Bertram Mitford (continued 4)

And Sub-Inspector Sandgate went to join his new troop, in a state of mind representing that there was hardly anything left in life to wish for.

Chapter Twenty Four.

Another Joke.

The village of Komgha was going through lively times. Every day nearly, levies, on their way to the front, would be passing through, and as it was the last settlement on the border, rations and other necessaries would be in demand, which was good for trade. More over, every room and corner in the place was occupied, not to mention waggons and tents on the common land; for something of a scare was prevalent. The Gcalekas beyond the border had been defeated, certainly—or rather had been chased out of their own country—but there was restlessness among the Gaika and Ndhlambe tribes within the border, and these were both numerous and powerful, with a fine war-like reputation in the past. So many homesteads had been abandoned temporarily, and their owners had either gone into laager, or into the settlement, or, at any rate, had sent their wives and families thither. A goodly proportion, on the other hand, ridiculed the scare, and remained on their farms.

And they seemed justified in doing so. Already more than one of the burgher forces had withdrawn from the Transkei en route for home. The country was quiet again, it was reported; luckily the disturbance had been kept beyond the border, or the inter-Colonial tribes would have been up in a blaze. But there were always some uncomfortable objectors who liked to point out that the Paramount Chief had not been captured, that the rising was only scotched, not killed, and that then we should see.

The village was the virtual headquarters of the F.A.M. Police—and in the Artillery barracks crowning an eminence, no less than in the two troops occupying a permanent camp just outside, a chronic state of readiness and activity prevailed. A scheme of defence too had been formed in case of attack—an event of the highest improbability, for even if the rising were to spread, the Kafirs would refrain from attacking a strongly defended place, and reserve their energies for the destruction of outlying farms and the ambush and massacre of small bodies of travelling whites.

Dick Selmes was growing rather impatient. If he could bear no further part in the war—and the doctor had again seriously warned him not to take his wound too lightly—he saw no reason why he should not seek out Hazel Brandon. His feelings had undergone no diminution, no deadening by reason of change and excitement and peril. The girl’s image was bright and clear in his mind, and the recollection of her engaging ways and sweet and sunny disposition was undimmed. He was not likely to find another like her in one lifetime.

He had been lunching with the Commandant and some of the Police officers. The former’s hospitable and unpretentious bungalow was always open house—a hospitality that our friend Dick was fond of availing himself of, for after the time he had spent with the Police, and the hard knocks he had shared with them, he felt as one of themselves; and but for that other attraction would have been in no hurry to bid farewell to a lot of such thundering good fellows, as he defined them on every occasion. Yet now, as he strolled along the wide dusty road, he felt hipped.

“Why, if it isn’t Mr Selmes!”

Dick, who was in a brown study, started at the voice—a feminine voice—then stared. He saw before him the mother of the small boy he had jumped into the sea to save—at some risk to his own life; and he had forgotten her very existence, and the cordial hopes she had expressed that he would one day see his way to paying them a visit. Now she was standing there with a smile and an outstretched hand, the same small boy hanging on to her by the other.

“How do you do, Mrs Waybridge,” said Dick, heartily. “Why, here’s Jacky. Well, young ’un, and how’s yourself?”

“And Jacky wouldn’t have been here but for you,” rejoined the other, with feeling. “And—”

Dick interrupted.

“Now, Mrs Waybridge, I think we agreed that that subject was to be treated as—er—a somewhat stale one,” he said deprecatorily.

“I’m sure I never agreed to anything of the sort,” she laughed. “But who would have thought of finding you here in Komgha. Why—what’s the matter with your arm?” becoming alive to the fact that it was in a sling. “You haven’t been in the war, have you?”

“Haven’t I? Had a most ripping time of it too. By Jingo, if it hadn’t been for this confounded scratch, I’d have been in it still. But Blunt turned so solemn over it and ordered me out.”

“Who?”

“Blunt, the F.A.M.P. surgeon.”

“And so you’ve come back wounded. But it’s not serious?”

“No, indeed. It’s a mere scratch. But, what brings you here, Mrs Waybridge, it’s my turn to ask?”

“Why, we live close here; our farm is out towards the Kabousie, only a few miles, and you’ve got to come and stay with us—now—to-day. Where are you staying here?”

“Nominally at Pagel’s, but it’s abominably crowded. Practically I subsist at the Commandant’s, or Chambers’, or at some other good chap’s in the Police. But I’m not stopping on much longer.”

“No, you’re not, for you’re going back with me this afternoon.”

Dick, in his heart of hearts, thought this rather a bore, and began to wonder what excuse he could make. It interfered with his plans. The other, reading his thoughts, smiled to herself. She had reason to know what he did not, that there was not the smallest chance of her invite being declined.

“Where is Mr Greenoak now?” she went on, not giving him time to utter the excuse he was trying to invent.

“Nobody knows, beyond that he’s bound on some mysterious mission, its object being to prevent the harmful unnecessary Gaika from taking the warpath.”

“Then I hope he’ll succeed. We have far too many of them as next-door neighbours. Well, we’ll get back to Pagel’s and have tea, and then it’ll be time to inspan. You haven’t got much luggage to pack up, I suppose?”

Dick was amused at the way in which she was taking possession of him as a matter of course. Personally she was a tallish, fair-haired woman of about five and thirty, rather good-looking, and with a pleasing voice. It would be great fun to accept that invitation, if only that Harley Greenoak would come back to find his bird flown. The said Greenoak had come to the conclusion that his charge could not get into much mischief in a crowded township, and with an arm in a sling, wherefore he had left him for a few days with an easy mind.

Even as Dick had said, the hotel—whither all this time they had been wending—was crowded. The stoep and the bar department were full of men and tobacco smoke, and battles were being fought over again, and the war brought to a sudden and satisfactory termination—according to more than one orator, who might or might not have taken any part in it. In the stuffy little dining-room they managed to find a quiet corner.

“How do you do, Mr Selmes?”

A red-hot needle dropped down the back of Dick’s neck might have produced a precisely similar effect to that evolved by this simple and exceedingly conventional query. He started violently in his chair, knocked both knees hard against the table, causing every article of crockery thereon to dance and rattle, and other people using it to scowl or laugh, according to mood. Then, as he extricated himself, he wondered if he were drunk or dreaming, for he stood holding the hand of—and looking down into the exquisitely winning face of Hazel Brandon.

The said face was demureness itself, but the sparkle of repressed mirth in the witching eyes told its own tale. Then, conscious that the gaze of the room was on him—on them—Dick pulled himself together.

“You here?” he gasped, as he gave her his chair—in the incoherence of mind born of the circumstances, overlooking the fact that another vacant one next to it, and which he now took, had been turned down as a sign of “engaged.” “Er—do you know Mrs Waybridge?”

“Yes, we know each other,” answered the latter for her. “You know”—to Hazel—“I’ve been trying to persuade Mr Selmes to come out and stay with us, now this afternoon, but he, for his part, has been trying to find some excuse. Don’t deny it, Mr Selmes”—with a laugh.

Dick felt cornered. Hazel at Komgha! There was no end to the surprises in this land of surprises. Likely he was going somewhere else just as he had discovered her presence here! What times they would contrive to have!

“Well—er—Mrs Waybridge, I thought it might be more convenient—er—a little later on,” he began lamely. “When my damaged limb is quite all right,” he added, as if a bright idea had struck him.

“Well, it’s our loss, I suppose, Mr Selmes,” she answered. “But mind you come as soon as you can.”

Dick promised—even enthusiastically. Then he turned to Hazel.

“Where are you staying here? Are your people with you?”

“No. But I’m not staying here at all. I’m only in for the day. I’m staying with Mrs Waybridge,” she answered in an even, matter-of-fact tone.

Heavens, what was this? Dick felt as if he had kicked himself out of paradise, locked the door behind him and thrown away the key with his own hand. How could he so much as have guessed that he had been doing all he knew to forego another stay under the same roof with Hazel? He stared at his plate—silently, blankly.

“Well, it’s about time we thought of inspanning,” said Mrs Waybridge. “Now, Mr Selmes. It isn’t too late to change your mind. What do you say?”

Dick’s face cleared. Here was a broad path out. He was unaware, too, of the pressures of the foot under the table exchanged by the two ladies as the richness of the joke unfolded itself. He only knew, with inexpressible relief, that the situation was saved.

“Then I think I will change it,” he answered, striving to quell the eagerness in his tone. “Besides, it’ll be such a joke on good old Greenoak when he gets back, to find I’ve flown.”

“Where is Mr Greenoak now?” asked Hazel. “Isn’t he here?”

“No. He’s away on some secret service.”

“Something to help other people, I suppose,” rejoined the girl. “He lives for that.”

There was just a little dimming of Dick Selmes’ golden vista. Was Hazel going to recommence booming Greenoak? She had never seemed to tire of that at Haakdoornfontein. Then he felt thoroughly ashamed of himself.

“I should think he did live for that,” declared Dick, heartily. “He saved my life twice since we crossed the Kei. Do you know, I was twice captured by the Kafirs, and the rum part of it was, it came off before the actual war began; but they’d have done for me all the same, as sure as I sit here—and that in a precious unpleasant manner—if it hadn’t been for Greenoak. But it’s something of a yarn, and must keep till there’s time to tell it. Shall I go and see after your inspanning, Mrs Waybridge?”

“No. Go and see after your own kit, that’ll save time. Only, don’t make it bigger than you can help, because the cart isn’t a Cobb and Co. coach.”

