"Forging the Blades" (continued 4)

“Dunno. Thought we might get a chance at a buck going back. Lucky I did.”

“Rather; they’d have done for me. I hadn’t a chance. Shake, old chap.”

The two comrades shook hands, and then thought no more about the matter. It was all in the day’s work.

“I wonder,” said Dickinson, when they had regained the other side—they had buried the head under a pile of stones, “I wonder who the swine could have been who was sniping me. He knew how to shoot, by the Lord! Shouldn’t wonder if it’s some discharged Nongqai. I always held it a mistake teaching those chaps to shoot.”

Symes agreed—with language, as usual. Then they had a hurried snack, and rode off—two very wet police—to find some safer and more open locality for their night camp. But that, too, was all in the day’s work.

Chapter Twenty One.

Sapazani “At home.”

Ben Halse showed no surprise when Denham broke the news to him; in fact, he felt none. What he did feel was a sharp pang at heart as he realised that he must go through the rest of his life alone. Well, it was bound to come some day, and one compensation was that it could not have come under more favourable circumstances. He had known the other long enough to have decided that had Verna searched the world over she could not have found a more fitting mate.

“Sure you’re in earnest about this, Denham?” he said. “Here you two have been thrown together for days and weeks. You’ve seen hardly anybody but ourselves all that time, and no women. I’m a plain man, you know, and I always speak my mind, so you mustn’t be offended.”

“Why, of course not. But you won’t mind my saying that you are arguing against your own argument. If, as you say, Verna and I have been thrown together all this time and are vastly less tired of each other than the day we first met, isn’t that a pretty fair test?”

“M’yes. It cuts both ways, I suppose.”

The two were seated in the shade of a wild fig-tree at the back of the house, and a little way from it, on the morning after the scene in the forest. Those words, “the first day we met,” carried Ben’s thoughts back to that very day when he had sat watching the pair walking down the garden path at the Nodwengu Hotel, and the possibility of just such a development had crossed his mind.

“If you were a younger man, Denham,” he went on, “I should be inclined to say, go away for a little while so as to make sure of yourself, and treat this as never having been. Then, if you are, come back again. But you’re old enough to know your own mind; at any rate, if you’re not now you never will be, that’s sure.”

The other laughed, lightly, pleasantly.

“Thanks,” he said; “I cordially agree as to the last, but totally disagree as to the first. Why, Halse, you surprise me. Doesn’t it occur to you that Verna may have feelings to be considered, and that the course you hint at might be a little bit rough on her? for I am conceited enough to believe that she has a very decided preference for the propinquity rather than for the absence of my unworthy self. How does that strike you?”

“I don’t know.” And the speaker subsided into thoughtful silence, and began slowly to cram his pipe. Denham, watching the movement of the gnarled brown hands, the set of the strong, handsome face, thought he could read what was passing in the other’s mind. He, himself, a stranger of a few weeks’ acquaintance, had come here to rob this man of the light of his home, of the pride and joy of his life, to destine him to loneliness thenceforward until his death. Something of this he put into words, with a rare and tactful sympathy.

“Ah, yes,” was the answer. “I might have been thinking something of the kind; in fact, I’ve often thought of it. The thing was bound to come some day, of course; but I’ve always told myself there was plenty of time, and at the girl’s age two or three or four years would make no great difference. But there—it doesn’t do to be selfish.”

Denham, recognising the shake in the voice of this strong man, put forth his hand, which the other gripped, and for a few moments there was silence.

“I’ve never seen any one I would so willingly entrust my Verna to as yourself, Denham,” said Ben Halse presently; “so there’s compensation in that.”

“You flatter me too much, Halse. But you won’t mind my saying you are about the most imprudent parent-in-law elect I ever heard or read of.”

He laughed as he said this. He was glad to throw off the serious vein.

“Why?”

“Because you are taking me so absolutely on trust. You know nothing about me. I may be a fraud financially. I may be an intending bigamist; in fact, anything. Now I tell you what. Before you give me Verna entirely you are to write to my solicitors—the two senior partners of the firm have known me ever since I was born. Write to them privately and separately, and make any and every inquiry that may occur to you.”

The trader thought a minute, then he said—

“Well, that’s fair and square and above-board, Denham. I’m pretty good at reading men, and I think I’ve read you accurately. But as you yourself have thrown out the suggestion, you won’t be offended if I follow it?”

He looked the other full in the face as though with a searching glance. But no trace of hesitation did he read there.

“Why, most emphatically not,” came the ready answer. “I’m a man of the world, Halse, and if I were in your place I should certainly exact a similar guarantee. You will get answers in a couple of months at the outside, I’ll take care of that. Meanwhile, you will sanction our engagement provisionally, subject to those answers being satisfactory to yourself?”

“Yes.”

And again the two men clasped hands.

Then followed a couple of weeks of what was simply a halcyon time. The sympathy that had existed between them almost from the very first had deepened now into the most perfect of affinity and trust. Again and again Alaric Denham blessed the chance that had brought him into the wilderness to find this pearl of great price—the one woman in the whole world who seemed born for him, who would stand by him even if the whole world were against him—and there might occur the opportunity of putting even this test upon her, but that he did not then foresee. Long days out together, in the sombre forest, or exploring wild, craggy heights in the clear, exhilarating mountain air; and every one of those days seemed far too short, and never was there the slightest sign of interest flagging between them. He told her more about himself and his life, but there was still that one thing he did not tell her. Yet why should he? The load was thrown off, and would remain buried in mystery for ever. Surely this strange, wild country had brought him relief and happiness beyond measure.

One day Verna said—

“Let’s ride over and pay a surprise visit to Sapazani this afternoon, father. We promised to show him to Alaric, you know, and he hasn’t been here for a long time.”

“All right. But how d’you know he’s at home?”

“I got it from some of the people this morning. He has been away a long time, but he’s back now.”

“Yes, he has,” said the trader meaningly. “He’ll get into trouble if he doesn’t watch it. How about the store, though?”

“Oh, we can lock it up for once in a way. Nobody’s likely to come, or if they do it’ll only be for a tenpenny knife. Trade’s too dismally slack for anything just now.”

“That’s a grand idea,” said Denham. “I had begun to think I was never going to see this ‘show’ chief of yours.”

“By Jove! what a beautifully built kraal!” exclaimed Denham, as they came upon it suddenly, over the lip of the hollow. “Rather different from those wretched, slovenly-looking affairs you see further down.”

“Yes; Sapazani is an intense Conservative,” said Ben Halse; “wherefore he isn’t beloved by those in authority. But the old-time kraals were all built like this one, except in the open country where there was no bush to make fences of. They used stone walls instead, and still do.”

They found the chief sitting in the shade of a dried bullock-skin just against the fence of the central open space. He gave them greeting in a dignified way, as between equals, but did not rise. That was a European custom, and therefore abhorrent to his conservative soul. But he called to an attendant to rig up a similar bullock-skin and to spread mats, not even rugs, for his visitors.

“Case of doing in Zululand as Zulus do, Alaric,” laughed Verna. “You’ll have to learn the native art of squatting. It’s all right when you get used to it.”

“Of course. I say, this is an uncommonly fine-looking chap. Do you think he’d let me fire the kodak at him? I put it in my pocket on spec.”

“We’ll try presently, but I doubt it.”

Meanwhile Sapazani was asking Halse who his guest was. He knew perfectly, but still he asked. Denham the while was watching him with intense interest. He had seen two or three chiefs at Ezulwini, looking thorough “slouches” in waistcoats and shirt-sleeves and ragged smasher hats. But this was a splendid specimen in every way. He looked every inch a chief, they did not, every inch a king, even. He hardly liked to present this dignified-looking savage with a superfluous pair of binoculars, by no means new, which he had brought along to that end. But Verna, consulted, set his doubts at rest on that score.

“What is he yarning about?” he asked.

“Oh, just commonplaces. He wouldn’t talk about anything else in the presence of a mere woman,” laughed Verna. “If father and he were alone together it would be different. Would you like to say anything to him? I can translate.”

“Yes, dear. Tell him I’m sorry I can’t talk to him myself, but that you can do it much better for me.”

“No, I won’t put it that way.” She put the remark, however, and Sapazani smiled, showing his splendid white teeth, his lustrous eyes moving from the one to the other.

“A splendid-looking chap, by Jingo!” pronounced Denham again. “A real type of the Zulu I’ve heard about or read about.”

The last remark Verna translated. The chief smiled again.

“I don’t know who the strange Inkosi is,” he answered. “He looks like one great in his own country. Perhaps the day will come when he will be able to speak with those who are great in his own country for those who were once great in ours.”

To this Denham answered that he would certainly do so if ever there was occasion for it.

Now some women appeared bringing tywala. The vessels were scrupulously clean, and the pinkish, hissing brew looked uncommonly inviting in its black clay bowls. Denham had tried it before, but had never been able to take to it. This, however, looked different.

“Try again, Alaric,” said Verna. “You’ll find this a superior brew. I know I’m dying of thirst.”

A portion was set before each of them, with the punga, or preliminary sip, which custom required on the part of the entertainers. Denham did try it, and voted it excellent, and then took a very long pull indeed.

“Now you’re initiated, dear,” said Verna merrily, “once you’ve learnt to drink tywala.”

