The two men sat hour after hour gazing at each other, and at the sun

creeping up in the heavens. Now and then Jacques looked away at the sea

gleaming brilliant and free, with a yearning look in his eyes that told

more than a thousand words, and from it he looked back again at the

flushed cheek of the babe in his comrade’s arms, weighing and weighing

all that the sea meant to him against the pangs of that helpless

innocent. Pierre sat immovable; cramp had possession of his limbs, but

he sat still for his life; if the child slept through the heat of

the day they were saved--what was dearer than life was theirs--if she

waked, he dared not think.

Noon came and passed, and the two men sat on--sat on with the same

yearning look in their eyes, and the same speechless constraint, and

the child still slept. A change seemed to be stealing over the heated

face. Jacques watched it anxiously.

‘The fever is leaving her,’ he said; ‘what will come after?’

Hope and despair alternated in his face.

Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock, they counted the chimes with

desperate eagerness--never were hours more leaden-footed--and still the

child slept. A wan white look had come into her face, and she looked

very ethereal and transparent.

‘_Bon dieu!_’ thought Jacques, in agony, ‘will she fade away before our

very eyes?’

Involuntarily Pierre stirred; a spasm of cramp had shaken him to the

soul, and Cecile awoke. Contrition and consternation stilled the cramp

in Pierre’s vast frame, and he rocked her gently to and fro.

‘Give her to me, my friend,’ said Jean Jacques, quietly, but the look

he bent on the child and the tone of his voice showed that despair had

entered into him.

Truly it was pitiful--the babe was strengthless and voiceless, she

only made a little imploring gesture, and looked with eyes big and

dark-shadowed in helpless appeal. The two men gazed at each other in

silent accord, then Jacques said:

‘She will die, if she meets again the chill night air--it is all over,

my friend; with the first shadows we must take her back.’

He gave one burning look at the sea that mocked him in long blue

ripples of laughter, then turned to the babe in his arms with a smile

in his eyes and soothing words.

Pierre groaned, and turning over lay on his face motionless. Jacques’

watch had begun. How terrible those next three hours were--waiting

for the pitiless sun to go down and the ending, ah!--such an ending

of the Day of Hope. If they took her back at sunset, the child would

live--yes, he knew that, he was sure of it--but at what a cost! Freedom

to him was the all of life, the air he breathed; in the cause of

freedom, or what he deemed such, had he not already endured two years

of torment--must he go back to heaven knew how many more? Stay, could

he not harden his heart? After all, who knows, the child might live

anyway; it was only to keep her another four hours. A silent and bitter

rage filled his heart, his own brilliant idea had cut from them their

last chance; so near to freedom and yet how far; not even a run for

their money, as the English say. Then his glance fell again on those

appealing eyes that seemed to ask so much and yet so little--only to be

taken back to her own little bed. A terrible dread and horror welled

up in the convict’s heart, and quenched the flames of rage; the shame

of his deed was casting its shadow before, and with anxious, desperate

eyes, he watched the sun’s departure from the heavens with an agonising

hope that the remorse of the murderer of an innocent might be spared

him.

Slowly, slowly, the sun went down. With the lengthening of the shadows

Jacques made his preparations for the return. He formed a cradle of

the blanket by passing a piece of the rope through the four corners,

and then made the end of the rope fast to the roof. When the lights

began to twinkle from the town through the fast gathering dusk, and the

strains of the convict band playing in the Place came to their ears,

they journeyed--and it was time indeed.

Pierre went first down the rope, then Jacques lowered the child in her

blanket cradle into his arms and followed, flinging the rope back again

on to the roof, that no sign of their hiding should be left for the

buzz to make mock of. They took a narrow upper path that led above the

town to the back of the Governor’s house.

A sneering fate kept that procession as secret as the former one--not

a creature came nigh them. The buzz was recruiting its disappointed

energies with gossip to the strains of Faust. Jean Jacques, a former

distinguished member of that orchestra, even now, as he walked in

Pierre’s wake, jaded with hunger and fatigue, and racked with the pangs

of despair, cursed his successor under his breath for a wrong note in

the solo of the Devil’s serenade, the strains of which were wafted to

him on an unfriendly breeze.

‘Hurry, Pierre,’ he said between his teeth.

Rapidly and noiselessly they skirted the outer wall, passed through a

wicket gate, and crossed the garden to the long white house. It seemed

deserted, save for a light streaming into the outside darkness from

a window on the ground floor. Creeping quietly forward, Jacques saw

through the open casement the figure of the Governor seated at a table

in a long low room that did duty as a library. His head was bowed upon

his two outstretched arms, a hat, cloak, and pistol were laid on the

table in front of him.

So the preparations had been made!...

Jean Jacques withdrew, and making a sign to Pierre they moved back

along the verandah until once again they were below the window of

their little prisoner’s room. Noiselessly as she had been taken from

it Cecile was restored to the little bed that lay ready for her. With

a deep sigh she turned her eyes gratefully on Jacques as he placed her

softly amongst the pillows, and then closed them in an exhaustion,

deep as the grave. After listening a moment to make certain from her

breathing that all was well, he drew the clothes gently over her,

closed the mosquito-curtains, and slid to the ground.

‘_Allons!_’ said he to Pierre, and linked his arm in his comrade’s.

So they passed through the open window and stood before the Governor.

He raised his grey head slowly from his arms, and sat staring in amaze

at the two figures in front of him.

‘Monsieur le Gouverneur,’ said Jean Jacques, simply, ‘we are here, my

friend and I, to render ourselves; you may do to us what you please--we

have failed.’

He raised his head, and confronted the Governor, with calm and haggard

face. The latter sprang to his feet with the cry:

‘My child! My child! Cowards, miscreants, what have you done to my

child?’

‘Pardon, Monsieur, we are not cowards--we should not be here else. Go

and look for your child in her own bed; we wait for your return.’

The Governor, without a word, turned and fled out of the room and up

the stairs.

The two stood immovable and waited; Pierre indeed made a gesture

towards the pistol, but Jacques, into whose eyes had crept a look

almost of hope, shook his head, and the giant, faithful in his

confidence to the last, left it untouched. The Governor returned, grave

and stern, but his eye was bright and he walked with a firm step.

‘My child is ill,’ he said.

‘Monsieur,’ said Jacques, with dignity, ‘we were afraid for her, so we

brought her home; had we kept her till midnight she would have died;

but have no fear--I know the fever; she will be well again in a short

time.’

The Governor shivered--the shock and strain of the last two days had

unnerved him. He sat down again, and leant back, thinking. A flame shot

into his eyes.

‘And you would have killed my child!’ he said, with a menacing gesture

at the two figures in front of him.

‘No, Monsieur, we would not, and the proof is in that we have brought

her back rather than that she should be harmed.’ Jacques looked

fearlessly back into the searching and resentful eyes. The Governor

fell back in his chair, and it seemed to them an eternity before he

spoke again. When he did it was slowly and measuredly, and his words

were those of a judge:

‘Men, I, the Governor of this great island, and a French gentleman,

had sacrificed my duty and my honour to my love. What you required has

been done--the boat is provisioned and ready, the way will be clear

from eleven o’clock till twelve. At your bidding, _yours_, had I done

this; _you_ had put me to this shame, but Fate has delivered you into

my hands, and saved me what, as God be my witness, was necessity. Why

should I spare you? Yet,’ he paused, and the sombre calm of Jacques’

face was pierced again for an instant by that gleam of hope, ‘you have

made a sacrifice. I know that to such as you, liberty is sweeter than

life,--I cannot doubt the sacrifice,--and I will grant you one chance.

If that chance favour you, you will find in that chest what I have

prepared for you--disguises and some papers, signed by me, assuring you

a passport; hide in this room till eleven o’clock, then go, and may

fortune speed you--the boat is at the little bay; but if the chance

favour you not--look for no mercy from me, for by heaven, you shall

have none. Wait for me here.’

Again he left the room and ascended the stairs.

‘Go, go!’ said Pierre, ‘there is still time.’

‘No,’ said Jacques, and they waited--for nearly an hour they waited,

so worn that they no longer felt the strain,--there is a limit to

suffering, bodily and mental, beyond which feeling is not.

The Governor returned; his eyes softened somewhat when he saw them, and

he took the pistol in his hand.

‘Mademoiselle is awake; _this_ is your chance. Follow me upstairs and

into her room. If, when her eyes fall upon you, there pass but a shadow

over her beloved face, there is no mercy for you.’

So saying, he went out. Jean Jacques turned to Pierre and gripped his

hand.

‘_Courage_,’ he said, ‘_jouons bon jeu_,’ and the indomitable spirit

shone out of his black eyes into his comrade’s.

The Governor mounted the stairs. Jean Jacques whistled under his

breath, Pierre wiped the cold sweat from his brow, and they followed.

The Governor passed into the room through the open door; as they paused

for one second, they could see Cecile’s eyes turned lovingly on him and

her hands stretched out; her old nurse was sitting at the head of the

bed on one side, and a doctor was on the other. A lamp, turned low,

gave a fitful light; the Governor reached forward and turned it up.

‘_Dieu merci, nous avons de la chance_,’ thought Jacques, ‘at all

events she will not take us for ghosts or bogies;’ then, with head up,

and a smile on his lips and in his eyes, he marched boldly into the

room, Pierre following like a dog.

The Governor, standing back in the shadow, his head bowed, stood

watching his little daughter with eyes that burned like coals of fire

in the hollows of his wasted cheeks.

No one spoke.

As Jacques moved forward, the child turned her eyes from her father

towards him; when they lighted upon him, a look of curiosity, but not

of fear, dwelt in them for a moment, then a smile dimpled up in the

brave little face, her hand moved, and her lips parted as if to blow a

kiss to her guests.

Jacques advanced to the bed and stroked the little head--Pierre stood

at the foot and grinned with sympathy.

‘It is enough,’ said the Governor, ‘you are _men_; go, and God save

you.’

THE SPIRIT OF THE KARROO.

‘Oh! the trail is hot, and the heart is black,

Sleuth, and stealth, and a hard-gripped blade!

Over the shimmering sage-green brush,

Under the lea of the kopje’s rise,

Winding the skein of the narrow track,

Sleuth, and stealth, till the debt is paid!’

Greed, Hate, Jealousy, these three, and the greatest of these is

Jealousy.

Now this is true according to Euclid, who says that the greater

contains the less: it is also true that in 1891--was it? Pietris

Vanhiever--

* * * * *

‘My--ahh--my a--a a,’ yawned a--large gaunt silver-backed jackal out of

the long grass by the side of a little stone _kopje_. Anon he raised

his head and licked his gums in a slow and appreciative manner, as if

a pleasant thought had occurred to him. The night was drawing in over

the sandy plain, Namaqua partridges were flitting to the half-dried

waterhole, the spring-bok were drawing together, and forming serried

squadrons against the possible attack of such as Silverback of the

stealthy foot and hungry fang; and from the Englishman’s camp hard

by came the smothered grunt and squeal of the mules beginning with

rapture their evening feed out of the leather trough slung to the

waggon pole.

The stones of the _kopje_ moved, and an aged one-eyed hyæna slunk

out into the grey-green growth that surrounded his home. He sidled

deprecatingly till within speaking distance of the jackal, and said in

a whisper, the huskiness of which was born of much midnight prowling

and many an unholy meal:

‘Is there meat in the wind, friend, that thou lickest so thy good red

gums and white teeth? If perchance it be so, I pray thee remember thy

old comrade, the widower and one-eyed.’

‘Meat,’ snarled the jackal, ‘ay, ay, but meat is for those who can

see;’ and casting a sneering glance at the bleared face of his visitor,

he resumed his careful watch on the camp.

‘Peradventure it is mule, O crafty one?’ said the old reprobate,

leering covetously towards the newly-lighted fire that threw the

encampment into sharp relief against the fast gathering darkness.

‘Bah!’ said Silverback, ‘mule! mule is good enough for prowling

one-eyed vagabonds, but not for me. I would sooner chase a young buck

through the long night than eat a plaguey salt beast like mule.’

