"ON THE ROCK THEY SCORCH, LIKE A DROP OF FIRE."
"What are they really doing over there, do you suppose, Eustace?" said
Eanswyth anxiously, as they regained the house. The thunder of the wild
war-dance floated across the intervening miles of space, and the misty
glare of many fires luridly outlined the distant mountain slopes. The
position was sufficiently terrifying to any woman alone there save for
one male protector, with hundreds of excited and now hostile savages
performing their weird and clamourous war rites but a few miles away.
"I'm afraid there's no mistake about it; they are holding a big
war-dance," was the reply. "But it's nothing new. This sort of fun has
been going on at the different kraals for the last month. It's only
because we are, so to say, next door to Nteya's location that we hear it
to-night at all."
"But Nteya is such a good old man," said Eanswyth. "Surely he wouldn't
harm us. Surely he wouldn't join in any rising."
"You are correct in your first idea, in the second, not. We are rapidly
making such a hash of affairs _in re_ Kreli and the Fingoes over in the
Transkei, that we are simply laying the train for a war with the whole
Amaxosa race. How can Nteya, or any other subordinate chief, refuse to
join when called upon by Kreli, the Chief Paramount. The trouble ought
to be settled before it goes any further, and my opinion is that it
could be."
"You are quite a politician," said Eanswyth, with a smile. "You ought
to put up for the Secretaryship for Native Affairs."
"Let us sit out here," he said, drawing up a couple of cane chairs which
were always on the _stoep_. "Here is a very out-of-the-way phenomenon--
one the like of which we might not witness again in a lifetime. We may
as well see it out."
If Eanswyth had been rather alarmed heretofore, the other's perfect
unconcern went far to reassure her. The wild, unearthly chorus echoing
through the darkness--the glare of the fires, the distant, but thundrous
clamour of the savage orgy, conveyed no terrors to this strong-nerved
and philosophical companion of hers. He only saw in them a strange and
deeply interesting experience. Seated there in the starlight, some of
that unconcern communicated itself to her. A restful calm came upon
her. This man beside her was as a very tower of strength. And then
came over her a consciousness--not for the first time, but stronger than
she had ever felt it--of how necessary his presence was to her. His
calm, strong judgment had kept matters straight for a long time past.
He had been the one to pour oil on the troubled waters; to allay or
avert the evils which her husband's ungovernable temper and ill-judged
violence had thickly gathered around them. Now, as he sat there beside
her calmly contemplating the sufficiently appalling manifestations of
that night--manifestations that would otherwise have driven her wild
with terror--she was conscious of feeling hardly any fear.
And what of Eustace himself? Lucky, indeed, that his judgment was
strong, his brain habitually clear and unclouded. For at that moment
his mind could only be compared to the seething, misty rush of a
whirlpool. He could see her face in the starlight--even the lustrous
glow of the great eyes--could mark the clear outline or the delicate
profile turned half away from him. He was alone with her in the sweet,
soft African night--alone with her--her sole protector, amid the
brooding peril that threatened. A silence had fallen between them. His
love--his concealed and hopeless love for her overcame him. He could
not command words--not even voice, for the molten, raging fires of
passion which consumed him as he sat there. His hand clenched the arm
of his cane chair--a jagged nail, which protruded, lacerating it nearly
to the bone--still he felt nothing of physical pain--mind triumphed.
Yes, the anguish of his mind was so intense as to be akin to physical
pain. Why could they not be thus together always? They could, but for
one life. One life only, between him and such bliss that the whole
world should be a bright and golden paradise! One life! A legion of
fiends seemed to wrestle within the man's raging soul. "One life!" they
echoed in jibbering, gnashing chorus. "One life!" they seemed to shriek
aloud in his brain. "What more easily snapped than the cord of a life?"
