THE DRUMS BEAT AT SUNSET
Japp was drunk for the next day or two, and I had the business of the
store to myself. I was glad of this, for it gave me leisure to reflect
upon the various perplexities of my situation. As I have said, I was
really scared, more out of a sense of impotence than from dread of
actual danger. I was in a fog of uncertainty. Things were happening
around me which I could only dimly guess at, and I had no power to take
one step in defence. That Wardlaw should have felt the same without any
hint from me was the final proof that the mystery was no figment of my
nerves. I had written to Colles and got no answer. Now the letter with
Japp’s resignation in it had gone to Durban. Surely some notice would
be taken of that. If I was given the post, Colles was bound to consider
what I had said in my earlier letter and give me some directions.
Meanwhile it was my business to stick to my job till I was relieved.
A change had come over the place during my absence. The natives had
almost disappeared from sight. Except the few families living round
Blaauwildebeestefontein one never saw a native on the roads, and none
came into the store. They were sticking close to their locations, or
else they had gone after some distant business. Except a batch of three
Shangaans returning from the Rand, I had nobody in the store for the
whole of one day. So about four o’clock I shut it up, whistled on
Colin, and went for a walk along the Berg.
If there were no natives on the road, there were plenty in the bush. I
had the impression, of which Wardlaw had spoken, that the native
population of the countryside had suddenly been hugely increased. The
woods were simply _hotching_ with them. I was being spied on as before,
but now there were so many at the business that they could not all
conceal their tracks. Every now and then I had a glimpse of a black
shoulder or leg, and Colin, whom I kept on the leash, was half-mad with
excitement. I had seen all I wanted, and went home with a preoccupied
mind. I sat long on Wardlaw’s garden-seat, trying to puzzle out the
truth of this spying.
What perplexed me was that I had been left unmolested when I had gone
to Umvelos’. Now, as I conjectured, the secret of the neighbourhood,
whatever it was, was probably connected with the Rooirand. But when I
had ridden in that direction and had spent two days in exploring, no
one had troubled to watch me. I was quite certain about this, for my
eye had grown quick to note espionage, and it is harder for a spy to
hide in the spare bush of the flats than in the dense thickets on these
uplands.
The watchers, then, did not mind my fossicking round their sacred
place. Why, then, was I so closely watched in the harmless
neighbourhood of the store? I thought for a long time before an answer
occurred to me. The reason must be that going to the plains I was going
into native country and away from civilization. But
Blaauwildebeestefontein was near the frontier. There must be some dark
business brewing of which they may have feared that I had an inkling.
They wanted to see if I proposed to go to Pietersdorp or Wesselsburg
and tell what I knew, and they clearly were resolved that I should not.
I laughed, I remember, thinking that they had forgotten the post-bag.
But then I reflected that I knew nothing of what might be happening
daily to the post-bag.
When I had reached this conclusion, my first impulse was to test it by
riding straight west on the main road. If I was right, I should
certainly be stopped. On second thoughts, however, this seemed to me to
be flinging up the game prematurely, and I resolved to wait a day or
two before acting.
Next day nothing happened, save that my sense of loneliness increased.
I felt that I was being hemmed in by barbarism, and cut off in a
ghoulish land from the succour of my own kind. I only kept my courage
up by the necessity of presenting a brave face to Mr Wardlaw, who was
by this time in a very broken condition of nerves. I had often thought
that it was my duty to advise him to leave, and to see him safely off,
but I shrank from severing myself from my only friend. I thought, too,
of the few Dutch farmers within riding distance, and had half a mind to
visit them, but they were far off over the plateau and could know
little of my anxieties.
The third day events moved faster. Japp was sober and wonderfully
quiet. He gave me good-morning quite in a friendly tone, and set to
posting up the books as if he had never misbehaved in his days. I was
so busy with my thoughts that I, too, must have been gentler than
usual, and the morning passed like a honeymoon, till I went across to
dinner.