“I call this uncommonly jolly,” pronounced Denham, looking around. “These chaps must have a good time of it.”

The domed huts within their ring fences shone yellow and picturesque in the sunlight. A few men were seated in groups chatting in a bass undertone, and the red top-knots of women showed above the thorn fence, gazing curiously at the visitors.

“Sapazani would tell you ‘must have had a good time of it,’” said Ben Halse. “He’s a man of the past.”

“Discontented?”

“Rather.”

“Tell him I want to give him this, Halse,” producing the binoculars. “To remember my visit by.”

Sapazani received the gift in the same dignified fashion, and they instructed him how to find the focus. He tried it on various objects and then handed it to an attendant.

“It is good,” he said. “I will remember.”

But to the proposal to snapshot him he returned a decided negative, polite but firm. Denham was disappointed.

“Couldn’t he show us his hut?” he said. “I should like to see what the hut of a big chief is like inside.”

This was readily acceded to. Sapazani rose and led the way. Then Denham was even more struck by the tall, magnificently-proportioned form, the great muscles showing through the brown satiny skin as the man walked, easily, leisurely, straight as a pine-tree, with head slightly thrown back. Verna could not help noticing that the two men, standing upright together, were of exactly the same height and build, the savage chieftain and the up-to-date English gentleman.

Denham admired the interior of the cool, spacious hut, with its polished floor of hard, black clay, and the bowl-like fire-place in the centre, the assegais disposed on pegs around the walls, and the clean, rolled-up mats against one side. The place was a model of coolness and cleanliness, he decided.

When they got outside again several of the chief’s wives, convened by Verna, were standing waiting for them. To these she distributed various things she had brought, chatting and joking familiarly with them. They were fine, merry-faced girls, and here again Denham found a keen bit of character study. Sapazani accompanied his visitors to the gate of the kraal—he was a stickler for old-time Zulu etiquette, as Ben Halse and Verna, of course, knew, wherefore they had hitched up their horses outside and bade them farewell.

“Well, and what do you think of our ‘show’ chief now, Alaric?” said Verna, as they started on their homeward ride.

“He’s a splendid-looking fellow, and his manners are perfect,” he answered. But to himself he was thinking that had Sapazani been a white man he would have resented the way in which the chief had looked at Verna more than once. Being a native, of course, any such idea was absurd, preposterous, out of the question. But he wondered whether Ben Halse had noticed it.

And Sapazani, looking after them, was saying to himself—

“The trap is set, and yonder is the bait—au! yonder is the bait—impela.”

Chapter Twenty Two.

Bluff—And Counterbluff.

When they reached home they found a visitor awaiting them, in the shape of Harry Stride. Ben Halse, for all his hospitable instincts, secretly and within himself wished him at the devil. Verna would rather he had not come—just then; but Denham, of the trio, was the least concerned. So secure was he in his own happiness that he could not but be sorry for the man who had failed to draw his at the same source. But as far as any outward manifestation of lack of welcome was concerned the new arrival had no cause of complaint.

During the evening they talked generalities, the state of the country, the day’s visit to Sapazani, and so forth. But Stride, while not manifesting the former instinctive hostility towards Denham, did not fail to notice, with jealous eyes, the perfect understanding which seemed to prevail between him and Verna. Were they engaged? he wondered. They must be, judging from a look which, more than once, he saw pass between them. Well, he had a card up his sleeve, but he would not throw it until the morning. So he went on chatting about things in general, and Verna was especially kind to him. Denham too, with ready tact, refrained from anything that might be construed into bordering on an air of proprietorship! out of consideration for the poor fellow’s feelings; and when Verna went out with Stride for a quarter of an hour or so to look at the night, he remained chatting with Ben Halse.

“You won’t be shooting each other in the night, will you, Denham?” said the latter drily. The point of the joke was that, accommodation being somewhat limited, the two men would have to share the same room.

“I’ll try not to return the fire; but, on the whole, perhaps I’d better stick a dummy in the bed, and slip outside. Poor chap! Nobody could be more sorry for him than myself.”

“I’m sure of that. Well, every man must take his chance, and Harry’s young yet. He’s a good sort of boy, but I don’t believe he’ll ever do much for himself.”

“Perhaps he’s never had a show.”

“That’s the worst of it. A lot of these young fellows come drifting up to this country knowing nothing about it, and think they’re going to pick up gold under every stone. That prospecting business is just foolery. They’d much better settle down to some steady job. And yet, and yet—where’d I have been myself if I hadn’t let out and chanced it? Well, it’s a world of pitch and toss, after all.”

Stride was the first to turn in, and when his companion followed he had rolled himself in his blanket as though asleep. But he was wide awake enough in reality. He hated that other so intensely that he could not trust himself to speak now that they were alone together. Some people had all the advantages of life and others none; and here this stranger, solely because he was a rich man, or was reputed to be, must have a free walk over; must come here and rob him of all that made life worth living—hope, to wit. Well, to-morrow he would fire the first shell. And he did.

Just after breakfast, but before they got up from table, Stride produced a square envelope.

“I took a few snapshots down in the Makanya the other day,” he said, drawing out some prints. “What d’you think of that, Mr Denham?” handing one across the table to him.

Denham took it, and it was all he could do not to let it drop. The ghastly face staring at him from the glazed paper, hideous and bloated through immersion and decomposition, was that of the head which Sergeant Dickinson had been at such pains, and trouble, and risk to photograph. There was a frightful fascination about it, and he continued to gaze, aware the while that Stride was fixing his face with a pitiless glance.

“Well, what d’you think of it?” said the latter, growing impatient.

“Think? Why, that it’s a good study of a dissecting-room subject, but a beastly thing to spring upon any one just after breakfast. Where did you get it?” handing it back.

“It was taken below the Bobi drift. A head was found sticking in the bushes, also some clothes, with things in the pockets. I, before that, found a saddle with a bullet hole through the flap.”

“Yes; you told us that at the club the other night, I remember. So they’ve found more?”

Stride was puzzled. He thought to have knocked the enemy all of a heap, but the said enemy had never wilted, beyond what a man might naturally do who had an unusually ghastly and repulsive picture suddenly sprung upon him, as Denham had said, just after breakfast.

“But isn’t it our turn to be let into the mystery?” suggested Verna sweetly.

“Oh, I don’t know. No; I won’t show it to you,” answered Stride. “It is rather nasty, isn’t it, Mr Halse?” handing it on to him.

“Looks so. Ugly-looking Jew, I should say. Wonder what the devil he was doing down there. I suppose they shot him for plunder. Zulus are not what they were. Time was when a white man was perfectly safe in any part of this country. Who took the photo, by the way?”

“Dickinson, at Makanya.”

“Oh yes, the police sergeant. Well, have they investigated?”

“Rather. They’ve got at his identity, too. He was a Jo’burg Jew named Hyam Golding. The next thing is to find out what induced him to travel that way at all. It doesn’t lead anywhere in particular.”

“Let me see it,” said Verna. “I’m not of the hysterical, ‘fainting-female’ order, am I? Thanks,” as it was handed to her. “What a horrid-looking man he must have been. I mean apart from the conditions under which this was taken. Let’s see some of the others.”

He complied. One he kept out, and handed it to Denham.

“Do you recognise it?” he asked. “You came through it, I think you said.”

“Did I? I think not, considering I didn’t know one drift from the other. However, it’s just possible I may have; but one drift is very like another, especially in photography.”

“It’s the Bobi.”

Somehow Verna’s instincts were instantly on the alert. There was more than a subtle something in Stride’s manner and remarks, a sort of “making a dead set” smack about them. She became cold and hostile towards him at once. He saw this, and realised he had make a mistake. So he left the subject of the head, and drew attention to the other prints.

His plan had failed. He had thought to induce Denham to give himself away before the others, and that completely. But he had reckoned without the cool nerves of Denham. Well, the next card to play was bluff.

An opportunity was not easy to find. Most of the morning they sat in the shade, and smoked and chatted. But later, when Verna was busy indoors, and something had taken Ben Halse away, Stride said—

“I’ve got something to tell you. How about taking a bit of a stroll, where no one’ll hear us?”

“All right. Let’s.”

They strolled off together a little way. Suddenly Stride said—

“Rum thing this murder down in the Makanya, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know enough about it to say. But I suppose there’s no doubt about it being a murder?”

“Not a particle. Dickinson has worked the thing up in first-rate style. There’s hardly a link missing from the chain.”

“Not, eh? There’s a saying, though, that a chain is no stronger than its weakest link; but if the link is not merely weak but missing altogether, what’s the use of that chain?”

“The link can be supplied,” said Stride meaningly. “Dickinson could put his hand on the right man at any minute.”

“Then why the devil doesn’t he?”

The straightness of this query rather nonplussed Stride. But he remembered that men in desperate straits had many a time been known to save the situation by consummate bluff.

“Perhaps he isn’t quite sure where he is at this moment,” he answered. “I could help him.”

“Then why the devil don’t you?”

“Look here. Let’s quit beating around the bush,” said the other, speaking quickly. “Will you take a piece of advice?”

“Can’t say until I hear it. But I’ll promise to consider its burden when I do.”

Denham was getting rather sick of all this mysterious hinting. He was also getting a bit “short.”

“I’ll give it you in one word, then,” was the answer. “Skip.”

“Don’t see the joke. Explain.”