‘Ow--ah,’ sighed the hyæna, ‘your Swiftness may indeed speak so, having

legs of steel and jaws like cast-iron traps; but to one who has fasted

these many days, being old and forsaken, mule and meer-cat ’tis all the

same, it goes into the stomach--what more can I expect, who am old, and

nigh to my end?’ and he rolled his eye imploringly at Silverback.

‘Well, well,’ said the latter somewhat mollified, ‘I say nothing; for

two nights have I watched and hunted, and what I have seen, I have

seen.’ With this enigmatical remark he sat up, and regarded his aged

companion with a critical glance. ‘Truly he _is_ old,’ he said to

himself; ‘he cannot count greatly on a division, and having a certain

experience of graves, perchance he may be of service, the hoary old

sinner. Watch with me if you will,’ he snarled aloud.

So bidden, the one-eye joined the two eyes, and with them glared on

steadily and patiently through the dark at the white man’s camp.

* * * * *

‘When you’ve finished supper, Dan, saddle me Hopper’s horse; I’m

going to have a try in the dark at that last lot of buck we saw this

afternoon.’

The speaker, a long, careless-looking Englishman, with blue eyes and

a fair beard, sat kicking his legs over the side of the waggon and

smoking a short pipe with much contentment after his supper.

Dan Vanhiever, a swarthy half-caste, part Kaffir, part Boer, with a

slight limp, rose at once from his recumbent posture with his feet to

the fire, and assisted by a Hottentot boy, with many a hoarse ‘_Yuip,

Schelm!_’ detached and saddled the much-resenting grey, who, with his

companion Waltong, was taking alternate bites at the fodder and the

mules from either side of the leather trough.

‘Good-night, boys! keep the fire going, so that I can find my way back;

so long!’ The Englishman swung himself into the saddle, and taking his

rifle, rode away on the back track of the waggon.

Early to sleep is the rule on the _veldt_, and two of the three

followers left in the camp turned their toes to the fire and slumbered

noisily.

The third, Pietris Vanhiever, sat forward, his hands on his knees, his

swarthy, black-browed face flushed and scowling, a smouldering light in

his eyes;--or was it only the reflection from the blazing fire, on to

which he heaped plentifully the gathered brushwood?

Presently he stood up, glancing stealthily at his companions, his hand

on a long knife in his belt,--a picturesque figure, in red shirt, blue

jean trousers, widening and opening in the seam towards the foot, and

sewn with hair, and the wide-brimmed felt hat of South Africa.

‘Ah, Boss! two nights have I watched, and two days have I fasted, and

now I will make an end,’ he muttered in Dutch between his teeth, and

bent down to see if both men were asleep. Then he crept noiselessly out

of the camp circle, and stooping almost double, ran swiftly as a man

runs who knows the end and purpose of his going.

* * * * *

Silverback turned his sardonic mug towards his ghoul-like neighbour,

and with a twirl of his brush, as much as to say, ‘I told you so,’

stole out of the shadow of the little _kopje_ and followed silently on

the trail. With every hair on his bristly back standing up in unholy

eagerness, with his one eye and his few remaining teeth staring with

greed, the ancient reprobate grunted the magic word ‘Man,’ and hobbled

cautiously after the jackal....

* * * * *

The long Englishman, glancing from side to side, rode carelessly and

slowly along the track left by the broad wheels of the waggon. Once he

unslung the Winchester he carried on his right arm, and fired two or

three shots, but seemingly at random. The track took a sudden turn to

the left, round a slight rise in the ground; once past this he urged

the grey into a canter, turning round in his saddle to see that he was

not followed.

‘Can’t be seen from the waggon here,’ he said to himself; ‘not that

it matters much, though--their manners are disgusting, and assuredly

morals they have none. Covering my trail is much the same as going to

church in the old country for the benefit of the servants,’ he added

with a laugh.

The light from the risen moon was fairly strong, and the track, luckily

free from meer-cat holes, lay straight over the _veldt_ towards a

large broken group of sandy red rocks of curious formation. Their

irregular outlines took weird and mysterious shapes in the half light,

and their happening in the vast flat desolation of the _Karroo_ gave

them the appearance of being the creation of some saturninely fantastic

spirit. The track ran so narrowly between two of the biggest rocks that

a driver could touch them on either side of him with his whip. Out of

the red soil of the rock on the one side grew a giant Cokerbôm tree,

old as the world itself, projected in a stiff uncompromising rigidity

over the track. The Englishman, riding rapidly beneath, reached up and

plucked a spiky, inhospitable leaf.

‘Tough old beggar!’ he soliloquised, sucking his finger, ‘you’ll be

growing here when _I’m_ dead and gone, and all’s blue; in a couple of

thousand years you _may_ be a foot or so taller if you have luck; rum

things, trees--wonder if they have souls?’

He emerged into the open _veldt_ again, and another half hour’s canter

brought him within sight of an isolated piece of civilisation; the

lengthy, low, white buildings of an outlying Boer ostrich-farm, in a

square enclosure, dotted with carefully fostered and unwilling plane

and eucalyptus trees.

‘Steady!’ he muttered, ‘she said last night she’d be at this end--yes,

and that’s the tree. He reined in his horse. ‘There she is, by heaven!

What a blessing to find a woman punctual; but then she isn’t a woman,

only a girl--poor child!’

With a half sigh he swung himself from the saddle, and, leading his

horse, stepped forward to where, shrinking in the shadow of a couple of

trees just on the outside of the enclosure, stood a slip of a girl in a

white dress with a dark cloak thrown over it. Her grey eyes lost their

look of fright, and devoured him, as he fastened his horse to a branch;

with a low cry, almost a moan, of delight, she straightened herself and

sprang into his arms.

‘How long have you been here, _Liebchen mein?_’ He spoke in Africander,

with an occasional German word.

‘O my King, I came as soon as the house was quiet and I could steal

out. I came like a mouse, with my heart in my mouth, and two hours I

have waited and suffered, but now--now--O my Lord and King, I live,

and the darkness is overpast--see, I have brought all that I have, as

thou badest me.’ She lifted a slight bundle wrapped in a light rug,

and placed her other hand timidly, with oh! so light a touch, upon his

beard. ‘Is my Lord’ (she used a word that in Africander means also

husband) ‘pleased with his servant?’

Her face flushed painfully and anxiously. Truth to tell, he did not

look over-pleased--he stood looking pitifully first at the bundle,

then at the slight figure that leaned so lovingly, and yet so timidly,

against him, and the shadow of an almost seriousness came over the

careless blue eyes. He put his hand on the long fair hair, and said

gently:

‘All that my pretty does is good, and shall she not be rewarded?’ He

raised her chin, and kissed her eyes and lips. ‘Yet I am sorry too, for

I have been thinking, and it cannot be to-night--I can’t take you away

to-night, child.’

Her head drooped and she shivered. ‘Not to-night--not to-night? But my

Lord _promised_ me.’

‘Yes, child, I know, but there are many things I didn’t think of that I

_must_ do before we go away. I must go back to Cape Town and put things

straight. Cheer up, sweetheart, ’tis only for a fortnight, or three

weeks at most, and then I will come and take you away for good and all.’

‘I’m afraid--so afraid. If my Lord leaves me, he may forget, he will

see other women, and I am so poor and little--let me come now, my King,

only to be near thee--I won’t ask more, just to be near thee--_let_ me

come.’

‘Dear child, be reasonable--think a minute, think of the waggon. I

can’t leave that, and we should be followed and overtaken at once, and

there’d be the devil to pay. Then think of my men--I don’t want my

little flower amongst rough swine like the Vanhievers.’

‘Vanhiever!’ The girl shrank out of his arms, and stood staring wildly

at him. ‘What Vanhiever? not Pietris--not Pietris?’

‘Ay, Pietris and Dan--what ails you, child?’

‘My God! O my God!’ She sprang back to him, and threw her arms round

his neck, and drew his head down to hers with a gesture of protection.

‘He doesn’t know, does he? Tell me, he doesn’t know?’

‘What _is_ the matter, you funny child? You’re shaking all over! _Who_

doesn’t know, _what_?’

‘He, Pietris. Don’t you know? Didn’t you hear? He was my lover. I was

betrothed to him,--_him_ that I hated, and he swore to kill any one

that came between. Did not my Lord know?’

Her voice fell again, and she spoke in a terrified whisper.

He flung his head back. ‘Not I,’ he said, with a laugh.

‘The hog, to raise his eyes to you! Well, dear, it’s all right, he

knows nothing;’--then, as a thought struck him, he went on with a sort

of relief, ‘but don’t you see, that settles it, it can’t be while he’s

with me--won’t do at all.’

‘No, no, and O, my Love, be careful--don’t come here again. You don’t

know him; he is a devil, and the child of devils.’

She clung to him despairingly.

‘All right, my darling, trust me. I’ll make tracks for Cape Town

to-morrow, and you must promise me to be a good child and keep a brave

heart, and then--think, only two weeks--three at the longest--there,

there.’

She lay resting in his arms, her face buried against his shoulder,

stifling the sobs that _would_ come; then, raising her head, she said

quickly and passionately:

‘Go, my Lord, go, and quickly; thou may’st be missed, and remember,

he is a devil--yes, a _devil_. In three weeks thou wilt return.’ She

looked full in his face. ‘Go, and by this--and this--do not forget thy

servant.’

She put her lips to his and kissed him passionately twice.

‘No, my darling, no.’ There was a husk in his throat, and the careless

gaiety of his voice was shaken. He mounted and rode away, looking back

at the slight figure leaning against the tree, with hands clasped to

her breast in a dumb agony.

After he lost sight of her, he rode for some time silently, his head

drooping; then, as a man will who has been much on the _veldt_, he

began talking to himself disjointedly:

‘Poor little thing!--I don’t know--I don’t know--am I a most awful

brute, or what am I? What am I going to do? Devil only knows--this

is a mess, my boy, whichever way you look at it. She’s a sweet

child, but--my God, for always, and then--my people--and then--the

world--and then--her people, umm--Boers, bah! Brutes! Too many “and

then’s”--Strikes me I’ve been a fool--a dashed fool. Well, can’t be

helped; what’s to be done now, that’s the point?’

The grey tossed up his head and neighed--they were fast nearing the

rocky island in the desert of sand and scrub.

‘What’s to be done? cut and run? My Gad, it’s blackguardly, but _que

voulez vous_? it’s wise.--Go back to her? Poor little thing! I’d like

to, fast enough, I’m fond enough of her now, _but_--always a d----d

“but,” and this time a devil of a d----d “but.”’ The grey stumbled, and

his thoughts were jerked into another train. ‘That swine Pietris! The

impudence of the brute! Leave her--that means--to him--By gum! I can’t

stand that--it’s not on the cards at all--to him, the blackguard! By

George, no! I shall _have_ to go back to her, oh! decidedly I shall

have to go back, and the sooner the better, and, d----n it, I’m glad of

it.’

He urged the tired horse forward with voice and heel, and entered the

narrow passage between the giant rocks.

* * * * *

There was silence where the venerable Cokerbôm tree, from under its

grim red-grey protectors through unnumbered centuries, laid a gnarled

and fantastic shadow across the moonlit track. That little world of

rocks and sand, of scanty brush and tree, held its breath. In the

death-like stillness the spirit of the Pass seemed to be straining to

catch an approaching sound.

A long, deep-drawn, hissing breath, and again that brooding silence,

while the moonlight played for an instant on the silver tongue waiting

in the mesmerised space for its brief repast. Along a knotted, spikey

branch Pietris Vanhiever crouched, grasping in his hand a naked,

long-bladed knife; his sinewy arm, on which the dark swollen veins

stood out like cords, was stretched so as to give full play to a swift

and sudden blow. His teeth bared in hungry expectation, every nerve

strained in eager listening, he waited for the fulfilment of his vow,

and the satisfaction of that passion of jealousy, which, after his two

days of absolute bodily starvation, dominated his half-caste being to

the extinction of every other feeling.

Presently there came within the ken of his hungry spirit a muffled

regular sound drawing rapidly nearer--without doubt the footfall of a

horse on the soft sand. His black eyes gleamed under their heavy brows

with a sombre fire, and gripping the branch more closely, he swung his

arm once, twice, backwards and downwards, then drew it close to the

branch again and waited.

