Perseverance and the instinct of self-preservation will effect much
that, under ordinary circumstances, would be abandoned as impossible.
By working at night within the cave, and at dawn at the outer entrance,
they contrived to loosen heavy stones, and piled them together so
cleverly, that they felt sure that in a day or two all traces of their
hiding-place would be obliterated, especially if the surf increased.
Starting in the depth of a stormy night along the coast, at the imminent
risk of their lives, they resorted by day to the rocks, where they ate
such a portion of the provision they carried as served to keep up their
strength. There was no scarcity of water, the heavens still poured
forth their floods; at times they were almost blinded by the rain, and
had not the heavy fogs occasionally rolled themselves up, they might
have perished. For his own wise purposes, God chose to lead these two
men in safety through the storm, and on the third day of their journey
they entered a dense bush, crept along the bank of a stream, the
Inzonzana, forded it in safety, and, having waited till nightfall to
cross the open plains northwards, they about midnight entered a narrow
gorge or kloof, and lay down to sleep; nor did they wake till the sun,
for the first time since their _entree_ upon this stage of their
existence, came from his chambers unveiled, and rejoicing as a giant to
run his glorious course.
"We are all right now," said Lee, "and we may light a fire in this dip
under the cliff; we may wait again till night-time to pay a visit to my
friend up there," pointing to a mud hut on the slope of a mountain,
which Gray would not of himself have discovered. "And so now to dinner;
there is a scrap of pork left; our smoke will not attract attention
here, so we may make ourselves comfortable; you will see fires in all
directions by-and-by."
And so it proved. The swollen rivers had detained many a Kafir from a
thieving or hunting expedition; but Lee knew he was some distance from
any kraal of importance. However, in case of any unexpected visit from
rovers, he selected the densest part of a thicket for their bivouac till
evening.
The sun went down, and the cool breeze, which stirred the surface of the
stream, fanned the travel-stained faces of the wanderers. The sprews
and smaller finches, the canaries, the titmouses, and the blue birds and
the Cape chlories--a whole airy colony, in fact, of bright-winged
creatures--began to flit about the bush preparatory to taking their
pleasant pest among the myrtle boughs and dwarf lilacs, and soon woke
the adventurers, who had sought repose in that small Eden.
Gray sat up, and the scene had its influence on his mind, which was not
yet as a garden utterly laid waste and tare-sown. Gentle thoughts stole
over him, and he longed for the wings of the doves crooning near him to
fly away and be at rest; but such thoughts became as a bottle in the
smoke when his companion awoke himself, and, rousing Gray by a rough
shake, bid him get up from the bed of dry leaves on which they had
reposed themselves with a comfort rare to their wearied frames.
Lee's mind was wide awake. Now that he had readied a place of
comparative security, for he knew well where he was, which was more than
Gray did, he, Lee, almost wished that the latter had been drowned with
the other victims of the storm; but the wish was idle--there he was--his
fellow-convict, his comrade. It would not do to lose sight of him; he
was at his mercy, for the deserter might earn his pardon by betraying
his companion.
As Lee considered these points, he did not by any means contemplate
getting rid of Gray by violent means. How many men, from whose misdeeds
originate death and misfortune, shudder at the abstract idea of
slaughter in cold blood.
"The breeze that stirs the stream,
It knows not the depth below."
And the little bubbling spring, that rises with diamond brightness amid
the flowery turf, wots not of the desolation it may spread in its course
if unrestrained.
But Lee's career had been little checked in its evil nature; and I
question if Gray had been thoroughly disabled by rheumatism or fatigue,
whether his companion would have had any compunction in leaving him to
the mercy of stray Kafirs or wild beasts.
But, as matters stood, it was clear he must not be lost sight of; so
Lee, on hearing his companion complain of cramped limbs, made a virtue
of necessity, and bid him take courage, and follow him to the trader's
hut.
With some little difficulty they scrambled across the stones lying in
the bed of the gorge, through which a swift rivulet was rushing. Had
there been water enough to drown Gray, and had he fallen into it _by
accident_, I know not how he might have fared.