“Don’t see it, eh?”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Well, bluff’s a good dog sometimes,” sneered the other, who thought he would enjoy a different situation directly. “Still, you take my tip and skip, with the smallest loss of time you can manage. I don’t suppose they’ll bother to follow up the thing very keenly once you’re clean out of the country. And if you’re wise you mighty soon will be. Get out through Swaziland and into German territory if you can, or at any rate keep dark. Halse will be able to help you.”

All this while Denham had been looking at the speaker with a kind of amused curiosity. At the close of the above remark he said—

“What’s the matter with you?”

“What d’you mean?” snarled Stride, who was fast losing his temper.

“Mean? Why, that I’m wondering why you asked me to come out with you to listen to all the nonsense you have just been talking. You’re not drunk, any fool can see that, and yet you fire off some yarn about some Jew found drowned, or murdered, or something, down in the Makanya; and talk about chains and missing links and all sorts of foolishness, and on the strength of it all invite me to ‘skip.’ Really the joke strikes me as an uncommonly thin one.”

“It’ll take the form of an uncommonly thick one,” snarled the other, “and that a rope, dangling over a certain trap-door in Ezulwini gaol. Well, I thought to do you a good turn, came up here mostly to do it, and that’s how you take it. Well, you may swing, and be damned to you.”

Denham lit a fresh cigar. He offered his case to his companion, but it was promptly refused.

“Now let’s prick this bubble,” he said, looking the other fair and straight in the eyes. “From a remark you made in the club the other evening I gathered you wanted to insinuate that I had murdered some one. That, of course, I didn’t take seriously.”

“There may have been others who did, though,” interrupted Stride.

“No matter. Then you roll up here, and suggest that I am wanted as the murderer of some unknown Jew, whose top end appears to have been found in the Makanya bush. You know, if I were less good-natured, you might get into serious trouble over such a thing as that. You insinuated it in the presence of the Halses, too.”

“Meaning an action for slander, I suppose. Go ahead. I defy you to bring it. Do you hear? I defy you to bring it.”

“It isn’t worth while. Still, if you go on spreading these stories all over the country I may be compelled to. It’s one thing to make accusations, but quite another to prove them. To prove them,” he repeated emphatically, with his eyes full upon the other’s, and a sudden hard ring coming into his tone with the last words.

Inwardly Stride was conscious of his first misgiving in the matter. He was as certain in his own mind that the man before him had, for some reason or other, killed the one, part of whose remains had been found, as that the sun shone. But between certainty and proof was a far cry. He was not lawyer enough to know that in such a case as this any evidence that could be got together would be of the circumstantial kind, and not necessarily conclusive, and he had come here with the express object of frightening Denham out of the country altogether. Instead he had found that Denham was not the sort of man to be frightened at all.

“Oh, the proof’ll come right enough,” he answered, with an easiness that was more than half affected. Then seriously, “Look here, you know I’ve no reason exactly to belove you?”

Instantly Denham’s tone softened.

“I think I can guess,” he said, “and cannot but be sorry. But that is all in the fair chances of life. How can I help it?”

“Help it? Damn ‘helping it,’” was the furious reply. “But now, look here. I—with others—am going to make it the business of life to bring this thing home to you. We shall hunt up every scrap and particle of evidence of your movements since you first landed, your every movement. There’s one chance for you and it the last. Clear out—now, at once.”

“Now, really, you make me laugh. Is it in the least likely?”

“What is in the least likely?”

Both started. Verna had come up behind them, but though she had coughed more than once, in the tension of their discussion they had failed to hear her. She had foreseen a quarrel when she saw them go off alone together, and had made up her mind as to the best means of preventing it. And it was perhaps just as well that she had.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Revelation.

A curious change had come over Denham soon after Harry Stride’s visit. He seemed to have grown grave and rather silent. Even his interest in collecting seemed to flag. If Ben Halse noticed it he held his tongue. Verna noticed it, and resolved not to hold hers.

Her opportunity came. They had climbed to the resting-place which had been the goal of their ride that first day: that great natural window in the rock tooth which overlooked such a magnificent sweep of wilderness; in fact, this point had become rather a favourite objective in their many expeditions à deux. Here was her chance, here alone, beyond every possibility of interruption; here, alone together, the world far away. But before she could begin he said—

“I have something to tell you.”

The girl’s face went white, and something like a gasp escaped her. Like lightning there flashed through her brain the one and only possible thought. He was going to tell her he had made a mistake, or that there was some impediment and they must part. Her love for him had reached such a height of passionate adoration that where he was concerned she had no pride left.

He gazed at her in blank amazement. Then she was clasped tight in his embrace.

“For God’s sake don’t look like that,” he said. “My darling one, what is it?”

“Are you going to tell me there is something that must part us?” she managed to gasp out.

“Good God, no!” he answered vehemently. “At least,” he added, sadly doubtful, “that depends on yourself.”

The colour came back to her face and her eyes lit up, sweetly, radiantly.

“Depends on myself,” she repeated. “Why, in that case nothing in the world can part us—nothing!”

“Are you sure?”

“Nothing. Nothing,” she reiterated. “Alaric, my darling, you have not been yourself of late. There is something on your mind, and that is what you are going to tell me now. Am I right?”

He nodded. Then, after a pause—

“Tell me again, Verna. Is there anything that could separate us, anything I may have done—not against yourself, mind!—in this wide world that could cause you to shrink from me? Is there? Think it out.”

“Why, of course not,” she answered, boldly serene now that the whole question lay in her own hands, almost laughing, in fact, although knowing full well she was on the verge of something tragic.

“But—what if I have killed a man?”

“What if you have killed twenty men? Some people have, and they brag about it.”

He looked hard at her.

“Yes; but what if I have—what the law calls—committed murder?”

Now she looked hard at him, then shook her head.

“You have not murdered me—nor father.”

There spake the natural woman in Verna Halse. He had not injured her or hers, consequently who ever this man had injured it was nothing to her. In all probability he was justified in so doing, certainly was, in that in her eyes he could do no wrong.

“But do you quite understand, Verna?” he said gently. “I am in danger of—of the rope.”

“Are you? Well, we shall make it our particular business to see that that danger passes off. Why, there are places about here where you could hide for years. Listen, Alaric”—suddenly waxing grave, while a passion of tenderness came into her voice—“You saw fit, goodness knows why, to love me. Do you think, then, I am going to shrink from you because you are in a difficulty? I am only an ignorant sort of girl, but I have seen something of one side of life, at any rate, and the power does not exist—law or anything else—that shall take you from me. But, tell me all about it.”

“I will, Verna. You remember the first time we came to this spot, and I was telling you things? I said there was one thing I hadn’t told you, but that I might some day. This was it.”

She nodded.

“You remember, too, on that occasion, my saying what a splendid thing it was to feel quite easy in one’s mind, and that I had not always been able to by any means?”

“Yes.”

She was gravely attentive now. Her quick mind, not at ease itself, was rapidly piecing two and two together; wherefore his next remark caused her little if any surprise.

“That beastly thing young Stride sprung upon us the other day was an exact likeness of the man, only, of course, it exaggerated his villainous expression. He’s dead now; but what I suffered at that blackmailer’s hands—good God! Verna; when I think of it I could wish he might come to life so that I could kill him over again.”

Then a new experience came to Verna. This man, so strongly self-possessed, upon whom an easy dignity sat so well, had suddenly become a different being. His eyes glowed and his features were set. He seemed completely to have lost sight of her and her presence for the time being; to be “reconstituting” the tragedy of horror and revenge. This was a side of him—a tigerish side—of which she had never dreamed, but she did not shrink from it, not one atom. She put forth a hand into his, and the touch calmed him.

“Tell me, Alaric,” she said. “Why did you kill him? I dare say he deserved it. In fact, judging from that villainous-looking face he must have.”

He looked at her in some amazement. The cool, matter-of-fact tones in which she discussed what to most women would have come as a very disquieting shock, astonished him a good bit.

“Love,” he said in an uneven voice, placing the cool, shapely hands round his neck and against his face, “I place my life within those dear hands. I will tell you the whole thing.”

Then he told her how the dead man had systematically blackmailed him for some years past, acting on the knowledge of a former business secret, which if divulged would not merely have spelt ruin, but worse; a transaction into which he had been led by others, in the days of his comparative inexperience. Then he told her of the tragedy on the river bank in the Makanya forest; told her minutely, omitting no detail. She listened intently, breathlessly.

“When I rode away from that spot,” he concluded, “it was with an unspeakable load lifted from my mind, a load that had weighed upon it for years. Everything was favourable. We had not been seen together, for we entered the country by different ways, and our meeting was entirely a chance one. He had found out somehow that I was bound for Ezulwini, and had started to catch me there, in order to squeeze out some more blackmail. He had missed his way and had wandered to where we met. I had not missed mine, for I had mapped out a way through all that wild part. When we did meet the first idea that flashed through my mind was that now and here was a chance such as I should never get again. Everything was favourable—the wild loneliness of the spot, seldom if ever travelled, and the fact that we had not been seen together. I would force him to sign a declaration which should put it out of his power for ever to harm me. But he flatly refused, and the rest you know. It was only afterwards that it occurred to me that the sequel was the best that could have come about, for the declaration, being unwitnessed, would probably have been worth nothing at all. I must have been a bit off my head, or that would have occurred to me at the first. Now, Verna, why don’t you shrink from me?”