“Will a flannel shirt and a cartridge shell be overweight?” said Dick, slily.

Chapter Twenty Five.

A Missing Link.

It is safe to say that no more light-hearted unit among Her Majesty’s subjects existed than Dick Selmes as he rode out that day to the Waybridges’ farm.

Here he was, suddenly and unexpectedly called upon to undergo a wholly delightful sojourn once more beneath the same roof with this girl who had held his thoughts during the past three months. And now he was resolved to bring things to a head, and somehow he thought he had no reason to despair of doing so. Had he been near enough to catch what was working in the mind of one of the occupants of the Cape cart—which he was not, for his horse, fresh and “beany” from stable confinement and diet, would not be held in to the more sober, jog-trot pace of a vehicle—he might have thought so still more.

In her first glance at him Hazel had decided that, whatever it was that she had found wanting in him before, had now been supplied as though it were the missing link of a chain. The experiences he had been through since their last meeting had hardened and strengthened Dick Selmes in every way. He had taken part in more than one battle, and had undergone perils such as had fallen to the lot of few—as we know—and such experience had left its mark. He had learned self-reliance in a sharp school, but he had learned it. There was a straight decisive look in his clear eyes which had not been there before, a stamp, too, of it in his features, and now Hazel came to the conclusion that Dick Selmes was the handsomest man she had ever seen, or would ever be likely to see. Even now, how well he looked on horseback. His steed, the same one which had carried him through his express-riding experience, just now was giving ample opportunity for a display of horsemanship; and, watching both from the cart, Hazel realised that small Jacky was but voicing her own verdict in rough and ready fashion when he exclaimed—

“Ma, but Mr Selmes is a fine chap, and, can’t he just ride!”

“And swim too, eh, Jacky?” was the maternal reply, given significantly.

“Ja. Rather!”

It was sunset when they reached the farm; whose owner they could see down at the sheep kraals some little way off, apparently engaged in counting in, and at this they would not disturb him. A Kafir stable hand came up to take the horses.

“Come in, Mr Selmes. My husband will be up directly, when he’s done counting. He and Magwelo will do the outspanning.”

“Oh, but I can give a hand so long, Mrs Waybridge. Why—if that isn’t Elsie.”

“Ay, it’s Elsie. And how are ye, Mr Selmes?” said the Scotswoman, as Dick heartily shook hands with her. “Man, but ye’ll have seen something, A’m thinking, since ye first took me for Miss Hazel, up at Mr Hesketh’s.”

“Elsie, that joke’s stale,” cut in Hazel, quickly. “I don’t know either that it was ever much of a joke in any case.”

And Dick felt grateful. He did not want to be reminded of having made an ass of himself—and that before other people. But the Scotswoman turned away, not in the least offended, however. Soon the owner of the place was seen approaching. He was a middle-aged, strongly built man, with a quiet-looking, shrewd face, thickly bearded, and he was rather reticent of speech.

“John,” said his wife, “I’ve brought you some one you’ve very much wanted to see—Mr Selmes.”

“Very much wanted to,” echoed the other, heartily. “I should rather think so. How are you, sir—and a thousand welcomes. I need hardly say how glad I am of the opportunity of thanking you in person—”

“No—no, Mr Waybridge. That’s a subject we must agree not to mention,” protested Dick. “Really—if only to oblige me.”

“There are some subjects that can’t be dismissed so lightly,” was the answer. “You don’t meet with cases of heroism so often as all that.”

“Oh, Mrs Waybridge, do come to my rescue,” laughed Dick. “Now I’m going to take refuge in helping to outspan. Hallo! There’s my little friend, Florrie. How she’s grown.”

A pretty little girl came half shyly forward. She and Jacky constituted the Waybridges’ surviving family. Waybridge himself had not been present on the occasion of the rescue, his wife and children having been on a visit to Cape Town without him.

This Kaffrarian farm was pleasingly situated; in front and around an undulating roll of mimosa-dotted plains, at the back a line of hills, covered with dark bush. Now, as the sun dropped down to the horizon, these were thrown out all green and gold. At the back of the house was a large fruit garden, fenced in by hedges of quince and pomegranate. The sheep kraals lay in front, at some little distance.

“I’m afraid you’ll find it a bit slow here, Mr Selmes,” said Waybridge, as they were seated out on the stoep after supper. “I hear you’re a great sportsman, but there’s nothing on earth to shoot here.”

“Yet all that bush at the back ought to show something,” said Dick.

“So it ought, but it doesn’t. There are a sight too many Kafirs—and dogs. They won’t leave a hoof anywhere within reach. Clear everything.”

“That’s very nearly what Mr Selmes did at Haakdoorn,” said Hazel, mischievously.

“Ah, that was a very paradise of a shoot,” answered Dick, meeting her eyes in the starlight; and she read into the words a meaning beyond what they might on the surface convey, as he intended she should. It was like old times sitting out in the still night with her beside him, he thought. Then the conversation, as it was bound to do, got on to the war, and Dick, being pressed to do so, told them about his adventures. These, as a rule, he avoided talking about lest he should be suspected of brag.

“You see,” he now concluded, “you wanted to hear about things, but don’t imagine for a moment I’m particularly proud of any of those experiences, because honestly I’m not. The more I look back on them, the more convinced I am that I acted the silly ass; especially in running other people into unnecessary risk to get me out. And if it hadn’t been for Greenoak, time after time, I never should have been got out.”

“What about Gcalekaland now?” said Waybridge.

“Think it’s settled?”

“I believe so. The niggers were knocked into a cocked hat. But what about your crowd round here? Are they reliable?”

“There is unrest,” answered Waybridge. “Yes, decidedly there is unrest. But if we all followed the example of some of our neighbours by running away into laager, it would be courting the very danger we want to avoid. Isn’t it a fact that the way to draw any animal after you is to run away from it? Of course; and so some of us made a kind of league to stick to our farms.”

“Aren’t you uneasy, Mrs Waybridge?” said Dick.

“Not in the least. I don’t believe, either, that the Kafirs would do us any harm. We are on very good terms with them, and the old chief, Nteya, who bosses all the Gaikas round here, is a really nice old man, and we are very friendly. At worst we should be sure to get warning to clear.”

“These scares occur from time to time,” went on Waybridge, “and one of the results is that your servants all leave. When they come back you may rely upon it that the scare is over. Just now I’m badly off for hands. Four cleared out one night, all Sandili’s people. But they’ll come back. Nteya’s people stayed on, and those are the three I have yet.”

Dick Selmes, a lurking anxiety at the back of his mind on account of Hazel, felt reassured. His host’s serene composure on the subject could hardly fail to carry that effect. Then, upon the stillness of the night a far-away, long-drawn sound floated weirdly.

“By Jingo!” he cried, “that reminds me of the war-dance in Vunisa’s location that I’ve just been telling you about. Listen.”

They did listen. Again and again the strange sound wailed forth, seeming to come from where a distant glow was now visible beyond a roll of the plain.

“It is a dance of some sort,” said Waybridge, “but I don’t suppose it’s a war-dance. Sounds as if it was over at old Umjuza’s kraal, or not far from it. They often go in for dances, maybe for a wedding, or maybe like we do, for the sake of having a little festivity. It’s just an extraordinary beer-drinking, I expect.”

But to one who had heard it before, in grim and sinister earnest, that sound coming out of the darkness, as the voices of ravening beasts straining to be let loose, combined, too, with the state of uneasiness and tension then existing, struck a feeling of vague inquietude. Dick Selmes wondered if he felt as reassured as his host’s explanation and unruffled serenity should have warranted him in feeling.

Chapter Twenty Six.

Greenoak’s Plan.

Harley Greenoak sat smoking a pipe in the one living-room of the Commandant’s modest little bungalow. It was night. The only other occupant of the room was its owner; and he was moving tranquilly about arranging his “specimens,” dividing his attention about evenly between these and the subject of conversation. Yet the latter was weighty with the issues of life and death.

“If things go as you say, Greenoak,” he was observing, “we haven’t a man too many; either here, or over the Kei, or indeed along the whole frontier. Yet, look how my hands are tied. You know, I was always against allowing those burgher forces to go home, at any rate until a sufficiently equivalent force had been raised to supply their place. I am hampered at every turn, and if it wasn’t that I believe we are only at the beginning of our troubles instead of the end, I’d resign.”

“Don’t do that, Commandant, if only that it would be a precious difficult thing to supply yours,” answered Greenoak.

“I advised what should be done, and that was to make a quick and secret march, and arrest Sandili and Matanzima, together with some half-dozen more mischievous of the amapakati whom we know, and promise to hang the lot on the first outbreak among their people. When I put it to the Government I was forbidden to move. You know the rest.”

Greenoak nodded. The other went on—

“Look what came of bagging those other two, Vunisa and Pahlandhle. Their Reserve has been fairly well behaved ever since. We can’t hang them because the Gcalekas are an independent nation, but their people don’t know we can’t, and so are behaving themselves for fear we should. But the Colonial tribes are British subjects, and therefore rebels if they begin the row, so there’d be no ‘prisoner of war’ treatment for them. By the way, what has become of that hair-brained young dare-devil who helped us to grab them? I don’t seem to have seen him about lately.”

“Dick Selmes? Oh, he’s being taken care of,” answered Greenoak, drily. “He’s over at Waybridge’s farm. He’s got an attraction there.”

“H’m. Well, but if you start on this undertaking you’ll have to leave him to himself for a while. And you’re his bear-leader.”

