Bertram Mitford (continued 4)

Somehow her predominating instinct was not fear but interest. She had never seen natives in their war-trappings before, and now she looked upon the shields and assegais and cow-hair adornments with vivid interest as something novel and picturesque. The fire of the police had checked them, or rather caused them to swerve, but they continued to run through the bush parallel with the waggon, though giving it a wide berth. But, as the police cantered forward so as to protect the waggon, they closed in nearer.

“What’s the row?” testily cried Fullerton, whom the sound of the volley had started wide awake.

“We can keep them back for the present, sir,” said the sergeant, riding alongside. “Luckily they don’t seem to have any guns. But there’s no harm in pushing on to the Kezane as quick as possible.”

This Wyndham had already begun to do. But the ground was rough and bad, and the mules were anything but fresh. The fleet-footed natives could easily keep pace with them, if not outstrip them. These could be seen from time to time, flitting through the bushes, their obvious intent being to get ahead if possible and rush the whole outfit at some point in the road where the conditions would be more favourable to themselves.

Lucy Fullerton had uttered a little cry of alarm and then went deadly pale. Her sister, on the other hand, was absolutely cool, and watched every movement of the foe with a deepening interest. Wyndham, his face now stern and set, was giving all his attention to his driving. Fullerton was cursing his own idiocy at having left his revolver behind.

“It was foolish of you, Dick,” said Clare tranquilly. “But—I brought it for you.”

“You? You brought it?”

“Yes,” and diving down among some bundles under the seat, as calmly as though she were looking for a mere pocket-handkerchief, she pulled up a small travelling-bag, producing thence two revolvers and two boxes of cartridges.

“Clare, you’re a jewel of a girl,” pronounced the astonished Fullerton, as he took the weapon she handed him. “But what’s the other? Wyndham’s?”

“No. It’s mine,” calmly loading it.

“Yours? That’s no lady’s toy anyhow. Why where on earth did you get it?”

“Mr Lamont gave it me—when he came to see us to say good-bye.”

“Lamont gave it you! Good Lord! But—why?”

“He knew there was going to be a rising, and said it might come in useful.”

“He knew— Well, I think he might have given some of us the benefit of his knowledge.”

“He did. He gave it to some, who hardly believed him, and to me—who did. I passed on the benefit of it to you, but you wouldn’t profit by it until too late. So here we are.”

“Do you mean to tell me, Clare, that the real reason you wanted me to take you into Buluwayo was because Lamont told you there was going to be a rising?”

Clare nodded.

“That’s right, Dick. If I had told you the real reason you’d only have pronounced it one of ‘Lamont’s scares’—just as the others did—and refused to move. As it is you’ve put off the said move too long.”

“Good Lord! You take my breath away!”

“I’ll take it away still more directly,” she said tranquilly. “What do you think of Mr Lamont having saved the whole of Gandela from being massacred on the day of the race meeting?”

“Oh come, now, that’s a little too fat!” answered Fullerton, yet not so incredulously as he would have answered, say that morning.

“Well, he did.” And then she told the whole story.

“I’m hanged if it doesn’t sound probable,” said Wyndham. “Heavens! if only they’d rushed us that day. Oh, it won’t bear thinking about.”

“Sounds probable,” repeated Clare. “It’s more than probable—it’s true. I fell in with Mr Lamont up on Ehlatini the next morning, and he showed me all the tracks made by the impi. I picked up a couple of cow-tail armlets—or leglets—which they’d dropped, just like the ones these are wearing.”

“By Jove!”

There was silence after that Wyndham was anxious to get his team through a narrowing sort of point ahead, where the ground rose abruptly to an overhanging portal on either side, and where rocks and stones, shadowed by wild fig-trees, would afford dangerous cover to the enemy were he to arrive there first, even though apparently without firearms. Under the double incentive of whip and voice the mules seemed to have forgotten their fatigue and were pulling out manfully. But to her brother-in-law’s suggestion, that she should give up the front seat to him and come in at the back, Clare returned a flat refusal.

“I want to see this,” she said, “and see it well. You can put up the side sail and see it from there.”

“But that’ll expose Lucy,” he fumed.

“No, it won’t. You’ll be in front of her. And they haven’t got guns.”

There was no help for it. Wyndham pleaded, but to him too she returned a deaf ear. She sat there—calm, cool, collected, fingering her weapon, and a determined and dangerous look of battle in her eyes.

