past--three years past to be accurate--and I had
never again seen the man who talked of Africa, though I had often
glanced round ball-rooms and theatres for that dark face with the
burning eyes and the ridiculous blue turquoise ear-rings. Many strange
things had happened since then to swallow up the memory of him, and it
_had_ been swallowed. But it was strange how often I had remembered him
again since I set out on this journey to Mashonaland, and passing
strange that though I had only been in Africa for a month and known the
veldt for only eleven days I seemed to understand all he had said about
it.
Why did I understand? I wondered. Was the lure of Africa on me too?
Was this strange brown land of golden days, and crimson and orange
eventides, and purple nights, calling to me? Would it keep me as he had
said it always kept people who felt the lure and heard the call? At the
thought I trembled a little, and felt afraid of I knew not what.
Afterwards I laughed to myself at the absurdity of the thought. How
could Africa keep me? I belonged to the civilised cities of the world.
My home was in Paris, London, Dublin, sometimes New York. I had lived
always amongst pictures, and sculpture, and books, beautiful music,
lovely clothes, jewels. All these things were necessary to me. I could
not contemplate life without them. Africa was only an interlude--an
experience. In a few months I should be back again hunting with the
Meath pack from our dear little box near Balbriggan; flying over to
London for balls and Hurlingham, or with my pretty Aunt Betty van Alen
in her Paris studio, entertaining her and her friends with the strange
tale of my adventures in this strange land. How ridiculous to fancy
that I could feel the thrilling pain of a claw in my heart--Africa's
claw! What was Africa to me or I to Africa?
I shivered. There were mists rising everywhere now, and joining the
clouds of dust they wove gauzy scarfs about us and white things moved
before us on the road, like spectres showing the way.
The sunshine that I loved so much was gone! It was my passion for
sunshine and blue skies that had brought me for a time to this barbaric
land. My passion for sunshine that I had never really been able to
indulge to the full, until the crushing failure of a great bank in
America had transformed me from an heiress into just an ordinary girl
with a few hundreds a year whom the world no longer concerned itself
particularly about.
That was one of the strange events that had occurred to change my life
and swallow up many vivid memories. First my lovely and much loved
mother, the one parent I could remember, had died, passing away softly
in her sleep one night and looking so happy--almost gay--as she lay
there dead, that it had seemed wrong to regret what had happened and the
blow had thus been robbed of half its terror and pain. Then, directly
afterwards, had come the banking disaster, sweeping away the great
fortune my mother had left and leaving nothing from the wreckage but a
few thousands to be divided between my brother Dick and me. That had
been the end of my fashionable career, and when I realised it I rejoiced
with an exceeding great joy, for it was a life that, as the French put
it, had "never said anything to me." Immediately the future had become
far more interesting. Hundreds of people whom I had never cared a
button about, but whom I had been obliged to meet and smile with, "and
gladly endure," dropped instantly out of my life and I never saw them
again. The horizon became a blank canvas that I might fill in with any
figures I liked against any background I chose. Well! the background I
chose was sunshine, which I sought in many out-of-the-way places where
sunshine abounds, and the people I let into my picture were all the odd,
charming creatures I met in my travels and the delightful writers and
painters and sculptors who made up the world of my Aunt Betty van Alen,
herself a gifted sculptress and a beautiful Bohemian soul. She had been
appointed my guardian by my mother, and we spent most of our time
together, only, a true American, she never could be drawn very far from
her beloved Paris. However, she was American in this, too, that she
considered the world as free to women as to men, and that no harm could
come to a self-reliant girl who had been well brought up and taught
black from white. So that when she could not be with me herself she
suffered no qualms in letting me go off on my excursions alone, and was
perfectly satisfied that I should never come to any harm. She was of
opinion that every true-born American girl has her head so well balanced
and such a fine sense of beauty and the fitness of things that she could
never step from the paths of wisdom, or stray from that straight white
road that her religion and early training had laid down for her; that
the more you trust an American girl the more she is trustworthy. And I
think she was right. But what she never took into account with me was
that though my mother was American and I had been born under the Stars
and Stripes, my father's half of me was Irish, and Irish drops in the
blood spell love of adventure, love of the extraordinary in people and
places and things, love of beauty, and lots of other loves, that not
only cause one exquisite pleasure that is more than half pain, but lead
one into many strange places where convention is not. However, I never
told her or any one else of these things. Indeed it was only dimly that
I realised them for myself.