But they reached the opposite slope dotted with granite heaps and mimosa
clumps, climbed the mountain steep, and traversed another path. The
moon, like a blazing shield, rising above the distant mountains, lit the
plains, but the nearer hills were yet in deep shadow; and it was not
till the wanderers were in full advance upon the ill-tended garden
fronting the hut indicated by Lee, that they discovered, some paces from
them, what appeared a herd of cattle. They drew back stealthily, for
Lee's experience of the country made him cautious, and sunk down in a
hollow beneath the thickest bush at hand. Each held the other by the
arm; they scarcely breathed, and paused with fixed eyes and rigid limbs
for many minutes.
At length a rustling sound arose among that mysterious crowd, the
shivering noise of assegais announced its warlike calling, and a Fingo
chief marshalled his phalanx with their shields of bullock hides,
beneath which they had been resting till the rising of the moon. Keen
watchers of their great mother, Nature, they had calculated to a nicety
the darkest nook for a shelter to rest beneath their shields preparatory
to their march at night.
It was clear they were on a mission of vengeance, for the few Kafirs,
whose fires had appeared during the day, were either too terrified to
leave their lairs, and give warning of an enemy's approach; or, what was
more probable, the band of warriors had moved unnoticed to the spot.
In perfect silence, and within the shadow of the hill, the chief put his
force in order; ere long they were on their march.
Not a sound was now heard upon the hill-side, but a measured tread of
distant feet was distinctly audible to the convicts, as, impatient of
delay, and, it must be owned, rather disheartened, they lay with their
ears to the ground listening to the receding footsteps of the Fingoes
along the edge of the ravine.
"What a life we are to lead in this savage country!" murmured Gray, who,
ill, weary, and unhappy, would have given worlds to have been at his
duty as a soldier again.
"Silence, fool! and follow me," was Lee's reply.
There was nothing for it but to obey. They crept cautiously into the
garden fronting the trader's hut; it was a desolate piece of ground;
such plants as had once flourished were trodden to the earth; the door
was torn from its hinges, and there was light enough from the moon to
see that the interior had been rifled of some, if not all, of its
contents.
The two men sat down upon the earthen floor of the despoiled abode; the
one cursing, the other moaning in the anguish of pain and weariness of
heart.
A man's form suddenly came between them and the moonlight that shone
upon the opposite mountain. A pistol clicked in their ears.
"Who have we here?" said a stern voice in English. The convicts rose to
their feet, and in a moment all three men stood together in the clear
and radiant atmosphere.
But, to Lee's disappointment, the man, who had just issued from some
place of concealment near them, was not the person he had expected to
see, and on whose co-operation in his plans he relied, inasmuch as he,
Lee, had some claims on the trader's good-will; and, compelled by
circumstances to be prompt and truthful, he plainly admitted his
surprise and regret. Then, without satisfying his interrogator as to
his identity or his comrade's, he inquired abruptly, "Where is Tanner?"
To this he received, instead of a reply, the unsatisfactory answer of
"What's that to you? and who the devil are you?"
The pistol was again elevated, but Lee coolly put it aside; and,
sensible that his desperate position could only be defended by hardy
measures--seeing, too, that the peremptory tone of his opponent was that
of a man whose privacy was not to be further invaded against his will,
answered in a steady tone:
"I am not a spy, you may trust us both; lead us into your cabin, or we
must climb higher up the hill to the hut where Tanner kept his powder in
old days. If it is not standing now, there is a cave near it, and we
can light a fire there in safety. My companion must have an hour's rest
and food, and we shall be secure enough there. To tell you the truth,
we are both hungry, and have travelled far."
It was clear that the speaker knew the ground on which he stood and the
calling of the trader, who, to outward observers travelling the country,
carried on a harmless traffic in ostrich-feathers, skins, horns,
tobacco, snuff, and such comforts as civilisation in her slow march
through Kafirland had taught the use of to the natives. Puzzled, and
rather disconcerted, he led the way to the hut.