“He won’t object to that,” laughed Greenoak. “And he seems by this time to be uncommonly well able to take care of himself.”

“So I should think. And I always thought you kept him quite enough in leading-strings. No, it’s no good. I can’t satisfactorily locate this beast even now,” bringing to the light a small wooden box from which he had just removed the lid, and which contained the identical specimen of the lizard tribe which we saw him puzzling over in the small hours of the morning which had witnessed the attack on the Kangala camp. “I didn’t bring the right book. I shall have to wait until I get back to my library.”

King Williamstown was the official headquarters of the F.A.M. Police, and there the Commandant owned a roomy and commodious bungalow, which contained a varied library, well stocked with standard works dealing with his favourite science.

Now he replaced the box and went over to the window. It was open, but the blind was down. This he pulled up and stood gazing meditatively out into the night, as though to penetrate darkness and space to where the plotting chiefs were even then arranging for the wave of steel and torch which should presently sweep the land. In good sooth he might well feel anxious. He was a singularly observant and keen-minded man, with a cool, matter-of-course courage that would stick at nothing once his judgment had commended any given line of action as necessary. He had consistently maintained that, given a free hand, he would have guaranteed there should have been no outbreak at all in the first instance; when such had befallen, he was confident of his power to stem it, but again he was hampered by official orders and counter orders. And now, when the most dangerous outbreak of all was imminent, once again Red Tape wriggled its way in.

Greenoak, seated back in his armchair, refilled and lit his pipe in silence. He too was busy with his own thoughts, and forebore to interrupt those of his friend. These two men, who understood each other so well, were both of the concentrative order of mind, and when there was anything of importance to be thought out, they thought it out thoroughly, and round and round. Here there was something very important indeed, an enterprise which held out to Harley Greenoak quite as big a chance of losing his life as any he had ever taken. But that was not what engaged his attention for the most part. It was the chance of failure, and all that such would involve. The Commandant’s favourite dogs, two beautiful black spaniels, which had just leaped in through the open window, came frisking up to him, wagging their tails, and whining for notice. Mechanically his hand passed over each glossy head, and still there was silence between the two men. Then the Commandant shut down the window and turned into the room again.

“Well, Greenoak, if any other man was bound on this errand, I should say it would be useless. But yourself—”

“I shall feel the pulse of the locations anyway, and can gauge pretty accurately whether the farmers who are still sticking to their places ought to leave. I’ll have a good talk with Matanzima.”

“Not Sandili?”

“Sheer waste of time. He’d be too drunk.”

“You may find a difficulty in getting away. In any case, you’ll be shadowed at every step.”

Greenoak laughed drily as he toyed with the spaniels’ ears.

“I don’t want to brag,” he said, “but we’ve known each other a long time. Did you ever know me ‘shadowed’ to any purpose by any one I didn’t intend should shadow me?”

“No, I can’t say I did. I don’t believe any one ever did.”

“Well, it happened once—not long ago either. And who the dickens do you think succeeded in doing it?”

“Who?”

“Our young friend, Dick Selmes. No more, no less.” And he told the other, briefly, of his enterprise in Slaang Kloof.

“Well, that doesn’t count, for of course he guessed where you were bound for, and the distance and surroundings were so trifling that there was no opportunity of throwing him off the scent. Here, of course, it’s different. You’re a wonderful fellow, Greenoak, but I don’t know why your glass has been standing empty so long. Here. Fill up.”

Several glasses already used, and a large but more than half-emptied decanter on the table—item a good deal of tobacco ash, pointed to the fact that some of the Police officers and an outside friend or two had been spending the evening with the Commandant. The latter now charged his glass, and pushed the excellent Boer brandy—whisky was hardly known on the frontier in those days—over to Greenoak.

“We’ll drink success, at any rate,” he said, “to the ‘secret service’ department.” Then, after a pause, “Upon my word, Greenoak, I wish you’d throw up this undertaking.”

Greenoak, for him, looked somewhat surprised. In all the years of their acquaintance he had never known the Commandant in an expostulatory vein. He was habitually the most matter-of-fact and laconic of men. Could it be that he was ageing?

“Oh, I’m getting rusty here, and spoiling for the chance of putting something or somebody to rights,” was the answer.

By this time it was well known that the Gaika locations were in a frame of mind that may best be described as smouldering. So far the grog-sodden mind of Sandili was incapable of deciding anything. Whoever got the old chief’s ear last spoke the “word” that was “good.” But his warrior son, Matanzima, and the young men of the tribe, were spoiling for a chance to distinguish themselves. The spirit of Donnybrook was dangerously abroad.

But their kinsmen, the Gcalekas, across the Kei, had been badly defeated and their country cleared—this, then, was no time for a rising on the Colonial side. So one would have thought, but a short-sighted policy had allowed one by one of the burgher forces in the Transkei to evacuate that territory without supplying their place. The war was over, it was pronounced. Was it? Back came the defeated paramount tribe, swarming into its old country again; the Paramount Chief, Kreli, as paramount as ever, and laughing at the “softness” of the white man. These were now plotting to stir up the intra-Colonial tribes, and by a simultaneous rising on the part of these to drive the said white man “into the sea,” as their expressive way of putting it ran.

This plot was, of course, suspected by many, and known by few, but it was reserved for Harley Greenoak to find out through one of those mysterious sources of information that seemed closed to others, that the time for its execution was imminent. An accredited body of Gcaleka fighting men was to cross the Kei into Sandili’s location, and their arrival was to be the signal that the moment for rising had come. Thousands upon thousands of armed savages would thus hold the frontier at their mercy. It was too late to prevent this. The only course was to neutralise it, by being prepared. And the bulk of the armed force upon the border had been withdrawn.

Harley Greenoak got up and went to his room. He took down his guns and drew them from their holsters. The double .500 Express was deadly with big game, but he was not sure he did not prefer the rifle and smooth-bore for man. A charge of Treble A. buckshot was so deadly at anything like close quarters. Yes, he would take the one with the shot barrel. It, with his ordinary and very businesslike revolver, constituted a most formidable armament, in the hands of one who so thoroughly knew how to use it as himself. Returning to the other room, he proceeded to load up a saddle-bag with a supply of the most concentrated and therefore portable provisions, sufficient to last him several days; but, to all appearances, hardly enough to last him for one.

“You’ll find Mantisa at the place arranged, all right,” said the Commandant, naming one of the native detectives. “He’s a good runner, and will bring the news straight and quick—directly you get any to send. John Voss had better be sent round to warn the farms.”

The other nodded, and the two men shook hands. The lights were then extinguished, for it was just as well that possible watching eyes should not see Harley Greenoak as he stepped forth into the darkness. And having saddled up his horse, he started upon his dangerous and self-sacrificing undertaking alone.

As he rode on through the night, keeping his horse at a walk, his thoughts were still busy with his plan. He had not told the Commandant of the expected crossing, and this for more than one reason. First, he wanted to verify, his information, and this he felt confident of his ability to do, by going in person among the disaffected Gaikas. His consummate knowledge of natives and their language, above all of the ways of their language, would enable him to do this. He could read them like a book, however much they strove to conceal from him their real mind. Then he was not altogether without hope that he might be able, even at the eleventh hour, to persuade them to “sit still.” His personal prestige with them, and influence, were enormous, and while they would secretly be laughing at any accredited Government official, to his own words they would listen with unfeigned respect. Again, were a strong patrol of Police despatched to watch the drifts, it would defeat its own object. It would be powerless to prevent the projected incursion, for the Gcaleka emissaries, being aware of its presence, as, of course, they could not fail to be, would simply melt into twos and threes, and cross the river at many different points instead of at one. Further and more important still, it would precipitate the outbreak he was striving to delay, even if he could not prevent; and such of the settlers who still remained on their farms would be massacred without warning. And this was just what he had set himself out to avert, this strong, brave, experienced man—he alone—single-handed.

But what of himself—of his own life? Did he not value it that he was going to place himself alone in the power of these sullen plotting savages? Well, this was not the first situation of the kind in which he had played the leading and only part. It was by just such cool and calculated intrepidity, by just such well-nigh superhuman confidence in his own personality and resource, that Harley Greenoak had come forth, not merely with his life, but triumphant and successful where ninety-nine men out of a hundred would never have come forth at all.

The settlement, largely augmented by tents and waggons of refugees, was in darkness, as he left it behind. Down by the outspan quite a number of waggons had formed a laager, but from this came no challenge as he passed it near by. Either its inmates were asleep, or the sound of a horse travelling at a foot’s pace conveyed no suggestion of danger. The open veldt lay in front, the great table-topped cone of Moordenaar’s Kop towering on high against the myriad stars.

But—what was this? Behind, not too near, but just near enough to keep the horseman within sight, within hearing, a stealthy form was flitting. Seen in the darkness, it was that of an evil-looking, thick-set savage, with a forbidding countenance dotted unevenly with scrabbly wisps of beard. In his hand was a pair of hard iron-wood sticks, and one assegai, with a broad, keen, fluted blade.

The rider held carelessly on. His horse, purposely kept unshod, gave little sound from its footfalls; himself, perfect in his self-restraint, foregoing even the comfort of a harmless pipe. Harmless, yes—under most conditions; under existing ones, the mere faint spark of light required for its ignition was a thing to be avoided, lest it should reach the wrong eyes, small as might be the chance of it doing so. But his habit was to take no chances in a matter of life and death.