“Shrink from you?” and the clasp of her hand tightened on his. “It would take a great deal more than this to make me even begin to think of doing that. In fact, I can’t see anything so very dreadful about it at all. A blackmailer is the most pestilent vermin on earth, and shooting’s too good for him. Let me think. Ah! He tried to shoot you, you said?”

“He certainly would have if I’d given him the slightest chance. Still, there’s no getting over the fact that I fully intended to shoot him in the event of his persistently refusing to sign that paper.”

“And he deserved it. Moreover, didn’t you try to get him out of the water?”

“Yes. I couldn’t stand seeing even him finished off in such a beastly manner. Afterwards it occurred to me that it was the best possible thing that could have happened in that it would destroy all trace. You understand?”

“Perfectly. But now, if the worst came to the worst, couldn’t you make it out a case of self-defence?”

“A very poor plea,” he answered, with a gloomy shake of the head, “especially under all the circumstances. Besides, no end of things would be raked up and a motive established. But nothing more would have been heard of the affair if that infernal Stride hadn’t picked up the saddle. Then, when he heard I had come through the Makanya just about that time, he put two and two together. He more than hinted as much one evening in the club before them all. Before them all, mind! Of course I made some joke about it, but as sure as we are sitting here, Verna, I could see that two, at any rate, more than half believed there might be something in it. Those two were James and Hallam.”

Verna’s brows knitted. She did not like this feature in the case.

“Do you know why Stride is so vindictive in the matter, Verna?” he said, after giving her an account of his interview with the young prospector and the latter’s threats.

“I think I can guess.” Then she fell to thinking whether she could not turn Stride’s weakness for herself to account. But it was too late, she recognised. He had set the ball rolling—at first all innocently, it was true—but it had now rolled too far.

“Who did you first meet after you had left the river?” she asked.

“I struck a small kraal, and, incidentally, the people were none too civil. But it was a long way from the spot where it happened.”

Not even to her could he break his word of honour pledged to the strange, sinister-looking fellow-countryman who had shown him hospitality, to respect to the uttermost the latter’s secrecy.

Verna thought for a moment. Then she said—

“Alaric, do you remember the time that we killed the indhlondhlo, down in the forest, Mandevu’s sudden appearance?”

“Yes,” eagerly. “What then?”

“Do you remember his reference to your power of snake-charming, not once but twice?”

“Good God! I should think so. I thought it strange at the time.”

“Well, could he—or anybody—have witnessed the whole affair?”

“N-no,” he answered thoughtfully. “I don’t see how any natives could have been concealed within sight or even earshot. The horses would have winded them and have got restive, whereas they were perfectly quiet.”

“I can’t make out that part of it at all,” said Verna. “I must think. He knew about that other snake-charming incident. I could see that. The question is—if he knew, how did he know? Some one must have seen it, and if they saw the one thing they’d have seen the other.”

“Yes; they must have. Verna, I have an instinct,” he went on somewhat gloomily, “a sure and certain instinct that this net will close round me. Everything in life looked too bright since I succeeded in ridding myself of this incubus, and, then I found you. After that everything was positively radiant. Of course it couldn’t last.”

“But it can last, and it shall. Dear one, you said just now that you were placing your life in my hands, and that precious life I shall guard with a jealous care. I have means of hearing things from outside which you would hardly believe, and shall set them working at once. No, it would take a great deal more to part us now—Do you remember the day we first met,” she broke off, “and they were talking of this very affair in the hotel? Well, I volunteered the remark that you had just come through the Makanya, but nobody heard. They were all talking at once, but I didn’t repeat it. Some instinct warned me not to.”

“Ah, that first day! We little thought what we were going to be to each other then.”

Verna shook her head. “I’m by no means so sure of that,” she said.

“No more am I, now I come to think of it.”

After this Denham threw off his depression as though by magic. As the days went by and no news came from outside, he was almost dazzled in the sunshine of happiness that flooded his heart. He had dreaded the effect of the revelation upon Verna, and now that he had made it, so far from her love for him lessening it had, if possible, deepened tenfold.

Then fell the bolt from the clear sky.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Verna’s Dilemma.

Alaric Denham had disappeared.

He had gone out by himself early in the afternoon on foot, taking with him his collector’s gun. At sunset he had not returned; then night fell and still no sign of him.

Verna’s anxiety deepened. She could hardly be persuaded to go into the house at all. Her eyes strove to pierce the gathering gloom, her ears were open to every sound that could tell of his approach. Yet no such sound rewarded them. Her father was disposed to make light of her fears.

“Denham’s no kind of a Johnny Raw, girlie,” he said. “He knows his way about by this time. Likely he’s wandered further than he intended, after some ‘specimen’ maybe, and got lost. He’ll have turned in at some kraal for the night, and be round again in the morning.”

But morning came and still no sign, then midday. By that time the trader himself came to the conclusion that it might be as well to institute a search.

The missing man had left an idea as to where he was going. But, starting from that point, an exploration of hours failed to elicit the slightest trace. Inquiries among natives, too, proved equally futile. None had so much as glimpsed any solitary white man. They had called at Sapazani’s kraal, but the chief was absent. It was in this direction that Denham had announced his intention of wandering. Undhlawafa, however, promised to turn out a party of searchers. Night fell again, and Denham was still missing.

Strong, feverishly energetic, Verna had taken an active part in the search; but for any trace they could find, or clue they could grasp, the missing man might have disappeared into empty air. Even her father now looked gloomy, and shook a despondent head. There were perilous clefts about those wild mountain-tops half concealed in the grass, into which a man might easily fall and thus effectually perform his own funeral. That this one might have done so was now her father’s belief, but to Verna herself another alternative held itself out. What if he had been secretly followed and arrested for that which he had done? Or what if he had detected such danger in time and felt moved to go into hiding? Somehow neither of these alternatives seemed convincing. The heartsick, despairing agony of the girl was beyond words.

Four days thus went by, Verna was despairing, her father gloomy. To the latter she had now confided Denham’s story; they had arranged between them that this should be done in the event of certain contingencies. Ben Halse came to the conclusion that this rather tied his hands, for to advertise the disappearance would be to draw too much attention to a man who had every reason for avoiding it.

It was night. Verna stood in the open door looking forth. A faint snore now and again from another room told that her father had subsided into obliviousness, but to-night she herself could not sleep; indeed, but for the sheer physical exhaustion of the day she would never have been able to sleep at all. The soft velvet of the sky was afire with stars, and above the dismal howl of prowling hyenas would now and again rise the distant song and roar of savage revelry from some kraal far out on the plain beneath. Back in the sombre recesses of the mountains weird, indescribable sounds, disguised by echo, the voices of bird or beast would ring forth, or a falling star dart, in trailing spark, through the zenith. Suddenly another sound fell upon her ear. Somebody was approaching the house.

All the blood ran tingling through her frame. She listened—listened hard. Footsteps! Alaric had returned. He should find her there, waiting. But the glow of intense thankfulness sank in her heart. But for the one obsessing idea she would have recognised that those soft-padded footfalls were not those of any white man.

She advanced a few steps out into the gloom and called softly. A figure came into sight indistinctly. Even then her heart throbbed to bursting. This nocturnal visitor must be the bearer of news. But he had halted. She must go towards him.

“And the news?” she said, speaking quickly.

“If the Nkosazana would hear of him who was missing,” was the answer, “she must go to the chief’s kraal alone. This movement must be known to nobody, not even to U’ Ben. Otherwise she would never see or hear of the missing one again.”

All further attempts at questioning the nocturnal visitant met with no reply. He had delivered the ‘word’ of the chief, and had nothing to add to it. Only—the Nkosazana would do well to lose no time. If she could start at daylight it would be highly advisable. But no one must know. It was in the conditions.

To say that Verna was suddenly lifted from darkness to daylight would be to say too little. The condition certainly struck her as strange, but then—the stake at issue! Alaric was not dead, but had perhaps been obliged to go into hiding, was the solution that occurred to her. That was it. Sapazani was their friend, and had warned him, and aided in his concealment. He would get him away out of the country later on, and she—why, she would go to him, go with him, to the uttermost ends of the earth, as she had more than once declared when they had been discussing just such a contingency.

How she got through the night Verna hardly knew. Before dawn she was astir. She woke her father, and told him she was going to start off on another search on her own account, and Ben Halse, himself thoroughly tired out after days spent in the saddle on this bootless quest, had answered that it was quite useless, but that she had better be doing something than nothing, and hail turned over again to sleep the sleep of thorough exhaustion.

As the day dawned, and she was well on her way, Verna became aware that she was being followed, or rather kept up with, by one man. The path was steep and rocky, and she could seldom ride out of a footspace; yet at every turn this man would show himself, either in front or coming on behind with long, swinging strides. Him, however, with an effort of patience and a knowledge of native ways, she forbore to question, though she strongly suspected him of being her visitant of the night before.

The sun was up by the time she reached her objective. The kraal lay peaceful in the early morning; the great double ring fence, and from some of the yellow, domed huts blue smoke was rising. Yet it seemed to her that the place was deserted. It was the hour of milking, yet no cattle were to be seen, and there were few people about. What did it mean? What could it mean?