It had a counter, shelves, weights and scales--all the accompaniments of
legitimate trade; but on striking a light, and holding it up, both
visitors and host were soon made aware of the devastated state at the
stores. The shelves had been cleared of their blankets, the walls were
bare of all but the nails to which beads and bugles had been suspended
in tempting array; the tobacco had been swept from the counter, the
remnant of tobacco-pipes lay broken on the trampled floor, and scarce a
vestige remained of any portable wares. A bunch of common candles
hanging in a corner had escaped the notice of the thieves. One of these
the host took down, and, going into an inner room, returned with the
welcome intelligence that there was something yet left in the locker.
Either overlooking the entrance to this inner apartment, or having found
sufficient plunder to satisfy themselves, the thieves had here left all
intact. The marauders had been Kafirs, who, not aware of the Fingoes'
proximity, had swept off all the property they could readily dislodge.
The Fingoes bore the odium of the theft, but they were only intent on
repossessing themselves of their own property.
A bed covered with skins stood at one end, a chest, a bench, and a
common table of yellow-wood at the other; a few household utensils
completed the furniture; the window was darkened by a rude shutter, and
the ashes of a wood fire were on the hearth.
Drawing a few sticks together from the scattered embers, the host, a man
of determined aspect, re-lit the fire, replenishing it with a billet of
wood, and in a short time the three men were seated together on the
ground with closed doors. A repast of dried buck and some mouldy bread,
which did not look particularly inviting even to wayworn travellers, was
spread before them; and the large chest being removed, some clay, which
had been spread to give the surface the same appearance as the floor,
was cleared away, a heavy stone was lifted, and the master of the hut,
descending an aperture, brought up a tiny keg of Cape brandy, filled the
flask he carried in his huge pocket, and, replacing the keg, the stone,
the trap-floor, and the chest, handed a tin cupful of the burning liquid
first to Lee and then to Gray.
All this, of course, had not been done in silence. The host, who called
himself Brennard, recounted how he had been absent on a trading
excursion for some days to Fort Beaufort, a garrison in the northern
part of the colony; how, on his return, his horses and oxen had fallen
lame, and he had left them at a brother-trader's station; how he had
talked homewards with a pack-ox carrying some of his stores--the ox was
now fastened to a stout oak far down the adjoining kloof; how he had
advanced to reconnoitre, having heard the Fingoes were on march against
Umgee's people, who had stolen Fingo cattle; and how, after watching the
phalanx advance upon their silent path to his own property, which they
despoiled sad left, he had been astonished to meet two white men on his
ground, one of whom was evidently no stranger there.
Gray remained contented as an auditor to a conversation begun by
Brennard in Dutch, and carried on by Lee, who admitted in English that
he had been in the country before, and that he had known Tanner, the
first trader on the station; but the dialogue was soon wholly carried on
in Dutch, which was incomprehensible to the deserter. He learned,
however, that Tanner had been shot on the other side of the Kei in a
conflict with the tribes there. Brennard, who had been his agent beyond
the Bashee, knowing that the head-quarters of the business needed
looking after, left a deputy on the coast, near the Umtata river, and
removed himself to the hut in the hills.
In a word, Brennard was a dealer in gunpowder, which he sold secretly to
the tribes on the English frontier; and the men on the coast were the
established consignees of arms from British artificers.
Lee, of course, soon enlightened Brennard on the subject of his former
acquaintance with Tanner; but how it first came about was a mystery to
the trader. He was beginning to consider how he might sift this out,
and both convicts were on the point of reminding him that they should be
glad of some change of raiment, when a long low whistle, from the side
of the hut nearest the hill, interrupted their plan of operations, and
the trader, rising, prepared to leave the hut.
His pistol lay on the bench, Gray seized it.
"Put it down, Gray," said Lee; "I know my man now; besides, you fool, do
you suppose he would have left a loaded weapon behind him if he was
bringing an enemy upon us? Put it down, I say," and he took it out of
the hand of the deserter, who, as his prospects opened before him, began
to deplore his state, and longed, with thoughts half-bewildered, to free
himself from the net he felt gradually closing round him.