‘Loppety, loppety, loppety’ came the swing of that peculiar

three-legged canter that was steadily and virtuously making for the

Englishman the first stage of that route that should put his little

girl--his own property--for ever out of the reach of such swine as

Pietris Vanhiever.

‘That _he_, forsooth--_he_--good Lord! it’s almost comic--certainly

quite impossible!--Yes, this big _Kopje’s_ the first landmark--shall

see the camp fire from the other side--unless the lazy hogs have let it

out--hallo’....

The silent scream of the thirsty knife backwards and downwards, the

hollow groan, the soft thump of the body on the sand, the frightened

snort and sudden wheeling of the riderless horse, the hiss and dart of

the destroyer on his prey--these things are written in the dumb records

of the giant and changeless tree.

The sound of the grey’s hoofs fleeing back in the direction from whence

he had come had faded away before Pietris raised himself from the body

of his enemy.

Dead, oh! undoubtedly dead; the good knife had gone home just below

the left shoulder--no need of a second blow--a famous place, that. Yet

he was sorry too--it would have been good to have struck again, and

yet again, and--ah! that hated face! should he crush it shapeless with

his heel, staring up at him careless and proud even in death? Should

he? Should he? The Kaffir blood in him surged in waves to his heart,

the desire to mutilate and mangle his enemy smote him sore. Not with

his boot, though--no--no--leave signs--besides, too soft; only _Veldt

schoens_; no--the knife again, blade or handle--all the same. He leant

over and strained at the handle; as he strove to draw it from the

wound, the eyes of the dead man seemed to roll and fix themselves on

his. With a cry of superstitious terror he recoiled, and to his vision,

maddened by passion, weakened by physical exhaustion and starvation,

the blanched lips of the corpse moved in the old smile of cynical

mockery.

A nameless dread seized upon him--the white man in him, that had given

the nerve and passionate resolution for the steadfast fulfilment of his

vow, gave place in a moment to the unreasoning, superstitious savage.

The man’s body was dead--he knew that assuredly--but his spirit was

alive and _there_--that proud and sneering spirit that he could not

slay. He shrank back and crouched in a huddled heap against the rock,

watching with fascinated gaze the movements of his enemy.

Now, to a diseased and distorted vision moonlight plays queer tricks

with things. The tortures of the damned came upon Pietris Vanhiever,

and, greatest torture of all, he was deprived of the power of flight.

It seemed to his terror-ridden brain that the spirit through those eyes

was drawing him slowly--slowly--to the body of his victim, there to

hold him to eternity. Then a fresh horror came upon him, and the devil

of superstition turned his thoughts to the tales crooned to him by his

Kaffir mother, in the half light of the evenings, at the door of the

native hut. The tales of the spirit of the Karroo, the Great Spirit,

that comes to the souls of men whose lives and blood are spent upon

the Karroo’s breast, and gathers them to itself; the legends of the

woe and ruth that befall the living man who looks upon the gathering

of that harvest; and he shook with the cold fear that seized upon, and

paralysed, his limbs and knees. So minutes and hours went by, and the

moon dropped low behind the great rocks, and a black darkness came over

the pass of death, and ever the white upturned face held him through

the blackness in a stupor of terror, hearing nothing, seeing nothing,

save only, in those staring, shining eyes, the spirit of his enemy.

Ah--h--h, what was _that_?--at the end of the Pass, what was

that?--white, silent through the darkness--what was it? _Lieber Gott_,

what was it? Coming, white and terrible, yes, coming to the harvest.

‘_Ah!_’--and screaming aloud in superstitious horror, ‘The spirit of

the Karroo! the spirit of the Karroo!’ he fell back heavily in a dead

swoon....

Hopper’s horse, stumbling in the blackness against something soft lying

athwart the narrow track, bent down his head and sniffed, then with a

snort of terror and disgust wheeled round and vanished for the second

time riderless into the night.

* * * * *

The breath that stirs over the Karroo before the first streak of dawn,

straying into the heart of the great _Kopje_, stirred the soft down on

the tips of Silverback’s ears, and played faintly with the beard on the

dead man’s face.

‘The dawn is at hand, O Lord of the far-smelling nostrils and

steel-like jaws, would it not be well to bite and sup, if but just a

little, for surely this be dead also, he has not moved these two hours.’

‘Try and see,’ snarled the jackal.

The hyæna drew back his grizzled snout with a grunt of disgust and

alarm.

‘The Mother of all hyænas forbid! _I_ touch a whole man, _fresh_,

that also might yet be living! Nay, nay, but do thou, who knowest not

fear, make trial and see if he be really good corpse, and no longer

two-legged demon, and I will withdraw a while and keep good watch at

the hinder end.’

‘Coward!’ grumbled the jackal, watching him shrink to the outside of

the _Kopje_. ‘But as for me,’ he grunted to himself, ‘the day is at

hand, and my stomach calls loudly.’

Licking his long red gums, he stole forward from his lurking place

in the crumbled sand, and set his white fangs in the fleshy part

of Pietris’ leg, not omitting to beat a rapid retreat, in case of

unexpected developments.

The murderer’s death-like swoon was not proof against the meeting of

those steel-like jaws. He groaned uneasily, and rolling round, raised

himself stiffly and slowly to a sitting posture.

‘A thousand devils!’ he muttered, rubbing his leg, from which the blood

flowed freely, ‘what fool’s game is this?’

Then his bewildered eyes in the fitful grey glimmer, that before the

coming of the dawn forced itself into the recesses of the _Kopje_, fell

on the upturned face of the Englishman. With a start Pietris sprang to

his feet, recollection of the events and the horror of the night coming

with a rush to his awakening mind. He staggered, then shrinkingly crept

forward, and, bending over the body of his victim, looked long and

fearfully into the glazed eyes.

‘It is gone!’ he muttered, ‘gone, gathered--and I--woe is me!--ruin

and death--I have seen the harvest;--well, there is no more fear in

that trash,’--he spurned the prostrate body,--‘except for this’--and

stooping, with a great effort he wrenched the knife from the wound. He

plunged it into the ground, and, wiping it carefully, replaced it in

his belt. His eye in stooping caught the fresh spoor of Silverback and

his companion.

‘_Gott sei dank!_’ he muttered, ‘there needs no burial here,’ and his

eye followed the spoor into a cave at the rock base. Once again he

looked at the helpless corpse, and a thought came into his mind. He

rolled from the side of the rocks a large stone, rubbed on it some of

the blood still dripping from his own leg, and placed it close to the

head of the dead man--then: ‘It will be thought he fell, and struck his

head, for soon there will be but bones,’ he said with a grin; then with

a muttered oath, and a hurried look around and back, half of fear and

half of hate, he fled painfully and wearily, but with noiseless steps,

towards where in the far distance the embers of the camp fire still

cast a red glow, and whence an occasional grunt from a half-slumbering

mule was borne towards him on the breath of the dawn. Rapidly and

wearily he fled, in the misty half light, and behind him in the

darkness rose and fell the unearthly yowl--the jackal’s grace before

meat.

‘The feast begins,’ he muttered, and as answering cries came from the

scrub to the right and left of him, ‘Good eating, all of you!--this was

he born for.’

* * * * *

‘Not guilty’ was the verdict; ‘guilty, but not enough evidence,’ the

comment of the Court, for Hopper’s horse, a gaunt silverbacked jackal,

and a Cokerbôm tree were not asked to give testimony.

To this day, if you should chance to take Pietris Vanhiever with you

on a shooting trip, do not over your camp fire discourse on native

superstitions pertaining to the _Karroo_--it is calculated to upset an

otherwise good hunter.

A PRAIRIE OYSTER

‘I drink my love at the fall of night,

As the glow dies out of the Western sky;

I drink to the whirr of the widgeon’s flight,

And the coyote’s yowl, as we drundle by.

‘I drink my love in the prairie morn,

With a “Hey! farewell!” to the falling moon,

To the stars a-point at the flush of dawn,

And the waking cry of the watchful loon.

‘I drink my love in the heat and glare,

With the sun a-flame on the silent lake;

I drink to the hum of the quivering air,

To the beat and throb of the world awake.

‘Here’s a toast to them all! And it’s sung refrain

Is the clink and jar of a westward train.’

We droned along in one of those fits of despondency peculiar to trains

that have an immensity of flat ground in which to pick up their lost

time.

The night was a lovely one, hot, with a bright moon silvering the

prairie, and trying vainly to throw shadows in a shadowless space. In

a meditative mood, I lounged on the platform against the open door of

the smoking car, and it seemed to me that I was taking a lesson in the

comprehension of infinity. A rolling plain as far as the eye could

reach--not a tree--not a house--as limitless and as empty as the sky

itself.

A peculiar feeling of rest and freedom at first possessed me; I was, or

thought I was, beginning to understand many things hitherto unrevealed,

to have a sympathy with Simon Stylites, and an appreciation of

Mahatmaism; but soon a wild desire to project myself indefinitely into

space seized upon me. The moonlight and the vastness were getting into

my brain--a little more, and I might have leapt from the train, and run

until nature or prairie dog holes should assert their influence upon

me;--and then with a saving grace, a couple of coyotes appeared from

behind a hillock, and played with their tails in the moonlight--and the

spell was broken.

I became conscious that my cigar was out, that the mosquitoes were

annoyingly attentive. Better to be a limited being in a smoking car

and not itch, than to be an unlimited being outside it and itch most

‘demnibly.’ I went back into the smoking-room.

Empty, thank heaven--no professionals from the Golden City to talk faro

and rowdyism; no commercials to bombard one with down Eastern brag, the

decline of Winnipeg, or the future of Vancouver and the C. P. R.; no

globe-trotting sportsman to bewail his luck in the Rockies, or abuse

the British Columbian for a liar.

‘Empty, thank God.’

‘Take a light, sir?’ said a soft, rather high pitched, drawling voice

under my left elbow. I jumped, and, to disguise it, smote my cheek,

where a mosquito might have been, but was not.

A man of about forty, a long figure in a sleeping suit, with a lean,

brown, clean-shaven face, courteously bending forward, held towards me

the lighted end of a cigar.

‘Thanks very much, sir; delighted to find I’m not alone.’

‘_Not_ empty, thank God;’ said Mr Dick Denver, in an unmoved voice.

‘My dear sir,’ said I, sitting down next to him, ‘I should’nt have

dreamed of that remark, if I’d seen _you_; but you were so completely

tucked away in that corner, that I’d no idea you were here, and I must

confess I _was_ uncommonly glad not to see our ’Frisco friends, or the

bummers’ (_Anglice_ commercial travellers).

‘Guess you’re right; they are kind of tiring.’

‘What beats me,’ I went on, ‘is the way people like that, who really

have nothing to say, insist upon saying it, and, by Gad, enjoy saying

it, and are certain you enjoy hearing them say it, and set you down as

a condemned fool if you don’t say it yourselves.’

‘Right,’ said Mr Denver; ‘for a man that spreads himself around to be

dull, give me a woman first, and then a bummer. And yet,’ he went on

meditatively, ‘there are some profoundly interesting beetles amongst

that last tribe; and--amongst the other too.’ He sighed, and relapsed

into the silent puffing of his cigar. I had not travelled from Montreal

nearly to Calgary with Mr Denver without discovering that he was a

silent man on all subjects, and on the subject of women a dumb, and

apparently a deaf image. Try him upon the subject of ‘bummers’ the

oyster might open for once, I thought, but without much hope.

‘Did you ever have anything to do with any curious specimen?’ I said

carelessly.

‘Some,’ he said; ‘one mainly--Irishman--he travelled in wine; I guess

he was the smartest coon I ever struck, but no head--or rather too much

head, like a glass of stout.’

‘All Irishmen are like that,’ I said, sententiously and untruthfully;

then, with a cautious insertion of the opener, ‘what was his name?’

‘Kinahan; we called him Kinjan,’ and--more to himself than to

me--‘Jupiter! I was in the tightest kind of a hole with that cuss and

one other.’

‘Really tight?’ said I.

‘Never tighter, except about three times, and those I don’t take much

stock in talking of.’

‘Women?’ I said hardily. He nodded.

‘And others,’ he added, as if he had thereby over-committed himself.

