BAFFLED!
The room was small, low-ceiled, and its only furniture was a table,
chair, and truckle-bed--all obviously of Dutch construction--and,
unless he could find some means to secure his door, he resolved to
remain awake till dawn. The only window in the room overlooked the
roof of the stable where the dead horse lay. The sash was loose, and
shook in the night wind, and he could see the bright and, to him, new
constellations glittering in the southern sky.
Florian contrived to secure the door by placing the chair on the
floor as a wedge or barrier between it and the bedstead, on the
mattress of which--though not very savoury in appearance--he cast
himself, for he was weary, worn, and felt that there was an absolute
necessity for husbanding his strength, as he knew not what might be
before him, so he extinguished the candle.
Something in the general aspect and bearing of the man Josh Jarrett,
and in those of the woman, with her efforts to intoxicate him, and
something, too, in his general surroundings and isolated
situation--for the few scattered houses of Elandsbergen were all far
apart--together with the memory of the prying face he had seen at the
window, at the very moment he was picking up the gold, all served to
put Florian on his guard; thus he lay down without undressing, and,
longing only for daylight, grasped ever and anon the butt of his
pistol.
For some time past he had been unused to the luxury of even a
truckle-bed or other arrangements for repose than his grey greatcoat
and ammunition blanket, with a knapsack for a pillow; hence, despite
his keen anxiety, he must have dropped asleep, for how long he knew
not; but he suddenly started up as the sound of voices below came to
his ear, and the full sense of his peculiar whereabouts rushed on him.
Voices! They were coarse and deep, but not loud--voices of persons
talking in low and concentrated tones in the room beneath, separated
from him only by the ill-fitting boarding of the floor, between the
joints of which lines of light were visible, and one bright upward
flake, through a hole from which a knot had dropped out.
'Curse him, he's but a boy; I could smash the life out of him by one
blow of my fist!' he heard his host, Josh Jarrett, say.
Others responded to this, but in low, stealthy, and husky tones.
Certain that some mischief with regard to himself was on the _tapis_.
Florian crept softly to the orifice in the floor, and looked down.
Round a dirty and sloppy table, covered with drinking-vessels, pipes
and tobacco-pouches, bottles of squareface and Cape smoke, were Josh
Jarrett and three other ruffians, digger-like fellows, with Nan among
them, all drinking; and a vile-looking quintette they were,
especially the woman, with her hair all dishevelled now, and her face
inflamed by that maddening compound known as Cape smoke.
'When I was ass enough to be in the Queen's service,' said Jarrett
with a horrible imprecation, 'these 'ere blooming officers and
non-comms. led me a devil of a life; they said it was my own fault
that I was always drunk and in the mill. Be that as it may, I've one
of the cursed lot upstairs, and I'll sarve him out for what they made
me undergo, cuss 'em. One will answer my purpose as well as another.
Nan, you did your best to screw him, but he was wary--infernally
wary. Blest if I don't think the fellow is a Scotsman after all, for
all his English lingo.'
'Yes, he did shirk his liquor,' hiccupped the amiable Nan; 'you
should have drugged it, Josh.'
'But then we didn't know that he had all this chink about him.'
'That must be ours,' growled a fellow who had not yet spoken, but was
prodding the table with a knife he had drawn from his belt; 'we'll
give him a through ticket to the other world--one with the down
train.'
'And no return,' added Nan, laughing.
Florian felt beads of perspiration on his brow; he was one against
five--entrapped, baited, done to death--and if he did not appear at
headquarters with the fatal money, what would be thought of him but
that he had deserted with it, and his name would be branded as that
of a coward and robber.
Dulcie! The thought of Dulcie choked him, but it nerved him too.
Another truculent-looking fellow now came in, making five men in all.
'He has money galore on him--Nan saw the gold--money in a canvas bag.
How comes he, a sergeant, to have all this in his grab, unless he
stole it?' said Jarrett, in explanation to the new-comer.
