"A REGION OF EMPTINESS, HOWLING AND DREAR."
Right up under the cliff--the beetling rock overhead, the slope of the
hillside falling away into the basin above described--did our
adventurers make their fireless camp. But though fireless they were
under no lack of ingredients for a substantial meal, nor of the
wherewithal to wash it down satisfactorily; which latter fact was
perhaps the better appreciated from the certainty of this being the last
water they should find until their return.
"Queer thing this sort of contrast, Fanning," said Sellon, who with his
back against the rock was blowing tobacco clouds with post-prandial
contentment. "I suppose some of these evenings, when one gets back into
dress clothes and heavy dinner-parties again, one will look back to this
crouch under a big cliff as a kind of dream."
"I suppose so. Yet man is a would-be adaptable animal, after all. I
remember a chap, an Englishman, who was with me sea-cow shooting up on
the Tonga border. He had an idea of doing at Rome as Romans do, so he
got hold of a Zulu _mutya_ [A kind of apron--pretty scanty in
dimensions. It is usually made of cat-tails and bullock-hide], and cut
about in nothing but that and a pair of canvas shoes. We were after the
hippos in a boat, and it was risky, too--for the river was full of
crocodiles--in case a hippo should tilt us over. Well, before we had
pushed off an hour, the joker was burnt red, and in less than two was
literally skinned alive. He didn't kill any sea-cows that day."
"Battling sport, that sea-cow shooting must be. What do you say,
Fanning, when we've found our Golconda, to starting a shooting-trip bang
into the interior? Hallo! What's that giving tongue? Sounds for all
the world like a pack of foxhounds."
A shrill, long-drawn, baying chorus came floating upon the night-air,
but very distant. Then it drew nearer, then faded again, then plainer
still, then seemed to die away fainter and fainter in the distance. The
chorus, borne upon the night in fluctuating waves of sound, blended in
wild harmony with the frowning heights and untrodden desolation of this
out-of-the-world gorge.
"Wild dogs," said Renshaw, listening intently. "They're hunting
something--running it pretty closely, too, or they wouldn't be tonguing
like that. By the way, talking of wild dogs, I had an experience with
them once which was very much akin to that one of yours with the baboons
a little while ago. I was returning from a trip into the Gaza country,
with a waggon, and knocking around to shoot something, I fell in with a
clump of giraffes. They were shyer than usual, and led me a long chevy.
I only managed to wound one--not badly enough--and then it got dark.
My horse was rather done up, and I didn't quite know where I was. Then
it became obvious I shouldn't fetch the waggon again that night.
"Just as I was casting about for a good place to camp, I heard a whimper
close at hand. The veldt was sprinkled about with clumps of mimosa and
other thorns--in parts thickish--and all of a sudden the horse threw up
his ears and began to snort. I looked up. There, right in front,
squatted on their haunches in a semicircle, not a hundred yards off,
were a lot of wild dogs. Couldn't have been less than forty of them. I
just gave a shout and rushed at them. But they didn't move until I got
within twenty yards, and then they got up, cantered away the same
distance, and squatted down again. Then I lost patience, and picking
out a big one, just bowled the brute over as he sat. He stiffened out
without a yelp, but the rest didn't seem to care. So I stuck in another
cartridge, and stretched out another, and rushed at them at the same
time. They scattered then, but in no hurry. Now, I thought, I'll ride
on. But I happened to look back to see if they had dropped off. Not a
bit of it. The brutes were quietly trotting along in my wake. Again I
turned back. They just stopped, and squatted down as before.
"Now I had never known wild dogs act like this, the difficulty being, as
a rule, to get within shot of them at all, and I own to a kind of eerie
feeling as I marked the persistency of these ordinarily sneaking and
cowardly brutes, sitting on their haunches there in the dusk, licking
their lips as if they knew I was for them. You see it wasn't so much on
their account I felt shivery, but it looked as if they knew what I
didn't--like the old superstition, if it be a superstition, of a shark
following a ship, pointing to an approaching death on board, or the
actual fact of a lot of aasvogels watching a wounded buck, or a wounded
anything.