‘It seems to me,’ said I, feeling the opener deepening in the shell,

‘you don’t “take much stock” in talking of anything, considering that

you really have got something to say; tell me this yarn of Kinjan, and

be a benefactor to a poor sleep-forsaken devil.’

Mr Denver chewed the end of his cigar.

‘Bore you world without end,’ he said.

‘Try me,’ I besought.

‘We must have drinks, then.’ He heaved himself up, and called

melodiously over the car platforms.

When the materials had been brought, Mr Denver constructed himself his

favourite pick-me-up, in which raw egg and cayenne pepper formed the

chief ingredients.

‘Let me mix you one,’ he said; ‘guess you won’t weaken on it; it’s

short, but it’s breezy.’

We drank together, and our hearts were opened within us, and we became

as brothers. Through the open door and window the wonderful silver

prairie night came in, and the lamp of the smoking-room flickered and

went out before its breath. We swallowed another prairie oyster each,

and the strings of Mr Dick Denver’s tongue were unloosed, and he spake

plain, if a little through his nose.

And as he spake, the snoring from the sleeping-saloon and the snorting

of the engine became to me as the roaring of the surf upon the

sea-shore, and the rolling prairie as the sands of the desert, and afar

off a lone clump of trees shining white under the moon as the minarets

of a distant Moorish city.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was moving around one time on a cargo steamer,

calculating to go to Madeira or Teneriffe, and see what I could strike

out of those parts. Well, you know, I don’t cotton to “tramps;” they’re

a pretty ordinary lot, and the one I was on that trip was tough, just

tough; from the skipper down to the bacon the whole show was tough.

There were only three passengers on board: myself, this Kinjan, and a

long Britisher, by name Torin--the Hon. Christopher Torin was his full

label.’ Mr Denver paused, and tilted his head back in his seat, and in

this attitude, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, resumed, through a

cloud of smoke.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I guess I am of opinion _that_ Mr Torin was by a

considerable way the coolest and the silentest cuss I ever struck, and

I’ve had experience; but with it, mind you, he was the most reckless

devil that ever let in to make the universe hum. He wasn’t long

out of some mess or other--woman, I heard--and likely enough--poor

beggar!’--and Mr Denver heaved a sigh of smoke that brought a stupefied

mosquito down from the ceiling. Presently he resumed.

‘He was a long, good-looking chap, with a don’t-care look, and one of

those short, fair beards that grow on so many of you Britishers--going

a bit grey--and an extraordinary strong man, thick through, and long

in the limb. He was going down to Madeira, to fetch one of the South

African boats for a shooting trip. We three used to mess together,

you know, and got pretty thick,--Kinjan blowing around and spreading

himself, Torin smoking and drinking, and now and then nodding his head,

and I laying up and figuring them out--not for professional reasons,

but because it’s kind of got to be a habit of mine, and they were two

of the queerest bugs.

“Not alone in their glory,” I thought to myself, but, beyond a grunt of

appreciation, said nothing; the oyster was fairly open now.

‘Well, one evening about four bells,--while we were making down pretty

near in to the Morocco coast, and about a hundred miles top side

of Mogador,--I was leaning over the port rail aft, snuffing up the

phosphorus, and admiring at the right down smartness of the skipper,

shoving in shore on a real reefy coast, when there came an everlasting

jolt, and before I could get in the thin end of a cuss, I guess I

was treading water, and blowing like a grampus, forty yards from a

fast-sinking ship. It wasn’t any good going back--that was clear--she

wouldn’t be above water another five minutes, so I lit out and shoved

for the shore,--a long white streaky line about a quarter of a mile

off, with a blamed current setting me off it. I had to get there, or

bust, and I _got_, but it was stiff going, and when I had made the sand

I was as badly roasted as a leg of pork.

‘I easied a bit, and lay up with my legs in the water, though the tide

running out soon left them high and dry. By and bye, I came round, and

concluded to prospect along that shore, and see if any other wreckage

had come to hand. It was pretty dark, but the sands were easy going,

and there was a moon just getting up. I guess I hadn’t gone above a few

hundred yards when I saw something white, about the height of a man’s

figure, rising out of the sand a short way off. When I got nearer I saw

it _was_ a man, Torin himself, leaning on an oar and looking down at

his legs, which were quite bare.

‘I fetched out a howl of joy, and ran for him. I remember he just

turned his head, and all he said was: “Haven’t got a pair of breeches

to lend a chap, have you?” Seems he’d been in his berth when the ship

struck, and the lower end of his pyjamas had sprung and cut adrift in

swimming, and left him in pale pink above, and another kind of a pale

pink below. Being a tidy sort of a cuss, he was a good piece annoyed,

so I reckoned we had better get right along with the prospecting, and

it might be we should run on that nether end. However, we didn’t,

and presently, as we were a good bit stretched with swimming against

the tide, we lay up under a sand hillock and had considerable sleep.

I guess it might have been an hour or so after dawn, when I was

woke by a curious screechy sort of a noise. As soon as I got my ears

under weigh, I found it panned out something like, “Bedad! ye divils,

begorra, be aisy, bejabbers!”--seemed kind of Irish. I rolled over from

sleeping inland, and, by the holy poker, within fifty yards of where we

had slept, washed up high and dry by the tide, which had turned in the

night and was then about full, was a barr’l with a head on it, and out

of that head was just pouring the thickest kind of Irish. A man could

see that the inside of that barr’l was yearning to have some sort of

consideration paid to it. I roused up Torin, and we went down quietly,

and inspected the cask from behind. It was a very nice barr’l--a butter

barr’l--and I judge about a third full of butter, and may be two-thirds

full of Kinjan; and the funny thing was that the poor coon had been

washed up stuck fast in that barr’l with his head turned out to sea,

so as he couldn’t suspicion we were around, and he was waltzing into

creation with the finest language, and the air was real stiff with

cussing. Well, I guess we laughed some, though we were tarnation glad

to see him,--that is, I laughed, and Torin stood there stroking his

beard, with the nearest approach to a grin I ever saw on him. The

laughing just drove Kinjan mad, and he wrenched round with a mighty

wriggle, and when he saw us he fairly surpassed himself, cussing us up

and down, beginning with our boot laces--which were mighty scarce, by

the way. His remarks were not worth repeating.

‘When he had dried up, owing to a trickle of butter dripping from his

head into his mouth,--he was buttery all over,--Torin said, “Got any

bread with you?” That set him off again, but he toned down mighty

quick, and ended up by saying quite quietly:

‘“Take me out of this, and be d----d to ye, ye leather-headed sons of

bottle-washers!” and then he fainted. So we took him out, and hung him

over the cask, and sluiced water over him, and presently he came to,

ca’m, but pretty yallow.

‘’Pears when the ship struck, he’d been jerked off the poop right into

this butter barr’l, which was standing open and most empty on the lower

deck. When he felt the ship disappearing under him, being an Irishman,

and a genius, with a turn for expurriment,--but I guess mainly because

he couldn’t swim,--he calculated to stay where he was. He grabbed a

bit of wood that came along, and by means of this managed to keep the

barr’l top side up, the sea luckily being as ca’m as a mill-pond. He

said he was first taken out maybe hundred of miles till he could most

smell the Canaries, and then brought in again on the turning tide and

washed up. In his struggles near shore, he’d kicked clean through the

bottom of the cask, and, getting his leg jammed tight through the

hole, was as fast as a tick when we found him. He had a down on butter

afterwards; he never ’peared to go much on it, ’slong as I knew him.’

Over Mr Denver’s face, which had hitherto been as unmoved and

expressionless as carved mahogany, twinkled a fleeting look of joy,

which disappeared with the next puff of his cigar.

‘That was not the most amusing day I _have_ spent,’ he went on,

meditatively; ‘we kept mighty busy looking for fixings and finding

none to speak of; I guess the current must have appropriated all

that was useful in the old tub,--only the most or’nery articles came

along--empty hencoops, and barr’ls, and such like--not a single

tarnation thing to eat or drink. I judge the skipper and most of the

crew turned up their toes, though I heard afterwards that four of

them were saved out of a small boat by a passing vessel. Torin got a

piece of sail-cloth, and made himself a pinafore, which comforted him

some. Kinjan slept most of the day, and when he woke up, he told us

we were fools, and that what we wanted instead of mooning around for

things from the sea, was to go inland and find out if there weren’t any

houses or cities in the vicinity; and then he rolled himself up tight

in the shade of that sand-heap like a darned yellow dormouse, and went

to sleep again; I guess he must have had a most amazing wide-awake

time in that barr’l, I never saw a man sleep so. Torin and I were most

powerfully hungry and thirsty by this, so we went inland a piece and

looked about us for the highest ground we could find,--the country was

as blamed flat, mind you, as this prairie. We found a sand hillock that

rose a bit above the rest of the ground, and Torin made a back and

said “get up;” so I got, and stood on his shoulders, and looked; and

presently out of the distance away to the south-east, it might have

been five or six miles, I could see some white spikey things seeming to

stick up out of the yallow horizon. I told Torin, and he got up on me,

and when he came down--which he did pretty smart, owing to my balance

going wrong--he cursed gently, with his mouth full of sand, and said,

“Minarets, city!”

‘Well, we went back to Kinjan, who was awake, for a wonder, and told

him; and then he said he’d just remembered the whole country round

those parts was in the hands of the rebels, and that if we were seen we

should be killed, so he recommended us to go on hunting along shore,

till we ran across a boat, and get away in that, and he recommended

us particularly to look out for a barr’l of whisky; then he went to

sleep again. Well, we just sat down, and waited for him to get thirsty,

calculating that when that was so, being an Irishman, he would find

us a way out of the fix. And presently he got, and it woke him up,

and after cursing a bit, he sat up quite spry--but a piece yallow

still--and figured out the most beautiful plan of how we would go and

take that city if necessary, and make them provide us with an escort

down to Mogador. Then he said it was no good doing anything till it was

cool and dark. So he lay down again and went to sleep; and after one

more look along shore we lay down alongside and did the same, meaning

to start with the dawn next morning for the city. I reckon we were

played out that evening, and felt real rocky and dispurited.’

Dick Denver’s memories of that thirsty day were here too much for him;

he rose and called again for drinks across the platform. When they had

come, in the hands of a sleepy and coloured individual, he finished a

whisky and soda at a single draught, and resumed.

‘That fellow was infectious, I guess; anyway I slept until a heavy sort

of feeling about my chest woke me, and I found a great hairy nigger

cuss had taken me for an arm-chair. All around us in the moonlight were

a lot of ferocious-looking devils in long robes and turbans, armed to

the teeth. Torin was lying spread-eagled on my right--he didn’t ’pear

to be discommoded--but he spat out a broken tooth, and I heard him

mutter to himself, “You fools, much better have killed me, and have

done with it;” and I judged he was powerfully divided between two sorts

of wish.

‘There was a nigger holding on to each of my arms and legs, so I took

it quietly, and they bound me up like an eternal mummy. Out of the

corner of my eye I could see Kinjan’s face shining round and red in the

middle of a mass of niggers. He rolled his eye at me, and began, “Be

aisy, Dick--Begad! I’ll take tay with ye prisintly, ye hairy haythens!”

Just then one of the niggers stuffed his mouth with sand, so he shut

his head kind of sudden. Then they picketed their horses round us, and

sat on their haunches, and pow-wowed everlastingly.

‘I judged we were in the hands of a band of rebel Moors loafing along

shore in search of wreckage; and a man could see with half an eye it

was a tight place. I wasn’t more than six feet from Kinjan, and I

could tell by the prick of his ears he was understanding the pow-wow;

living as he did at “Gib,” he’d been a lot in the country and _sabed_

the lingo well. Lie low was the only game, and I lay and thunk a lot,

but all the time I felt kind of certain that if we were coming out of

that place, it was Kinjan’s show--and the more so because I knew he was

almighty dry. Their chief seemed a venerable kind of a bug, with a long

white beard and turban, and he did most of the pow-wowing. Presently

they easied off, and after looking us over well, and giving us a kick

or two, set two sentinels, and turned in for sleep. The sentries stood

out about twenty yards; and when the others seemed fixed pretty quiet,

Kinjan gave a gentle roll of his fat carcase towards me, and said, out

of his back teeth (I can’t give his accent, but it was real rich):

“Thanks be to Jasus, one of me knots is a granny. Praise the pigs,

I’ll be out of ut in ten minutes. Tell Torin; and when I give ye the

wink, stand by, and I’ll cut ye loose--then grab what ye can and clear

the camp; whist!” One of the sentries faced round right there and came

towards us; he prodded at me with the butt end of his lance to see that

I couldn’t move when he tickled me, and he rolled Kinjan over with

his foot; we neither of us budged, so he concluded we were fixed, and

mouched back again.