'Of course he stole it--it's regimental money, and evidently he is
deserting with it,' said the other, who was no doubt, like Jarrett, a
Queen's bad bargain also; for he added, 'What the devil do Cardwell's
short-service soldiers care about their chances of pension or
promotion--that's the reason he has the bag of gold; so why shouldn't
we make it ours? It is only dolloping a knife into him, and then
burying him out in the veldt before daylight. Even if he was traced
here, who is to be accountable for a deserter?'
And this practical ruffian proceeded at once to put a finer edge and
point upon his long bowie knife.
'You forget that he has a revolver,' said Nan.
'I don't,' said Jarrett; 'but he ain't likely to use it in his sleep,
especially when we pin him by the throat.'
He was but one against five armed and reckless desperadoes; and there
was the woman, too, whose hands were ready for evil work. The stair
that led to his room was narrow--so much so that there was but space
for one on a step. The lower or outer door he knew to be securely
locked and bolted. The window of his room, we have said, overlooked
the lean-to roof of the stable, where he knew that two horses were in
stall--a sure means of escape could he reach one; but the door, he
was aware, was locked, and the key in possession of the Kaffir groom.
He was maddened by the thought that his barbarous and obscure death
would brand him with a double disgrace; and death is more than ever
hard when suffered at the hands of cowards.
'What is the use of all this blooming talk?' said one, starting from
the table; 'let us set about the job at once!'
'Look you,' said Jarrett, 'if roused he'll perhaps try to escape by
the stable-roof, so while you fellows go up the stair, I go round to
the back of the house and cut off his retreat.'
'The stable-roof,' thought Florian, 'my only chance lies that way.'
He opened the window at the very moment that stealthy steps sounded
on the wooden stair, and a red light streamed under the door, which
their felon hands failed to force, so firmly was the chair wedged
between it and the bed. He slid down the stable-roof, and dropped
safely on the ground, to be faced by Josh Jarrett, who came rushing
on, knife in hand, but Florian shot him down, firing two chambers
into his very teeth, and then he sprang away like a hare out into the
open veldt, leaving the ruffian wallowing in his blood.
He knew not and cared not in what direction he ran at first, as he
could hear the oaths and imprecations of his pursuers, over whom his
youth, lightness, and activity gave him an advantage; but after a
time red-dawn began to streak the eastern sky, and he knew that was
the direction which, if he was spared, would take him to the bank of
the Buffalo River.
He continued to run at a good steady double, saving his wind as he
did so, and his courage and confidence rose when he found that he was
distancing his pursuers so much that he could neither see nor hear
anything of them.
As he ran on he thought for a moment or two of the fierce gleaming
eyes and glistening teeth of Jarrett--of the blood he had shed, and
the life he had perhaps taken for the first time, remorsefully; but
had he not acted thus, what would he have been? A gashed corpse!
'Bah!' he said aloud, 'I am a soldier--why such thoughts at all? Why
should I have mercy when these wretches would have had none?' and he
began to regret that he had not fired a random shot or two through
the room-door and knocked over some of them on the staircase.
A sound now struck his ear; it was the thud of galloping hoofs upon
the veldt, and his heart sank as he remembered the two horses in the
stable, where his dead nag was lying.
He looked back, and there, sure enough, in the grey dawn were two
mounted men riding in scouting fashion, far apart, and he could not
for a moment doubt they were two of Jarrett's companions in pursuit,
thirsting with avarice and for revenge.
He made his way, stumbling wildly and breathlessly down a wooded
ravine to elude their sight; on and on he strove till a vine root
caught his foot: his hands outstretched beat the air for a moment,
and then he fell headlong forward and downward into a donga full of
brushwood.
For a moment he had a sense of strange palms, and giant cacti, and of
great plants with long spiky leaves being about him, and then he
became unconscious as he lay there stunned and bleeding profusely
from a wound in his forehead, which had come in contact with a stone.
END OF VOL. I.
BILLING & SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.