The days went by, and Renshaw steadily gained in health and strength.
He was now able to walk about at will, to take short rides in the early
morning, and towards sundown, carefully avoiding the heat of the day,
and to begin looking after his stock again. Not that the state of the
latter afforded him much encouragement, poor fellow, for each day
witnessed an alarming decrease in the few hundred starving animals the
drought had left him. Meanwhile, the burning, brassy heavens were
without a cloud, save an occasional one springing suddenly from the
horizon, as though to mock at the terrible anxiety of the dwellers in
this desert waste, and as suddenly melting away, together with many an
eager, unspoken hope for the longed-for rain. Not a breath of air, save
now and again one of those strange whirlwinds which, heaving up bits of
dried stick and dust from the baked and gasping earth, and spinning them
round in its gyrating course, moves in a waterspoutlike column along the
plain, to vanish into empty air as suddenly as it arose--sure sign of
drought, or the continuance of the same, say the stock-growers, out of
the plenitude of their experience. The veldt was studded with the
shrivelled, rotting carcases of dead animals, scattered about here and
there in little clumps of tens and twenties, to the advantage of clouds
of great white vultures wheeling aloft ere settling down upon the
plentiful repast. Even the very lizards peering forth from the cracks
and crannies of the walls, or basking on the clay summit of old Kaatje's
outdoor oven, seemed gasping for air, for moisture.
All this Renshaw contemplated with the recklessness of a player who has
staked his last napoleon. Every day increased the unrest that was upon
him, the feverish longing to get away. It was not the mere run-down
feeling of one who desires a change, or the eagerness of a sensitive
mind to see the last of a detested locality. There was more than this
underlying it, and Maurice Sellon, watching him narrowly, though
unobtrusively, noted the circumstance, shrewdly guessing, moreover, that
anxiety on behalf of the mysterious Golconda was not the prevailing
motive this time. But, whatever it was, Renshaw, habitually reserved,
was closer than death itself.
Sellon, for his part, was as anxious to get away as his host. He was
thoroughly sick of his present quarters, and of the daily occupation of
seeing a few more wretched Angoras pay the debt of Nature--of staring at
the glassy, shimmering horizon, and wondering when it was going to rain.
Thoroughly sick, too, of swarming flies and of rough food none too
appetisingly displayed--of a sofa-bed, and falling asleep to the
accompaniment of the ticking rustle of the tarantulas hunting their prey
in the thatch overhead, and occasionally running over his ear in the
night. It was all very well for Fanning. He was used to that sort of
thing--Sellon was not; therefore small wonder that he should begin to
get sick of it. There wasn't even anything to shoot on the place, for
the springbok had trekked in quest of more favoured regions.
Sellon, however, was blessed with a mercurial temperament, as his host
had remarked, and the same now stood him in good stead, for, though
bored to death, he did not wax quarrelsome--the usual development of
that unenviable condition. But there was one matter which, haunting his
mind day and night, bade fair even to drive him into that.
He was racked by an hourly dread lest his friend should discover the
loss of the missing paper. Maurice Sellon was constitutionally as far
from being a coward as the average Englishman, well endowed with thews,
habitually is. But the consciousness that he had been guilty of a mean
and dishonest action tended to demoralise his easy self-reliance. A man
like Renshaw, the possessor of a secret of fabulous value, the clue to
which he had cherished for years, and patiently; and at the cost of
untold hardship and possible peril, had repeatedly attempted to solve,
would, he reasoned, prove a desperate man when he should come to realise
that his hopes were for ever shattered--a dangerous one, should he ever
arrive at the conviction that he had been deliberately robbed. The idea
of persuading him that he had himself insisted on destroying it during
his delirium seemed the only way out of the difficulty; but that
expedient now struck Sellon as a particularly thin one. Such a state of
mental nervousness had he reached, that he felt sure the other would at
once detect it as a lie. True, he had probably saved Fanning's life, as
the latter had himself declared. But at the moment of his terrible
discovery that consideration was not likely to count for much.