On this visit to Africa, so very far away from her, Betty had
unexpectedly held out rather firmly about the necessity of a chaperon,
and to please her I had travelled out with a frumpy old German governess
we had both known many years, who was visiting Africa to see about some
property an uncle had left her in the Transvaal. All the way out I had
made it quite plain to Madame von Stohl that I meant to go up to
Mashonaland and see my brother Dick, that in fact it was one of my chief
reasons for coming to Africa at all; and she never said a word against
the idea. But lo! after I had trailed around with her to all sorts of
uninteresting places in Cape Colony and the Transvaal she calmly and
firmly refused to fulfil _her_ part of the programme and go with me to
Mashonaland. She said she was afraid of being eaten by Lobengula, the
King of the Matabele.
The only thing to do, then, was to make my own plans and enquiries.
Every one told me it was a journey of the very roughest and wildest
description, and that very few women had done it before. It appeared
that there were already a great number of women in Mashonaland, but they
had all travelled up by waggon, with their men-folks to look after them,
taking about three months to accomplish the journey. Instead of this
information daunting me, as it was evidently meant to do, it made me
only the more eager for such an adventure. Therefore, when I heard one
man remarking to another (through the open window of the Johannesburg
Hotel where we were staying) that if I took that coach journey alone it
would take the curl out of my hair, I merely felt sorry for the man:--
first, because he never would and never could know that my hair curled
naturally, and secondly, that he should have so poor an opinion of an
Irish-American girl as to think that a few rough adventures would scare
her from a plan on which she had set her heart. In any case it was
really no business of his. But Africa is chock full of people who mind
your business for you as well as large quantities of their own. At
first I was amazed and indignant at the number of utter strangers who
came along and tried to interfere with my contemplated journey. Later I
learned to listen, in the same spirit as it was given, to advice that
was not really meant for anything but friendly information and a
touching interest in the mistakes of other people. And when I smiled at
them and told them that I loved adventures and couldn't get enough of
them, the men gazed at me with admiration, mingled (they told me) with a
longing to start for Mashonaland by the same coach, and the women looked
wistful but denied their longing to follow my example.
As for Madame von Stohl, she refused to budge from her comfortable
quarters in the Johannesburg hotel. I was secretly delighted, for
anything more tiresome than a fortnight's unmitigated von Stohl in the
cramped-up space of a coach I could not imagine. But I felt it my duty
to reproach her. She thereupon in great irritation made some not at all
agreeable remarks about the unfortunate fate of persons descended from
two entirely irresponsible nations, without any sense of duty towards
society, a craving for excitement, and no proper regard for the
conventions of civilised life.
She said all this whilst I was packing my prettiest gowns for Fort
Salisbury, and I, with the light heart of a girl who knows she is going
to get her own way, responded with some cheerful reflections on heavy
pudding-headed Teutons who had not an ounce of _nous_ in the whole of
their make-up, were absolutely lacking in imagination and the spirit of
adventure, and simply did not know the meaning of _joie de vivre_. What
was the use, I demanded, of sticking in Johannesburg and all the other
stupid imitation towns and imagining we were seeing _real_ Africa?
"One might just as well be in England or Germany, except that life in
Europe is more comfortable and not so expensive. What I want to see--
besides Dick, of course--is the illimitable veldt, and Brother Boer, and
prowling lions, and Lobengula's fifty wives."
Elizabet von Stohl had answered that her desire was not unto these
things. I then, having pitifully but very firmly told her that of
course she could not help having been born a German, went out and
telegraphed to Dick to come down to Johannesburg and fetch me. I
thought I would give convention a fair deal. However, he wired back:
"Impossible. You must not think of coming up here at present. Country
very unsettled. May be trouble with the natives at any time."
That was ridiculous, of course. If his wife could be up there, why
couldn't I? And if he couldn't fetch me, well, it was quite simple to
buy a ticket for the coach journey and go up by myself. There was
nothing monstrous in that! What did it matter about the country being
unsettled if one had a revolver and was an excellent shot?
Certainly twenty pounds was an amazing price for a coach ticket. But
the coach agent never said a word about its being a dangerous journey,
or tried to dissuade me in any way. On the contrary he told me that it
was a beautiful country, and that he was sure I should have a very
agreeable time. That was _something_ for my twenty pounds.
