MY DEAR AUNT ERNIE,--At last I have a chance of sending you a
letter--and, this time at any rate, you won't have to complain about
my sending you no news. I'll promise you that, before I begin, and you
needn't get scared either, because it's all good. I've been awfully
lucky, and all because that fellow Cathcart turned out such a funk and
a bounder. It's the oddest thing in the world too, that old Cis should
have written me to pick up all the news I could about Scarlett Trent and
send it to you. Why, he's within a few feet of me at this moment, and
I've been seeing him continually ever since I came here. But there, I'll
try and begin at the beginning.
“You know Cathcart got the post of Consulting Surveyor and Engineer to
the Bekwando Syndicate, and he was head man at our London place. Well,
they sent me from Capetown to be junior to him, and a jolly good move
for me too. I never did see anything in Cathcart! He's a lazy sort of
chap, hates work, and I guess he only got the job because his uncle had
got a lot of shares in the business. It seems he never wanted to come,
hates any place except London, which accounts for a good deal.
“All the time when we were waiting, he wasn't a bit keen and kept on
rotting about the good times he might have been having in London, and
what a fearful country we were stranded in, till he almost gave me the
blues, and if there hadn't been some jolly good shooting and a few nice
chaps up at the Fort, I should have been miserable. As it was, I left
him to himself a good deal, and he didn't like that either. I think
Attra was a jolly place, and the landing in surf boats was no end of
fun. Cathcart got beastly wet, and you should have seen what a stew he
was in because he'd put on a beautiful white suit and it got spoilt.
Well, things weren't very lively at Attra at first, I'm bound to admit.
No one seemed to know much about the Bekwando Land Company, and the
country that way was very rough. However, we got sent out at last, and
Cathcart, he simply scoffed at the whole thing from the first. There
was no proper labour, not half enough machinery, and none of the right
sort--and the gradients and country between Bekwando and the sea were
awful. Cathcart made a few reports and we did nothing but kick our heels
about until HE came. You'll see I've written that in big letters, and
I tell you if ever a man deserved to have his name written in capitals
Scarlett Trent does, and the oddest part of it is he knows you, and he
was awfully decent to me all the time.
“Well, out he went prospecting, before he'd been in the country
twenty-four hours, and he came back quite cheerful. Then he spoke to
Cathcart about starting work, and Cathcart was a perfect beast. He as
good as told him that he'd come out under false pretences, that the
whole affair was a swindle and that the road could not be made. Trent
didn't hesitate, I can tell you. There were no arguments or promises
with him. He chucked Cathcart on the spot, turned him out of the place,
and swore he'd make the road himself. I asked if I might stop, and I
think he was glad, anyhow we've been ever such pals ever since, and I
never expect to have such a time again as long as I live! But do you
know, Auntie, we've about made that road. When I see what we've done,
sometimes I can't believe it. I only wish some of the bigwigs who've
never been out of an office could see it. I know I'll hate to come away.
“You'd never believe the time we had--leaving out the fighting, which I
am coming to by and by. We were beastly short of all sorts of machinery
and our labour was awful. We had scarcely any at first, but Trent found
'em somehow, Kru boys and native Zulus and broken-down Europeans--any
one who could hold a pick. More came every day, and we simply cut our
way through the country. I think I was pretty useful, for you see I was
the only chap there who knew even a bit about engineering or practical
surveying, and I'd sit up all night lots of times working the thing out.