Hour after hour—then a short off-saddle, then on again, and still the stealthy form moved silently, cautiously behind, always keeping its distance lest the horse should neigh, or otherwise show signs of uneasiness. Harley Greenoak was being shadowed.

Chapter Twenty Seven.

In the Locations.

Sunrise. A long green valley bounded by pleasant, round-topped, bush-clad hills. The slopes are dotted with kraals, the blue wood-smoke curling aloft from the yellow thatch of many a beehive-shaped hut, the red-ochred forms of the inhabitants moving about—early as it is—making a not unpleasing contrast to the eye against the bright green of the pastures, though by no means pleasing to another sense, at far closer quarters. But the thorn enclosures contain no cattle, although it is milking-time, nor do any stand around outside, only a few sheep and goats. This is strange.

Harley Greenoak, pacing his horse up the valley, noted the fact, and—read it at its real meaning. And its real meaning did not augur well either for the situation or for his self-imposed mission by which he had hoped to improve the latter. But little time was to be his for tranquil reflection, for there was a savage rush of dogs from two of the clusters of huts he was passing at a hundred yards or so, and a tumultuous snapping and snarling round his horse’s heels. It was followed immediately by a scarcely less tumultuous irruption of the inhabitants. These poured forward, vociferating volubly. All had sticks, and a goodly proportion carried assegais. Their demeanour was not friendly.

But the foremost pulled up short, then the rest. The rush subsided into a walk.

“Whau! It is Kulondeka!”

No weapon had been presented, or even significantly handled. No change had come over the imperturbability of the horseman. It was only the name, the mesmerism, so to say, of the personality. That was all.

“I see you,” was the answer. “But I did not come to see you.” And the speaker rode unconcernedly on.

The crowd, who had now stoned and beaten off the dogs, fell in behind, talking in an undertone among itself. From every additional kraal passed, others came forth to swell it, at first aggressively hostile in attitude, then more subdued, but always sullen. In fact, Greenoak remarked that the prevailing attitude was that of sullenness.

“The grass is green and abundant. There should be good pasture for the cattle here now,” he remarked over his shoulder to the foremost. “There will be plenty of fatness and milk this season.”

A deep-toned murmur, in which he was quick to detect a covert sneer, greeted his words.

“Ewa—Ewa! Plenty of fatness this season, Kulondeka,” answered several voices. And the same unmistakable sneer underlay the words.

“Turn back, Kulondeka,” now said one, a man who seemed to be in some authority, as he came up along side of the horseman. “We do not want any white people about here now. The chief is tired of them.”

“The chief! But it is not the chief I am going to see, Mafutana. It is his son.”

“But what if he is not here?” said the Kafir, sullenly.

“But what if he is?” returned Greenoak, composedly. “I know my way. I have no need of these here”—with a wave of the hand towards those who were following. “They can go home.”

A hoarse jeer among the crowd greeted the words, but the said crowd showed not the slightest sign of complying with the speaker’s wish. More than one, gripping the long, tapering assegai, was thinking what a tempting target was offered by the back of this unmoved white man, riding there before them as though his life hung upon something stronger than a not very secure rope. So the strange procession passed on.

The newly risen sun was flaming above the Kei hills. The blue sky was without a cloud. The morning air, not yet unpleasantly warm, was clear and invigorating. The fair, rolling pastures were green and promising, and altogether the whole scene should have been one of pastoral peace. But it was the peace of the slumbering volcano, to-day stillness, to-morrow red ruin, and none knew this better than Harley Greenoak. He knew why there was no cattle anywhere in sight.

Now he had reached a kraal at the head of the valley, one in no wise differing in appearance from any of the others he had passed. Here he dismounted, but before he could make an inquiry of the inhabitants—the crowd following him, by the way, having now halted at a respectful distance—an interruption occurred—startling, unexpected.

A large body of Kafirs came pouring over the ridge. They were in full war-array—cow-tail tufts, flapping monkey-skins, long crane feathers flowing back from the head, jackals’ teeth necklaces—in short, every conceivable variety of wild and fantastic adornment which could lend to the sinuous clay-smeared forms a wholly terrific appearance. And indeed such was the effect, as with a roar like that of a beast they rushed down upon Harley Greenoak.

He, for his part, stood unmoved; though even to one of his iron resolution the array of excited faces and gleaming eyeballs, and threatening assegais, as the savages crowded up to him, might well have proved momentarily unnerving. Was this the projected Gcaleka raid, he wondered, and in a flash he decided that it was not. It was a body of young men who had spent the night war-dancing, with its concomitant of beef and beer feasting, hard by; and, now excited by such stimulant, mental and physical, was prepared for anything.

They made mock thrusts at him with their assegais—not too near, however. Others were leaping into the air, singing, or reciting all the deeds they were about to do.

“The time of the Abelungu has come!” cried one, if possible more truculent and demoniacal-looking than his fellows. “Whau! but we will drive them all into the sea, and take their wives for our wives. Have you a wife, Kulondeka? But no. She would be too old. She, and others like her, would do to hoe our corn lands. Or—”

And the speaker made a quick, downward slash with his assegai that left room for no explanation in mere words.

Greenoak listened to all this—and more—in silent contempt. He was getting rather tired of it, and expected that they would be getting the same directly, and would go. But the most truculent of them, a huge, red-smeared brute of well-nigh gigantic proportions, lunged forward and snatched hold of the double gun which he held in his left hand, attempting with a quick powerful jerk to wrest it away.

He did not succeed. In a twinkling the muzzle of Whites. Greenoak’s heavy revolver caught him fair and square between the eyes, with such force that the impact alone was almost enough to brain him, apart from the roar of the detonation which immediately followed. The huge barbarian, his head blown to atoms, crashed to the ground like a felled tree.

For a moment there was a tense and deathly silence. Greenoak, still holding the pistol pointed, had taken a couple of paces backward. His grey eyes were gleaming like steel, and his whole aspect was cool and dangerous. The time for indifference was past, he had decided; that for action had come; and the man who had ventured to lay a hand on him had paid for his daring with his life. At that moment he himself hardly expected to escape with his, but it would go terribly hard with several, before, in their weight of numbers, they should succeed in taking it. Now, he wasted no word. His silence, the lightning-like promptitude with which he had acted, and with which he would be ready to act again, as they well knew, were more awe-inspiring than mere verbal warning. And then there was the prestige of his personality.

Upon the silence broke forth a deep-toned, vengeful growl that was ominous. Then it suddenly died down. A voice behind him spoke.

“It is Kulondeka I see.”

“It is,” answered Greenoak, not turning his head. “And I think, son of the Great Chief, that these had better go home. It is not a healthy amusement for any man to try and snatch my gun out of my hand.”

At these words, cool and contemptuous, a new outburst of wrath went up, and the excited savages began to crowd up nearer, clamouring that Kulondeka should be given up to their vengeance. Some in the background raised the war-cry. It was taken up, and, gathering volume, sounded back from the hills, whence now other bands were hurrying to the scene. The chief’s son stepped to the side of Harley Greenoak and threw an arm around his shoulders.

“See. We are brothers,” he said. “The Great Chief is the father of both.”

Again there was a silence, broken immediately by a voice.

“Au! The son of the Great Chief is bewitched. This Kulondeka is the eyes and ears of the whites—here, everywhere. How then can he, too, be the son of the Great Chief?” And a fresh outburst greeted the words.

Greenoak noticed that this was the man who had tried to turn him back. He had thrust himself forward, and being a headman of some standing, and elderly, he might prove dangerous in the scale. And his leanings were hostile.

Matanzima drew himself up. It was time to assert his dignity, and he had plenty of it. Seen outwardly now, he was a lithe, straight, well-set-up savage, with clear eyes and a decidedly pleasing face. He wore an ample kaross of leopard skin, flung loosely around him, and but for this, and a massive ivory armlet, displayed no adornment whatever. Now he turned his eyes sternly upon the assembled rout, sweeping it steadily from end to end with his glance.

“Have I no men?” he said, in slow, incisive tones. “Have I no men? Then who are these? Are they Mafutana’s dogs, or are they mine? Hau! There are dogs who bark too loud, but when it comes to biting slink away with their tails down. How is it with these? I lead not such dogs to war.”

The clamourers paused, shamefaced. Matanzima was immensely popular with the younger men; in fact, was regarded as the leader and hope of the war-party. They dared not actively oppose him. They knew, too, that but for this white man, for whose blood they were thirsting, he would never have been here to lead them. The clamour seemed to be dying out.

“What of Nzinto yonder, son of the Great Chief?” cried a voice. “He is the son of my father, and lo!—he lies dead.”

“M-m!” The deep-chested murmur from the crowd backed the words. All eyes were bent eagerly upon Matanzima.

“Why, as to that,” said the latter, “you have heard Kulondeka say that it is not healthy to try and snatch a gun from his hand. Nzinto tried to, and—”

“Yet it shall be blood for blood, son of Sandili,” was the answer, “for he was my brother.”

“Kulondeka is my brother,” returned Matanzima. “Or, I should say, my father, for what am I but a boy beside him? Yet no blood for blood shall it be here. If you meet in battle—well and good, the best warrior is he who wins. Now we have talked long enough. I think—too long.”

And linking his arm within that of Greenoak, he drew him towards the hut from which he himself had just emerged, at the same time making a sign to one of his own immediate attendants to take charge of the horse, which, its first uneasiness over, was placidly cropping the grass, its bridle trailing on the ground.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

The “Pulse of the People.”