When I showed the ticket to Madame von Stohl she expostulated more
bitterly than ever, and said she should cable to Aunt Betty, failing
that, to Mr Rhodes, the Governor of Natal, Dr Jameson, and the Bishop
of Grahamstown. On my suggestion that the King of Timbuctoo might also
be a good man to consult she turned dark blue. Afterwards she made a
gesture like the washing of hands and said that I might go my ways, for
which I was very much obliged to her. And I did go them two days later
behind eight prancing mules, in company with a cheerful telegraphist for
Tuli, and a missionary who travelled in dancing pumps and a mackintosh.
Since then the magnificent red four-wheeled coach we had set out in had
been changed for "cart, carriage, wheel-barrow, and donkey-cart"; drawn
sometimes by mules, sometimes by oxen; driven by men sometimes black,
sometimes white, sometimes yellow, but always profane.
At Tuli we had shed the telegraphist, with regret, for he was a merry
and ingenious soul, full of plots for the commissariat and the general
comfort. At Palapchwe the missionary got off to call on Khama, the King
of the Bechuanas, who likes missionaries, though not to eat. The poor
man was minus his dancing pumps, having left them unwillingly in a
mud-hole where the cart had been stuck for several hours and we had been
obliged to flee for our lives from a horde of mosquitoes as large as
quail.
From Palapchwe I had travelled alone, but always in the care of reliable
drivers, and wherever there were telegraph stations I found that Dick,
(who had come round, once he knew I was well _en route_) had wired to
people to meet me and do all they could for me, and I had experienced
nothing but kindness and hospitality from the settlers, and storekeepers
and the officers at the police camps. On the third day out from
Palapchwe, however, my good driver had broken his arm, and been hastily
replaced by a man whom the coach agent did not know so well but hoped
would be reliable. This was my friend of the oystery eyes who so
vociferously bellowed--_Hirrrr... rrr... rrie-yoh doppers!... Slaagte
eiseltjies_!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Night was on us at last. The pace of the mules grew slacker and
slacker: they were reaching the end of their run, and obviously the end
of their endurance. The rush of water could be plainly heard on the
still air, and close ahead loomed the denser, taller bush that on the
veldt invariably outlines the banks of a river.
I began to think rather wistfully of the little tin hotel or thatched
store I knew must be near, where we would outspan for the night. The
travellers' bedrooms in such "hotels" were the most amazing and
extraordinary places I had ever met, but they were nevertheless an
improvement on my present confined quarters. I should at least be able
to stretch my cramped limbs, and there would be lights and perhaps a cup
of tea, and hot water to wash off the suffocating dust. These things
had never yet failed me at the various halting places, and there was
nearly always a woman of some kind to do her best for me.
The driver presently got down from his seat, lighted a lantern, and
going to the head of the team began to guide his tired mules along the
broken road. This was now little more than a wide foot-path,
waggon-rutted and holed-out by the hoofs of the beasts of burden that
had gone before. The stumps of trees chopped down by the axes of the
Pioneers were still green and sappy in the track, and the wheels of the
cart jarred against rocks that traffic had not worn down, and crushed
through the houses of white ants who had not yet acquired the wisdom to
build elsewhere than on the road leading to the country of Cecil Rhodes.
At last the cart stood still. The driver swinging his lantern went on
alone and in a few moments was lost sight of in the bush. The mules
began to quiver in an eerie way, and the trembling of them subtly
communicated itself to the cart which also began to quiver and creak
like an animate thing. I shivered and pulled a rug round my shoulders.
It seemed we had come to a lonely and desolate spot. The trees standing
black against the stars looked enormous and sinister, and there was
something menacing in that sound of swift rushing water.
After a long while the driver came stumbling back, fixed his lantern on
a hook in front of the cart, and began to be extremely busy with the
mules. The jingle of harness falling to the ground was heard,
accompanied by more creaking and shivering. My interest was aroused.
"What are you doing, driver?" I asked sharply. I knew quite well this
could not be right. If the mules were unharnessed how could we reach
that most desirable little tin hotel? The driver answered in a voice
considerably thicker and more incoherent than the last time I had heard
it (greased lightning, I had observed, frequently has this effect upon
the vocal cords):
"River's full--cart can't cross d' drift to-night."
"But the little tin--the hotel--?"
"Hotels d' other side," was the laconic response, and he continued to
undo the mules. Harness fell around him like hail.
"But what are you going to do?" I faltered.