‘I counted the gang; there were fifteen of them. Torin was laying very

low about three yards away, but I judged from a sign he made when the

sentry vamoosed, that he knew things were about to progress. After what

seemed a ’nation long time, Kinjan raised his head, and I saw from

his movements he’d succeeded in freeing his hands; presently he came

rolling gently on to me, and I felt the point of his blamed knife going

in as he cut the thongs; then he handed me the knife, and I rolled on

to Torin and hacked him loose; and just as I got through, one of the

sentries tumbled to it, and came for us like greased lightning. I saw

Kinjan throw out his arm from the ground, and the cuss tripped right

over it on to us, and his spear went into the ground through my coat.

‘Kinjan raised a whoop, and got that spear and ran it through the man

next him--he was a bloodthirsty little cuss. I laid for the sentry’s

pistols--he had two--and drew a very neat bead on the other sentry.

‘Torin he just sat up and purred, and then when the devils began to

come on, he took that fallen sentry by the legs, and got a wiggle

on him, and went for them into the thick; and he swung the poor

devil round and round and cleared that crowd like fury--’peared they

didn’t understand the game. He laid out three of them, and then they

scattered and drew back; I dropped another with the other pistol, and

Kinjan charged right down on the old chief, and bowled him over with

the butt-end of his spear. “’Tis all over, bhoys,” he said, and sat

on the old gentleman; and so it was. When they saw the tail-ends of

their boss waving in the air, the rest of them made tracks. In the

intervals of sticking the business end of his spear into things,

Kinjan had cut loose all their horses but four or five, and there was

a beautiful scrimmage over those sand hillocks, men and horses all

mixed, and travelling in most directions like fury. That was a vūrry

tidy dodge of Torin’s,--maybe it was rough on the sentry, but it was

vūrry impressive--some of the impressions might have been a foot long,

I should judge.’ He paused; the train had stopped with a jerk at a

station, and the engine was blowing off steam with a disturbing energy.

‘Durn the durned thing,’ said Mr Denver; but presently he resumed, as

we droned on again.

‘We--ell,’ and there was an alarming touch of boredom in his tone,

‘after we’d tied the old boy, we had a quiet time, doctoring up those

we’d stretched, as best we could, and figuring out what was to be done.

Kinjan and I palavered over the chances, but Torin didn’t seem to care

what we did, and seemed sort of disgusted with the whole affair. He

stood leaning on a spear by the horses, and once I heard him mutter,

“Damn! shan’t get such a chance again.” I judged he would have let

himself be killed like a sheep, but the fighting instinct was too

strong for him; he was as sulky as he could be, but he did what he was

told, which was the main thing. I was for riding along the coast and

trying to make Mogador, but Kinjan over-persuaded me that a bold course

was the best thing; he wanted to go right there for the city. “We’ve

got the weapons, clothes, horses, and a goide, but we’ve got nothing

to dhrink,” he said, “and ut would be unbecomin’ of us if we lift the

neighbourhood without dhroppin’ a cyard.” He took great pleasure in

dressing us up in clothes taken from the deceased, and fussed around

like a seven-year-old going to a party--the little devil had lots of

sand; he said the great thing was to get _into_ the city, and to do

that we must throw in plenty of style.

‘At last we got rigged out and mounted; I guess we made pretty fair

heathens, all except Kinjan--he was too red and fat. He tied the old

chief’s hands and his feet under his horse, and make him go first. I

came next with a shooting-iron handy, and the other two brought up the

rear. After a stretch, Kinjan rode up alongside the old gentleman, and

began to blandhander to him in his own tongue, and presently he made

me a sign, and then cut the ropes that bound his feet, and the old boy

perked up, and began to spread himself; and by the time we came within

sight of the town, those two were as thick as thieves. I judge Kinjan

would have made a fine poker-player,’ said Mr Denver in parentheses,

with a sigh of regret.

‘It was a light kind of a night, and we could see the walls around

the institution from quite a way off. The old boy was heading us for

the principal gate, and Kinjan turned to me: “The town’s in the hands

of the ribils,” he said; “but, praises to the Almighty! the ould

gintleman’s a big pot amongst thim, and he’s promised to take us to

the Sheikh--or whativer his misbegotten name may be--and git us a pass

and an iscort.” “Bluff!” I said; “’ware snakes.” “Faith! no,” said

he, “’tis a swate old baboo, and ut’s truth he’s telling.” I wasn’t

taking any, but it wouldn’t have done to interfere then, so I shut my

head, and we rode on along the walls. Presently we struck what I judge

was the front door; considerable of a high gate, fortified with iron

spikes, and vūrry strong. There were no signs of hospitality. “I guess

I’ll knock,” I said, and butted the end of my lance against the gate.

A voice cried out from one of the little towers on the walls on each

side in a kind of a sing-song; the old chief sung out something in

answer, and then they had a palaver. I reckon they spoke some strange

lingo, for Kinjan called out to me excitedly, “Can ye understand thim?

May me sowl rust if oi can.” Before I could answer, we heard a sound of

horses tramping, the gate’s hinges turned and it swung open, and there

in front of us, drawn up in line, with spears in rest, was a troop of

most a dozen mounted niggers. “Euchred, be Jasus! The ould schoundhrel!

and the drinks oi promused ’um!” said Kinjan, mournfully; I guess I was

thinking it was about time to throw up the cards and leave, when Torin

trotted his horse past me. “Good-bye, boys,” he said, “_I’m_ going

into the city.” He just waved his hand, clapped his heels into his

horse’s side, and went like a catamount for the troop. They slashed and

speared at him right and left, but they were taken by surprise; and I

guess his release hadn’t been signed, for he went through them like so

much paper. ‘Well, _sir_,’--Mr Denver rolled a cigarette and drew his

breath in with a sharp hiss--‘how it came about I can’t say, but Kinjan

and I, with the old gentleman between us, went through after him--they

were kind of discommoded, I suppose--Torin was a big man, and he left

an aperture. The moment we cleared them, Kinjan put a pistol to the

chief’s head. “Ye son of a herring,” he said, quite forgetting to speak

Moorish, “take us straight to the Sheikh’s palace, or I’ll schatter yer

dhirty brains.” The only words of Moorish were Sheikh and palace, but

they were enough for the old boy; he was as skeered an old cuss as I

ever saw; he ducked from the pistol, touched his forehead, and muttered

something, and we all vamoosed down the rattling stone-paved streets,

like the job lot of horse-thieves we were.

‘The old gentleman was profoundly interested in the business-end

of that shooting-iron, and so we got right there without any more

hanky-panky; you see the streets were just as empty as a nigger’s head,

and we had more than a street’s start of the guard. When we pulled up

sharp in front of a large detached location, we could hear the guard

coming, hell for leather. Kinjan explained to the chief that he had

got to take us to the Sheikh right along, or he would investigate

his interior. Now that old heathen was as swift a man at trapping an

idea as ever I saw; he signed to us to get off our horses, and, with

the end of the pistol working into the small of his back, he called

out loudly in Moorish, and the gate was thrown open for us. ‘Then,’

said Mr Denver, flipping petulantly at his cigarette ash, ‘occurred a

most annoying little affair. We were just passing quietly through the

doorway, and the guard not more than a hundred yards away, coming like

Jerusalem, when Torin pushed me aside, and stepped back to his horse.

“Go on,” he said, “I’ve got another word to say to those fellows.”

He was swinging himself into the saddle, when Kinjan drew a bead on

the horse and brought the whole show to the ground. “Not so fast, ye

suicidin’ divil,” he said, “bear ahand, Dick,” and before Torin could

get his balance we lugged him through the door and shut it. ‘I’ve

often regretted it since; ’twasn’t a neighbourly thing to do,’ said Mr

Denver, thoughtfully, ‘for when a man wants his release real bad, why

in thunder shouldn’t he have it?’ He lounged back in his seat with a

far-away look in his sunken eyes, and I had to jog him with questions

once or twice before he took up the word again.

‘Well, sir, the old chief had vamoosed down the street in the shindy,

and there was only the porter, looking tolerably parti-coloured. When

Torin found himself inside, instead of out, as he’d reckoned to be,

he just folded his arms and shut his head, and I guess neither of us

ever felt like alluding to that incident. Whether the porter took us

for devils or not, I can’t say, but he was tarnation civil, specially

when he felt the end of Kinjan’s pistol. As we passed through a stone

archway into a courtyard, the house began to hum, and we could hear

the guard behind us hammering at the gate we’d just come through.

Kinjan pointed out to the porter in Moorish, and shooting-iron, that

we were going right up to the Sheikh’s bedroom. The unfortunate coon

said he reckoned his head was feeling loose, and kind of wobbly on

his shoulders, but if we would ascend the steps he pointed to, we

would find the Sheikh’s private apartments at the top; we thanked him,

and he said his head felt real loose; but we took him along and went

right there. He played us honest Injun, did that porter, and may be

his woolly top’s on his shoulders yet; but I’m not betting on that,’

drawled Mr Denver, compassionately; and he stopped, turning his head to

gaze out of the window.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘there’s the dawn.’ And sure enough, far away behind

us on the eastern horizon, a pale salmon streak slowly lengthened and

spread; between us and it on the dim prairie lay a still, murky sheet

of water. In front of the train, in its western wayfaring, the young

slopes of the Rockies rose shadowy and faint in the growing light. As

we stepped out on to the car platform the shrill tragic cry of the loon

came floating to us, through the wreathing mist, from across the reedy

pools. We watched the sun rise--and those who are watching the sun rise

on the prairie and the flushing of the early mountain slopes in the

reflected light, are not greatly given to talk. But when it was over, I

turned to Dick Denver. His brown, lean face looked drawn and haggard,

and he shaded his eyes with his hand. Presently he raised his hand to

his hat, and taking it off, stood looking long and steadily at the now

risen sun, and his lips moved. If I hadn’t known him for a hardened

and notorious sinner, I should have said he was muttering a prayer. The

impression was so strong upon me that I waited to speak until he had

replaced his hat.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘Well?’ he replied absently, his eyes still on the far horizon.

‘And then? What happened next? Did you see the Sheikh?’ I lamely jogged

him.

‘What!’ his mind returned unwillingly. ‘You can’t in thunder want to

hear any more after that?’ and he pointed eastwards.

‘I’m very sorry,’ I said, ‘but I most certainly do. I want to hear the

rest of your yarn badly.’

‘Oh! well,’ he said, resignedly, ‘I guess there’s mighty little left to

tell.’

‘The Sheikh,’ I jogged.

‘Oh, yes, the Sheikh,’ he went on in a hopelessly bored tone; ‘we saw

him--he was a vūrry civil cuss, said it was all a mistake, and we were

his dearest friends, and the English were his fathers and his brothers

and all his relations, and I guess--oh, yes, I guess he sent us down to

Mogador with a troop of cavalry, and--that’s all.’ He turned and went

back into the smoking car. The oyster was closing fast.

‘Just one question,’ I hazarded; ‘what became of the other two men

afterwards?’ He drew out a pack of cards, and began shuffling them, and

I had to repeat the question.

‘Oh! I guess Kinjan would be alive,--why certainly he would be; unless

he might have been caught up in a flame of fire, there wouldn’t be any

other kind of a death for him,’ he said with the ghost of a smile.

‘And Torin?’

‘Gone out, I reckon,’ he said impassively.

The curt grimness of this remark jarred upon me, though why it should

have, I don’t know; why expect sentiment from Dick Denver, who lived

from day’s end to day’s end with his life in his hands?