And now, for the first time, an instinct came upon her, an instinct as of some harm pending. Had she done right to come? Was this part of some sinister plan? and were those who distrusted Sapazani more completely “in the know” than they two? She paused, irresolute. But it was too late to turn back now. The man who had kept pace with her all the way had grasped her bridle rein and was inviting her to dismount.

“Yonder. The chief,” he said, when she had done so.

The space immediately surrounding the kraal was open save for a small clump of spreading mimosas. In the shade of this Sapazani was seated, with three or four other ringed men in attendance. That her arrival was expected was obvious, for a wooden pillow, covered with a clean, new rug, to serve as a seat, had been placed for her. Knowing their ways, she greeted Sapazani in the usual pleasant and cordial style and sat down to talk—outwardly as careless as when they last met, inwardly her whole soul raging with eager impatience.

“And he who is lost?” she said at last. “He is found?”

“He is found.”

Her joy and thankfulness knew no bounds, and she was hardly conscious of the withdrawal of those around the chief.

“What is for two ears is not for eight,” went on the latter. “I have a word to you, Izibu.”

“That is why I am here,” she answered, with a smile. “And him of whom I came to learn tidings?”

“Of him we will presently talk,” answered Sapazani. “Talk we now of myself. I am in need of a new inkosikazi (principal wife), and her I shall take from among the daughters of the white people.”

Verna stared.

“That will not be easy, will it?” she answered, striving not to smile.

“Easy? That I know not. But my new inkosikazi (principal wife) will be thyself, child of U’ Ben, and the lobola (Price paid in cattle to the father or guardian of a girl asked in marriage) which I shall send will be the life of him whom thou seekest.”

Verna half started from her seat, flushing crimson with anger and outraged pride. Then she subsided again.

“Is this a joke on the part of the chief?” she said. “Because I like not such jokes.”

“No joke is it,” answered the other, in a tone of firm assurance. “My new inkosikazi shall be thyself, Izibu.”

Reference has been made to the impassable barrier to unions between white and colour existing, and rightly so, throughout the whole of South Africa; but the repulsion and degradation attaching to such is deepened tenfold when it is the woman who represents the white race. In Verna, of course, such tradition was part of her being, and now that this was put broadly before her, her horror and disgust were unlimited. She to be one of the many wives of a squalid savage! for such the stately and fine-looking Zulu chieftain had now become in her eyes; a mere despised black man— Sapazani’s colour was copper red—why, she must be dreaming. No living being in his senses dare make such a proposal to her. But she checked the scathing reply that rose to her lips—she could not hide the flashing fury in her eyes—for she must not lose sight of the end for which she was there, the finding of Alaric.

“Listen, Izibu, and I will tell a story,” said the chief, who had been watching her keenly, but outwardly unconcerned. “There were two bulls grazing together near the banks of Makanya River. They began to roar at each other, perhaps one wanted the pasture to himself, or this or that heifer, no one knows. Suddenly one gored the other to death and pushed him into the river, then went on his way. These bulls were of the Amangisi (English), and among such for one to kill another is death. There were those who looked down upon this conflict from high up on the other side of the river. They will be there to speak when wanted.”

Now a new light broke upon Verna. Alaric had positively declared that nobody could have witnessed the encounter or the restiveness of the horses would have betrayed the presence of such. But they had been on the other side of the water, hence the very pointed reference on the part of Mandevu to the double feat of snake-charming. To her, of course, the parable needed no interpretation. This hateful fiend had got Alaric into his power to compass his own object, and that object—good Heavens!

“But you would not betray him, you who are our friend!” urged Verna, clasping and unclasping her hands in an agony of appeal.

“The magistrate,” went on Sapazani, “our magistrate at Esifeni, will be surprised, he who is never tired of saying Sapazani is not loyal. He will be surprised when Sapazani the disloyal hands over to him one of his own people who has broken the white man’s sternest law, and says, ‘Here, take him, I want not such among my people.’ This is what will happen if the child of U’ Ben refuses to become my new inkosikazi.”

Verna was beside herself. Here, then, was the missing link in the chain. The deed had been actually witnessed. Nothing could save him. The mention of her father inspired her with an idea.

“You would not dare do this thing,” she said. “My father would kill you, would never rest until he had done so. Every white man in Zululand would combine to hunt you down, nor could you long escape.”

“Why, for that, Izibu, there will be no white men left in Zululand to do it before many days have passed. Well? Is it to be his life, or—?”

Verna saw no way out. She, of course, did not intend to accept the dreadful alternative. She would kill herself. That afterwards; but now she must save this precious life. Then another idea struck her. What if Alaric were delivered over to the authorities, might it not be that the evidence would not be strong enough? Was it not worthwhile risking this? She knew what Alaric’s answer would be. But Sapazani seemed to have been reading her thoughts, for now he said—

“My mind is different in this matter. It is too far to Esifeni, and the man might escape. Therefore I shall have him killed here—to-day—killed by torture, and thou shalt see it done, child of U’ Ben.”

Verna’s face was stony with despair.

“And if I agree?” she said slowly. “He will be placed beyond all reach of danger?”

“That will he, Izibu. My word stands.”

“Where is he now?”

“Here.”

She turned to follow the sweep of his hand. From the direction of the kraal a group was approaching, and her heart beat quicker as she recognised the central figure. Alaric Denham stared in amazement. He made a move to join Verna, but was prevented by the guard surrounding him. Incidentally the said guard was bristling with assegais.

“What is the meaning of this, Verna?” he said. “There’s no war. Yet these fellows collared me unawares, and here I am. But what is it, darling?” becoming alive to the stamp of piteous misery upon her face.

“You will go free now,” she answered, “right away out of the country. It’s no longer safe here.”

“Well, I’m agreeable. Are you ready?”

“Yes—no—that is, not yet,” she faltered hurriedly.

“Take him back,” commanded the chief, and the guards moved away with their prisoner, who, of course, understood nothing of what had been said, but supposed that Verna would contrive to straighten it out somehow. “Well, Izibu, he is going to be got ready for the torture. Do you agree to save him? It is the last chance.”

“Oh, God! God, help me!” she sobbed forth, sinking to the earth, her face buried in her hands; Sapazani, watching her, gloated over her fine form, soon voluntarily to be placed within his power. So taken up was he that he failed to perceive the approach of the man who now stood at his elbow. Turning angrily, he beheld Mandevu.

The latter whispered a word or two. Sapazani was astonished, but did not show it.

“Wait here, child of U’ Ben,” he said, rising, “until my return.”

“But they will torture him!”

“Not until my return.”

He moved towards the kraal gate. The word which Mandevu had whispered in his ear was “Opondo.”

The renegade was seated within the chief’s principal hut. His hard, vindictive face was firm and impenetrable.

“Greeting, Sapazani,” he began, without ceremony. “Thou must give up thy purpose. The two yonder must be allowed to go free.”

The snatching of a bone from a hungry mastiff might convey some sort of idea of the expression which came over Sapazani’s face at this utterance; the very tone of which admitted of no dispute.

“Must?” he repeated.

“Yes, must.”

“Hau! I am no chief!” he said sneeringly, “no chief. And if I refuse?”

“Then thou wilt indeed be no chief, son of Umlali, for it would ruin the whole of our plan to carry out thy purpose.”

Sapazani brought his hand to his mouth and sat thinking. He knew that the other spoke truly, and yet—

“Further,” went on his visitor, “U’ Ben is my friend. He saved my life once, and has done me good service in the past. His child must not be harmed. For the other, the man, he will be able to do me—to do us—good service in the future, when the time comes, for which reason Mandevu has been constantly near him so that I could find him at any time, therefore he must go free.”

Verna, seated there, alone, in stony-eyed misery, was wondering if it were not all a hideous nightmare. “I have bought his life. I have bought his life,” she kept moaning to herself.

“Rise up, child of U’ Ben,” said a voice, whose owner she had not heard approach. “The word of the chief is that thou and the white man are to go home together, now at once.”

“Do not mock me, Mandevu,” she answered stonily.

“Mock? Au! See. There he comes,” pointing with his stick.

Verna raised her eyes. From the direction where she had last beheld him Alaric Denham was approaching—alone.

Chapter Twenty Five.

Volcanic.

“I hope the brute won’t turn obstreperous, Vidler,” said the magistrate of Esifeni to the clerk of the court, as the two met on the verandah. “’Pon my soul it isn’t fair to stick us in such a position. Here we are, with three or four police, stuck away in the thick of a perfect hotbed of rebellion, and expected to keep it in order.”

The other shrugged, but said nothing. He was fully alive to the difficulties of their position. The “brute” referred to was no less a personage than Sapazani, who was expected that morning to answer to a summons with regard to certain matters, specially ordered by the Chief Commissioner.

“This country’s being run on the wrong tack altogether,” went on the magistrate. “Here’s a tinpot township with three or four stores, as many more tin houses, and a Methodist chapel, and the Residency. Sounds big, don’t it, Vidler? especially when there’s wind enough to blow out the Union Jack we delight to fly from the pole in the garden. And all the force we’ve got to back it up is four police. Why, we’re only here on sufferance. It isn’t fair that a man with a wife and family should be forced to live at the mercy of that ruffian Sapazani.”