They were alone here together. Not a living soul had they seen during
all these weeks, except the family of Korannas, who officiated as
servants--both field and domestic--to the establishment. They were
alone together--cut off from the outside world as thoroughly as though
shut up on a desert island. What deadly, terrible penalty might not
Fanning exact from the man who had so deeply injured him? He was no
longer weak and tottering with illness; he had, in fact, nearly
recovered his normal vigour. The more Sellon looked at the situation
the less he liked it.
What a fool he had been to meddle with the thing! He would have given
worlds to be able to replace it. But it was gone irrevocably.
At one time his suspicions had rested on the Koranna servants. But the
narrow watch he had kept upon them, as also the immediate and careful
search he had made around the house at the time of the occurrence, had
forced him to abandon this idea. Dismissing the Satanic theory at first
formed, he had hit upon another--to a dweller in Southern Africa, almost
as wild and chimerical; but then it must be remembered that Sellon was
not a dweller in that country--only a "raw Englishman," in fact, as the
Boers define a recent importation. That black claw which had reft the
paper from his hand in the dead midnight must have belonged to some huge
baboon, who, attracted by the light, had approached the open window, and
having accomplished his mischievous and monkey-like manoeuvre, had
decamped forthwith to his native wilds. Anyhow, the precious clue had
disappeared, and in all human probability would never again be lighted
on by mortal eye.
Mingled with his apprehensions on the above counts, however, were the
misgivings of cupidity, and there were times when he suspected Renshaw
of regretting his offer. The latter, since first mentioning the subject
of the treasure, had hardly reverted to it, and this reticence struck
him (Sellon) in an unfavourable light, and the reason assigned for it as
a mere excuse.
"Take my word for it," Renshaw had said, one day, "we had better leave
the subject entirely for a little longer--till we get down country, say.
You see, the long and short is, it's an exciting one to me, and my head
is by no means clear yet. It'll be better to put it off, and there's
plenty of time."
And this answer, judging the speaker by himself, and, indeed, it is fair
to say, by his knowledge of the world, struck Sellon as eminently
unsatisfactory. At the risk of a rebuff, a rupture even, he had more
than once adroitly tried to "draw" his host, but with so little success
as to leave him ignorant as to whether the latter was sufficiently
familiar with its contents as to render him independent of the document
itself.
Outwardly, the intercourse between the two men was pleasant and friendly
enough, and though they had little to do but smoke Boer tobacco and
wonder whether it would ever rain again, they had not yet exhausted
their subjects of conversation, Sellon was a lively talker, and full of
shrewd worldly wisdom, and the other's natural reserve admirably fitted
him for the part of a good listener. Or, on the other hand, more than
one strange wild incident, evolved out of the reticent, lonely man's own
experiences, was of vivid interest to the globe-trotting _viveur_.
Then it was that the latter came to impart snatches of his own history.
He had migrated to South Africa as a pure speculation, and ready for any
adventure that might come to hand--mining, treasure-seeking, a trip up
country, anything that promised possible profit. He had half arranged
an up-country trip, and it was while journeying to a distant township to
interview the other partner in the scheme that he had lost himself, and
accident had landed him so opportunely at Renshaw Fanning's door.
One night they had been thus chatting, and retired to bed, having
decided to make a start, at all risks, the day after the morrow. The
heat was something fearful. A dead, sultry, boding stillness reigned
over everything, productive of that strange nervous depression which is
wont to afflict mankind prior to an approaching convulsion of Nature.
Every door and window of the house stood open, as if to keep up the
fiction that there was any air to come in.
"I believe there's going to be an earthquake, at least," said Sellon, as
he turned in.
"Or a big thunderstorm, only--no such luck!" answered Renshaw.
It was not the night to bear the weight of a blanket, or even of a
sheet, had the latter luxury been among the resources of the
establishment. Sellon, after tossing uneasily for an hour, dropped off
into a heavy sleep, and dreamed.
He was alone in a deep, craggy gorge. Beetling rocks reared high above
his head, just discernible in the gloom, for it was night. It was the
"Valley of the Eye."