Harley Greenoak was not sorry to exchange the riot and racket outside for the cool interior of the young chief’s hut. The latter was by no means as neat and clean as he had been wont to find in similar dwellings among the Zulus; because the Xosa has a sort of passion for grease—and dogs. Two of the latter got up growling as he entered, but slunk out of the doorway with astonishing celerity at a peremptory word from their master. Then two of Matanzima’s wives appeared, bearing food, in the shape of stamped mealies and curdled milk, also a large calabash of native beer, and here again there was a suggestion of but half-washed vessels, and a flavour of grease and red-ochre seemed to permeate the stuff itself. But to Greenoak little matters of this sort were the merest trifles.

“It is good to see you again, Kulondeka,” said the young chief, when breakfast was well under way. “Now—what is the news?”

“News? Why as for that, son of Sandili, the news is great.”

“Great?”

“It is. And such as it is I bring it from—no further distance from here than I could shoot with this gun.”

“Ha!”

The ejaculation, quick and eager; a sudden intensity wherewith the answer had been received was not lost on Harley Greenoak. As we heard him tell the Commandant, he was here to feel the pulse of the people. Already he had got his finger upon it.

“The people are mad, son of the Great Chief,” he went on. “Mad—quite mad. The people here.”

Matanzima laughed—and it struck his hearer there was a note of great relief in the tone.

“Why, as to that, Kulondeka,” he said, “they are only a little excited. They are all young men, those out yonder. They have been dancing all night, and have not worn it off. But—mad? Au!”

“And Mafutana, and Sikonile, and others who gave me speech on the way hither—are they young men, and have they been dancing all night?” said Greenoak, innocently, and with his head on one side. “They talked ‘dark’ as they followed on behind me, but—not dark enough, son of Sandili. Ah—ah—not dark enough. They are mad. Shall I say why?”

The young chief nodded and uttered a murmur of assent.

“Then why are the children of the House of Gaika preparing for war?”

This was putting things straightly. Matanzima brought his hand to his mouth with a quick exclamation. Then, laughing softly, he shook his head.

“Now, nay, Kulondeka,” he said. “You are my father, but your dreams have been bad. The war was not with us, and it is over now. And I would ask—If we sat still then, if we did not rise in our might to aid our brethren over yonder, would it not be the act of fools and madmen to rise now, when there is no one to aid, and the whites are all armed and prepared? Now, would it not?”

“It would. It would be the act of just such as these. That is why I say that the news I bring is that your people are all mad, Matanzima.”

The latter did not immediately answer, and Greenoak sat and watched him. Such words, uttered by any other man, would have been equivalent to the signing of his death-warrant. But Greenoak knew his ground. He had saved the life of the young chief once, and he knew that the latter would never forget it as long as he lived. Moreover, between the two there was a very genuine liking, and a longing to save this fine young fool from the ruinous consequences of the mad, impracticable scheme on which he was already embarking had borne a full part in moving him to start upon his perilous undertaking.

“Whau! Kulondeka. Are you sent by Iruvumente?” (The Government.)

“Not so, Matanzima. Yet the answers I am getting might well make it appear as though I were. For they are just the answers that might be got ready for a Government commissioner.”

The other laughed again, but just a trifle shamefacedly. He knew, only too well, the utter futility of trying to hoodwink this one man of all others. The latter went on—

“Where are all the cattle belonging to the people? The land here is green and the grass soft and fresh. Who would have thought the pasture in the Gombazana Forest could be better?”

Here again was food for fresh discomfiture. For how should Kulondeka have known so accurately that the tribe had been steadily sending away all its women and children to the wooded fastnesses he had mentioned, in order to have its hands free entirely? Yet what did not Eulondeka know?

“For that,” answered Matanzima, “there may be some reason. The Ama Gcaleka might come over and seize some of our cattle to make up for all your people took from them, what time we did not aid them. Ah—ah! What time we did not aid them,” he added significantly.

“If you feared that, why did you not send word to Bokelo?” said Greenoak, using the name by which the Commandant was known among the tribes. “He would have sent sufficient Amapolise to patrol the border, so that such a thing could not have befallen.”

The look on Matanzima’s face at the mention of such a contingency would have escaped pretty nearly any other man than Harley Greenoak. Him it did not escape. Yes. He was getting his finger more and more tightly on “the pulse.”

“When there is lightning in the air, does a man go about flourishing steel,” was the reply, with another amused laugh. “Whau! some of our people are hotheaded, and not always clear-sighted—as you yourself have just seen,” he added whimsically. “There has been lightning in the air, and Bokelo’s Amapolise might be just the steel which should draw down the crash.”

“Now, listen to me, Matanzima, and we will talk ‘dark’ no longer,” said Greenoak, becoming impressive. “You have referred to me as your ‘father,’ and that is just what I want to be to you. I want to see you great and powerful, and at the head of your nation. I do not want to see you—with others—spend the rest of your life in the white man’s prison. The Great Chief Sandili, is old and infirm, and are you not his ‘great’ son? It cannot be long before you yourself are Chief of the House of Gaika! Whau! look around. Is it not a splendid land which is given you wherein to dwell? Are not the people prosperous and happy, with cattle grazing by their tens of thousands in valley and on hill? Why, then, fling all this away with both hands? Why exchange it all—for what? Ask those of your people who have passed years of their lives in the white man’s prison, for any offence against the white man’s laws. Ask such what it feels like—day after day—moon after moon—toiling at road-making, dragging heavy carts loaded with heavy stones, watched and guarded every moment by, it may be, some miserable Hottentot, ready to shoot you down at any attempt to escape, sometimes in chains it may be. Whau! What a fate for the chiefs of the House of Gaika. Come heat, come cold—ever the same weary round of toil. Then again—no home, no comfortable huts, no wives, no tobacco—nothing to look forward to but the most miserable and grinding slavery. That is the fate you are rushing upon headlong. The fate that will as surely be yours as that the sun is shining above at this moment. You and your people are not as the Ama Gcaleka. They are Kreli’s men, and you and the Ama Ngqika are the Queen’s men. This is the way the laws of the white men punish those who rise in rebellion against the Queen. Now say. Is it good enough? Is it?”

Greenoak paused, and sat gazing fixedly at his listener. The young chief’s face had grown troubled and moody.

“Whau! Such words are even as the words of Tyala,” he said, as though half to himself.

“The words of Tyala,” echoed Greenoak, eager to push his advantage. “Ha! And Tyala is wise—no man wiser. Now, Matanzima. You have the ear of the Great Chief. Go now and speak into it, word for word, all I have been saying. Lose no time, do it at once. So shall you save not only yourself, but your people. To delay is death. Where is Sandili?”

“Near Tembani. But I cannot go to him now, Kulondeka,” he explained gloomily. “Do you not see? The people here. I alone can hold them.”

Yes, that “pulse” was beating now, that pulse of the people which Harley Greenoak was there to feel. There was no chance of making a wrong diagnosis here. But a great sinking came into his heart. More and more, while reasoning with this young leader of the seething war-party, his mind had been impregnated with a growing pity for him, and the dreary intolerable doom he was so surely preparing for himself and many more. For, reading the other, more and more easily he realised that it was too late for the young chief to draw back. The plot had about reached its head. The incursion from beyond the river was all arranged, and its fulfilment imminent. Yet—was it too late?

“Then—hold them,” he answered emphatically. “Hold them. Have you no men? Send and recall the cattle and women that have been sent away. Send out another ‘word’—that the time is not ripe. Think, son of Sandili, the last chief of the House of Gaika; for no other will be chief after him when the whole nation is broken up. There is yet time. It is not too late. Now, I have ridden the night through, and I am growing old. While I sleep—for I am tired—think again upon my words; and—act upon them, and that at once.”

Greenoak rose, and going to the side of the hut, stretched himself upon the ground. In less than five minutes he slept, slept hard and dreamlessly. Slept—one man, alone—in the midst of teeming enemies, who but a short while before had been clamouring for his life, and even now, it might be, were plotting how they might take it when he should be once clear of the protecting presence of their chief. The sanctuary of the latter’s house they dared not violate. But blood had been shed, and blood cried for blood. It would be hard if they could not, by way of wily ambuscade, obtain their just vengeance when this man should be beyond the protecting influence. The prestige of his personality was great; still he was but one, and they were many. Vast events were maturing; the making an end, then, of this man, with the semi-supernatural reputation for invulnerability, would be a fitting precursor of them.

But Harley Greenoak was still Harley Greenoak, and meanwhile he slumbered on, peacefully and unafraid, in their midst. Would he have slept on so soundly had he known what was going on in another part of the location? Who knows?

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Mafutana’s Plan.

Sikonile’s hut was full. Sikonile’s hut, being full, was exceedingly close and stuffy. Moreover, it was thick with tobacco smoke; for, unlike the Zulus, both men and women of the Xosa tribes were great smokers, and so thick was the cloud, having no egress but by percolating through the thatch roof, that none but Kafir eyes could have remained open in it for two consecutive minutes. This, with the foetid, musky, human odour combined with that of more or less rancid grease, would have sent the ordinary white man promptly outside, feeling very sea-sick indeed. No white man, however, was there; incidentally a very lucky thing for the white man, and that for other reasons than the one just given.

Sikonile was an elderly Kafir, and the expression of his massive, bearded countenance was scowling and vindictive as he sat gloomily puffing at his long-stemmed angular pipe. And this was scarcely wonderful, seeing that he was the father of Nzinto, the man whom Harley Greenoak had just shot dead. The fact that the deceased had brought his fate upon his own head did not count for much towards mending matters.