‘In heaven’s name, why indeed?’ I said aloud to myself, as I turned

once again before going through the door to my berth--Dick Denver was

dealing a set of poker hands, and humming softly to himself. It was

broad daylight, and the train still droned along. I was dead tired;

and as I shut the door softly, and turned into my bunk, instead of an

intelligent moral deduction from the story and its teller, all I could

think of was the children’s grace, ‘Thank God for a good dinner.’

ACCORDING TO HIS LIGHTS

‘Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone;

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in your own.’

--Adam Lindsay Gordon.

‘Prevention is better than cure,’ they say. Quite probably; anyway that

must be the reason why our system of imprisonment is so popular, for

whoever knew anyone cured by it?

What the exact state of Eugene Rattray’s moral sentiments were upon the

day that he was released from Rochester Gaol, it would be difficult to

say.

Judging from the following record, I very much doubt whether the term

of his imprisonment had materially affected his view of things.

What was his offence? The law called it by an awkward name having

consequences; these consequences the law applied to a man who had

come back of his own accord from Australia to ‘face the music,’ as he

phrased it. I myself could never see that the offence was more than

a chance effect of circumstances upon a formed character. It seemed

to me futile to punish a chance effect, seeing that it was the formed

character you wanted to get at; but anyway, ‘they done it,’ as Huck

Finn has it.

When I went to see him in Pentonville, where he was known as ‘that

there tall _I_talian with the strong beard, wot carries ’is ’ead so

’igh’ (certainly Eugene’s origin was half Greek, but then it was _all_

Greek to the warders--hence the _I_talian), he talked cheerfully

enough, poor chap, and without any bitterness as to the past. As to the

future, he put it away; he had to ‘face the music,’ and in doing that

he was hard enough put to it to ‘carry ’is ’ead ’igh’ in the present,

without thinking of the future. I suppose he realised to a certain

degree what it would be like to ‘come out,’ but not greatly, for he

told me that he felt exactly like a wrecked man flung on a desert

island, when, on a February morning, with his certificate of discharge

in his pocket, he walked out of Rochester Gaol into the world.

So feeling, he strolled to the end of the street, and there the sense

of having lived his life pressed so strongly upon him that he stood

debating dazedly whether he would not go back, and ask to be taken

in again. He even took some steps in the direction of the prison,

till the absurdity of the idea presented itself to his mind. He shook

himself like a dog, and, pulling up before a shop window, looked long

and critically at his image in the plate-glass. It was a presentable

reflection, tall, straight, well-clothed; he took off his hat, and

replaced it quickly with a shudder; he registered a mental vow not to

remove his gloves for some days; he gazed at his upper lip blankly, it

did not seem to fit in with his surroundings; finally he turned out his

pockets--one pound fifteen shillings and sixpence.

This pantomime he went through mechanically, with the feeling that he

must do something rational, something practical, however trifling, to

save him from thought; and the next moment, the black waves of despair

came rolling in over his flimsy breakwater one after the other, driving

him with head down and huge strides anywhere away from his fellows.

_This_ was the tug; anything that had gone before was child’s play to

_this_. Out into a world that could look, and point and whisper the

words ‘Convicted felon!’ to which there was no answer. It had been

different in there; what were the words but the common property of all?

It was easy enough to hold one’s head up in that dim world; but outside

it, where everything was so clear and bright, where the light was

strong--he cursed the sun; where everyone could and would read, mark,

learn, and inwardly digest his shame; where he was branded like any

poor devil of a sheep on a bush run. He flung himself down in a field,

and--well, there are some things that are best left alone, and the full

tide of a strong man’s humiliation is one of them.

Two hours later, Eugene walked into Rochester Station, his brow knit

and his head thrown back, and cursing his fate silently in his heart.

He took a first single to London.

‘As long as I have a sou,’ he thought, ‘I’ll give it for the only

luxury left me--solitude;’ and he jingled the few remaining coins in

his pocket.

They say an habitual criminal turned loose again upon society goes

back to the scene of his offence--there is also a saying about a

dog. Eugene was not an habitual criminal, he was only a victim of

circumstances, playing on a formed character, yet he experienced

a vague desire to return to the circumstances. He has told me that

on that short but divinely lonely journey he was able to think his

position over rationally. Item--he had no money, but many relations and

friends, possibly, nay probably, willing to help him. Item--he was of

the leisured class, unfitted for, _and_--a large _and_--disqualified

for anything, except the merest manual labour. Item--he was physically

strong, but happily, so he had been told, not unlikely to die at any

minute. Item--he loved the best of everything. Finally, item--he had

no reputation, and therefore no self-respect. He cast about in agony

for any foundation on which to base a self-respect, and he found one,

whether good or bad, who knows? In the circumstances, to the man, the

only one. ‘Face the music; keep your head up; society has dealt you

hard measure, treat it with the contempt with which it will undoubtedly

treat you; if you let go the plank of your pride for but a minute, you

drown.’

Nobody knew that he was free; his discharge had come a month earlier

than expected, for some reason connected with certain services to the

internal economy of the dim world. So far, good. The practical sum of

his reflections came to this: ‘_Let_ no one know, avoid acquaintances,

work in the docks till you have earned a passage to the diggings, and

then’--he thought almost cheerfully of the ‘then.’

He stepped out of the carriage serenely; after all it was only his

friends and acquaintances that mattered, a tiny eddy in the huge

whirlpool of existence; easy enough to keep out of that eddy. He was

always of a sanguine disposition; it had been very hard, I remember, at

school to persuade him that he would infallibly miss his remove. It is

the sanguine people upon whom circumstances play their pranks; luckily

the payment of the piper is not to them so severe a tax as it is to

the others--the pendulum swings very evenly. He lunched, to fortify

the reaction; he lunched well; it was the first meal he had had for

fourteen months--those in the dim world did not count. A cup of coffee

and a cigar completing the fortification, he walked out of the station

and along the crowded streets, enjoying the stir and bustle around him.

Mechanically he moved westwards. Presently he found himself opposite

one of his favourite haunts--he would go in and read the papers. He

stopped at the steps with a jerk, the waves came rolling back on him

again, he gripped his plank and strode on. Some vague idea of seeking

the docks directed his steps eastwards again through the heart and

centre of the hum. He caught himself gazing with an indifferent,

almost a callous eye at places and objects which were as the very

pivot upon which had turned the whirling wheel of circumstances that

now forced him to walk among his fellows a branded outcast. As he

passed the London and Westminster Bank in Lothbury, a grey-haired man,

hurrying from the door, ran against him, and without apology hastened

past westwards. Eugene, in no mood to be jostled, turned angrily, but

something familiar in the man’s back arrested his attention; the close,

humping set of the shoulders, the head set stiffly forward, the walk of

a man who goes straight to his object, and that object, money. Eugene

looked after him undecided, then crossed the street, and hurrying on,

took up a position that enabled him to see the face.

As he thought--his Uncle Stephen; no mistaking the shark’s mouth

between the close-cut white moustache and beard, the light grey eyes

under thick lids, looking neither to the right nor left, mechanically

summing up the price of the man’s coat in front of him.

‘Not a day older, the same amiable Uncle Stephen; you old beast!’

muttered Eugene between his clenched teeth. He followed him, at first

mechanically, then with a steadily growing resolve.

The one man who had had it in his power in the first place to check, in

the second to annul circumstances--and yet not a hand raised, not even

the kink of the crooked, grasping little finger unbent. The words, in

the saw-like voice, dinned in his ears:

‘You’re a black sheep, sir, I’ll do nothing for you.’

To-day he was bidding farewell to his identity and to his former life,

but he meant to have a word with that man first; merely an expression

of opinion. How he hated that back threading the mazes of Cheapside and

Ludgate Hill, stopping every now and then before a picture or a china

shop, ‘bargain’ in its every line.

‘Four miles a day, and seventy,’ thought Eugene disgustedly; ‘he’ll

live to be a hundred.’ The back threaded its way unwearyingly through

the Strand and Charing Cross, and down the now gas-lighted Piccadilly,

towards the Park, unconscious of the tall shadow that, dogging it

grimly, waited for a less crowded thoroughfare. So journeying, they

neared Hyde Park corner, and the back wavered; a slight drizzling rain

had begun to fall.

‘It’s a cab fare against the gloss of that hat,’ thought Eugene; ‘um!

thought so; the fare has it,’ for the back had turned into the Park,

and was being borne swiftly along under an umbrella in the direction of

Kensington. Eugene turned up his coat collar, and crossing over to the

opposite side, drew slightly nearer to the chase. As he intended the

opinion to be a strong one, he preferred to have a fair field and no

favour, and waited his chance quietly, knowing his Uncle’s usual route

would lead him through a sufficiently deserted region.

To speak his mind!--A very empty satisfaction, but still, some sort of

salve to the bitterness of his feelings.

A nursemaid and her charge pressing homewards in the dim distance were

now the only people in sight, and Eugene was on the point of ranging

alongside, when something white lying in the pathway where his Uncle

had just passed caught his eye. Stooping, he picked it up, and stopped

mechanically to examine the contents of the packet. The light was

dim, and he read the heading words on the covering with difficulty:

‘Seabright Trust.’

He rubbed his eyes, and read it again. No mistake about the words:

‘Seabright Trust,’ the Trust of which himself and his respected Uncle

were, or rather had been, the co-trustees; he tore open the covering.

Quite so; documents of importance, notes, gold, dropped, undoubtedly

dropped by his Uncle. A fierce joy leapt up in his heart; he took one

look at the fast disappearing figure, then drew quickly back into the

shelter of some trees, and turned again to the contents of the packet.

His _co_-trustee--well, not exactly, now--possibly it might have been

better for that gentleman, he thought with a bitter sneer, if he were

still so. Over this Trust he had come to grief, over this Trust that

man--his co-trustee--had shown him no mercy, no saving grace, not even

the grace of a two days’ silence. Hard measure, hardly dealt, ‘black

sheep--black sheep’--that was all. Well, things square themselves: over

this Trust the black sheep would be quits; the documents were _most_

important; the bottom of the Serpentine was quite an admirable place

for them.

What construction the law would put upon their disappearance,

really--he reflected with a grim smile--he couldn’t say; his Uncle

would doubtless know; he knew the consequences of everything so

accurately. The memory of that fourteen months in the dim world pressed

like lead upon his brain; the revengeful Southern blood leaped in his

veins, and he ground his teeth and laughed aloud. He hoped it might

be held _criminal_ negligence, the documents were _so_ important; it

was, moreover, quite unfortunate for his co-trustee that it was at all

events indirectly to the latter’s interest that they should cease to

exist. This would be better than speaking his mind. He leapt a paling

and looked about him for stones suitable to weld the canvas covering

and its contents to their new abode. Let him think; there were also

notes and gold, _these_ most certainly, whatever else happened, _that

man_ would have to restore, therefore by taking them he robbed nobody.

‘By God! What I take from him is my due; he has taken everything from

me; shall there be no exchange?’

‘The notes may go,’ he thought, ‘they’re risky. I’ll give society no

more chances, but the gold will give me a fresh start. Uncle Stephen!

Uncle Stephen! this isn’t your day out, it’s mine, and by heaven I’ll

make the most of it.’

Now, in this matter, as he said when he told me of it afterwards, he

acted with conviction; there was no struggle in him as to the right or

the wrong of the thing--it was so plain--no single qualm of hesitation

or regret tempered the seething delight in the coming revenge, only he

was forced to stamp his feet and grind his teeth to get back a clear

power of thinking to his whirling brain.

He filled the bag with scientific care, first taking out the roll

of gold; then tying the strings, he leapt back across the paling.

The nearest way to the Serpentine led him across the path where the

packet had been dropped. As he crossed it he saw a figure approaching

slowly through the dusk, from the direction in which his Uncle had

disappeared; he shrank behind a tree and watched. If it should be that

old shark, and he were seen--well--a blow neatly given secured the

necessary amount of silence, and did no great harm.

‘He’s an old man, and I don’t want to hurt him, but by heaven I won’t

be stopped--.’

The figure advanced very slowly, and Eugene watched it anxiously in the

fast waning light. It seemed to move forwards down the path a few feet

with a jerk, and then to stop suddenly. It was bent almost double, so

that no glimpse of the face could be seen, but a curious, indistinct,

shrill murmur like the ‘goo-gooing’ of a dumb man came down to Eugene’s

ears.

