ON THE KARROO.
Heedless of the spikes and brambles of the star-shaped carrion-flower
and other Euphorbia, prickly cacti, and so forth, as if their bare
legs were clothed in mail, the Zulus rushed hither and thither about
the wood in their fierce and active search, and, as they never
doubted they would find the fugitive, they became somewhat perplexed
when he was nowhere to be seen; and after traversing it again and
again, they dispersed in pursuit over the open country, and then
Florian began to breathe more freely.
He had lost his white helmet in the Buffalo, and been since deprived
of his scarlet tunic; thus, fortunately for himself, his attire
consisted chiefly of a pair of tattered regimental trousers and a
blue flannel shirt, and these favoured his concealment among the
dense foliage of the tree.
Night came on, but he dared not yet quit the wood, lest the searchers
might be about; and he dared not sleep lest he might fall to the
ground, break a limb, perhaps, and lie there to perish miserably.
When all was perfectly still, and the bright stars were shining out,
he thought of quitting his place of concealment; but a strange sound
that he heard, as of some heavy body being dragged through the
underwood, and another that seemed like mastication or chewing, made
him pause in alarm and great irresolution.
Florian thought that night would never pass; its hours seemed
interminable. At last dawn began to redden the east, and he knew
that his every hope must lie in the opposite direction; and, stiff
and sore, he dropped a fresh cartridge into the breech-block of his
recently acquired rifle, and then slid to the ground and looked
cautiously about him.
Then the mysterious sounds he had heard in the night were fearfully
accounted for, and his heart seemed to stand still when, not twenty
paces from him, he saw a lion of considerable size, and he knew that
more than one horse of the Kind's Dragoon Guards. had been devoured
by such animals in that country.
Florian had never seen one before, even in a menagerie; and,
expecting immediate death, he regarded it with a species of horrible
fascination, while his right hand trembled on the lock of his rifle,
for as a serpent fascinates a bird, so did the glare of that lion's
eye paralyze Florian for a time.
The African lion is much larger than the Asiatic, and is more
powerful, its limbs being a complete congeries of sinews. This
terrible animal manifested no signs of hostility, but regarded
Florian lazily, as he lay among the bushes near a half-devoured
quagga, on which his hunger had been satiated. His jaws, half open,
showed his terrific fangs. Florian knew that if he fired he might
only wound, not slay the animal, and, with considerable presence of
mind he passed quickly and silently out of the wood into the open, at
that supreme crisis forgetting even all about the Zulus, but giving
many a backward nervous glance.
It has been remarked in the Cape Colony that a change has come over
the habits of the lion on the borders of civilization. In the
interior, where he roams free and unmolested, his loud roar is heard
at nightfall and in the early dawn reverberating among the hills; but
where guns are in use and traders' waggon-wheels are heard--perhaps
the distant shriek of a railway engine--he seems to have learned the
lesson that his own safety, and even his chances of food, lie in
silence.
Over a grassy country, tufted here and there by mimosa-trees and
prickly Euphorbia bushes, Florian, without other food than the green
mealies of which he had had a repast on the previous day, marched
manfully on westward, in the hope of somewhere striking on the
Buffalo River, and getting on the border of Natal, for there alone
would he be in safety. But he had barely proceeded four miles or so,
when he came suddenly upon three Zulus driving some cattle along a
grassy hollow, and a united shout escaped them as they perceived him.
Two were armed with rifles, and one carried a sheaf of assegais.
The two former began to handle their rifles, which were
muzzle-loaders; but, quick as lightning, Florian dropped on his right
knee, planting on the left his left elbow, and sighting his rifle at
seven hundred yards, in good Hythe fashion, knocked over the first,
and then the second ere he could reload; for both had fired at him,
but as they were no doubt ignorant of the use of the back-sight,
their shot had gone he knew not where.
One was killed outright; the other was rolling about in agony,
beating the earth with his hands, and tearing up tufts of grass in
his futile efforts to stand upright.
The third, with the assegais, instead of possessing himself of the
fallen men's arms and ammunition to continue the combat, terrified
perhaps to see both shot down so rapidly, and at such a great
distance, fled with the speed of a hare in the direction of that
hornets' nest, the military kraal.
To permit him to escape and reach that place in safety would only,
Florian knew, too probably destroy his chances of reaching the
frontier, so he took from his knee a quiet pot-shot at the savage,
who fell prone on his face, and with a quickened pace Florian
continued his progress westward.
Compunction he had none. He only thought of his own desperate and
lonely condition, of those who had perished at Isandhlwana, of poor
Bob Edgehill and his song--
'Merrily, lads, so ho!'
the chorus of which he had led when the 'trooper' came steaming out
of Plymouth harbour.