Lee read mistrust, and what he called fear, in the face of his
unfortunate companion. The mistrust was unmistakable, but the fear was
that which a heart, born as honest as human nature can be, feels when
involved in wrong-doing, from which there is no escape.
"Stay, Brennard," said Lee, indicating an assumption of confidence in
Gray. "I suspect I know what that whistle means. I have no secret from
my friend here," laying his hand on the shoulder of the deserter as he
spoke. "I have told you as much as need be of my tale, and now let us
make a bargain--there is nothing like plain speaking in great
emergencies; and as I have a pretty strong notion that through your
information we might be handed over to the authorities, I do not mind
reminding you that we might do the same by you; and that while our fate
would only be re-transportation--for we have escaped from the wreck of
the _Trafalgar_--_perhaps_ yours would be a dance in the air. Whether
the hut in the kloof is still in its old place, I cannot tell; but a
commando out here would soon rout out your stores, and either take you
prisoner, or set a price on your head. At any rate, the game would be
up with you as a respectable British trader,"--Lee laughed
heartily--"and you would be at the mercy of the Kafirs or the Dutch,
into whatever territory you might wander."
He whom the convict so addressed was a man of powerful frame--
deep-chested, and rather short-armed, every limb proved strength; backed
by a couple of Kafirs, he might have despatched his visitors; but,
although a dealer in contraband stores, and accustomed to danger, and at
times to scenes of warfare, in which he was supposed to take a part
against the very population he helped to arm,--although, in fact, he,
like Lee, was a traitor, he would have hesitated at a deed of
cold-blooded murder on his own hearth.
In a word, no two men could have better understood each other than Lee,
the convict, and John Brennard, the trader of the Witches' Krantz
(Cliff). As for Gray, he might truly be considered, what a late ruffian
was described to be, "the victim of circumstances,"--with wearied body
and aching heart, he sat by, a passive listener; passive, because he
_could_ not help himself.
The low whistle was repeated, and Brennard, opening the window-shutter,
responded in the tone of a wandering, hungry wolf: then the signal came
clear but slow, and with evident caution, and moving in am upward
direction, died away in some hollow of the hill. Then Brennard, closing
the aperture carefully, proposed entering on a solemn compact with his
new acquaintances, to which they agreed.
Strange indeed is that species of oath, which binds bad men together,
and which may truly be considered as founded on a superstition, of which
the devil is the founder. There are many to whom the nature of such an
oath is sacred, who will rob, murder, desolate the home of the
industrious and virtuous, and commit every crime which by that oath they
are bound to enter upon, in partnership with others as "blind of heart"
as themselves. In these compacts, they swear by the Bible, thus
blasphemously making the word of God a witness and a guarantee for sin.
Aye, and such compacts have been kept inviolate, even at the gibbet's
foot, and beneath the bloody guillotine.
And, after all, what is an oath, in the opinion of a truly honest man?
A seal set upon the word of a villain, who only tells the truth because
the fear of punishment on earth compels him to do it. He who lies to
God daily, would hardly hesitate to lie to man, but that he lets "I
dare, not wait upon I would," and trembles, like the Chinese and the
Kafir, not at commission of crime, but at the disgrace and punishment
which must follow its discovery.
They stood up, did those three desperate men, in the low and narrow
room; the owner of the wild domicile held the book in his hand, for
there was a Bible in the chest. They opened the unholy compact with the
words "I swear." As they spoke, their eyes were fixed distrustingly on
each other, not on Heaven, the witness they invoked, and Brennard was
proceeding to dictate a certain form, with its set phrases of "betrayal
of brotherhood," "rights of partnership," etc, when the whistle came
back from the krantz above, descended gradually down the hill-side,
paused, chirruped like a bird, a gay, innocent bird, and a low tap at
the door was followed by a voice of most musical sweetness.
"Vuka u zishukumise"--"Awake and be stirring," said the voice. It was a
woman's.
"Urga lungenalake?"--"Are you ready?" asked Brennard.
"Ewa--urga kuza ni nina?"--"Yes--when are you coming?"
"Dirge za"--"I am coming now," replied the trader.