‘What the devil is it?’ he thought, and as if for answer, one

intelligible word ‘Trust’ came in a half-scream through the chill

evening air, and then the ‘goo-gooing’ began again. Suddenly, when only

some few yards away, the figure straightened itself as if animated by a

spring, and Eugene saw his Uncle.

The right arm hung stiffened at his side, the left gesticulated wildly,

pointing down the path and then to his mouth, out of one side of which

came that weird and curious mumbling. Eugene shuddered; whatever else,

there could be no _fear_ of this pitiable being--he stepped from behind

the tree and moved forward.

The figure continued to advance, dragging itself painfully along--as

it seemed the left leg alone moving--and the eyes fixed on Eugene’s

advancing form had an intense look of agonised appeal. There was no

recognition in them, only an unasked question; the mouth mumbled, the

man’s left hand alternately pointed down the path, and clutched the

breast of his overcoat. It seemed to Eugene that the piteous searching

in the eyes must pierce the covering which his buttoned coat formed

over the lost bag, and with an involuntary movement he threw it open.

The figure staggered, and with an inarticulate cry thrust out its hand

for the bag. Eugene drew back--he must have time to think. His Uncle,

a dim look of recognition struggling through the film of agonised

entreaty, crouched almost double again before him. The drizzling mist

shrouded the rest of the world, and these two figures stood alone.

A thousand thoughts and feelings surged in the nephew’s mind. Gratified

revenge, reluctant pity, and a growing railing at the fates. In a whirl

of disgust he found that the thing he had in his heart to do was no

longer in his power. Why had he lingered that minute to gloat over

his revenge? Why turned his head as he was taking his road _to_ that

revenge? A minute sooner, this miserable, crouching, smitten figure,

with its dumb, despairing look, and its dumb, despairing voice, would

not have been cringing in supplication before him. What had befallen

the man, hale a few minutes before, did not trouble him; he was

bitterly raging at the failure of his revenge, and disgusted with the

stroke of fate which had caused it, tearing from him his fresh start in

life.

‘If I could,’--he swung the bag doubtfully in his hand, and felt the

gold in his pocket; ‘_if_ I only could,--but I can’t, and there’s an

end of it. The old brute--he’s down, and I _can’t_ kick him.’ All

feeling of pity for the miserable object before him was swallowed up in

an amazing regret. He even cursed the training which caused him to feel

the impossibility of that kick.

‘A good many of my late friends would have been on in this piece,’ he

thought bitterly, ‘and glad of the chance.’

He plucked the bag from under his coat, and opening it, dropped the

stones out one by one.

‘I suppose this’ll have to go back too,’ he muttered, and replaced the

gold, with a sigh of disgust. The stricken man’s eyes gleamed, and he

put out his left hand feebly. Eugene put the bag into it, but the grasp

was uncertain, and it fell again to the ground. The shock of seemingly

losing it a second time was too much for the disordered intellect,

and in a dead swoon, Stephen Rattray fell stiffly forward on to his

nephew’s shoulder.

Eugene laid him on the ground, carefully buttoned the packet into the

inner pocket of his Uncle’s coat, and then drew himself away to think.

He couldn’t get a clear grasp of things with that hated figure touching

his. Leaning apart against a tree, and looking down at the helpless

form, he dealt grimly and despitefully in his heart with the feeling

that troubled him; let it stand for want of better phrasing at ‘common

humanity.’ He railed at it; he even took some steps of retreat; he

reasoned with himself.

This man, when a nod of the head might have saved, had reduced him to

the level of the brute beasts--what duty then lay upon him to act but

upon that level? This man lay there, dependent on him for a chance

perhaps of further life. Yes, but there had been a bitter hour, when

their positions had been reversed, and the closing of that hour, with

its depths of horror and degradation, its blotting out of all hope and

life, was vividly before him. This, too, was an old man, at the end

of things, and he had been a young man at the beginning--that was but

an aggravation. As things now were he had done him no wrong, taken no

revenge; the packet was found; it was even himself that had restored

it: the stroke had come through a visitation of the fates, through no

dealing of his.

He searched, and he failed to see any reason why he should lift a

finger to give back life to this hulk. It was adding insult to injury

indeed to expect him to carry his enemy perhaps a mile in search of

help. Leave him here?--and get help?--he would certainly die before it

came. No, either all or nothing; and it should be, by heaven, _nothing_!

He turned on his heel,--and straightway it came upon him that these

things were not done. Just as impossible as kicking a fellow on the

ground, or shooting an unarmed man.

‘By Gad! the other thing’s got to be done! When I’ve lived a few years

in Borneo or some such place, I shall know better how to deal with

you, my friend; in the meantime--’ he lifted him, and with wearily slow

steps bore him disgustedly in the direction of the Alexandria Gate.

Now that he had begun, he meant to see it through; and with many a

halt, for his Uncle was a heavy man, he got him through the fast

closing fog to the crossing of Rotten Row.

‘I don’t want any fuss,’ he thought, as he put his burden down and

paused for breath; ‘can’t afford to have it advertised that I played

the good Samaritan. Evening paper paragraphs--“The Admirable Convict,”

“Rattray Repents,” “Remarkable occurrence in connection with a

scandal in high life, showing the beneficial influences of our prison

system--Nephew and Uncle”--Good Lord!’

He wiped his brow, and propping his Uncle’s motionless form against a

rail, went in search of a cab. He found a four-wheeler at the gate of

the Park, and drove back in it.

‘Now, my friend, bear a hand,’ he said to the driver; ‘this gentleman’s

had a stroke; we must get him home at once. Double fare, and look

sharp--it’s the only chance.’ He gave the astonished man the address,

and between them they lifted the helpless form into the cab.

When they drew up at the house, Eugene leapt out and rang the bell.

‘Hope it’s Ashton,’ he thought. The old butler, a man who had known him

from his youth up, opened the door, and recoiled in blank astonishment

when he saw who was there.

‘Master Eugene!’ he said.

‘All right, Ashton, don’t make a row. Look here, my Uncle’s had a

stroke; he’s in that cab; I came across him in the Park walking home;

better get him in-doors at once. And look here, Ashton,’ he lifted his

hat significantly, and said grimly, ‘you know all about me, I suppose;

well, see that my name doesn’t come out in this business.’

He held out his hand to the old man.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said the butler, taking it, ‘always proud to take

your hand, sir, believe me. I’ll make it all right,--say I picked him

up myself, if necessary; you can depend on me, sir.’

‘Thank you, Ashton,’ said Eugene; ‘and look here, give that chap a

sovereign,’ he pointed to the cabman waiting at the door, ‘and lend me

another, there’s a good fellow.’

The butler pulled two sovereigns out of his pocket.

‘Proud to be of any use to you, sir,’ he said.

Eugene, with a choke in his throat, helped them carry his Uncle into

the house; and as the door closed, turned to the cabman.

‘You haven’t earned that sovereign yet,’ he said, handing him one,

‘it’s all right, but you’ve got to shut your head--d’ye see? Now go on

to the docks, and drive like Hell.’

He sat back in the cab that rattled eastwards through the fog, and he

ground his teeth.

‘That’s over; and the Lord do so to me, and more also, if I’d do it

again,’ he said between them; and with those words, Eugene Rattray

disappeared from among his fellows, and the place thereof knew him no

more.

THE DEMI-GODS

[Music]

PROLOGUE

Into the garden of rest had come trouble and pain, for the end was at

hand.

He sat in the sun, on the stone wall that divided the garden from the

great lake, and swung his legs, silently gazing with his soul in his

eyes, and SHE, in a long wicker chair, sideways to him, shaded her face

with her hand and looked down. The soul went out of him, and hovering

over the waving hair, and the dimple at the corner of the drooping

mouth, peeped through the fingers of the dear hand at its true and only

resting places--those brown pools over whose depths lay the clouding

shadow of the morrow.

_But_ another twenty-four hours, and then back to prison--to prison--to

prison. The thought beat through both hearts, with the level monotony

of a tolling for the dead, for the glorious dead, for the month past of

a sweet and lovely life together in the garden of rest.

To-morrow was the ending of all life and light, bringing with it for

her a separation from the true self, a return behind the triumphant

car of a mocking and over-riding fate, to a caged existence, a loathed

companionship, a weary, weary beating of the breast against the bars;

for him--a legion of mind-devils, torturing, twisting, lying in wait at

every turn and corner of life, ever alert and ever cruel, and a dreary,

craving ache.

To-morrow was the farewell of their love, perhaps till the grave--who

knows? their great and burning love, that had given all and taken

all, that had cared with an exceeding tenderness for every thought

and movement, that was old, yet had not tired, that had known and

understood, having no depths left to sound, no heights to win; that

tree which, planted in the moist, cool earth of comradeship, had

grown steadily and grandly till it rejoiced in the sweet foliage of a

perfect trust, and the glorious flowers of passion. The day looked on,

and laughed in slanting rays of heat and light, and presently on a

snow-cooled breeze wafted between two towering heights came a chime of

far-off Italian bells.

She looked up into his face, and smiled.

‘Shall I sing my Love a little song?’ she said. And as he knelt beside

her, she held his head in her two hands, and sang shyly into his ear,

in time to the drifting cadence.

* * * * *

Out of his eyes fled hunger and pain, and he leaned his forehead on

her breast, and so they drank of the merciful well of peace. The chime

floated faintly past them with a note of invitation.

* * * * *

‘The bells have got into my head, darling. I’m mad, I think,--I can’t

feel anything--Child of mine, come for a drive, and find the bells;

we’ll get drunk on sun, and air, and sky, and mountains, and--kisses,

and forget there is a to-morrow and an ending.’

He stood up straight and strong, and drew her to him.

So they waited, and the chime floated once more past, while they looked

life again into each other’s eyes.

Then, with his arm around her shoulder, and hers drawn round his waist,

they walked through the garden of rest to the gate where the angel of

Publicity threatened such proceeding with a flaming and respectable

sword.

* * * * *

_The Meditations of Pietro._

‘The sun is very yellow and hot here by the side of the water, and the

flies are like to a hundred devils on my good Nicolas--Ugh! Pighead,

what good to shake thy bell! It is not good sitting here, for I have

only money for one--two--three--yes, for four drinkings, in my pouch,

and the last a little one, and the day is hot. Eleven of the clock,

for there begins the morning tolling from San Felice. Where be these

fools of strangers? There be many things to see, also my chariot is

very strong, and beautiful exceedingly, and my good grey Nicolas, is he

not a most willing puller, being still young and lusty? Yet, forsooth,

because it is the Sabbath, they will not stir forth--these fools--but

sit at home in sad garments, and eat, thinking to make the day holy.

‘Ai! What are these? Can it be they are coming? Ai--Ai--_si signore,

si, si, signora, si, si, si.... This_ is several drinkings; moreover

they appear to be English. A very curious peoples, the English--for

some reason known only of God they speak to me in French, as if I,

Pietro, understood French, forsooth. However, it is all the same thing;

the _he_ waves his hat to the West, and says--“_San Felice_;”--now San

Felice is in the South;--the _she_ says “_Campenella_,” and does not

wave anythings,--decidedly she is the more intelligent; and I, Pietro,

the most intelligent of all, for I nod my top once, twice, three times

strongly, and say “San Felice, si, si,” and beat my grey, and lo! we

are off, and they have forgotten to bargain. Ho! A very curious peoples!

‘And yet, now that I regard, perhaps I have done to the English an

injustice. _These_ are no doubt mad, they have a very queer look, their

eyes are all shiny, and they sit very close together, though even I,

Pietro, am hot, sitting up here alone on the head of my chariot.

‘Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling, sighs my old friend the bell, as Nicolas

shakes his ears at the road; _si, si, amico_, it is long, and it is

white, and--pouff--dusty, and in places even steep.

‘Yes, now I know for a certainty they are mad; it is not for them the

road either too long or too steep or too dusty; they only sit like

coo-doves, and the _he_ sighs, and every now and then he starts upon

his feet, greatly endangering his neck, and points with his fist, and

says, “Look, Carissima, how grand, how _beaut_iful!”