Yes; and there was the "Eye" itself--gleaming out of the darkness,
seeming to transfix him with the cold stare of a basilisk. Somehow he
felt no exaltation on having gained the place--no triumph over treasure
trove. Instead of putting forth his efforts to reach the shining stone,
his chief desire was to flee from the spot. But he could not--he was
rooted to the ground, shivering, trembling, with a chill shrinking of
mortal dread. Nearer, nearer, drew that gleaming Eye, and, lo! beside
it flashed forth another. There were two--a pair of eyes. Then before
them came shadowy hands holding a bow. It was drawn. It was pointed
full at him. Still he could not move. The poisoned arrows. Oh,
Heaven!
The string twanged. With a shrill hiss the arrow sped--the poisoned
arrow. A loud hiss, a deafening hiss, and, lo! the gloom of the valley
was lighted up with a blinding glare, and--
"Close shave that, old chap!" said a voice.
The spell was broken--broken by that well-known voice. Starting up in
his bed, bathed in the sweat of deadly horror, Sellon beheld a strange
sight.
The room _was_ lighted up with a blinding glare. In the middle of it
stood Renshaw Fanning, holding up a huge snake by the tail. The reptile
was quite dead, its head shattered by the hard oaken table, but its
hideous length was still undulating with a convulsive writhe. The glare
was the result of a continuous succession of vivid lightning flashes.
Just then a mighty rolling peal of thunder shook the house, making the
doors and windows rattle like castanets. Then followed pitch darkness.
"Strike a light, if you have any handy, but don't come too near me in
the dark," said Renshaw. "This joker's fangs may still be of some
account, albeit he's stone dead."
As though still dreaming, Sellon obeyed.
"What the very deuce is the meaning of it all?" he said, as by the light
of the candle he sat surveying the situation.
"Only this--that you were as near passing on your checks as you ever
will be," was the reply, "And you may thank this thunderstorm for it
that you didn't. The thunder awoke me at once, though it didn't you,
and of course I went outside to look at the weather. Then, by the glare
of a flash of lightning, I spotted this brute. He was lying bang across
both your legs, with his head against the wall. The flash lasted just
long enough for me to lay hold of his tail, and I knew the geography of
the room well enough to whirl him up and bring his head down upon the
hardest part of the table."
Sellon stared at the speaker, then at the hideous, writhing body of the
reptile, without a word. He seemed stupefied.
"Scott!" he burst forth at last. "Well, we are quits now, at any rate.
But that's something like a nightmare."
This, then, was the interpretation of his bloodcurdling dream. The
terrible eyes, the frightful riveting spell, the shrill hiss, the
poisoned arrow. He felt clean knocked out of time.
"Green cobra--and a big un at that," said Renshaw, throwing the carcase
through the open house-door. "See how it was? The beggar knew a big
rain was coming, and sneaked in here for shelter. It's never altogether
safe to sleep with open doors. And now, unless you can sleep through a
shower-bath, it's not much use turning in again. This old thatch will
leak like a sieve after all these months of dry weather. Better have a
`nip' to steady your nerves."
The storm broke in all its fury; every steel-blue dazzling flash, in
unintermittent sequence, lit up the darkness with more than the
brightness of noonday, while the thunderclaps followed in that series of
staccato crashes so appalling in their deafening suddenness to one
belated in the open during these storms on the High Veldt. Then came a
lull, followed by the onrushing roar of the welcome rain. In less than
five minutes the dry and shrunken thatch was leaking like a shower-bath,
even as its owner had predicted, and having covered up everything worth
so protecting, the two men lit their pipes and sat down philosophically
to wait for the morning.
It came. But although the storm had long since passed on the rain
continued. No mere thunder-shower this, but a steady, drenching
downpour from a lowering and unbroken sky; a downpour to wet a man to
the skin in five minutes. The drought had at length broken up.
Too late, however. The rain, as is frequently the case under the
circumstances, turned out a cold rain. Throughout that day all hands
worked manfully to save the lives of the remnant of the stock--for the
Angora is a frail sort of beast under adverse conditions--and as it grew
bitterly cold, packing the creatures into stables, outhouses, even the
Koranna huts, for warmth. In vain! The wretched animals, enfeebled by
the long, terrible drought, succumbed like flies to the sudden and
inclement change. Save for about two score of the hardiest among the
flock, by nightfall of the following day Renshaw Fanning was left
without a hoof upon the farm.