The tumultuous thunder of the fierce war-dance sounded louder and louder
upon the night--the glare of the distant fires reddened, and then glowed
forth afresh. What if Tom Carhayes had come upon the spoor of his
missing sheep--and in his blind rage had followed it right into Nteya's
location? Might he not as well walk straight into a den of lions? The
savage Gaikas, wound up to the highest pitch of bloodthirsty excitement,
would at such a time be hardly less dangerous than so many beasts of
prey. Even at that very moment the cord of that one life might be
snapped.
Suddenly a great tongue of flame shot up into the night, then another
and another. From a hilltop the red and threatening beacons flashed
forth their message of hate and defiance. The distant tumult of the
savage orgy had ceased. A weird and brooding silence lay upon the
surrounding country.
"Oh, what does it mean? What does it all mean?" cried Eanswyth starting
up from her chair. Her face was white with fear--her dilated eyes,
gazing forth upon the gushing fires, were wild and horror-stricken.
Eustace, standing there at her side, could hardly restrain himself from
throwing his arms around her and pouring out a passionate storm of
comforting, loving words. Yet she belonged to another man--was bound to
him until death should them part. But what if death had already parted
them? What if she were so bound no longer? he thought with a fierce,
wild yearning that had in it something of the murderer's fell purpose,
as he strained his gaze upon the wild signals of savage hostility.
"Don't be frightened, Eanswyth," he said reassuringly, but in a voice
from which even he could not banish every trace of emotion. "You shall
come to no harm to-night, dear, take my word for it. To-morrow, though,
we must take you to some safer place than this is likely to prove for
the next few days."
She made no answer. He had drawn his arm through hers and the strong,
reassuring touch seemed to dispel her fears. It seemed to him that she
leaned upon him, as though for physical support no less than for mental.
Thus they stood, their figures silhouetted in the dull red glow. Thus
they stood, the face of the one stormy with conflicting emotions--that
of the other calm, restful, safe in that firm protecting companionship.
Thus they stood, and to one of these two that isolated position in the
midst of a brooding peril represented the sweetest, most ecstatic moment
that life had ever afforded. And still upon the distant hilltops,
gushing redly upward into the velvety darkness, the war-fires of the
savages gleamed and burned.
"We had better go in now," said Eustace, after a while, when the flaming
beacons had at length burnt low. "You must be tired to death by this
time, and it won't do to sit out here all night. You must have some
rest."
"I will try," she answered. "Do you know, Eustace, there is a something
about you that seems to put everything right. I am not in the least
frightened now."
There was a softness in her tone that bordered upon tenderness--a
softness that was dangerous indeed to a man in his frame of mind.
"Ah! you find that, do you?" he answered, in a strained, harsh,
unnatural voice. Then his utterance seemed choked. Their eyes met in
the starlight--met in a long, clinging gaze--then their lips. Yet, she
belonged to another man, and--a life stood between these two.
Thus to that extent Eustace Milne, the cool-headed, the philosophic, had
allowed the impulse of his mad passion to overmaster him. But before he
could pour forth the unrestrained torrent of words which should part
them there and then forever, or bind them more closely for weal or for
woe, Eanswyth suddenly wrenched herself from his close embrace. A
clatter of rapidly approaching hoofs was borne upon the night.
"It's Tom!" she cried, at the same time fervently blessing the friendly
darkness which concealed her burning face. "It must be Tom. What can
he have been doing with himself all this time?"
"Rather! It's Tom, right enough, or what's left of him!" echoed the
loud, well-known voice, as the horseman rode up to the _stoep_ and flung
himself from the saddle. "What's left of him," he repeated grimly.
"Can't you strike a light, Eanswyth, instead of standing there staring
at a man as if he had actually been cut into mince-meat by those
infernal brutes, instead of having only had a very narrow escape from
that same," he added testily, striding past her to enter the house,
which up till now had been left in darkness for prudential reasons, lest
by rendering it more conspicuous the sight might tempt their savage
neighbours, in their present ugly humour, to some deed of violence and
outrage.
A lamp was quickly lighted, and then a half-shriek escaped Eanswyth.
