"And there's no end of voyaging
When once the voice is heard,
For the river calls, and the road calls,
And oh! the call of the bird."
I suppose I fainted, and later perhaps I slept. At any rate it seemed,
and must have been, a long while afterwards that I waked up to a sound
so pleasant and comforting that I believed at first I must still be in
the land of strange dreams in which my mind had been wandering. But I
presently realised that though I was still lying curled up in the cart,
it really _was_ the sound of wood crackling and burning in a fire, and
that the aromatic flavour in the air was the smoke of wood mingled with
the curiously sweet scent of burning leaves and branches, still hissing
with sap. Very softly I raised myself upon a cramped elbow and looked
out of the cart. The place was transformed. The circular clearing, no
longer gaunt and terrifying but a scene of tall enchanted trees and
frondy ferns, was lit up with leaping rose-and-amber lights from four
large fires built at the corners of a square. The post-cart, well
within the radius, had a munching horse tethered to it, while stretched
at full length on a rug in the firelight was a man.
He was lying carelessly at his ease, and by the flickering light of the
fires looking through a number of letters and papers. One hand
supported a determined-looking jaw; the rest of his face was hidden
under a hat with so evil a slouch to it that it might easily have
belonged to a burglar. He wore no coat; only a grey flannel shirt open
at the neck, with a dark blue and crimson striped handkerchief (the kind
of thing college men put on after boating or football) knotted loosely
round his bare throat. His khaki riding-breeches were "hitched" round
him on a leather belt from which also depended a heavy Service revolver
and a knife-case. By the side of him on the rug lay a gun. He was
evidently taking no risks as far as lions were concerned.
I began to have an extraordinary curiosity to see his face. Moreover I
longed with a fervent longing not only to get out and sit in the warmth
of those homely and attractive fires, but to speak with another human
being. If he would only look up, I thought, and let me see whether or
not he had an honest face! I could not trust that hat. With such a hat
he might be a horse thief, an escaped convict, an I.D.B., or a pirate on
a holiday, and though any of those might possibly be interesting persons
to meet I felt that the time and place were hardly suitable for such a
_rencontre_. The only thing to do was to lie _perdue_ until I was able
to come to some conclusion as to what manner of man he was. Even while
I so decided he moved.
Sitting straight up he rolled the letter he had been reading into a ball
and aimed it with violence and precision at the nearest fire, uttering
at the same time some bad and bitter words that came quite clearly to my
ears. However, I was by that time inured to bad language. Every one in
South Africa uses it when they think you are not listening. Also, it is
apparently the only language that mules and oxen understand for drivers
never speak any other. I had become so accustomed to wicked words that
I no longer took the slightest notice of them.
To my amazement I discovered that he was muttering verse to himself--
bits of Stevenson:
"Sing me a song of a lad that is gone.
Say, can that lad be I?
Merry of heart he sailed on a day,
Over the sea to Skye.
* * * * *
Glory of youth glowed in his veins
Where is that glory now?"
He whipped the muffler from his neck at this and flung it down, then
drove his hands into his pockets and continued his sullen chant:
"Give me again all that was there.
Give me the sun that shone.
Give me the heart, give me the eyes,
Give me the lad that is gone!"
He flung off his hat. I was able to get some idea of his general
appearance then, as he passed up and down in the varying lights and
shadows, and that too seemed strangely reminiscent of some one I had
known. But I was disappointed to find that he didn't look the least bit
like the hero of a romance. He was not even tall. What was worse he
had the most awful hair. It was black and lank like an Indian's and
distinctly thin in front, and one strand of it like a rag of black silk
kept falling away from the rest and hanging down between his
bad-tempered blue eyes--at least I felt sure they must be bad-tempered,
and I had to come to the conclusion that they were blue, because every
time he passed the fire I got a suggestion of blue. He perpetually
smeared the rag of hair back from his eyes and it as perpetually fell
down again. A curious thing about him was the way he moved, so softly
and firmly on his feet, yet without making a sound, and when he reached
the end of one of his enforced marches he swung round in the same
pleasing way that the sail of a boat swings in the wind. It was hard to
admit that a sort of burglar in riding-breeches could interest one by
the way he walked, but I had to admit after a time, that there was a
queer distinction and grace about him. He made a further remark to the
stars:
"`Give me again all that was there.' But what for, good Lord? To let
women wipe their boots on and throw in the mud! Ah, they leave one
nothing! They throw down every shrine one sets up."