I was just sitting down when I remembered that I had left my watch in
my waistcoat behind the counter, and started to go back for it. But at
the door I stopped short. For two horsemen had drawn up before the
store.
One was a native with what I took to be saddle-bags; the other was a
small slim man with a sun helmet, who was slowly dismounting. Something
in the cut of his jib struck me as familiar. I slipped into the empty
schoolroom and stared hard. Then, as he half-turned in handing his
bridle to the Kaffir, I got a sight of his face. It was my former
shipmate, Henriques. He said something to his companion, and entered
the store.
You may imagine that my curiosity ran to fever-heat. My first impulse
was to march over for my waistcoat, and make a third with Japp at the
interview. Happily I reflected in time that Henriques knew my face, for
I had grown no beard, having a great dislike to needless hair. If he
was one of the villains in the drama, he would mark me down for his
vengeance once he knew I was here, whereas at present he had probably
forgotten all about me. Besides, if I walked in boldly I would get no
news. If Japp and he had a secret, they would not blab it in my
presence.
My next idea was to slip in by the back to the room I had once lived
in. But how was I to cross the road? It ran white and dry some distance
each way in full view of the Kaffir with the horses. Further, the store
stood on a bare patch, and it would be a hard job to get in by the
back, assuming, as I believed, that the neighbourhood was thick with
spies.
The upshot was that I got my glasses and turned them on the store. The
door was open, and so was the window. In the gloom of the interior I
made out Henriques’ legs. He was standing by the counter, and
apparently talking to Japp. He moved to shut the door, and came back
inside my focus opposite the window. There he stayed for maybe ten
minutes, while I hugged my impatience. I would have given a hundred
pounds to be snug in my old room with Japp thinking me out of the
store.
Suddenly the legs twitched up, and his boots appeared above the
counter. Japp had invited him to his bedroom, and the game was now to
be played beyond my ken. This was more than I could stand, so I stole
out at the back door and took to the thickest bush on the hillside. My
notion was to cross the road half a mile down, when it had dropped into
the defile of the stream, and then to come swiftly up the edge of the
water so as to effect a back entrance into the store.
As fast as I dared I tore through the bush, and in about a quarter of
an hour had reached the point I was making for. Then I bore down to the
road, and was in the scrub about ten yards off it, when the clatter of
horses pulled me up again. Peeping out I saw that it was my friend and
his Kaffir follower, who were riding at a very good pace for the
plains. Toilfully and crossly I returned on my tracks to my
long-delayed dinner. Whatever the purport of their talk, Japp and the
Portuguese had not taken long over it.
In the store that afternoon I said casually to Japp that I had noticed
visitors at the door during my dinner hour. The old man looked me
frankly enough in the face. “Yes, it was Mr Hendricks,” he said, and
explained that the man was a Portuguese trader from Delagoa way, who
had a lot of Kaffir stores east of the Lebombo Hills. I asked his
business, and was told that he always gave Japp a call in when he was
passing.
“Do you take every man that calls into your bedroom, and shut the
door?” I asked.
Japp lost colour and his lip trembled. “I swear to God, Mr Crawfurd,
I’ve been doing nothing wrong. I’ve kept the promise I gave you like an
oath to my mother. I see you suspect me, and maybe you’ve cause, but
I’ll be quite honest with you. I have dealt in diamonds before this
with Hendricks. But to-day, when he asked me, I told him that that
business was off. I only took him to my room to give him a drink. He
likes brandy, and there’s no supply in the shop.”
I distrusted Japp wholeheartedly enough, but I was convinced that in
this case he spoke the truth. “Had the man any news?” I asked.
“He had and he hadn’t,” said Japp. “He was always a sullen beggar, and
never spoke much. But he said one queer thing. He asked me if I was
going to retire, and when I told him ‘yes,’ he said I had put it off
rather long. I told him I was as healthy as I ever was, and he laughed
in his dirty Portugoose way. ‘Yes, Mr Japp,’ he says, ‘but the country
is not so healthy.’ I wonder what the chap meant. He’ll be dead of
blackwater before many months, to judge by his eyes.”