The magistrate of Esifeni was not a timid man, but the monotony of life at his remote post rather tended to make him “nervy.” Of late, moreover, he had seen and heard enough to make him anxious, and the largest thorn in his side was named Sapazani.

Between himself and the chief there existed a latent hostility which, never failed to peep out more or less whenever they met. Of late they had met rather more often than either wanted, but official duty required it; otherwise Downes would gladly have treated Sapazani on the principle of giving an organ-grinder sixpence to go to the next street.

“Wonder if that’s him,” said the clerk, shading his eyes to gaze at a distant cloud of dust coming over the rise, for the township was situated in a shallow, open hollow. “Yes, it is,” he went on, “and he’s bringing a regular impi with him as usual.”

The magistrate frowned.

“Damn him,” he said. “I’m always giving him hints about that, and by way of taking them he turns up next time with a bigger crowd still. It’s done for impudence, Vidler.”

“I’m afraid it is, sir. But in this case we mustn’t forget that our force consists of four police, two of whom happen to be just now absent; and, incidentally, that you have a wife and family.”

“Quite right, Vidler, quite right. I’ll keep my temper, somehow,” he added, half savagely, half weariedly.

His subordinate was doubtful on this point, but forbore to say so. The day was abominably oppressive, and the hot wind from the north raked everything. It was the worst possible sort of day for the transaction of a difficult and delicate indaba, when both parties to the same were in a state of mutual friction.

The Zulus were now within recognising distance. Sapazani was clad in a well-cut riding suit of Bedford cord, with boots and spurs, but there was nothing between the sun and the shine of his head-ring, and he rode a good horse. Undhlawafa and a few others were also mounted, and then came a string of followers, clad mostly in a long military surtout. As Vidler had said, it seemed a regular impi, for there certainly could not have been much less than a hundred.

“There’s one point on which Sapazani and I agree,” said the magistrate, as he watched the approach of the cortège, “but not for the same reason, and that is obliging these fellows to wear clothes when they come into a township. It facilitates concealed weapons, but a chap with nothing but a mútya on has nowhere to conceal anything.”

There was a stretch of grass between the Court House and the main road. Here the chiefs dismounted and came forward. Some dozen perhaps were there, the main body of their followers squatting themselves a little distance away. They gave the salute civilly but coldly—

“Nkose!”

This was calculated to start the talk wrong, Downes holding that, as representing the British Government, he ought to be given the salute royal, “Bayéte.”

The magistrate was seated in the verandah, with a table in front of him covered with papers; on his right was the clerk, and two members of the Natal Police stood on the other side. But before everything had been got into order Sergeant Meyrick had remarked to Trooper Francis—

“What’s the odds we’re here to draw our next month’s pay, Frank? Sapazani’s an awful rascal, and he don’t bring a whole crowd like that here for nothing.”

“Depends upon how much Downes can keep his rag in,” was the answer. But their revolvers were loaded, and they had other ammunition handy.

The indaba began upon small matters, a recent dispute or two as to the ownership of cattle, or of land commonage, and so forth. Over the way people were gazing with faint curiosity at the new arrivals, and one or two storekeepers were trying to inveigle them into a trade. But it was difficult to scare up much interest in Esifeni. It was not a township addicted to excitement, and Sapazani was not a popular potentate among the storekeepers, in that his conservative soul discouraged the purchase of European goods on the part of his people.

In the preliminary questions Undhlawafa did most of the talking, referring now and then to the chief, who had been accommodated with a chair by virtue of his rank. Then the magistrate said—

“Come we now to a weightier matter—”

He was interrupted, brusquely, unexpectedly.

“I talk not before my own dogs,” said Sapazani, with a wave of the hand towards the court induna who was standing at the end of the verandah, the same man who had brought him a summons to his own kraal, also towards two native constables who were hanging on the offskirts. The tone was curt, peremptory, not to say haughty. The magistrate stared at the speaker, frowned, then said, sarcastically—

“Is this my court or has Sapazani suddenly been chosen to represent the Government instead?”

But the chief’s face underwent no change. He returned the official’s gaze with a straight, haughty stare.

“I talk not before my own dogs,” he repeated.

Downes was nonplussed.

“Well, if you prefer it, come within my own room,” he said. But the other curtly refused. He did not know what trap might have been laid for him there. Once out of sight of his people and where was he? Certainly between four walls anything might happen, outside, well—he knew where he was.

“If I talk I talk here,” he declared. “Otherwise I go home.”

Downes was speechless with rage—we have said that the day was abnormally hot and oppressive, and that these two men, whenever they met, invariably got upon each other’s nerves. But he haply remembered the burden of his remarks to Vidler. The whole township was practically defenceless. No arms were visible certainly, but more than an uncomfortable suspicion was upon his mind that they were there all the same. It was a case for making the best of it. The while Vidler had made the slightest perceptible sign to the court induna that he should withdraw as though of his own accord, and with him the two native constables.

“Go easy, sir,” he whispered warningly to his superior, in an undertone. The latter pulled himself together.

“Talk we now of Pandulu,” he said.

“Pandulu?” echoed Sapazani.

“Yes. What of him?”

“Who is Pandulu?”

And Undhlawafa and the remainder of the group looked at each other, and repeated, “Who is Pandulu?”

“He is a man from Natal,” answered the magistrate. “He has been seen near your kraal, Sapazani, he and Babatyana, who is wanted by the Government. Where are these men?”

“Pandulu? Babatyana? Men from Natal?” repeated the chief. “Now, Nkose, this is like talking through a bullock’s skin. No Amakafula have been at my kraal.”

“I said not at thy kraal, but near it,” was the short reply. “Now a chief is responsible to Government for all that happens within the tribe which he rules—under the Government. Under the Government,” repeated Downes emphatically.

“Yet even a chief is not as the white man’s God. He does not know everything,” was the sneering reply. “I would ask—why does the Government allow its own people in Natal to come over into Zululand at all? We need no Amakafula in this country. Why does it allow them to come here? Is it that it cannot prevent them?”

And something of their chief’s sneer was echoed among the group, in the shape of a smothered laugh.

“Prevent them?” retorted Downes. “A man of your intelligence, Sapazani, must know that the Government has the power to sweep this land from end to end if necessary until there is not a man left alive in it.”

“The Government? Which Government?” answered the chief, with his head on one side. “The Government of Natal or the Government of the Great King beyond the sea?”

“Both Governments. Both work together. The question is childish.”

“Both work together,” repeated Sapazani, still with his head on one side. “Au! That is strange. Because when the men down in Natal were ordered to be shot for killing two of the Nongqai the King’s Government prevented it.”

“That was only until they had inquired further into it,” answered the magistrate. “But they were shot—were they not?”

“We have heard so.”

There was a note of incredulity about this reply which was exasperating. Perhaps it was intended to be.

“So it will be with every one who defies the Government, no matter who he may be,” concluded Downes, magisterially, as though clinching the argument.

“Nkose,” replied Sapazani, outwardly polite, though subtly sneering, “I would ask why the Great King has withdrawn all his soldiers from here. Is it because he is angry with the white people here?”

Murmurs of assent ran through the attendant group. Downes thought to detect the cloven foot. Those infernal Ethiopian preachers had been around disseminating that very idea, he remembered.

“It is not,” he answered decisively. “It is because he trusts all his subjects—black as well as white. But should any such show themselves unworthy of his trust their punishment will be swift and terrible.”

“But, Nkose, it will take a long time to bring soldiers from across the sea,” persisted Sapazani, speaking softly.

“There are enough on this side of the sea to do it all,” said Downes. “More than enough. Now take warning, Sapazani. You are not loyal. I, your magistrate, can see that, have seen it for some time past. You are sheltering these disaffected men—Pandulu and Babatyana.” Here Sapazani smiled to himself as he thought of the “shelter” he had afforded to the first named. “If this is done it will mean but one thing, that you are thoroughly disloyal to the Government. Well, the fate of a disloyal chief is banishment or death; at any rate, banishment, never to return.”

Here Sapazani smiled again to himself as he thought of the head of the royal house, who had been banished but had long since returned. That smile exasperated Downes still further.

“You will appear here within half-a-moon’s time,” he went on, “with one or both of these men. At any rate, you will appear to—”

“Hau! Appear here in half-a-moon’s time? Hau! But I will not, O little-dog of the King’s little-dog Government. Have I nothing else to do than to wear out the road to Esifeni! I will not appear in half-a-moon’s time, impela!”

The interruption was startling. The chief had leaped to his feet, and, his tall form straightened and his arm thrown forward, was glaring at the magistrate, with murder in his eyes, as his voice rose to a sullen roar of defiance.

“For every trivial thing,” he went on, “I am summoned to appear at Esifeni. If a calf is sick I am summoned to Esifeni to explain it. If a baby dies I am summoned to Esifeni to explain it. Hau! I will come no more—no more. Let the Government do what it will. I, too, have men. I, too, have men.”

His voice had now risen to a perfect roar. The group had uneasily sprung to its feet. Undhlawafa in vain tried to whisper words of soothing counsel to the exasperated chief, but they fell on deaf ears. The ears of the outside attendants were by no means deaf, however, and now they came crowding up around the scene of the indaba. Their attitude was silent, waiting, ominous.

