Old Trader Hume was dead.
Not that he was really old when he died, but he had lived a life that
had robbed him of his youth at one end and cut off the slow decline on
the other. At fifteen he began the career of trader and hunter; before
twenty he had been tossed by a buffalo, and broken his leg in a fall
from his horse; at twenty-five he had been twice down with the fever; at
thirty he was known as Old Hume; at fifty he had gone home to die--a man
worn, sun-dried, and scarred with many wounds. Home to the Old Country,
the land of his parents, the land of rest and green fields that had
figured in his waking dreams, and in his lonely watches beneath the
African sky.
His mother had talked to him of the quiet village, the ivied church, the
bells, the song of the lark, and the pleasant customs of the country
folk; and his father had told him of the great cities, the roar of life,
and the silence of old ruins testifying to a mighty past; and the
untrained, toughened Colonial boy had kept before him one goal--the
hoary tower of Westminster, the green meadows, and the tuneful bells of
old England.
Well, at last he had gone home; but it was not the home of his dreams.
There were the wonderful green fields, the eloquent ruins, and a
multitude beyond expectation for number; but there was something
wanting, and the lack of it preyed upon him, hastening his end. These
swarming men and women were not of his type. The people in the streets
hurried along hard-eyed and absorbed; his neighbours treated his
overtures with suspicion, not understanding his familiar greeting and
his manner of going about in his shirt-sleeves, smoking strange tobacco.
He was alone in the midst of crowds, and he waited for death with the
patience of a stricken animal, while the people who understood him not
made much of an explorer recently returned, not knowing that this
weather-worn stranger who pottered about aimlessly had braved more
dangers in unexplored countries, and had, without thinking of it, opened
up more routes for the advance of commerce. One friendship he had
formed with the son of his father's brother, his only living relative, a
boy who had been with him on his last trading trip, and whom he had sent
to Oxford to pick up the ways of men, and, perhaps, some of their
learning. But he only saw the lad in the long vacation, and then only
for a few days, insisting that the young fellow should camp out in Wales
with some of his companions.
Now, Old Trader Hume was dead and buried, and his nephew, Francis Hume,
was alone in the old man's room, the room of a hunter filled with
trophies of the chase.
The young man was bending forward, one hand supporting his head, while
the other, dangling listlessly, held a sheet of paper. Long he remained
so, his eyes absently fixed on the point of a curved rhinoceros' horn,
then leant back in the chair and read the contents, setting forth the
last will of his uncle.
A very short and simple document it was:
"I, Abel Hume, commonly known as Old Hume, the Trader, leave to my
nephew Frank all my possessions, including 275 pounds in the Standard
Bank. There is a map in my pocket-book drawn by myself. That I leave
him also, and it is my wish that he will follow the directions
therein. I would like him to use my double Express, and to treat it
tenderly. Good-bye, my lad; shoot straight, and deal straight.
"_Signed_ Abel Hume."
"Dear old chap!" muttered Frank, with a sad smile, and again he sank
into a long reverie.
He had always thought that his uncle was a wealthy man, and, under that
impression, he had lived rather extravagantly at Oxford. His uncle had
paid his bills, and he tried to recall if there had been, unnoticed at
the time by him, any word or sign of disapproval, but he could remember
only the dry chuckle of the hunter at some unusual entry.
"Poor old boy," he said again; "I wish he had told me. What a lonely
time he had!"
He thought then--how could he help it?--of his own prospects, which had
lost so suddenly all the wide outlook of a happy career.
"I must give up Oxford, of course, and my friends, too, before they give
me up; but what am I to do?" He looked around at the house, at the
trophy of assegais on the wall, at the lion's skin on the hearth, the
yellow eyes glaring, and the red mouth set in an everlasting snarl.
"I am sorry the old man came home. He was happy there in the bush, or
on the trek. What a life he must have led during those thirty-five
years of hunting and trading, and what yarns he did spin in the
evenings! There was that story of the bull elephant."
He lit his pipe by instinct, and was lost in veldt and kloof among the
big game until the strange glamour of the chase, from which no man is
free, was upon him, and he was soon sitting with his uncle's favourite
rifle in his hands, examining its rich brown barrels, and the polished
stock of almost black walnut, bound about the hand-grip with the skin of
a puff-adder. He brought the butt to his shoulders, his cheek against
the stock, and began sighting at small objects on the wall. The gun was
heavy, but he had not been at Oxford for two years for nothing, and his
muscles were those of an athlete.