We had a missionary came over the first Sunday, and wanted to preach,
but Trent stopped him. 'We've got to work here,' he said, 'and Sunday
or no Sunday I can't let my men stop to listen to you in the cool of the
day. If you want to preach, come and take a pick now, and preach when
they're resting,' and he did and worked well too, and afterwards when we
had to knock off, he preached, and Trent took the chair and made 'em all
listen. Well, when we got a bit inland we had the natives to deal with,
and if you ask me I believe that's one reason Cathcart hated the whole
thing so. He's a beastly coward I think, and he told me once he'd never
let off a revolver in his life. Well, they tried to surprise us one
night, but Trent was up himself watching, and I tell you we did give 'em
beans. Great, ugly-looking, black chaps they were. Aunt Ernie, I shall
never forget how I felt when I saw them come creeping through the long,
rough grass with their beastly spears all poised ready to throw. And now
for my own special adventure. Won't you shiver when you read this! I
was taken prisoner by one of those chaps, carried off to their beastly
village and very nearly murdered by a chap who seemed to be a cross
between an executioner and a high-priest, and who kept dancing round me,
singing a lot of rot and pointing a knife at me. You see, I was right
on the outside of the fighting and I got a knock on the head with the
butt-end of a spear, and was a bit silly for a moment, and a great chap,
who'd seen me near Trent and guessed I was somebody, picked me up as
though I'd been a baby and carried me off. Of course I kicked up no
end of a row as soon as I came to, but what with the firing and the
screeching no one heard me, and Trent said it was half an hour before
he missed me and an hour before they started in pursuit. Anyhow, there
I was, about morning-time when you were thinking of having your cup of
tea, trussed up like a fowl in the middle of the village, and all the
natives, beastly creatures, promenading round me and making faces and
bawling out things--oh, it was beastly I can tell you! Then just as they
seemed to have made up their mind to kill me, up strode Scarlett Trent
alone, if you please, and he walked up to the whole lot of 'em as bold
as brass. He'd got a long way ahead of the rest and thought they meant
mischief, so he wouldn't wait for the others but faced a hundred of them
with a revolver in his hand, and I can tell you things were lively
then. I'd never be able to describe the next few minutes--one man Trent
knocked down with his fist, and you could hear his skull crack, then he
shot the chap who had been threatening me, and cut my bonds, and then
they tried to resist us, and I thought it was all over. They were
horribly afraid of Trent though, and while they were closing round us
the others came up and the natives chucked it at once. They used to be
a very brave race, but since they were able to get rum for their timber
and ivory, they're a lazy and drunken lot. Well, I must tell you what
Trent did then. He went to the priest's house where the gods were
kept--such a beastly hole--and he burned the place before the eyes of
all the natives. I believe they thought every moment that we should be
struck dead, and they stood round in a ring, making an awful row, but
they never dared interfere. He burnt the place to the ground, and then
what do you think he did? From the King downward he made every Jack one
of them come and work on his road. You'll never believe it, but it's
perfectly true. They looked upon him as their conqueror, and they came
like lambs when he ordered it. They think they're slaves you know, and
don't understand their pay, but they get it every week and same as all
the other labourers--and oh, Aunt Ernie, you should see the King work
with a pickaxe! He is fat and so clumsy and so furiously angry, but he's
too scared of Trent to do anything but obey orders, and there he works
hour after hour, groaning, and the perspiration rolls off him as though
he were in a Turkish bath. I could go on telling you odd things that
happen here for hours, but I must finish soon as the chap is starting
with the mail. I am enjoying it. It is something like life I can tell
you, and aren't I lucky? Trent made me take Cathcart's place. I am
getting 800 pounds a year, and only fancy it, he says he'll see that the
directors make me a special grant. Everything looks very different here
now, and I do hope the Company will be a success. There's whole heaps
of mining machinery landed and waiting for the road to be finished to
go up, and people seem to be streaming into the place. I wonder what
Cathcart will say when he knows that the road is as good as done, and
that I've got his job!
“Chap called for mail. Goodbye.
“Ever your affectionate
“FRED.
“Trent is a brick.”
Ernestine read the letter slowly, line by line, word by word. To tell
the truth it was absorbingly interesting to her. Already there had
come rumours of the daring and blunt, resistless force with which
this new-made millionaire had confronted a gigantic task. His terse
communications had found their way into the Press, and in them and in
the boy's letter she seemed to discover something Caesaric. That night
it was more than usually difficult for her to settle down to her own
work. She read her nephew's letter more than once and continually
she found her thoughts slipping away--traveling across the ocean to
a tropical strip of country, where a heterogeneous crowd of men were
toiling and digging under a blazing sun. And, continually too, she
seemed to see a man's face looking steadily over the sea to her, as he
stood upright for a moment and rested from his toil. She was very fond
of the boy--but the face was not his!