"Going to put d' _eisels_ into d' stable," he answered stolidly,
indicating with his arm a mass of blackness on his left, that might have
been either a hay-stack or a cathedral, "an' shut me in wid dem. You
better come saam, Miss." He gave a drunken chuckle. I fingered my
Colt, and that gave me courage to answer in a clear voice that betrayed
no sign of the panic in my soul:
"Nonsense, driver! of course there must be some decent place for me to
spend the night. Take me to it at once."
He had all the mules loose, and holding each by a small head-rein they
radiated from him like the rays of a black star of which the lantern in
his hand was the scarlet centre. By its light I could see his stupid
brutal face clearly, though I was hidden from his vision in the dimness
of the cart. However he could recognise authority when he heard its
note, and looking towards me answered with a faint shade of respect in
his voice if not in his words:
"You got to take your choice, Miss. Come saam into d' stable wid me and
d' mules or else sit in d' cart all night wid d' lions. We can't cross
d' river."
"Lions!" I stammered. "But there _must_ be some place, somewhere for
me to go to--a hut--a store--something!"
Such a desperate, horrible situation was incredible. The mules were
shivering with the steam still rising from them and the driver grew
impatient. Apparently he acknowledged a duty to them if not to me. He
came close to the cart and spoke menacingly and finally into it.
"See yere: dis is d' Umzingwani River. No hotels yere, oney plenty of
lions, worst place in Africa for lions; dat's why I'm going to shut me
up with d' _eisels_. See dat place over dere?" He pointed to another
grim shadow that might have represented _anything_ in this grim place of
shades--"Baas O'Flynn and Baas Jones kept a store dere. Baas O'Flynn
died of d' jim-jams, and his grave is round back of d' hut: and a
lioness fetched Baas O'Flynn out from behind the counter one day and
walked off wid him in front of two kaffirs. I tell you lions is thick
round here. Dat's why dey built a stable dis side for when d' river's
full, and dat's why I am going to shut me up wid d' _eisels_. So now
you better take your choice, Miss, d' _eisels_ and me--or d' lions."
I was silent in amazement and horror, petrified with apprehension; dew
was on my forehead. The driver, supposing that I was making my choice,
waited for a moment or so, then getting no answer, turned his mules and
moved away amidst the jingling of headstalls, muttering and chuckling to
himself:
"Ach! arlright den, I told you what, if you don't come _saam_ wid me!"
I watched his going with despair; but my dry tongue refused to call him
back. It seemed to me there could be no worse horror than to spend the
night shut in a stable with that brute and the mules. And yet--lions!
My backbone became a line of ice.
But I would not recall him. I watched him staggering away from me, the
lantern rays flickering between the dark bodies of the mules. They
seemed to go a long way off before they reached the stable, but at last
I descried the inside of a brick building, narrow and manger-lined. For
one moment I had a glimpse of the mules nosing eagerly to their places,
then the closing of a heavy door shut out the pale vision, a bar fell
heavily into its place, and I was shut and bolted into the outer
darkness: alone in a wild and lonely part of Africa.
Began then for me the strangest night of all my life. In the midst of
the thick darkness there suddenly and unwarrantably appeared between the
branches of trees taller than any I had seen on the whole journey a
wraith-like new moon, white as a milk opal. It peered through the black
trees like a ghost that has lost its soul and seeks for it in desolate
places. It shed no light at all, but just hovered there, peering,
paling the light of the stars, and etching into view things that had
better have been left hidden. It outlined some white bones that lay in
an apart place at the foot of a tree, making them glisten as if they
were composed of silver. It revealed the stable crouching amongst the
bush like a grey monster. It showed up a spectre-like kopje on the left
that I had not known was there at all and that was unlike any kopje I
had ever seen, bare as a glacier with neither stock nor stone on it,
nothing but one malignant-looking tree perched on its summit, leafless
and crooked, holding out a forked arm that beckoned me hideously.
It is not for nothing that a superstition exists purporting bad luck to
those who see the new moon through trees. There is indeed something
disquietingly sinister in the sight. My Irish heart beat wildly in my
breast. I was all superstitious Celt at that moment--not a drop of
calm, sane American anywhere about me. My shaking hand clutched at my
revolver. I had heard or read somewhere of people shooting the moon,
and I wondered vaguely whether it was upon occasions such as this that
the dread deed was done. Afar a wail of infinite sadness and melancholy
pierced and echoed through the silence. In months to come I was to
learn to hear music in the hungry jackal's dirge, but at that time it
sounded to me like the cry of some despairing soul suffering the
torments of everlasting fire.
I could not keep my eyes closed. Some mysterious force compelled me to
open them again and again upon the scene of terrifying ghostliness.