Now the best of Downes came out. He did not believe he had many moments more to live, nor did one of those four white men; they marked the way in which the right hand of each composing that crowd was concealed within its owner’s clothing. The hot fit of temper had left him, and he sat there confronting the enraged chief with the dignity of one who felt as an upholder of the Great British Empire at all risks to himself. Above and beyond the threatening half-circle he could see the flag of the Empire drooping limply over the roof which sheltered his dear ones, and it flashed through his mind that these might, perhaps, be left uninjured. Then he rose to his feet.

“Go,” he said. “I talk not with a chief who talks to me in that way. I am here alone, and these are all who are with me. But I am strong with the strength of the whole Empire which that flag represents. Go, and return not to talk in this way to the representative of the King.”

For one tense moment they looked each other in the eyes. Then Sapazani spoke—

“I go,” he said. “When I return it will not be in this way.”

He turned and, without a word of farewell, strode away. His followers were puzzled, therefore subdued. But the bright blades concealed beneath their clothing remained there, still bright, still undimmed.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Concerning Battle.

Skerry Hill was the absurdly-named trading store of a man named Minton, and at present it was in a state of siege. Ben Halse was there, and Verna and Denham, and half-a-dozen or so of prospectors and miners, including Harry Stride and Robson. The place was laagered up with waggons and carts, old packing-cases, tins—anything that came in. A strand or two of barbed wire had been rummaged out, and ringed in with this additional defence the inmates, numbering about a dozen rifles, felt fairly secure, at any rate until relief should come.

For mighty events had been maturing. Babatyana had raised the tribes in the north of Natal, then crossing the border had put the torch to those in the south of Zululand. It was war, pure and simple, and a large force had been mobilised to quell it. But what touched them here more nearly was the report, well confirmed, that Sapazani had defied and threatened his magistrate, had come within an ace of murdering him and massacring the whole township of Esifeni, and had then taken to the bush with his whole tribe in order to effect a junction with the rebels in the south. All the sparse white population of the district had either fled or gone into laager.

Now all this scare would not have troubled Ben Halse overmuch, but for the revelation which Verna had made to him. He was very angry, but he kept his head. He questioned her minutely as to the reason of Sapazani’s sudden change of front, but beyond that he had been suddenly called away and had not appeared again she was in the dark. He, however, took a serious view of it. Such a thing as any native acting in this manner was absolutely unheard of, absolutely without precedent. It was so preposterous even as to look like a practical joke, but natives of this one’s age and standing are not given to such. It was certainly time to get out of Sapazani’s country, even apart from the existing state of things. So he had buried everything that it was possible thus to hide, and incontinently trekked.

Denham was left in the dark as to the real reason of his brief captivity. To him Verna felt a natural shrinking and repulsion even from mentioning a loathsome matter of the kind. So they got up some story of the times being troubled, and that his capture was probably done with the object of holding him as a hostage.

They had not been long upon the road before they met with some Zulus who were well-known to them. These warned them not to follow the way they were going. It skirted the Lumisana forest for hours, and Sapazani’s tribe was ambushing the whole of that road. So Ben Halse decided to alter his plans, and turning off to Skerry Hill, join the laager there for the present. Needless to say, the acquisition of a man of his record and resource was enthusiastically hailed by the occupants. And Denham, too. Another “rifle,” and the more of such the better.

Minton was a rough and tumble sort of man, of no particular characteristic except that when he had had a couple of glasses too many he became a quite phenomenal bore; when he had had three, he wanted to fight, but as no one thought it worthwhile taking him seriously he went to sleep instead. He had a limp wife and several small children, all given to howling vehemently on any or no provocation.

“Hello, Ben,” cried Minton. “What’s the news up your way? Must be hot if you’ve decided to clear. Well, Miss Verna, hope you’ve brought your .303. We may want it. And you, sir; glad to meet you. Had heard of you being with our friends here. Come in; I’ve still got a boy left who can look after your horses.”

Verna did not like the allusion to her shooting powers. She had never quite thrown off that misgiving she had lest in Denham’s sight she should always be the fighting, hunting Amazon. Minton’s well-intentioned jocularity grated upon her ears. But it need not have.

Then the limp wife and the children came forward, and were duly made acquainted with Denham, who won golden opinions from the minor parent of the latter on the spots by stroking their sticky little paws within his, and insisting upon making them stickier still with the contents of certain glass bottles of bull’s-eyes which stood upon one of the shelves within the store.

“What’s yours, Mr Denham?” said Minton, going, in business-like fashion, behind the bar end of the store counter. “Ben’s form of poison never varies. It’s square face in this country, and ‘dop’ down in Natal—when he can get it. Cheer, oh!”

Now the prospectors dropped in. All knew Ben Halse; then they were introduced to Denham, and of course another round was set up.

“Hello, Robson,” sung out Minton, when this was accomplished. “Where’s your pal?”

“Don’t know. He says it’s too hot.”

“Too hot?” rejoined Minton derisively. “I like that. He’s hot stuff himself. Bring him in. It’s my round.”

Thus Harry Stride and Denham met again. The latter showed no trace of resentment with regard to their last meeting. He greeted Stride with an open, pleasant cordiality that rather astonished that youth. But Stride was not responsive. He avoided showing his antipathy, and was conscious of feeling galled that his partner, Robson, was behind the secret of it. Yet he need not have been, for the tactful North-countryman never by word or wink let drop that he possessed the slightest knowledge of the same even to him.

The accommodation was somewhat crowded, of necessity. Verna declined an invitation to use one of the rooms within the house. The perpetual yowling of the Minton nursery, heard through partitions of paper-like thinness, might as well have been in the same room. So she elected to sleep in the spider, on the ground that it was cooler. The men sat smoking in a group, with an occasional adjournment to the bar, then turned in anywhere and at any time as they felt sleepy. The horses were all brought within the enclosure and securely made fast.

“What have you been doing about sentry-go, Minton, up till now?” said Ben Halse, after every one was pretty well asleep.

“Oh, I don’t know we’ve thought much about it,” was the devil-may-care answer. “I’ve got a couple of pups here—them rough-haired curs you see yonder at the back. They’ll raise Cain enough before any one’s within two miles of us, you bet. Come and have a last nightcap—what d’you say, Mr Denham?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Done well enough already. However, one more.”

Both Denham and his host were hard-headed men, moreover, they knew that the said “one more” wouldn’t hurt them, in view of the scheme which each and both were mutually, though tacitly, hatching.

“This is a pretty silly way of running a laager, Denham,” said Ben Halse, with infinite contempt, when the two were alone together. “Why, on the tack these boobies are going the whole of this show is in Sapazani’s hand, and we don’t want that, eh?” significantly, forgetting for the moment that the owner was outside what he and Verna were not. “I propose that we take a turn at watching outside, one each side of the scherm.”

“I was thinking just about the same thing myself,” was the answer.

Hour followed hour. Both men, wide enough awake, had taken up their positions. Occasionally they would meet, and exchange a word or two. In the strong starlight the loom of the hills and the dark hang of forest were distinguishable, then towards morning a pale fragment of moon rose. Denham, sitting among the low thorn-bushes, the magazine of his .303 fully charged, enjoyed the silent beauty of the night, and his naturalist ear took in every cry of beast or bird away out on the otherwise silent waste. Intertwined, too, were thoughts of Verna and of his own position. As to the latter, in a way, the outbreak of war had been distinctly advantageous. No one, least of all the police, would have time to bother about the remains of some unknown Jew, or as to how he came to grief, now quite some time ago. Then the moon came over the distant ridge of forest, and it grew lighter and lighter. Even beneath his heavy overcoat Denham shivered.

Suddenly he grasped his rifle. No, it was only Ben Halse.

“Come round here,” whispered the latter. “Something’s moving.”

Denham’s nerves tingled. In a moment they were round at the point indicated. Several plover were circling overhead, uttering shrill cries.

“Look here,” whispered Halse earnestly. “When I fire there’ll likely be a rush. If there is, don’t be content with one shot. Pump about six into them one after another, as quick as ever you can. It’ll stop the lot for the moment, and rouse up those boozy idiots inside the fence. Then we’ll run like hell, but—look out for the barbed wire.”

Denham nodded. He was cool as ever man was, but the thrill of battle was in his veins, and, like the mythical knights of old, he was spurred by the thought that he was fighting for a lady-love. Intently he watched his companion. The latter raised his piece suddenly, then dropped it again; then up it went as quickly, and the flame and roar of the report spurted forth, followed immediately by another detonation.

Simultaneously there rose from the grass a mass of dark forms, but no sound was uttered. They would be in upon the laager and surprise it asleep, having first made mincemeat of the unfortunate sentry. But—would they? Acting upon Ben Halse’s instructions, Denham, half concealed by a broad, flat-topped thorn-bush, poured his magazine fire into the thick of them, cartridge after cartridge, and aiming low. He could hear Ben Halse doing the same, and knew he was missing nothing and nobody. He himself knew he was missing nobody. It was just as Ben Halse had predicted. The attacking line was thoroughly demoralised, and reckoning, as it might well have reckoned, that there were about twenty more men here than was really the case, dropped flat to the earth, a manoeuvre of which the two daring watchers took advantage to sprint away to the laager, keeping as much under cover of the bushes as possible.

“Steady, boys; it’s only ourselves,” sung out Ben Halse, as several rifles went up ominously to greet them. “Good Lord! I don’t know where you’d all be if it wasn’t for our same selves. Now, then, let’s get into position. We’ll want it directly.”