“The people might as well lie down again,” he was saying, continuing the debate, which had already reached a heated pitch. “‘It is not healthy to attempt to snatch a gun from the hand of Kulondeka,’” he quoted, with a sneer. “Hau! Had I been there then, Kulondeka would have found it ‘not healthy’ to shoot down the children of Gaika, here in their own home. Yet, a number of us, all armed, slunk away like stoned curs. Hau! like stoned and beaten curs!”

A fierce murmur greeted his words. He went on—

“And such call themselves men. And they all slink away before one. Men! Hau! I call them dogs. And if they slink away before one white, what will they do when many whites are arrayed against them? What is all this talk about driving the whites into the sea when they are afraid of a single one, alone in their midst? Why, our women would make better warriors than they.”

Most of those present, elderly or middle-aged men themselves, had sons who had been among the uproarious demonstrators; and liked not the contemptuous denunciation of the speaker. One now spoke.

“Not at the bidding of the white man did they hold their hands, Sikonile, but at the word of the chief.”

“The word of the chief,” echoed Sikonile, sneeringly savage. “Au! but Matanzima is not a chief. He is the son of the Great Chief, but he is a boy.”

“Yet he is the one to whom all these look up,” put in another. “The time to take vengeance was not yet.”

“Not yet? But will it ever be?” cried Sikonile, flinging out an arm and glaring around. “You are all afraid of this white man—afraid. Hau!”

The disgust and contempt of his tone, especially as conveyed by the last exclamation, stung them somewhat.

“Kulondeka is no ordinary white man,” said some one, sullenly. “There is that of tagati about him. Many have tried to kill him, and he is still alive. But—where are they?”

“Cowards all! Fools and cowards! They deserved their death,” was the fierce rejoinder.

“Yet, brother,” went on the one who had spoken last, “Kulondeka is here among us alone. It is thy son whom he has killed, but thou hast other sons. Matanzima is no chief—only the child of one. Yonder is his hut, and the white man is here. Now take thy other sons, and go and kill him.”

There was a touch of mockery in the tone. The words were, in fact, a challenge. Sikonile leapt to his feet.

“That will I do!” he blared forth, gesticulating with anger, for he was worked up to a blaze of revengeful exaltation. “That will I do!” And tearing down a bundle of assegais which hung against the side of the hut, he made for the door. But before he could gain it another voice spoke.

“Pause, brother. I have a better plan than that.”

The angry man paused.

“A better plan!” he sneered. “Plans—always plans! Whau! I like not such. We have heard too much of plans lately. It is now time to act. One act is worth ten times ten plans. Yet, what is thy ‘plan,’ Mafutana?”

“Hear it then, Sikonile. What sort of poor revenge would it be to kill Kulondeka, to kill him at once so that he feels nothing, and to get thyself and thy sons killed for violating the house of the son of the Great Chief—for this is surely what would happen? Should we not rather collect our sons together, and, stealing out from the kraals by twos and threes, meet after dark, and take him when he leaves to-night to return home? For he will leave to-night.”

A murmur of applause met this proposal. The vengeful father was impressed.

“Why, that is something of a plan,” he said. “But what if it should fail? Yet, it should not.”

“It should not, for it will be easy,” was the answer. “We can ambush every way by which he will leave. Then, think what your revenge will be. We will carry him to the ‘Place of the Bones,’ and spend the night burning him alive, even as we did the traitor Nemvu. Whau! what an end for Kulondeka! A great, a noble end. You, Sikonile, in each of his groans, as the fire eats into sinew and flesh and nerve, will hear the glad laughter of Nzinto, whom he slew. Now, say. Is not my plan the better? It will avoid trouble, for Matanzima, to whom all the fighters look up, will never know. And, what a noble revenge it will afford thee.”

An emphatic hum of approval went up from the entire gathering. Mafutana was a genius. And then all heads were grouped together in an eager, under-toned discussion, and, seen through the thick, dim smoke-cloud, the grim ferocious faces were as those of demons exulting over the torment of a newly acquired soul.

Harley Greenoak awoke at sundown, aroused by a light touch from his host, who had been watching carefully over his safety.

“It is nearly time to depart, Kulondeka,” said the latter. “To have done so earlier would not have been safe, to remain later would not be safe either; for, bear in mind, I am not the Great Chief, but only his child. And he has other children.”

There was significance in this. The very short twilight—for darkness falls suddenly under Southern skies—was used by Greenoak in solemnly repeating his former warnings. Then, when it was dark enough, they went outside, where the horse was already standing, all ready and saddled.

“Fare thee well, son of the Great Chief,” said Greenoak as he mounted. “My heart is sore for thee and the people if my words pass unheeded. I can say no more.”

Matanzima’s face was gloomy, and his tones sad as he answered—

“Fare thee well, Kulondeka. Who can alter or foresee his fate? For thyself, ride with care this night, and with wide-open eyes. Yet, who am I to offer counsel to one such as thee.”

The dark shadows of the adjacent bush, soon gained, swallowed up the rider. But he knew it in the dark as in the daylight; knew it as well as—even better than—the savages whose home it was, and who were even then lying, spread out in a line covering some distance, lurking, eager, every faculty of sight and hearing, and even scent, at the fullest tension as they awaited their sure and certain prey. Would they seize it? Such seemed indeed probable, for now, to make assurance doubly sure, not only lay the waiting enemy in front, but behind, stealthily flitting on, keeping the horseman ever in sight, moved a single form—that of an evil, thick-set, scrabbly bearded savage—the same whom we saw dogging his way in the darkness when he first set forth upon his perilous mission: the bulk, indeed, of whose peril had yet to be encountered.

Gaining the high ground, which should shut the valley from view, Greenoak looked back. The location lay beneath, quiet under the stars. A twinkle of light from some open hut door or the spark of an outside fire showed in the distance, but there was no sound of dancing or revelry. The night air blew fresh and sweet as he plunged down into a deep bushy valley.

Listening intently, he gave forth the cry of a night bird, then again. It was answered. Dismounting, he led his horse a few paces—then halted, soothing the animal, as a figure rose out of the gloom with rather startling suddenness. But its apparition seemed to convey no alarm to Harley Greenoak, for between him and it there now followed a short, low-toned, but very emphatic and earnest conference.

“Whau!” ejaculated Mafutana, in a smothered whisper.

“Do you hear anything, brother?”

Sikonile, raising his head, seemed to be trying to pierce the darkness. His broad nostrils snuffed the night air, like those of a buck.

“He comes,” was the answer.

Rapidly the word was passed along the line of crouching savages. And now the soft footfall of an unshod horse was plainly audible, advancing straight towards them. Hands gripped assegai hafts with fierce and bloodthirsty thrill, yet no weapon was to be used. The white man was to be taken alive, and, as their plans had been laid, he would easily be so taken. A mandate was issued by Mafutana to some of the young men, and these moved quickly away down the hill, widening out so that they should give the advancing horseman time to get within the toils, yet not too near, lest the horse should wind them and show alarm.

Along the dark ridge the crouching savages lay, tense with excitement; every head raised, listening, like that of some evil snake. Then a quick gasp escaped them. Just below there was the thud of a heavy fall, and the plunging of frantic hoofs, the jingle of a bit, and the rattle of stones. Like lightning they were up and sweeping down upon the spot. But no sound was uttered. This had to be brought through in silence.

Already as they arrived, their forerunners had raised the fallen horse, which stood trembling and snorting in terror, and had flung themselves upon and pinioned its rider. Others grinned as they untied the long reims which, extended from bush stump to bush stump across the path, had composed the trap which had effected their capture so easily and bloodlessly.

Sikonile came forward with a grin of hate upon his countenance that was simply demoniacal. He would have such a sweet revenge now. But as he pushed through the throng to look at the prisoner a murmur of wonder which had arisen had increased to a hubbub. This was not Kulondeka at all.

It was one of themselves—a native. In the starlight they could see his face. Yet—the horse was that of Kulondeka.

“Who are you?” asked Sikonile, an assegai raised threateningly.

“Pato, son of Teliso, of the Abatembu, under the chief, Umfanta,” was the unhesitating answer.

“And Kulondeka’s horse? How didst thou come by it?” asked Mafutana.

“Who is Kulondeka?” said the prisoner, wonderingly.

“Answer questions, do not ask them,” interposed Sikonile, furiously, giving the prisoner a couple of vicious digs in the thigh with his assegai.

“I found this horse down there,” said the latter sullenly, “and it was standing alone, so I took it. If it is a chief’s horse—au! here it is. I thought it was a white man’s.”

“Where were you going?” queried Mafutana.

But before any answer could be made, an interruption occurred. One of the bystanders, who had been bending down closely scrutinising the prisoner’s face in the starlight, shot upward with a quick ejaculation.

“Whau!” he cried, bringing his hand to his mouth. “See, brothers. Here is Pato, son of Teliso, of the Abatembu, under the chief, Umfanta. Should it not rather be Mantisa, son of no Fengu dog in particular, a spy of the Amapolise, under Bokelo? Do I not know him! Hau! He it was who got me a long time in prison, for stealing a sheep which I never stole. Ha! Welcome to thee, Mantisa. For thee we have a warm bed, ah-ah—a bed of fire!”

The unfortunate detective, seeing himself unmasked, realised that the only hope of escape for him was a swift death instead of a long and lingering one by fiery torment. So, instead of answering, he only spat contemptuously. A score of assegais were raised. But Sikonile flung himself in the way.

