"IS IT TOO LATE?"
Waybridge, having delivered his contract stock, had intended staying the
night at Fort Isiwa, but some news which was brought in at that post
decided him to start for home at no longer notice than it took him to
saddle up, and to get there as fast as his steed could carry him.
It was rather late when he clattered into Komgha, but, late as it was,
quite a number of men were astir. There was no help for it. He must
perforce off-saddle if only for a quarter of an hour, after the pace at
which he had pushed his horse, and that all uphill.
"Anything in this news?" he asked eagerly as he gained the stoep at
Pagets and called for a very long brandy and soda.
"Or is it all a yarn?"
"Yarn? Not much. The Gaikas have broken out, and are burning all the
farms within reach. Yours among 'em, I expect, Waybridge."
"Mine among 'em! But, good Lord! man, my people are still there."
The other whistled blankly.
"Didn't they come in?" he said.
"No. We didn't believe in the scare, you see. Devil take that
confounded horse of mine! I shall have to give him a few minutes more,
and then I'll push him along if I kill him. Won't any of you fellows
come with me? Women in danger, you know."
"Rather, I'll go," answered the man he had been talking to. Others
joined, and soon a compact dozen started off to get their horses--if
they could find them, and somebody else's if they couldn't--and whatever
arms they happened to own.
"That you, Waybridge? Yes, it's time you started. They are beginning
to send up rockets at your place." And Harley Greenoak, who had ridden
up unperceived in the excitement, dismounted, and walked up the steps.
"I should think so," said Waybridge, impatiently. "By the way,
Greenoak, I wish you'd sent us some sort of warning. I'd have taken it
from you."
"Couldn't, earlier than this moment."
The rescue party now assembled. There were fifteen in all. But the
presence of Harley Greenoak had the effect of sending up their
confidence in themselves and each other. They felt as if their little
force had suddenly been doubled.
"Have you been with Sandili, Greenoak?" said Waybridge, as they rode
forth.
"No. With that fighting son of his, Matanzima. He's practically
_baas_, and he means mischief. He'd have let me be killed, but I
happened to do him an important service some time back, and whatever may
be said about there being no gratitude in a Kafir, there is. I've seen
it in too many instances. Look. There are no less than six places
ablaze."
They were travelling at a smart canter. Glow after glow had arisen, at
intervals over the dim moonlight waste. The barbarous orgy was in full
swing. But no such glare hovered over the site of Waybridge's
homestead. Clearly, therefore, the Gaikas had not succeeded in
capturing the place. The rocket flights had now ceased.
"That young Selmes is a plucky chap," muttered Waybridge, more to
himself than to the others. "It's a Godsend he should be on the place."
"He's all that," said Greenoak. "We shall find your crowd all safe,
never fear."
A little more than an hour's sharp riding and they topped the last rise.
There stood the homestead, white in the moonlight. An exclamation of
relief escaped Waybridge. But on a nearer approach this feeling was
dashed.
"There's been a fight," he said quickly. "Those are dead Kafirs, and,
there are no lights showing."
The dark, motionless forms lying in front of the house, and discernible
in the moonlight, told their own tale. What other motionless forms
would they find within? Instinctively they put their horses at a gallop
now.
"Easy, easy!" warned Greenoak; "that line of quince hedge may cover any
number. We don't need to rush bang headlong into a trap."
The warning told. Wildly excited as the men were now, such was the
influence of its utterer that they slackened pace. Waybridge thought he
had never known what tense, poignant anxiety was until that moment.
"I'll go forward and make sure," he said thickly. "If--if--anything has
happened in there--it can't matter what happens to me, and--"
He rammed the spurs into his horse's flanks. But before he had shot
ahead fifty yards, a sight met his eyes--met the eyes of all of them--
which caused such a wild burst of relief that it could only find vent in
a ringing cheer.
Upon the stoep several figures were now standing, and prominent among
them the tall form of Dick Selmes. Harley Greenoak, whose feeling of
relief was certainly not inferior to that of the others, shook a
disapproving head.
"We want to bring this off quietly," he said. "We don't want to let the
whole Gaika nation know we're here, and that's about what all this
hullabaloo is likely to effect."
"It's all right, old chap. We'll give 'em fits if they give us the
chance," said one man, airily. Him Greenoak at once set down as a fool.
They galloped up to the house, and there was a vast amount of
handshaking and congratulation all round. Harley Greenoak held aloof.
"Who's on guard at the back, Dick?" he said drily, when he could get in
a word.
"At the back? Oh, we don't want a guard now, old chap," was the airy
response. "We've beat 'em off, made 'em run like so many curs. It was
the rockets did it, and the rockets were Mrs Waybridge's idea. But it
was Elsie who generalled the whole scrap. My hat, but you should have
seen her swinging that axe! She `downed' them one after another as hard
as they came in. It was fine strategy, I can tell you."
"And didn't A' tell ye that A'd mak ony sax o' yon heathen black
sauvages wish they'd never been born?" said the Scotswoman,
complacently. "And A' just stopped short at one."
"Well, you didn't give them time to wish they'd never been born, or
anything else," answered Dick.
"Ay, but they'll be wishin' it the noo, A'm thinking," was the dry
rejoinder, which, with its uncompromising Calvinism, evoked a great
laugh.