But pull the mules never so heartily the fleet-footed savages kept the pace, and kept it well. Half the police would gallop forward to check their advance with a volley, but as soon as ever they reined in their horses—lo, there was nobody in sight to fire a volley at. And then it became evident that the foe had divided, and that these human wolves were hunting their prey on both sides of the road.

“I—ji—jji! Ijji—jji! Ha! Ha!”

The vibrating, humming hiss—it must be remembered that the vowel is sounded as in every other language under the sun but the English—the deep-chested, ferocious gasp, split the air as the panting mules galloped furiously between the overhanging rocks and trees—which were now alive with swarming savages. Wyndham, cool and brave, kept all his attention centred on his team, for did that fail him—why then, good-night! Clare, with set lips, covered a huge savage who had sprung up hardly ten yards distant to launch an assegai, and pressed the trigger. The brown, bedizened body sprang heavily forward, throwing shield and weapons different ways, and sank, but the pallor of her face at the sight only served to heighten the brightness of her eyes. Fullerton, leaning out, pumped a couple of shots in a lucky moment into where three or four assailants rose together, likewise with fortunate result. Then an assegai whizzed through the upper part of the waggon tilt, while another struck one of the mules in the hinder quarters, and started the poor brute kicking and squealing in such wise as nearly to stampede the whole team and get it completely out of hand. Added to which some of the police horses were prancing and shying, and rendering it all that their riders could do to stick on, let alone use their weapons. Quick to perceive their advantage, the Matabele warriors swarmed down the rocks, or leapt upward from among the bushes, redoubling the volume of their vibrating, ferocious war-hiss—dancing, leaping, clashing their axes and shields together; in short, raising a most demoniacal and indescribable din.

Fullerton, watching his side of the vehicle, was cool enough and had his full share of pluck, but he was a lamentable revolver shot, and, after three bad misses, the assailants became alive to the fact, and began to run in closer with more confidence.

“Damn this thing!” he yelled, in his excitement and mortification. “It has a pull off you’d require a steam crane to move. Clare, give me yours.”

“No,” she answered shortly. And at the same moment two warriors sprang up behind a rock and quick as lightning hurled their casting assegais—not at their human enemies, but at the mule team. Struck in the shoulder, one poor mule stumbled and plunged wildly, and only the fact that Wyndham was a first-rate whip performed the miracle that prevented it from falling entirely. Then taking advantage of the confusion, several warriors, their shields covering them, the broad stabbing spear uplifted, charged forward to stab the leaders, and thus have the whole outfit at their mercy. But they reckoned without Clare Vidal.

Small wonder that they did. Small wonder that these unsparing savage warriors, trained all their lives in battle and bloodshed and deeds of pitiless ferocity, should have overlooked the fact that in this beautiful and winsome girl there lurked a reserve of splendid Irish courage and readiness and heroism. Cool, steady-handed as a rock, she poured in succession three of her remaining four shots into the leaders of the rush, and as those behind their falling bodies halted—checked, dismayed—no less coolly and steady-handed did she reload the chambers of her pistol. And she had saved the situation—so for.

Wyndham glanced up, and dismay was in his heart. He had hoped to find easier country beyond this point, but the road continued rough, and, moreover, for some distance on, the broken, rocky, bush-grown slopes continued, so that their pitiless foes were able to keep above them and under cover. Poor Lucy Fullerton, made of far softer stuff than her younger sister, was cowering in her corner, white as death and almost fainting, and now the savages began to laugh and shout exultantly to each other. The ground seemed to grow them. From every bush and rock they sprang forth by the score. It was for them a mere waiting game. Already the police had been cut off from the waggon, and were fighting like lions in the thick of their swarming foes; none braver than their sergeant, whose voice was everywhere, directing, encouraging—whose pistol had sent more than one of the ferocious assailants to their long home. Three of these brave fellows had already been overcome; knocked from their horses by hurled clubs, gasping out their lives, through a score of assegai stabs, on the reeking road. And now the mules, utterly blown, and only saved hitherto by Clare Vidal’s magnificent courage, dropped into a sullen and tired walk, out of which no effort, either of whip or voice, on the part of their driver could lift them. And at the sight, louder and more ferocious swelled the hideous Matabele death-hiss. The prey was theirs at last.

Chapter Twenty One.

The Relief Levy.

Not until noon of the day after their ghastly discovery did Lamont and his fellow refugees reach Gandela.