This talk satisfied me about Japp, who was clearly in desperate fear of
offending me, and disinclined to return for the present to his old
ways. But I think the rest of the afternoon was the most wretched time
in my existence. It was as plain as daylight that we were in for some
grave trouble, trouble to which I believed that I alone held any kind
of clue. I had a pile of evidence—the visit of Henriques was the last
bit—which pointed to some great secret approaching its disclosure. I
thought that that disclosure meant blood and ruin. But I knew nothing
definite. If the commander of a British army had come to me then and
there and offered help, I could have done nothing, only asked him to
wait like me. The peril, whatever it was, did not threaten me only,
though I and Wardlaw and Japp might be the first to suffer; but I had a
terrible feeling that I alone could do something to ward it off, and
just what that something was I could not tell. I was horribly afraid,
not only of unknown death, but of my impotence to play any manly part.
I was alone, knowing too much and yet too little, and there was no
chance of help under the broad sky. I cursed myself for not writing to
Aitken at Lourenco Marques weeks before. He had promised to come up,
and he was the kind of man who kept his word.
In the late afternoon I dragged Wardlaw out for a walk. In his presence
I had to keep up a forced cheerfulness, and I believe the pretence did
me good. We took a path up the Berg among groves of stinkwood and
essenwood, where a failing stream made an easy route. It may have been
fancy, but it seemed to me that the wood was emptier and that we were
followed less closely. I remember it was a lovely evening, and in the
clear fragrant gloaming every foreland of the Berg stood out like a
great ship above the dark green sea of the bush. When we reached the
edge of the plateau we saw the sun sinking between two far blue peaks
in Makapan’s country, and away to the south the great roll of the high
veld. I longed miserably for the places where white men were thronged
together in dorps and cities. As we gazed a curious sound struck our
ears. It seemed to begin far up in the north—a low roll like the
combing of breakers on the sand. Then it grew louder and travelled
nearer—a roll, with sudden spasms of harsher sound in it; reminding me
of the churning in one of the pot-holes of Kirkcaple cliffs. Presently
it grew softer again as the sound passed south, but new notes were
always emerging. The echo came sometimes, as it were, from stark rock,
and sometimes from the deep gloom of the forests. I have never heard an
eerier sound. Neither natural nor human it seemed, but the voice of
that world between which is hid from man’s sight and hearing.
Mr Wardlaw clutched my arm, and in that moment I guessed the
explanation. The native drums were beating, passing some message from
the far north down the line of the Berg, where the locations were
thickest, to the great black population of the south.
“But that means war,” Mr Wardlaw cried.
“It means nothing of the kind,” I said shortly. “It’s their way of
sending news. It’s as likely to be some change in the weather or an
outbreak of cattle disease.”
When we got home I found Japp with a face like grey paper. “Did you
hear the drums?”he asked.
“Yes,” I said shortly. “What about them?”
“God forgive you for an ignorant Britisher,” he almost shouted. “You
may hear drums any night, but a drumming like that I only once heard
before. It was in ’79 in the ’Zeti valley. Do you know what happened
next day? Cetewayo’s impis came over the hills, and in an hour there
wasn’t a living white soul in the glen. Two men escaped, and one of
them was called Peter Japp.”
“We are in God’s hands then, and must wait on His will,” I said
solemnly.
There was no more sleep for Wardlaw and myself that night. We made the
best barricade we could of the windows, loaded all our weapons, and
trusted to Colin to give us early news. Before supper I went over to
get Japp to join us, but found that that worthy had sought help from
his old protector, the bottle, and was already sound asleep with both
door and window open.