"Take care that Hazel doesn't go in there, Elsie," Dick managed to
whisper, referring to the kitchen, which had been the opening scene of
the drama, and where lay the four bodies of those first slain by that
intrepid Amazon.
The said bodies, however, were promptly dragged outside, and the sight
of these, together with those lying around the house, rendered it
unmistakably clear that a most gallant defence had been made. The while
the feminine side of the garrison was busy getting out liquid and other
refreshment for the relief party, though its consumption must of
necessity be hurried, for Greenoak had advised immediate removal to the
settlement, and Waybridge was already inspanning the Cape cart.
Fortunately the Kafirs had not been able to get at the horses, the
stable door being commanded by the firing-line. And the urgency of such
advice was to receive prompt confirmation.
An exploration of the garden had been judged advisable, and this,
accompanied by several others, was undertaken by Greenoak. Here they
found one more body--and a badly wounded Kafir. He was shot through
both legs, but had managed to drag himself into cover.
"It is Kulondeka," he said, recognising his questioner. "Then I will
speak. There are several more wounded lying about--yes. The people
have gone, but they will come again, with many others, before sunrise.
Take the white women and go, Kulondeka--now, at once. I know you. You
and the other saved me, yonder, the day we fought Ndimba's people with
sticks. Go. Lose no time."
Greenoak rejoined the others, feeling pretty anxious. They were by no
means out of the wood yet. A large marauding band might appear at any
moment, and, after all, their number was a mere handful. So it was with
a modicum of relief that he saw the cart inspanned, and its inmates duly
installed. But having seen them once started, with their escort,
Greenoak slipped back to the garden with the remains of a bottle of
brandy in his hand, and administered an invigorating drink to the badly
wounded savage.
"Your people will find you here," he said, "and the others. Now, you
have felt how hard the white man's blow can fall. Tell them."
After the peril and relief a reaction ensued.
"I suppose those horrible wretches will burn down the house," Mrs
Waybridge remarked, as they sped along. "Or, at any rate, plunder it of
everything."
Hazel, for her part, thought the enemy would do both, when he saw the
extent of his losses during the defence, for, of course, under the
circumstances, the dead had been left just as they fell. But, not
aspiring to the part of Job's comforter, she refrained from recording an
opinion.
Those forming the relief party laughed good-naturedly among themselves
as they noted how uncommonly close to the Cape cart Dick Selmes would
persist in riding, some of the younger ones with a tinge of envy. He,
for his part, was keeping up a string of lively talk and banter with its
occupants, and he was doing it with an object. Hazel had shown
wonderful pluck during the stirring events of the night, but the ghastly
sights she had witnessed, and the terror she had undergone, would be
likely to come back to her now in the reaction of feeling safe, and he
wanted her to forget them. So he rattled on, keeping their attention
turned in a more salutary direction; whereby shows out another side of
that missing link which the girl had decided had been supplied. He had
learnt to think.
The following day, and for days after, all manner of scare rumours kept
coming in, of homesteads burnt, of such inmates as were unable to escape
in time surprised and massacred, of stock swept away, and crops
destroyed. And then the savages began to watch the main road, to cut
off express-riders, or small parties; indeed, it was not long before
they waxed bolder, and news came of a fierce attack upon several
companies of a regiment of foot, on its march to the Komgha. To make
things worse, the so-called "conquered" paramount tribe swarmed back
into Gcalekaland again, joining hands with the now revolted Gaika clans
within the Colonial border. Thus the war, officially declared to be
over, had, in actual fact, only just begun.
A few nights after its plucky defence, Waybridge's homestead went the
way of the rest, but not before he had managed, with the aid of a few
daring spirits, to make a dash out there and bring away some of the more
portable effects, and to bury, or otherwise hide, others. But he did
not complain. The marvellous escape of his household, where others had
died cruel deaths, alone precluded that. In other ways, too, he had
been lucky, in that for some time past he had gradually been selling off
most of his stock, so that his loss was comparatively small.
As the days went by Dick Selmes began to look with wistful eyes at this
or that commando passing through, or at this or that patrol starting to
reconnoitre the countryside or keep the road open. Hazel, reading what
was in his mind, was furtively watching him. One day, when they were
alone together, she said--
"Dick, my darling. You are eating your heart out because you want to go
off again to this wretched war, and perhaps get killed. You are not
content to stay and take care of poor little me."
She had grown wondrously tender towards him since the night of peril
they had shared, in pursuance whereof she had laid an embargo upon any
more needless adventures on his part.
"It isn't that, sweetheart," he answered. "I'm only too happy here--
with you. But I seem to be hanging back--sort of skulking--while every
other fellow who can shoot straight, or not, is in the field."
She laughed softly.
"Skulking! You? Why, you've done the share of any ten men since the
beginning of the war. No--no--Dick. If that's all that's troubling
you, why it needn't. And now, look here, you are to go on escort duty.
You are to escort me--home."
Dick's face brightened.
"But, dearest, you are forgetting," he said, with a puzzled look. "The
road isn't safe yet--not by a long chalk--for you to travel under such a
small escort as myself and Greenoak."
"It'll be a bigger one. The Commandant is sending a lot of Police to
King Williamstown in a day or two, and he says I may travel under their
escort. Will you make one of it?"
"Won't I!" he answered delightedly.