It was only at night they could travel with any degree of safety. The appearance of some armed Matabele had driven them into hiding almost within sight of poor Tewson’s homestead, and for long the fall bitterness of death was on those three. For it was difficult to believe that the savages had not seen them and had gone to collect reinforcements, that they might hunt down the fugitives at their leisure. To make matters worse, their place of concealment was a deep donga leading to the river-bed, and overhung by a thicket of haak-doorn, so that, in the event of discovery, the enemy being right above would be able to destroy them with a minimum of risk to himself. An ignominious end, like rats in a hole, not even the consolation of being able to fight to the last and sell their lives dearly. Yet it had been a case of ‘needs must,’ for there was no other hiding-place available.

The heat, too, was stifling, and their quarters horribly cramped. Their food supply had nearly run out, and, worse still, their drink. All day they had heard natives moving around them, and the barking of dogs. All day had kept continuously recurring the certainty that they were being hunted, that discovery was but a matter of minutes; and when at length night came—blessed night with its coolness and sheltering darkness—why then these three had gone through a day they were not likely to forget for the remainder of their lives.

But with morning light their peril returned, and they were reminded of this when shortly after daybreak they sighted an impi on the march. They had barely time to flatten themselves among the clefts and boulders of a stony kopje when this force appeared in sight, and as it passed right beneath their hiding-place they were able roughly to count its strength. The warriors were marching in open order, to the number of about two hundred, and the watchers could make out that though bristling with assegais and axes, none of them appeared to carry firearms.

Here again prudence had counselled that they should lie low, and starting after dark reach Gandela the middle of that night; but by this time a strange impatience had taken hold of them, engendering recklessness. Even Ancram—starving, footsore, and utterly out of training for this sort of thing—shared in the feeling, and accordingly they resolved to chance it. This time fortune favoured them, and, having encountered no further adventures, three weary, haggard, and hungry men entered Gandela and went straight to Foster’s hotel.

Though in actual point of fact the distance accomplished was nothing wonderful to a brace of hardened pioneers like Peters and Lamont, yet the constant and recurring strain, combined with the hideous and pitiful sight they had witnessed, had told even upon them. As for Ancram, he was in a state of utter collapse.

“Now, Foster, turn us on some skoff right away,” said Lamont; “and we don’t want to wait for it, either, at least not any longer than it takes to have a tub. Meanwhile, a bottle of your Perrier-Jouet. Here you are, Ancram,” when this had been opened. “Dip your beak into this. It’ll buck you up, and, by the Lord, you want it!”

“Any news of the scare—anything fresh, that is?” asked the hotel-keeper, eyeing them curiously. These men had been through no ordinary experience, he could see that, but as yet they had told nothing.

“Well, rather. I’ll tell you presently. Have you a boy handy, Foster? I want to send a note quick to Orwell.”

On a half-sheet of notepaper he wrote hurriedly—laconically—

“Farm attacked by Matabele, and blown up. Peters, Ancram, and self escaped—have just come in. Went to warn Tewson, found whole family massacred. Saw impi this morning, heading as though towards Kezane Store. Warn Isard, and take precautions.

“Lamont.”

This he folded and addressed to the Resident Magistrate, and the boy was started off at once.

“I’ve a bit of good news for you, Mr Lamont,” said Foster, as the latter returned—tubbed, and to that extent refreshed—to begin upon the much needed food. “That rooi-schimmel horse you left with Greene the day you were in for the race meeting—well, he’s all right again now. Greene brought him in couple of days back, and there isn’t an atom of lameness about him.”

“That’s good news indeed, for it strikes me there’s plenty of work sticking out for him.”

They had just finished breakfast, and were enjoying the luxury of an excellent cigar when Orwell arrived. He was in a great state of excitement, and glanced meaningly in the direction of Foster, but this the hotel-keeper pretended not to see. He was all on thorns to hear the news himself, for that news there was—great and grave—he felt sure.

“Is this a fact, Lamont?” began Orwell, producing the slip of paper. “Good Lord, man, but the whole country must be in a blaze!”

“So it must. By the way, Orwell, of course you’ve got that laager all fixed up by this time.”

“Er, well—no—the fact is we have been planning it out, and—er—”

“You haven’t got it up yet? Well, if you’ll take my advice you’ll set about it at once. It isn’t a case of ‘another of Lamont’s scares’ this time,” he added, with somewhat excusable bitterness. “By the way, Foster, you might bring us another bottle of the same. Oh, and you’ll join us again.”

“Thanks. But, Mr Lamont, for God’s sake, say what has happened. We are a trifle interested too, as well as our officials, and I, for one, have got a wife and family into the bargain.”

The hotel-keeper was a very good fellow, and he and Lamont liked each other. Said the latter—

“Quite right, Foster. Fetch the liquid first and then you shall hear all about it. It’s time everyone knew, but I don’t want to create a panic. One of ‘Lamont’s scares.’”