Also, when I shut them the rush of waters seemed to surround the cart,
and I expected at any moment to find myself being swept away down the
strong river. In reality, nothing moved, not even a leaf on a tree.
All was still, silent as the dead under the watching moon; even the
little chirping cries and noises of the grass insects were hushed, or
swallowed up in the smooth swift sound of rushing power. Only far away
the wailing tragic cry of the jackal found many an echo and response.
Hours passed that were centuries to me, sitting Buddha-like on the floor
of the cart, stiff and motionless, clutching my revolver. The moon
lingered long, seeming to cling to the branches in a vain effort to stay
longer, but at last she sank despairingly, and once more the clearing
above the drift on the Umzingwani River was wrapt in the blackness of
the nethermost pit.
It was only then that I dared change my position a little. Feeling for
the hoops of the cart-hood I very slowly dragged my agonised limbs
upwards, until my head touched the top of the hood. Even so I could
barely stand upright, and the exquisite pain of leaping blood
circulating once more in my numbed limbs was almost more than I could
bear. But as I stood so, Fear, full-armed, rushed upon me again, for in
the sea of darkness round me, I distinctly heard something moving:--on
swift, padded feet something was stealing round the cart and
_breathing_! Sinking down noiselessly to my former position, I peered
between the mail-bags into the darkness, and once more dew stood on my
forehead in little beads. Suddenly, I saw two small pale green fires
that moved together, then two more exactly the same, and I knew they
were the eyes of savage beasts. Paralysed with fright, I was afraid to
stir, afraid almost to breathe. But my mind, still working vividly,
considered the best thing to do--to sit perfectly still in the hope that
they would not venture into the cart after me, or to fire my revolver
into them one barrel after the other. The noise of breathing and moving
was plainly made by more than one beast, and there were growlings now
and horrible purring noises. I came to the conclusion that there was
not one lion but probably half-a-dozen after me. To my increased horror
the cart suddenly began to shake. Were they preparing to spring upon
me? I grasped my revolver firmly, and with the other hand swiftly
crossed myself and whispered a prayer, for indeed I believed that my
last moment was come. But nothing happened. Only the coach went on
shaking softly, and the snarlings and growlings in several keys
continued; there was a faint jingle, too, of the harness that had been
left lying on the ground. What could be happening?
I began to feel strangely sick and faint. Since morning I had eaten
nothing but a very stale sandwich, and the long fast, together with the
series of emotions I had gone through, began to tell upon me. My mental
vision grew a little dim and unattached. I found myself thinking
vaguely about things that were not at all apropos to the situation. I
reflected, as drowning people are said to do, on all the things I had
done and seen since first I could remember, and on all the persons I had
known, including and especially Elizabet von Stohl who had so
emphatically opposed this journey. I suddenly detested her exceedingly!
How pleased though shocked she would be if she could know how
faithfully her prognostications of evil were coming true! Would she
pretend to be shocked? But she should never know. Even in my extremity
I gave a desolate smile to think that if the lions _did_ get me they
would carry me off into the deep bush and leave nothing behind to tell
the tale. My fate would be wrapped for ever in romantic if terrible
mystery, and no one would know what naked depths of terror my soul had
sounded amidst the fearsome darkness of the veldt. But I resolved that
if ever I got out of this alive the eloquent reserve which marks the
truly great should distinguish me also as far as my African adventures
were concerned. One thing was certain: my taste for prowling lions was
appeased. I also felt a diminished interest in Lobengula's fifty wives.
As for the illimitable veldt it was the limit!
And all the time the breathings and purrings and snarlings went on; and
as if that were not enough they began to _chew_. Heaven knows what they
were chewing, but I felt sure that it would very shortly be me.
Suddenly I became aware that _something_ had approached the step of the
cart and was close to me. I could hear its breathing and plainly I saw
the gleam of two little pale green fires. An enterprising lion had
smelt me out at last and meant to do unto me as had been done unto Mr
O'Flynn. The thought was too much; with the last desperate courage of
the doomed I took Fate into my hands, and leaning forward fired barrel
after barrel from my revolver in the direction of the little pale fires.
The noise of the detonations echoing and repeating through the silent
place was enormous and terrifying, but in the tingling stillness that
followed, my straining ears caught the sound of fleeing padded feet and
the crackling of small branches and undergrowth at gradual distances.
Then my senses swam, and I sank back behind my barricade of mail-bags.