He had now to traverse miles of a genuine South African _karroo_, a
dreary, listless, and uniform plain, broken here and there by
straggling _kopjies_, or small hills of schistus or slate, the colour
of which was a dull ferruginous brown. No trace of animal nature was
there--not even the Kaffir vulture; and the withered remains of the
fig-marigold and other succulent plants scattered over the solitary
waste crackled under his feet as he trod wearily on.
Night was closing again, when, weary and footsore, he began to feel a
necessity for rest and sleep, and on reaching a little donga, through
which flowed a stream where some indigo and cotton bushes were
growing wild, he was thankful to find among them some melons and
beans. Of these he ate sparingly; then, laying his loaded rifle
beside him, he crept into a place where the shrubs grew thickest, and
fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
Laden with moisture, the mild air of the African night seemed to kiss
his now hollow cheeks and lull his senses into soft repose.
Next day betimes he set out again, unseen by any human eye, and after
traversing the karroo (far across which his shadow was thrown before
him by the rising sun) for a few more miles, a cry of joy escaped him
when he came suddenly upon a bend of the Buffalo River and knew that
the opposite bank was British territory.
Slinging his rifle, he boldly swam across, and had not proceeded
three miles when he struck upon a kind of beaten path that ran north
and south; but, as a writer says, 'the worst by-way leading to a
Cornish mine, the steepest ascent in the Cumberland hills which
draught horses would never be faced at, is a right-royal Queen's
highway compared with a Natal road.'
Great was his new joy when, after a time spent in some indecision, he
saw a strange-looking vehicle approaching at a slow pace, though
drawn by six Cape horses. This proved to be Her Majesty's post-cart
proceeding from Greytown to Dundee, _viâ_ Helpmakaar, the very point
for which the escaped prisoner was making his way.
It overtook him after a time, and he got a seat in it among four or
five men like Boers, who, however, proved to be Englishmen. It was a
wretched conveyance, without springs, and covered with strips of old
canvas, patched in fifty places, and fastened down by nails. No
luggage is allowed for passengers in these post-carts, which carry
the mail-bags alone.
A naked Kaffir running on foot, armed with a whip, cut away
indefatigably at the two leaders; another on the box plied a long
jambok or team-whip of raw ox-thong, urging the animals on the while
in his own guttural language, and only used English when compelled to
have recourse to abuse, and after ten miles' progress along a
road--if it could be called so--encumbered by boulders in some
places, deep with mud in others, Florian found himself in the village
of Helpmakaar, and among the tents of the few survivors of the two
battalions of the 24th Regiment.
Then he heard for the first time of the valiant defence of Rorke's
Drift by Bromhead and Chard, with only one hundred and thirty men of
all ranks against four thousand Zulus, all flushed with the slaughter
at Isandhlwana.
He was told how the gallant few in that sequestered post beside the
Buffalo River--merely a loop-holed store-house, a parapet of
biscuit-boxes, and a thatched hospital, wherein thirty-five sick men
lay--fought with steady valour for hours throughout that terrible
night, resisting every attempt made by the wild thousands to storm
it, and without other light than the red flashes of the musketry that
streaked the gloom; how the hospital roof took fire, and how six
noble privates defended like heroes the doorway with their bayonets
(till most of the sick were brought forth), each winning the Victoria
Cross; how no less than six times the Zulus, over piles of their own
dead, got inside the wretched barricades, and six times were hurled
back by our soldiers with the queen of weapons, which none can wield
like them--the bayonet.
'Thank God that some of the dear old 24th are left, after all!' was
the exclamation of Florian, when among their tents he heard this
heroic story, and related his own desperate adventures to a circle of
bronzed and eager listeners.
For the first time after several days he saw his face in a mirror,
and was startled by the wild and haggard aspect of it and the glare
in his dark eyes.
'Surely,' thought he, 'I am not the same fellow of the dear old days
at Revelstoke--not the lad whom Dulcie remembers--this stern,
wild-eyed man, who looks actually old for his years;' but he had gone
through and faced much, hourly, of danger, suffering, and probable
death. Could he be the same lad whom she loved and still loves, and
with whom she fished and boated on the Erme and Yealm, and gathered
berries in the Plymstock woods and the old quarries by the sea?
How often of late had he lived a _lifetime_ in a _minute_!
There were sweet and sad past memories, future hopes, strange doubts,
retrospections, and present sufferings all condensed again and again
into that brief space, with strange recollections of his youth--his
dead parents, the old home, the cottage near Revelstoke, Dulcie,
Shafto, and old nurse Madelon--a host of confused thoughts, and ever
and always 'the strong vitality of youth rebelling against possible
death'--for death is always close in war.
But it was not death that Florian feared, but--like the duellists in
'The Tramp Abroad'--_mutilation_.