“See you these?” he said. “Where is Kulondeka?”

“That I know not,” came the sullen reply.

“Ha! The fire! The fire will make him speak!” cried several. “To the fire then! To the Place of the Bones!”

And in a moment the wretched Fingo’s arms were tightly bound behind him with raw-hide, and he himself was hustled along, propelled by kicks and blows and assegai prods, towards the place of his ghastly death.

But not until they had got some little way did it become known to the whole party that the horse had disappeared. It had been left standing, just as it had arisen from the ground, with the bridle still on its neck. In the prevailing excitement no one had made it his business to hold it. Now it was gone.

Chapter Thirty.

The “Place of the Bones.”

Harley Greenoak for once in his life had committed an error of judgment. He had quite reckoned on the possibility of being followed, even as he knew that every step of his way had been dogged from the moment he had left the settlement. But the possibility of a formidable and cleverly devised ambush being prepared for him in front, he had somehow or other quite overlooked. So when he turned over his horse to Mantisa with instructions to take it to a point agreed upon and await him there, he was, of course, in complete ignorance of the trap into which his auxiliary was about to fall. Even then, if Mantisa had carried out his instructions to the letter, instead of taking a way of his own because it was a little shorter, he need not have fallen into the trap at all.

Greenoak’s object in getting rid of his horse for a time was that he was going into exceedingly broken and rugged country, in parts of which he could not ride at all. A led horse would be a serious impediment, hampering him at every step, to say nothing of the repeated plungings and stumblings of the animal among the rocks and stones being nearly as good as a bugle for all purposes of telling undesirable ears near and far that he was there. Again, it might neigh on occasion, which would serve the same purpose.

Now he struck off at a tangent from his former line of route, and, after some hours of steady walking, got among the broken precipitous ground which overhung the river. Rising from far beneath, he could hear its swirl and murmur. Further down he struck, his labours doubled by his carefulness to avoid any and every sound. For sound travels far on a still night, more especially on a river bank.

He looked about for a place wherein to ensconce himself so that he could see without being seen, and soon found one that answered the purpose so exactly that it might have been made to order. It was a depression overhung by a great rock, and, lying snugly, with his gaze just over the tip of a hollow, he could command a full view of the river drift, while himself invisible from above.

And now it was as well he had had that long sleep in Matamzima’s hut, for the very restfulness of this place after hours of hard walking rendered even his iron frame lax to the point of drowsiness. But it was not far to dawn now.

The stillness was absolute, hardly the cry of bird or beast awoke to break it. The loom of the Kei hills was well-nigh invisible against the stars, so dark had become this darkest hour before the dawn. Then to Harley Greenoak’s ears came a far-away sound, faint but unmistakable. It was the sound of voices, of native voices, singing. From far down on the plains beyond the river it came, and it was drawing nearer and nearer.

The watcher’s nerves thrilled to the sound. The voices were pitched low; purposely so he knew, none better. Knew also that they proceeded from a moving mass of men. Would the dawn never come?

It would, and it did. The world had grown perceptibly lighter. The loom of the hills was now distinct, but the depth of the plain was in darkness. Still the moving sound drew nearer, and now in the tense stillness the listener could even distinguish the tenour of the words. It was a song of war.

None but a large and strongly armed band would have ventured thus to advertise its presence. The inference was clear. The body now marching from the Gcaleka country was the expected incursion. If he had been in any doubt before, Harley Greenoak had now already decided to himself that his information was accurate.

The darkness faded still more, and now upon the fast lightening plain he was able to make out the moving mass. Lighter still! Hundreds of armed savages were advancing to the drift. He could make out detail, and took in the fact that many of them had guns, and now even that indescribable rattle of assegai hafts—curiously unlike any other sound—was borne upward to his ears. But the identity of any in the band he could not arrive at.

The war-song had ceased. They descended to the drift in silence, and without a moment’s hesitation waded into the swirling current, their weapons held high above their heads. This was breast deep, and as they gained the middle of the stream many linked hands in order to steady themselves against its strength. More than once a deep-toned, smothered laugh and a splash told that an odd warrior here and there had slipped and got a ducking. Finally, the last had disappeared. He could not see them land, his own side of the river being shut from view by the tree-tops; but he knew exactly where they would land, and the line they would take for Matanzima’s kraal. Harley Greenoak’s work here was done.

The next phase of it was that of warning. Listening intently, he left his hiding-place. There was no sound of life along the river bank, the invading party had gone in an almost contrary direction. He struck into an old path, which followed the downward course of the river, and for some distance was able to travel with ease and rapidity. Then this ceased, giving way to tumbled and broken rocks, every here and there heavily overgrown with trailers. Above, on one side great rugged krantzes walled him in. Not for many miles further down could he strike the open country again. Greenoak had never been along this river bank before, but his experienced eyes took in the hang of it completely.

Suddenly he stopped dead short, listening intently. In front—and not very far in front—the sound of deep-toned voices. In a moment he had slipped into a cleft between two rocks, and had drawn the trailers over him; and it seemed hardly a moment more when a number of fully armed Kafirs appeared, moving leisurely along the way he had come, but taking the upward course of the bank. But for their utter unguardedness, they would have met him face to face. As it was, they passed so near as almost to brush the trailers which afforded him such precarious concealment. He held his very breath, so near were they.

They were talking at random, and a good deal all at once—and something was said about a roast, and how good it was, and the speakers passed on while others succeeded, talking about nothing in particular. But Harley Greenoak, through the interstices, recognised several of them, among others, Mafutana and Sikonile, whose son he had shot. Then he knew that this hiding-place had received him not a moment too soon.

The last of the Kafirs had gone by, but Greenoak was in no hairy to move. When, finally, he decided that it was time to do so, the sun was already flaming up from beyond the Kei hills, and the birds were breaking into song, twittering and calling from the cool shade of krantzes, or balancing on twig and spray, joyous, perky, in the glow of the new-born day.

Suddenly he halted. No sight, no sound, had thus pulled him up, but—an odour. For there came to his nostrils a strong smell as of cooking, and it came from in front. He remembered how some of the Kafirs had been talking about a “roast.” Of course, he was coming to where they had spent the night, and had feasted—probably upon stolen stock. Well, he would investigate. But—what if there should be others there?

Cautiously he advanced, weapons ready, peering before him, listening, the strange odour stronger with every step, and he found himself hoping they might have left some of their repast, for he could do with a broil himself. And then—

Not altogether unfamiliar with scenes of horrific ghastliness himself, at what he now saw, peering cautiously over a great rock, Harley Greenoak felt his blood run cold and his flesh creep.

Beneath lay a hollow, overhung by the beetling cliff. The place was evidently the resort of a gang of cattle stealers, for the ground was thickly strewn with the skulls and bones of cattle and sheep, but, needless to say, the sight of these was not what had perturbed him.

In the centre of the place, slung to a thick, stout pole whose ends rested on two rocks, was a human figure—what was left of one, that is. It hung horizontally, bound to the pole by wrists and ankles, back downwards, forming a bow, and underneath were the still smouldering ashes of a large fire. The head hung down and the wretched creature was quite dead, but the middle of the body, upon which the fire had played, presented a sight that was indescribably horrible.

This, then, was the “roast” to which those human fiends had made allusion, decided Greenoak; but why should the poor wretch have incurred such devilish vengeance, for the body was that of a native, not that of a white man? Mastering his horror and disgust, Greenoak stepped quickly forward to investigate—and then the mystery stood explained. In the agonised, drawn face of the dead man he recognised that of Mantisa, the Police detective.

Like light the truth was borne in upon his brain. He pieced together everything. The presence of Mafutana and Sikonile with the party supplied the link. They had been lying in wait for himself, and in the darkness had pounced upon Mantisa in mistake for himself, nor could it have been long after the former had gone on with the horse. Yet why should they have brought the poor wretch here to put him to such a ghastly death? An assegai or two would have answered all purposes there on the spot. And then a conviction of the real truth came home to Harley Greenoak. They had tortured their prisoner to force him to reveal his own whereabouts, and Mantisa had been unable or unwilling to do so. A great wave of pity and admiration swept through Greenoak’s heart as he gazed upon the miserable mangled remains.

“Poor, plucky devil!” he said to himself as he turned away, for the nature of the ground precluded any kind of attempt at burial. “Poor, plucky, heroic devil! Well, he’s gone aloft, that’s certain, if any one ever did get there, black or white.”

As he left the place of horror, he wondered what had become of his horse. Had it been captured too? But as against this, he recalled the fact that it was not in the possession of the perpetrators of this atrocity what time they passed his hiding-place. Well, he supposed he must give it up as lost, but coming at this juncture the loss was serious, for he had intended making a quick round in order to warn as many of the settlers as he could reach.

An hour of further travelling and the bush line would draw to an end in favour of more open country above. Just before reaching this, however, a sound reached him. It was the quick whinny of a horse, the shaking of the saddle-flaps, then a neigh. Of course, to one of Greenoak’s rapid powers of deduction this meant a riderless horse. What if it was his—what if it had broken away, while the savages were occupied with their prisoner? A few more minutes and he came in sight of the animal, and—it was his.

But, holding the end of the bridle-rein, was a man, a native—a thick-set, ugly, scrabbly bearded savage, and armed. Greenoak’s gun was up in a moment, covering the fellow.

But somehow or other, it did not seem to produce the effect he had expected. The ugly face split into a white stripe of grin, and a voice said in excellent English—

“Not shoot, Mr Greenoak. I John Voss.”