‘I think he talks foolishness, for it is always the same whether we

come to a pool or a mountain, or even where the trees grow thickly,

or there are flowers on the ground. And then what does the _she_ but

uprise also, ah! She is “bella,” the _she_! And puts her hand on his

shoulder, ah! The lucky shoulder! and before she has looked, Nicolas

gives a big pull so that both sit down on a sudden, upon their ends,

and laugh greatly.

‘They laugh always, these--when they do not sigh, and when they sigh

sometimes there comes also to my ears another sound, very gentle, like

the end of a good drinking. Can they already, then, be thirsty? Why,

even I, Pietro, am not yet thirsty, but soon shall be.

‘Yet no, when I turn, saying ‘_Il Signore--ha parlato_?’’ is he not

always tying on his boot--very curious must be the boots of the

English--and she hooking her glove, and both laughing, yes, always

laughing? nor can I see any bottle.

‘Overhead the sky is quite blue, and the sun very yellow, and there be

no shade, but the _he_ throws off his hat, and says, “Grand, glorious,

’twill make to grow the hair, Carissima;” this he says many times, so

that I learn it by stomach, and the _she_ strokes his top, where the

hairs did no longer kiss one another, and purrs--all these things I

know through the back of my hat where the brim is broad, and a man

half-turning can see with the corner of his eyeball.

‘Now, in a good time we come to where the valley runs away down from

the road, and Nicolas, as is the habit of this pighead, when the sun is

hot even to the winking of his master’s eye, walks over till he hangs

above the valley by the hairs of his tail and the strength of my right

arms, and presently with much thanking of God and cursings of that

pighead, I pull him up again; at the which what does the _he_ but cast

himself back laughing, and say, “Do it again, do it again,” which I am

supposing is of great wit, for the _she_ laughs also greatly.

‘Do they think, perchance, that I, Pietro, cannot drive? Chickenheads!

it is now of a surety they are mad--I, Pietro, who am a celebration! I

too laugh, and so we laugh all three, until we come to where there is

good drinking.

‘“_Goutez un petit peu_,” I speak to them in that fool’s tongue--this

much knowing, and that quite enough.

‘“_Si, si_,” they say, and nod their tops, yet do not descend.

Certainly they have drunk upon the voyage, for the day is hot. Well,

well, I, Pietro, am thirsty and so inwards; Nicolas also will drink,

but not of the Asti that bubbles sweet and yellow. Ai! Good! Very good

drinking; is it not so, my pighead? And what of these? they have not

drunk, yet are their eyes shinier than even before, and surely they are

_very_ near together.

‘So we go down into the valley from whence on both hands the big hills

roll up their limbs, and I, coming to that place where it is of the

custom to show where the man from the market was bereft of his goods,

and where his body was cut off, turn on my head, and tell them in

usual words the story.

‘Chickenheads! never yet did any understand, and my Italian is very

pure, very--always in great estimation.

‘These only say, “_Si, si!_” and presently many times: “How far San

Felice? How far? How far?” What shall this mean? I know not, yet surely

I must to tell them--being of great intelligence, so I stop my Nicolas

and speak of the country and how many peoples live in the town, and

the name of the mayor; and then, for greater satisfaction of these,

because they will pay largely--turning a little to think the better,

and outspit once, twice, very skilfully on two hairs of Nicolas’

back-tail--again to them, concerning the other road, and the number of

horses my master has, and how I, Pietro, have a wife (whom God plant!)

and several offsprings.

‘But these only laugh, and point in many ways, having no intelligence,

and say, “How far, how far? More?”

‘Chickenheads! and do? What to do? But nod my top, and on again where

the brown water runs swiftly down from the hills towards its Mother,

the great blue lake. Ai--so it runs busily from the hills where the

snow cloak lies shining in the sun. And now these are quiet, quiet as

the deep Mother herself, or as the tall Father with his white head.

Perhaps they are frightened; well, _I_ was frightened once; that was

many years ago, being but a whipperling; for the Mother is very blue

and still and deep, and the Father is of a giantness strong as the

death itself.

‘So the little brown Son runs over between them, and carries messages

and greeting.

‘Yet not always, for in the great heat comes the Fiery One and licks

him up for a space, and tears off the Father’s white hairs that get

thinner and thinner with every golden dawning. Surely the _he_ with the

hat, upon which he sits, should regard and understand of this, taking

warning lest the same befall; yet perchance there is a difference, his

hair being of a fair mud, as is that of all the English.

‘Now the _she_ is “bella,” with many hairs running in billows like

waves on the shore of the lake, only not white-topped, and her face is

like unto a violet and a star. Yet also is she like unto something that

springs swiftly and far, or unto that which waves its wings in the

sunlight, making many colours, and floats past like the twinkling of an

eyebrow. Also have I seen in shops figures of porcelain of a delicate

transparence, so that a man can look at things through them, that are

greatly like her; so it seems also the _he_ finds her, for whenever

she points and bids him to be looking at the things around, he regards

straightly and without winking at her eyeballs, or--so often as _I_ am

observing at her _eyelashes_, which she then, it seems, wears long upon

her cheeks.

‘Ai! I have seen one or two fairer amongst my own race; but never

amongst these strangers, wearing nets on their faces, with blue

looking-glasses for their eyes, and very thick garments of a sad colour.

‘And so on and on past the great Mother, Nicolas drawing with a good

stomach to where rises the long hill to San Felice, and ever comes

clearer the great chime, it being now the second pulling of it.

‘Then the _he_--mad, as I have said--descends and marches with me,

patting my Nicolas and saying, “Good, good, how old?” With that he

regards his teeth. Now I know well what I must be saying, when one of

these regards where once were Nicolas’ teeth, and says, “How old?”

For I am of great intelligence and have learnt it by stomach,--so

“_Eightee_” I say. “What?” says the _he_, and his eyes grow of a

roundness, then he laughs and wheels his toes to the she, and says

something of a great wit, and both laugh again. Then a curious thing

passes, for the she says, “Ah! Eight_ine_! but _impossible_!” and like

to a shot gun rolls from the chariot moving, and both run and look at

Nicolas’ knees, and again at his teeth. Do they think then that he eats

his knees?

‘Then again both say Eightine! but _impossible_! and I say Eightine,

_si, si_! and nod myself so that they shall not think small of Nicolas,

or that he is too young a horse and fiery, as I was of a fear they

might. Yet they wag their tops very often and as I think, sadly, and

the _she_ looks at Nicolas softly and timidly, and smites him very

gently, and they walk up all that great hill--both--even “_la bella_.”

‘But then it is all same thing, they are English and mad; who knows

what is in them?

‘Now am I thirsty again; but at the end we have become in San Felice,

and after much questioning of the peoples walking in the streets--who

know nothing--I find at the end the place where they wish to drink,

the bells being quite at hand, and very full of noise.

‘So I leave them for mine own drinking. Yet they do not hurry to their

drinking, but go slowly, and as it were without eagerness, looking at

each other, and the “bella’s” eyes shine like two stars in a heaven of

violets.

‘What did they, while for three hours I and Nicolas ate bravely and

drank much, is of a supposition. But now we are again to returning

ready, and see! they come, the “bella” with many flowers in her hands;

and still their eyes shine, and their noses smell the flowers, and they

say, “_Allez, Pietro, allez!_”

‘So, with a crackling of the whip-stick, we roll through the streets,

and down to the other road leading through the valley of the fair view

to the bridge that cuts in two the great Mother, and so home again. Now

I have a liking for this road, and so has Nicolas; it is of a gentle

sloping, with many spots where he that is intelligent can ‘_goutez un

peu_,’ and so we go pleasantly.

‘The Fiery One is hiding him behind the tall Father and his brethren,

and there comes over the earth a great sweet colour as of the sparkling

Asti in this my glass, and all things drink deeply of the flushing

light--even those lying back with eyes very serene, and arms invisible

cunningly--and I, Pietro, even more deeply, for have I not also of the

light inside me?

‘Only Nicolas goes like the pighead he is, without reason, now on one

side, now on the other, and jumps as does the flea when you catch his

tail.

‘Well--well--he is a sure beast, and the way is very long--and

safe--and aww--drowsy, and the light has got into my eyes, and also, I

think a little into my top--aw--w--w--well, I _will_ perchance sleep a

little--’tis a sure--beast--and the way--a--w--w....’

EPILOGUE.

The champagne light faded slowly from the snow-crowned tops, and from

the green and grey sides of the hills, and the violet shadows crept on

over the great blue lake below; the shining in _her_ eyes was fading

too, giving place to a look of great rest and faith, and _his_ face

turned to hers was the face of a man gazing at the Holy Grail.

So, obliviously, unconsciously onwards, the cup of a perfect joy full

to overflowing.

The carriage rolled slowly along the white and dusty road by the

lake-side, the tired horse picking his own way, the pleasantly drunken

Pietro heavily asleep on his box.

In the fast gathering dusk they came to the iron railway bridge that

carved the lake into two halves. The carriage road and railway track

lay parallel across the bridge, divided only by a high partition of

iron-work running its entire length. The gates of each lay open, and a

level crossing tempted the unguided horse past the gate of the road on

to the lines of the railway.

Perhaps some sting of a dormant yet uneasy conscience, or the jolt of

the wheel, caused his slumbering driver to awaken suddenly; the reins,

jerked sharply and mechanically to the left, brought the horse’s head

round into and through the wrong gate. In a minute the carriage was

being dragged along the single railway track with no room to turn.

A frightened cry from the driver, and the grey, terrified by the

jerking at his mouth, and the unwonted nature of the road, plunged

forward wildly. Losing his balance, Pietro fell over to the side of the

line with a groan of terror, and crawled, shrinking, to an iron girder

at the side, to which he clung with trembling arms.

‘Sit still, my darling, it’s a fair course and no favour; can’t go

wrong, Sweet, there isn’t room to upset; we shall be all right at the

end.’

She gave a little shiver and clasped her hands tightly round his neck.

‘Courage, sweetheart; we’ve laughed the day through, and we’ll laugh it

through to the finish; is it not so, O my love?’

The darkness closed in, the horse plunged and snorted in his mad

career, the carriage rocked and rattled fearfully. He strained

her close to him with a laugh, looking with eyes of love into her

face,--and the same sweet look of rest and faith was upon it.

‘Hast thou been happy all this long day, child?’ he said.

‘Ay--ah! How happy!! There is no telling.’

Then suddenly her face changed; over it closed the grim shadow of

the morning, and even in that moment of fear and excitement a black

reaction was upon her. With a low moan she whispered:

‘My own, I want to die now, _now_, with thee in my arms, thy face to

me, thy lips to mine, and no one to see but the sky and the lake; I

can’t face to-morrow and the ending--I can’t--I can’t!’

The passionate whisper rose into a cry, the breathing choked in a sob,

and the calm of her face broke, and vanished suddenly, as the calm of

the great lake breaks and vanishes before the icy blast sweeping down

the mountain gully.

For answer he held her closer and closer in his arms.

‘Gold help me! neither can I, thy wish is mine.’...

From out of the darkness in front, swelling gradually above the

rattling of the carriage and the snorting of the horse, came a

muttering sound.

‘The gods are merciful,’ he said; ‘a train’s on us; it’s all

over--there will be _no_ ending.’

Nearer and nearer came the terrible roar, stunning all the faculties

of heart and brain, and still the maddened horse sprang forward to his

doom.

With a supreme effort HE tore himself free from the bond of numbness

and cried to HER fast in his arms; and through her eyes in that one

last look her soul crept to his.

‘Demi-gods to-day! better this ending than to-morrow’s;--if there be

a future life, darling, it is ours together--body to body, soul to

soul.... One kiss, my darling--closer, closer--ah----’

With a stagger the greedy roar fled past into the purple night, its

hungering stilled--and from over the shadowy lake under the watchful

and silent stars a requiem chime came floating:

[Music]

J. Miller & Son, Printers, Edinburgh.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious punctuation errors and omissions have been fixed.

Page 117: “annyway there will” changed to “anyway there will”

Page 157: “in the camp turne” changed to “in the camp turned”

Page 209: “Oue into a world” changed to “Out into a world”