"All of a sudden, I became conscious of a most sickening and
overpowering stench. By that time it was almost dark--but not too dark
to make out objects indistinctly--and the objects that caught my eye at
that moment were sufficiently hideous and appalling. All around, the
veldt was strewn with human corpses--swollen and decomposed, torn and
mangled by wild animals, or ripped and hacked by the assegais of their
slayers. They were natives, and of all ages and sexes, lying about in
contorted attitudes, some heaped upon each other, the frightfully
distorted countenances staring up at the sky. Pah! it was sickening, I
tell you, coming upon this in the dusk. There seemed no end of them,
and they were scattered as if cut down while fleeing. I learned
afterwards it was the result of a Matabili raid. Well, this find
accounted in a measure for the boldness of the wild dogs. They had been
largely feeding on the human form divine, and had acquired a
proportionate contempt for the same."
"What an experience!" said Sellon, whom this story, told amid the dark
and savage surroundings of their fireless camp, considerably impressed.
"You must have seen some uncommonly queer things in your time, Fanning?"
The other smiled slightly.
"Well, yes, I have. This is a land of strange experiences, although
prosaic enough on the surface. I hope none will befall us before we get
home again--always excepting the strange experience of finding ourselves
rich men in the shape of what we are looking for."
"By the way, whereabouts was it you were attacked that time? Anywhere
near here?"
"About half an hour's ride further on. The poort narrows very much, and
the cliffs are not nearly so high. It was just sundown, and I was
jogging quietly along homewards very much down on my luck over the third
failure, when bang came a shower of assegais and arrows and kerries,
hurtling about the rocks like a young hailstorm. I spurred up then, you
bet; but the ground is beastly rough, as you've seen, and the enemy
could get along as fast as I could--besides, I had a brute of a
pack-horse that wouldn't lead properly. They chased me down to where we
first entered this defile, and by that time it was dark--luckily for me.
As it was, I only shook them off by sacrificing the pack-horse."
"Now, how the deuce did you manage that?"
"Why, I knew they'd reckon on me taking the shortest cut for the river.
So when I got out of the poort at the bottom of the turret-head
mountain--you remember that steep little slope where your horse turned a
somersault--I put on pace a little so as to get a start. Then I stuck a
burr under the pack-horse's tail and cast him loose. Away he went,
slanting off into the other poort, which seems to lead towards the
river, while I lay low. I could see the devils skipping down the poort
on his heels, in high old glee. In the night I moved on again, striking
due north, and after making nearly a week's cast--and nearly dying of
hunger and thirst--I fetched up at the drift we came through day before
yesterday. And, by the way, I think old Greenway was wrong in saying,
`Beware the schelm Bushmen.' Those chaps struck me as more like
Korannas. There were some quite big fellows among them."
The time and place were singularly appropriate to the narration of wild
and perilous experiences. But this latest in no wise tended to raise
the listener's spirits. Sellon was not of the stuff of which
adventurers are made. He was keen enough on this expedition and the
dazzling possibilities it held out. But he didn't want to be killed or
wounded if he could help it. No such thing as going into danger out of
pure love of excitement found a place in his philosophy. He was not
imaginative, yet the idea of being struck down by an unseen enemy, or
worse still, perhaps, dragging himself away mortally wounded to die like
an animal in a hole or cave, in the heart of this frightful desert, a
multitude of foul and loathsome beasts howling for his blood, per
adventure waiting till mortal weakness should embolden them to pounce on
him before life was extinct--these considerations struck home to him
now, and fairly made him shiver.
"By-the-by, Sellon," said the careless voice of his companion, "do you
think you'd be able to find your way back to the river again?"
"Now, why the deuce should you ask that, Fanning?" was the testy
rejoinder.
"Oh, naturally enough. I wanted to know!" said Renshaw, astonished
somewhat. "Besides, supposing anything happened to me--and a hundred
things might happen--could you find your way out?"
"Well, it's certainly an infernal labyrinth so far, and I suppose likely
to get worse. Still, I'll take extra notice of the landmarks," growled
Sellon.
Then he rolled himself up in his blanket to turn in, characteristically
leaving his companion to do whatever watching was necessary. And there
was some of the latter to be done, for ever and anon the scream of a
leopard away among the crags, or the growling snuffle of some beast,
unseen in the darkness, slaking his thirst at the waterhole just below,
would cause the horses to snort wildly, and tug and strain at their
picket _reims_ in alarm. It needed the sound of a human voice, the
touch of a human hand, and that frequently, to allay their fears--
peradventure to prevent them from breaking loose and galloping madly off
into the night; and however his less inured companion may have been able
to revert to more congenial scenes in the blissful illusions of dreams,
there was little sleep that night for Renshaw Fanning.