They did. Broad shields showed through the misty dawn, their bearers advancing at a sort of creeping run behind them, then the gleam of assegais. A few shots were fired, but hummed high overhead, doing no harm. But the men within, now thoroughly aroused, were all the cool and daring pioneers of civilisation such men almost invariably are. Each instinctively sought out the most useful post, and their rifles crashed into the advancing rush, pouring in shot after shot from the magazines.

“Here, you mustn’t be here. Go back into the house. You’ll be hit.”

The tone was gruff, and the speaker Harry Stride. Verna answered—

“No, I shan’t. I can shoot, and I’m going to.”

And she did. Afterwards she did not care to reckon up with what effect.

The loss to the assailants was great, terrific. They were at close quarters, and the defenders were firing low. And then they began to get entangled and tripped up on the barbed wires.

“Usutu!”

The war-cry rang out, fierce-throated, on the right. A derisive yell was the reply.

“Boy, bring the coffee, sharp,” shouted someone inside, between the volleys.

“How much to the Point?” sung out someone else: the joke being that many of the assailants wore clothes, and had possibly been kitchen boys or ricksha pullers in Durban or Maritzburg. To which the assailants would shout back—

“How many women have you got there, abelungu? Ha! We shall find wives directly without having to pay lobola.”

“Here is the price of one!” cried Verna grimly, as she drilled the head of a flitting savage who was glancing from one point of cover to another. A huge shout arose from the defenders.

“Good shot! Oh, good shot! Three cheers for Miss Halse!”

And they were heartily given, amid the roar of dropping volleys. Yet, at the moment, Verna felt disgusted. That old feeling came over her again.

But a voice dispelled it.

“Darling, you are too rash. There are enough of us. Why not go under shelter?” Denham was beside her. All the bitter thoughts vanished.

“Alaric, don’t loathe me for this,” she whispered. “I don’t do it for choice, but we want all the defence we can make.”

“We shall always be able to say we have fought literally side by side, at any rate,” he answered, with a pressure of the hand. “How can I think any the worse of you for your splendid pluck?”

There was no more time, however, for anything of this sort. The attacking party had divided into two, and one section of it had crawled round, under cover of the thorn-bushes, to the other side. Now they opened fire, and the bullets began to hum and “ping” over the laager. To their accompaniment the storekeeper’s wife and children kept up an unintermittent howling.

“For God’s sake, Ada, choke those brats,” yelled the exasperated Minton, “and yourself helping them. Here’s Miss Halse dropping her man to each shot with the best of us, and all you do is to sit and howl. That won’t help any.”

It grew lighter and lighter, and consequently more dangerous for the savages. They had reconnoitred this laager and its conditions at night, and had voted it a safe and easy walk over, and so it would have been but for the arrival of Ben Halse. Now they concluded it wasn’t good enough, and drew off under cover of the long grass. Then the sun flamed up over the dark wall of forest-hung hill, and Ben Halse, and one or two more, were just able to get in a stray long shot at stragglers showing themselves in the retreating distance.

“They’re done with,” said the last named. “Tell you what it is, Minton, you deserved all you’d have got for leaving your shop to take its chance. You’d have got it too if it hadn’t been for me and Denham, though I don’t say it to brag.”

“Oh, damn it, old chap,” was the answer. “Don’t jaw and lecture like a bally Methodist parson. Come on in and have a drink all round. I’ll swear we’ve deserved it. Then breakfast. All’s well that ends well.”

They counted the dead. There were thirty-three of them, nearly three times their own number, and not one of themselves was scratched, though a horse had been hit by a chance bullet. Of wounded none were found, their comrades having had time to carry them away.

Breakfast over there was a great cleaning of rifles, and much talk. All but one or two were wildly elate. They had had their first brush and had come out with flying colours. They thirsted for a second. So when someone said suddenly, “Look there!” and every head, turned in the direction pointed out, was conscious of a dust cloud coming along the road where it crossed a distant ridge, all hands rejoiced exceedingly, because they were going to get it.

They were, however, doomed to disappointment, for several binoculars soon revealed behind that whirling dust cloud, no Zulu impi, but a large contingent of the Natal Police, advancing at a quick trot.

Their pace slackened as they drew nearer, and recognised that all was well. As they rode up, nearly a hundred strong, in double file, the very simplicity of their khaki uniform and well-filled bandoliers, the sunburnt faces of the troopers, mostly young men, hard and athletic, and full of determination and dare-devil dash, seemed somehow far more imposing than any display of scarlet accompanied by the blare of a regimental band. These men were doing the hard work of their country, and they looked it.

“We’ve come to clear you out of this, Minton,” said the inspector in command, when the first greetings were over, “Sapazani has broken out, and has nearly two thousand niggers in the Lumisana. So roll up everything and be ready to trek to Esifeni with us as soon as our horses are rested. You’ve done well enough this morning, but a few of you like this are a mere mouthful in the long run. Besides—the ladies.”

The storekeeper swore a bit. He wasn’t going to be hustled off for any blooming Sapazani, not he. They had taught them a lesson that morning that wouldn’t want repeating, and so on. Inspector Bray grew “short.”

“Well, if you’re a blanked idiot, Minton,” he said, “stay, by all means; but I don’t suppose there are any more such fools. Eh, Halse?”

“I’m not one of them, Bray,” was the answer. “A man can risk his own skin as much as he’s fool enough to do, but he’s no business to risk that of his womenkind. My party goes with you.”

That settled it. The consensus of opinion was against the storekeeper, wherefore, as he could not stay on by himself, the whole position was simplified. He occupied the remainder of the time burying the most valuable of his stock-in-trade, the liquor to wit, and such other things as were worth bothering about in an emergency. Meanwhile the two police officers and Ben Halse went round the line of attack, like a sort of informal coroner’s court “viewing the bodies.” Several of these the latter recognised as Sapazani’s people. The others he did not think were.

Then, when the Force had sufficiently rested, there was saddling up and inspanning, and soon after midday the column pulled out.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Of the Bush Road.

An advance guard of twenty men was thrown forward; Ben Halse’s trap and that containing the other storekeeper’s family being in the middle of the main body, which was ready to close up around both at a moment’s warning. Scouts were thrown out, but there were places in which the thick bush rendered the services of such entirely useless.

The prospectors especially were inclined to treat the whole thing as a picnic; indeed, there was hardly a man there present who was not spoiling for a fight—and would have been intensely disappointed if no such were put up. The women and children were certainly a drawback; stray bullets have an uncomfortable knack of splattering in anywhere. That the escort might be overwhelmed by weight of numbers and utterly wiped out never occurred to them. Nearly a hundred police in full fighting kit, and the dozen or so of extra rifles, ought to be able to hold their own against all Zululand. Isandhlwana? Oh yes; but that was out of date; out-of-date weapons and out-of-date men. With quick-firing rifles, and an abundance of ammunition, they could hold out for ever against a mob of ricksha pullers and kitchen boys, for such were the sorry substitutes for the old-time splendid legionaries of the last king. The civilian element, in view of its victory that morning, was inclined to treat the whole situation as a joke.

Denham, however, formed an exception to this spirit, so, too, did Ben Halse, for the same reason. Inspector Bray, an experienced officer, who was in command of the Force, felt not a little anxious; he would not have felt anything of the kind but for his charges; and there was a very critical bit of the road just beyond the Gilwana drift—several miles of thickly bushed country. If they were attacked at all it would be there, he prophesied to Denham, who was riding beside him.

It was a lovely afternoon, the air brisk, fresh and crisp, the sky cloudless. The scattered thorn-bushes were alive with bird voices, but that dark hang of forest on the rugged hills, now on the right hand, now on the left, there it was that the element of menace lay.

“It’s the devil,” he said, “to have women to look after. I beg your pardon, Denham, but I’m talking generally. You see, any tumble-down shanty of a brick building will stop a bullet, but nothing will here. You can make ’em lie down in the bottom of a trap, for instance, but that’s not bullet-proof. And I think I see Miss Halse, for instance, consenting to do anything of the kind.”

“I’d be sorry for the chump, black or white, she had got the sights of a rifle on,” he answered, with a thrill of pride. “She’s just a dead shot.”

“So I’ve heard,” said Bray, with a twinkle in his eyes. “You must have had a good time together all this while. Good sport—and all that?”

“No, you don’t draw me, Bray. I’m a collector, and I never heard that birds and snakes were ‘royal’ game.”

“Rather hard to keep one’s piece from going off—by accident, of course—when a waterbuck or something strays across the road, eh?”

But this chaff was interrupted by a trooper, who had ridden back from the advance guard, and the intelligence he brought caused his superior to swear. The river was down, and the passage of the Gilwana drift would be impossible for at least a couple of hours.

“That’s that infernal thunder burst up in the hills early this morning,” declared Bray. Then he gave orders to off-saddle where they were, for, of course, he had originally intended to do so on the further side. However, it was open here, at any rate, and they might still be able to push through the thickest and most dangerous part before dark.

“This is a real old picnic now, Miss Halse,” pronounced Sub-Inspector Dering, as he helped to unpack from the spider the requisite things which had been brought along for lunch. “Lord, what a nuisance those kids are!” he added in an undertone. “Always howling.”