For her husband presented a ghastly spectacle. He was hatless, and his
thick brown beard was matted with blood, which had streamed down the
side of his face from a wound in his head. One of his hands, too, was
covered with blood, and his clothes were hacked and cut in several
places.
"For Heaven's sake, Eanswyth, don't stand there screeching like an
idiotic schoolgirl, but run and get out some grog, for I want an `eye
opener' badly, I can tell you," he burst forth with an angry stamp of
the foot. "Then get some water and clean rag, and bandage me up a bit--
for besides the crack on the head you see I've got at least half a dozen
assegai stabs distributed about my carcase."
Pale and terrified, Eanswyth hurried away, and Carhayes, who had thrown
himself on the sofa, proceeded growlingly to give an account of the
rough usage he had been subjected to. He must have been stealthily
followed, he said, for about half an hour after leaving Nteya's kraal he
had been set upon in the darkness by a party of Kafirs. So sudden was
the assault that they had succeeded in snatching his gun away from him
before he could use it. A blow on the head with a kerrie--a whack which
would have floored a weaker man--he parenthesised grimly and with
ill-concealed pride--having failed to knock him off his horse, the
savages endeavoured to stab him with their assegais--and in fact had
wounded him in several places. Fortunately for him they had not
succeeded in seizing his bridle, or at any rate in retaining hold of it,
or his doom would have been sealed.
"The chap who tried it on dropped under my stirrup-iron," explained
Carhayes. "I `downed' him, by the living Jingo! He'll never kick
again, I do believe. That scoundrel Nteya promised I shouldn't be
molested, the living dog! There he was, the old _schelm_, he and our
friend of to-day, Hlangani--and Matanzima, old Sandili's son, and
Sivulele, and a lot of them, haranguing the rest. They mean war. There
couldn't have been less than six or seven hundred of them--all holding a
big war-dance, got up in their feathers and fal-lals. What do you think
of that, Eustace? And in I went bang into the very thick of them."
"I knew it would come to this one of these days, Tom," said Eanswyth,
who now reappeared with the necessary refreshment, and water and towels
for dressing his wounds.
"Of course you did," retorted her husband, with a savage snarl. "You
wouldn't be a woman if you didn't, my dear. `I told you so,' `I _told_
you so,'--isn't that a woman's invariable parrot cry. Instead of
`telling me so,' suppose you set to work and see what you can do for a
fellow. Eh?"
Eustace turned away to conceal the white fury that was blasting him.
Why had the Kafirs done things by halves? Why had they not completed
their work and rid the earth of a coarse-minded brute who simply
encumbered it. From that moment he hated his cousin with a secret and
bitter hatred. And this was the life that stood between him and--
Paradise.
Tom Carhayes was indeed in a vile humour--not on account of the wounds
he had received, ugly as some of them were; for he was not lacking in
brute courage or endurance. But his wrath burnt hot against the
insolent daring of his assailants, who had presumed to attack him, who
had, moreover, done so treacherously, had robbed him of his gun, as well
as of a number of sheep, and had added insult to injury by laughing in
his face when he asked for redress.
"I'll be even with them. I will, by the living Jingo!" he snarled as he
sat sipping his brandy and water--while Eanswyth, still pale and
agitated from the various and stirring events of the night, bathed his
wounds with rather trembling fingers. "I'll ride into Komgha to-morrow
and have the whole lot arrested--especially that lying dog, Nteya. I'll
go with the police myself, if only to see the old scoundrel handcuffed
and hauled off to the _tronk_."
"What on earth induced you to run your head into such a hornet's nest
for the sake of a few sheep?" said Eustace at last, thinking he ought to
say something.
"Hang it, man!" was the impatient retort. "Do you suppose I was going
to let these scoundrels have the laugh of me? I tell you I spoored the
sheep slap into Nteya's kraal."
"Well, they seem to have the laugh of you now, anyhow--of _us_, rather,"
said Eustace drily, as he turned away.