I had made up my mind that death was certain, and yet my heart belied
my conviction, and I could not feel the appropriate mood. If anything I
was more cheerful since I had heard the drums. It was clearly now
beyond the power of me or any man to stop the march of events. My
thoughts ran on a native rising, and I kept telling myself how little
that was probable. Where were the arms, the leader, the discipline? At
any rate such arguments put me to sleep before dawn, and I wakened at
eight to find that nothing had happened. The clear morning sunlight, as
of old, made Blaauwildebeestefontein the place of a dream. Zeeta
brought in my cup of coffee as if this day were just like all others,
my pipe tasted as sweet, the fresh air from the Berg blew as fragrantly
on my brow. I went over to the store in reasonably good spirits,
leaving Wardlaw busy on the penitential Psalms.
The post-runner had brought the mail as usual, and there was one
private letter for me. I opened it with great excitement, for the
envelope bore the stamp of the firm. At last Colles had deigned to
answer.
Inside was a sheet of the firm’s notepaper, with the signature of
Colles across the top. Below some one had pencilled these five words:
“_The Blesbok[1] are changing ground._”
I looked to see that Japp had not suffocated himself, then shut up the
store, and went back to my room to think out this new mystification.
The thing had come from Colles, for it was the private notepaper of the
Durban office, and there was Colles’ signature. But the pencilling was
in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to
send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of
signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it,
therefore, that the scribble was Colles’ reply to my letter.
Now, my argument continued, if the unknown person saw fit to send me a
message, it could not be merely one of warning. Colles must have told
him that I was awake to some danger, and as I was in
Blaauwildebeestefontein, I must be nearer the heart of things than any
one else. The message must therefore be in the nature of some password,
which I was to remember when I heard it again.
I reasoned the whole thing out very clearly, and I saw no gap in my
logic. I cannot describe how that scribble had heartened me. I felt no
more the crushing isolation of yesterday. There were others beside me
in the secret. Help must be on the way, and the letter was the first
tidings.
But how near?—that was the question; and it occurred to me for the
first time to look at the postmark. I went back to the store and got
the envelope out of the waste-paper basket. The postmark was certainly
not Durban. The stamp was a Cape Colony one, and of the mark I could
only read three letters, T. R. S. This was no sort of clue, and I
turned the thing over, completely baffled. Then I noticed that there
was no mark of the post town of delivery. Our letters to
Blaauwildebeestefontein came through Pietersdorp and bore that mark. I
compared the envelope with others. They all had a circle, and
“Pietersdorp” in broad black letters. But this envelope had nothing
except the stamp.
I was still slow at detective work, and it was some minutes before the
explanation flashed on me. The letter had never been posted at all. The
stamp was a fake, and had been borrowed from an old envelope. There was
only one way in which it could have come. It must have been put in the
letter-bag while the postman was on his way from Pietersdorp. My
unknown friend must therefore be somewhere within eighty miles of me. I
hurried off to look for the post-runner, but he had started back an
hour before. There was nothing for it but to wait on the coming of the
unknown.
That afternoon I again took Mr Wardlaw for a walk. It is an ingrained
habit of mine that I never tell anyone more of a business than is
practically necessary. For months I had kept all my knowledge to
myself, and breathed not a word to a soul. But I thought it my duty to
tell Wardlaw about the letter, to let him see that we were not
forgotten. I am afraid it did not encourage his mind. Occult messages
seemed to him only the last proof of a deadly danger encompassing us,
and I could not shake his opinion.
We took the same road to the crown of the Berg, and I was confirmed in
my suspicion that the woods were empty and the watchers gone. The place
was as deserted as the bush at Umvelos’. When we reached the summit
about sunset we waited anxiously for the sound of drums. It came, as we
expected, louder and more menacing than before. Wardlaw stood pinching
my arm as the great tattoo swept down the escarpment, and died away in
the far mountains beyond the Olifants. Yet it no longer seemed to be a
wall of sound, shutting us out from our kindred in the West. A message
had pierced the wall. If the blesbok were changing ground, I believed
that the hunters were calling out their hounds and getting ready for
the chase.
[1] A species of buck.