Well might Greenoak start. This, then, was the fellow who had been stealthily following him. The make-up was perfect. It happened that normally John Voss was a singularly neat and smart-looking native, with an intelligent face and, for a native, a very respectable beard, of which he was not a little proud. The sacrifice of this latter alone, in order to transform himself into an evil-looking, squalid savage, argued a whole-hearted zeal deserving of recognition, and he had certainly succeeded, for himself, to a dangerous degree at that moment.

“Well, John, you’ve had a narrow escape,” said Greenoak. “But that I was afraid the horse would have schreked at the shot and cleared, you’d have been down with a bullet through you at this moment, I believe. Now let’s hear all about it.”

The other told him—how he had followed Mantisa, and witnessed his capture; how in the excitement of that event he had mingled with the Kafirs in the darkness, and had ridden away upon the horse when their attention was more fully occupied, intending to wait for its owner at the point where he judged the latter would reappear. Then Greenoak told him of the crossing from Gcalekaland, and the barbarous vengeance which had been taken upon poor Mantisa. It happened that John Voss had not been into the location at all, so had been powerless to warn either of the ambush laid, for the simple reason that he knew nothing of it.

And as they travelled, these two laid their plans as to how best warn the neighbourhood.

Chapter Thirty One.

Conditional.

“Another ‘whited sepulchre,’ Faugh!” said Hazel, dropping in disgust the two halves of the outwardly magnificent peach she had just broken open, but which within was a mass of squirming maggots.

“Try these,” said Dick Selmes, pulling down a bough of the tree, on which grew several, and holding it for her while she made a selection.

“I thought so,” she went on, rapidly breaking open and throwing away another, and then another. “No, I give it up. This is a bad year for peaches.”

The two were alone together among the fragrant boskiness of the fruit-laden garden. The midsummer day was hot and cloudless, yet just a puff of cool air every now and then, from the not very far distant Indian Ocean, redeemed it from downright sultriness. Birds piped and whistled away up among the leaves, but shy of showing themselves over much. There had been too much havoc wrought among their kind in defence of the fruit to encourage them to court human propinquity.

“How jolly this is!” went on Dick, looking around.

“Are you ever anything but jolly?” she asked.

“Oh yes! I can get the blues, I can tell you. For instance—”

“For instance—when?” she repeated, as he broke off.

“For instance—well, I don’t mind saying it. That time we left Haakdoornfontein I felt anything but jolly.”

“Yet Haakdoorn isn’t a wildly exciting place at the best of times. Ah, I see. You missed the hunting.”

This was exasperating. She was in a bright, mischievous, teasing mood, but oh—how entrancing she looked, the lift of the heavily lashed eyelid, the little flash of white teeth in the bantering smile, the rich mantling of the sun-kissed, oval face.

“I missed you. Hazel, you know that perfectly well. And just think. I had you all to myself in those days, and here not. All these jokers who were here for Christmas—well, I found them a bore, for that reason.”

Christmas had just past, and on and around it several people from far and near had been to spend it with the Waybridges; and of these visitors the bulk had been men—and in proportion had seemed fully to appreciate Hazel’s attractions. Dick Selmes could not but own to himself that he had not enjoyed his Christmas over much, though he would not have let it be known for worlds.

“Hadn’t you enough of me all to yourself at Haakdoorn?” she said softly, but still with that mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

“As if that question requires any answer. Darling, you know I want you all to myself always—all through our lives. You must have seen it. Haven’t you?”

“Perhaps. I won’t tease you any more now. But you must listen to me.” The girl had grown very grave now—very earnest. Her eyes, dilated with varying emotions, were full upon his face, and the predominant emotion, was unqualified approval. “First of all, what would your father have to say?”

“The dad? Why, he’d be delighted, of course.”

“Yes, but would he? I’m not so sure. He has never heard of my existence, and would think you had been entrapped by some nobody in the course of your travels—” Here a slight wave of colour had come over her face. “Now, I won’t have that thought of me, or said by any one.”

“But, Hazel darling,” he pleaded eagerly, “I think you are setting up a kind of—er—bogey. The old dad is the dearest old chap in the world, and a jolly sight too good to me, and for me.”

She looked at him and softened. She liked him more—more than ever—for what he had just said. Perhaps she showed it.

“I can quite believe that,” she answered. “Still, it doesn’t alter what I say.”

His face fell. So blank was it that for a moment he felt positively miserable.

“But, Hazel dearest, don’t you care for me a little bit?”

Her heart went out to him.

“Dick, you know I am very fond of you,” she answered, adding to herself, “as who could help being?”—“No—no, not yet,” putting out a hand as he made a step forward.

“But—now we are engaged,” he protested rapturously.

“We are not,” she answered, and his face fell again. “And the only condition on which we will be is the one I told you. Get your father’s consent.”

“It strikes me, Hazel, that you are forgetting I am not exactly under age. I am quite independent into the bargain.”

“All the more reason why I should refuse to be the means of bringing dissension between you. Why, it would be murderous—absolutely murderous, after what you have told me. I am not forgetting either that you have a certain position.”

“Oh, hang the ‘position’!” cried Dick. “But you are very cool and—er—judicial over it all, Hazel. If you cared as much as I do.”

“Perhaps, dear, I am speaking and acting in your own interests,” answered the girl, softly. “I am setting you a test. It might be that when you get back home again something might transpire which would make you devoutly thankful to me for having refused to allow you to engage yourself to some little nobody whom you had found amusing in the course of your wanderings.”

“Hazel! Now you hurt me.”

He looked it. There was no doubt about it that his feelings were deeply wounded, but there was a dignity about the way in which he took it that appealed to her so powerfully as well-nigh to bring about her surrender there and then.

“I didn’t mean to, God knows,” she answered earnestly and more softly still. “But I am looking at things from a sheer common-sense standpoint. You are very brave and strong, Dick, but in one way, I believe I am stronger than you. I am only putting before you a little trial of strength, of endurance. Surely you won’t shrink from that?”

“Let us understand each other, Hazel,” he said gravely, all his boyish light-heartedness gone. “You won’t engage yourself to me until I get my father’s consent?”

“That’s it.”

“But you will, conditionally, on my getting it?”

She thought a minute.

“I will wait until you do get it, or it is refused. But, Dick, understand that this doesn’t bind you in the slightest degree.”

“Oh, but it does bind me. Whoever heard of a one-sided engagement?” some of his light-heartedness returning. “I’ll write to the dear old dad on the very first opportunity.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to go yourself than to write?”

“And leave you all that time? No—no, Hazel. I’m not going to give you that chance of forgetting me.”

“Or yourself?” with a significant smile.

“Now you are repeating the offence, and I shan’t forgive you unless you give me just one k— Oh, damn!”

The change of tone, the change of attitude were in keeping, and Dick found himself in a sort of “standing at attention” rigidity, as small Jacky Waybridge came lounging down the garden path, a catapult in his hand. We fear that Dick came near wishing he had left that unwelcome urchin to the sharks on a former occasion, but that in such case he himself would not now be here—with Hazel.

“Been shooting any birds, Jacky?” said Dick. “Look. Just over there I saw a rare clump of mouse-birds light just now; over there, just this side of the mealie land.”

The spot indicated would take the small intruder fairly out of sight.

“No good, catapult’s broken.”

“Why don’t you go to the house and get another?”

“They’re all broken. Mr Selmes, couldn’t you mend it for me?”

“I’ll try. Let’s see. Ah, got a bit of reimpje about you?”

The youngster felt in his pockets.

“No, I haven’t,” he said.

“Well, you’d better cut away to the house and get one,” said Dick.

There is a modicum of cussedness, sometimes vague, sometimes more pronounced, inherent in most children.

This one had his share of it. He was fond of Hazel, and attached to his rescuer, yet there was something about the two which had aroused his infantile curiosity. When he saw them alone together—which he did pretty frequently—a sort of instinct to watch them would come uppermost in his unformed mind, and this was upon him now. So he said—

“Never mind about the catapult, Mr Selmes. I’m tired. I’ll sit and talk to you and Hazel.”

“Well, what shall we talk about, Jacky?” said Dick, making a virtue of necessity.

“Oh, let’s go on talking about—what you were talking about while I came.”

This was funny. The two looked at each other.

“But that wouldn’t interest you in the least, Jacky,” answered the girl. “In fact, you wouldn’t understand it.”

The sharp eyes of the youngster were full upon her face, and did not fail to notice that she changed colour slightly. When he himself had done something which he ought not to have done, and was taxed with it, he would change colour too; wherefore now he drew his own deductions. What could Hazel have been doing that came within that category?

“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t tell. No, I won’t.”

“Won’t tell?” repeated Hazel. “Won’t tell what, Jacky?”

“I won’t tell,” was all they could get out of him. Dick Selmes burst out laughing.

“Before you can ‘tell’ anything, kid, you must first of all have something to tell,” he said. “You’ve been talking a lot of bosh. Now, I think we’d better go in, for it must be getting on for dinner-time.” The two got up, and as they strolled along beneath the high quince hedge, hanging out round fruit, like the balls upon a Christmas tree, both hoped for an opportunity of at any rate satisfactorily closing their conversation. But it was not to be. That little wretch stuck to them like their shadow, nor did either want to inflame his curiosity by telling him positively to clear.

“Then it is to be conditional,” Dick said, just before they reached the door.

“That’s the word.”

“On the terms named?”

“Exactly on the terms named.”