He rose up to replace the gun tenderly in its rack, and then, going to
his uncle's desk, took out the pocket-book--a much-worn leather case,
bound round with a length of braided buckskin.
Folded up in an inner pocket was a frayed piece of paper. This he
carefully spread out on an open book, and, with a faint smile about his
lips, carefully examined the roughly-drawn outlines of river and
mountains. This was not the first time he had seen the sketch. His
uncle had, on his last visit, with much gravity, taken the paper from
its hiding-place, and had told the story connected with it--a story
which had impressed the young undergraduate, chiefly on account of the
moving adventures related, the real heart of the thing taking but an
insignificant place in his thoughts.
Yet he vividly remembered how the old hunter, usually so cool, had
worked himself into a pitch of excitement, and how, placing his withered
finger on one spot, he had, sinking his voice to a whisper, said
impressively:
"There, my lad, is your fortune. Your fortune; the fortunes of a
hundred men."
What was the story? Was there a fortune there, or had his uncle been,
like many a lonely wanderer, the victim of a hallucination? He pored
over the map, and in imagination listened again to the slow, grave words
of the old hunter, whose eyes had flashed under the glow recalled by the
memory of that expedition. His uncle had struck north through the
Transvaal, and after crossing the Crocodile, had turned to the east for
an unknown land, whence rumours had come of great herds of elephants.
Entering a bush country too thick for the waggon to continue, he had
gone on afoot with a score of boys for a big vlei, where there was,
indeed, a happy hunting-ground. There, after bagging some fine tusks,
he had heard from an old black of a strange rock to the west, which
shone bright in the sun, and had struggled to reach the spot. A week he
spent amid the tangle of reeds about the river, and in the gorges of a
wild and lofty chain of mountains; and then, one day, in the early
morning, he had, from the Place of the Eye in a singular rocky profile
of a human face, seen shine out, from the great plain below, a blaze of
light which glowed for the space of an hour while the rays were level,
and then went out. He had seen the Golden Rock, the shining stone of
the natives, the eye of the morning, the place of bloodshed, as the old
man related, and he marked the spot where he had stood, for he could go
no further then. Several days he had spent returning to the huts at the
vlei, where he listened much to the old man, hearing more about the
rock, and of the glistening ornaments that were made from it whenever a
new chief arose. He learnt about the tribe who lived at the feet of the
mountains and in the great forests, and he planned how he would reach
the rock, when news came that his waggon had been burnt by the natives,
and the next day he himself was attacked. Escaping to the river, where
he lurked in the reeds, he at last fashioned a hollow tree to his
purpose, and floated down the Limpopo, enduring twenty-five days of
fearful suffering before he reached the month, where he was picked up by
a Portuguese trader and landed at Delagoa Bay. In that trip he had lost
everything--waggon, oxen, ivory, skins and stores, and before he could
plan another expedition to the mysterious rock he felt he had entered
the shadows, and the craving for the home of his forefathers would not
be denied.
"My lad, that is your fortune. I have seen it, and you must find it.
Will you promise?"
"Yes, uncle, I promise," Frank had said, laughing at what he thought was
a joke.
"That's all right," the old hunter had replied. "When a Hume makes a
promise he means to keep it--or die."
Frank now remembered those words and all they implied, and they spoke to
him now with greater force than when he had heard them.
He had made a promise, carelessly, not knowing what he said, just to
humour his uncle. Nevertheless he had given his word. Was he bound to
keep it? Well for that matter, he was a Hume.
Taking an atlas from the shelf, he studied the East Coast of Africa, and
the course of the Limpopo from its mouth. As far as his uncle had
drawn, his sketch tallied with the map, and so exactly indeed that he
must have filled in the original rough draft from the printed map.
Folding up the much-creased paper with a sigh, he paced up and down the
room, tugging at his moustache, a blank look on his manly face.
Suddenly stopping opposite a mirror, and seeing his reflection, he broke
into a loud laugh.
"Hang it! what a brute I am! But it's too absurd, this legacy of a
Golden Rock which does not exist. Well, at any rate, I can use up the
bank balance in making a hunting trip to the spot, and after that--"
He shrugged his shoulders, and went out to see about executing the will.