Orwell looked rather foolish.

“Oh, don’t keep harping on that, old chap,” he said. “We are all liable to make mistakes, and I, for one, am the first to own it. And now the first thing to do is to organise a defence committee, and set to work with a will.”

Then, as the hotel-keeper returned, Lamont started to narrate all that had befallen, the attack on Peters, then on the homestead, and how they had stood off the savages until night.

“They must have found dynamite while looting,” he said, “for soon after we’d left we heard the devil of an explosion.”

He continued his narrative shortly and succinctly. When he got to the massacre of the Tewsons, his listeners grew white with horror.

“Yes. We saw what we don’t want to see again, and would like to forget we ever had seen. And now we’d better get hold of the best men here, Orwell, and fix up a plan. Jennings and Fullerton, and some of the others.”

“Fullerton’s not here,” said Orwell. “He started for Buluwayo only this morning with his wife and sister. Wyndham’s driving them—”

“WHAT?”

It was Lamont who had spoken—shouted, rather. And in truth the interruption was startling. He who made it was leaning forward over the table, his dark face without a vestige of colour, his eyes staring as though already they beheld a reproduction of the grim horror upon which they had so recently gazed, only, in this case—

“Yes. But they had an escort,” explained Orwell wonderingly. “Isard sent some police with them.”

“Some police! How many?” in a dry staccato tone.

“Oh, a dozen, he told me. Some of his best men—”

“Come on, Peters,” shouted Lamont, springing to his feet and not waiting to hear any more. “We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we’ll get at it at once. An escort—a dozen police—and the whole country up in a blaze! Foster, let me have the best horse you’ve got in your stables for Peters—you shall name your own price. Now then, who’ll volunteer?” going out into the bar, where several men had already collected. It had got about somehow that something was in the wind, and more and more were rolling up at Foster’s to see what they could find out. “Who’ll volunteer? Fullerton’s been idiot enough to start his womenkind off for Buluwayo this morning. They’ll be at the Kezane Store by the time we catch them up, and we saw with our own eyes an impi, a couple of hundred strong, heading straight for that very point this morning. The whole country’s in a blaze. My farm’s been blown up, and Tewson and his family are all murdered.”

“That’s quite true,” said Peters.

“Well, Peters and I, and as many of you as will volunteer, are going to start off down the road now at once to the rescue of Fullerton’s outfit—if no one’ll join, the two of us will go alone. You see we’ve just seen white women and children who’d been cut up into pieces. Fullerton has women with him. Who’ll volunteer?”

Several men stepped forward without hesitation. Others would have, but one had no horse, another no rifle, and so forth. All these objections were met by Lamont without a moment’s hesitation.

“Get them then,” he said, “and that at once. I’ll be responsible for those who are too out of luck to get them for themselves. Get them, and roll up here as soon as ever you can. Not a minute to lose.”

To describe the state of excitement that prevailed is rather beyond our strength. Most of the men were wiry, hard-bitten prospectors, some of them, as the speaker had put it, ‘out of luck,’ a euphemism for out of funds, others were doing a spell of taking it easy, but all were enthusiastic to join. But all stared at Lamont with wonder. He whom they had never known other than the soul of coolness, and reticence, and caution, was now on fire. His eyes seemed to blaze from his colourless face, his voice trembled with its earnestness as he drove home his appeal to them by drawing a picture of these two helpless women, refined and daintily raised, at the mercy of—in the power of—these black fiends; of whose ‘mercy’ in such cases, he and those with him had, with their own eyes, just beheld a sample.

“I say, Lamont,” began Orwell, most of the men having gone away to effect their preparations, “don’t you think you’re rather over-estimating the risk. You know you’re tired and excited, and all that.”

“No, I don’t. I know what I’m about, and I know what I’ve seen. I tell you, Orwell, if you’d listened to me a fortnight ago instead of loftily pooh-poohing everything I told you, it might have made a lot of difference.”

“What’s all this scare-mongering about,” began another man who had just entered. “Here they are telling me, Lamont, that you’re organising an expedition to go to the relief of the Fullertons. Why, man, they’ve got a dozen of our police with them.”

The speaker was Isard’s subaltern. Isard himself was out on a patrol just then.

“All serene, Blackmore. If they had a hundred of your police they might not have one too many. At any rate I’ve served against the wily Matabele. I don’t know whether you have.”

“Er—perhaps not. Still you can’t want so many men. We’ve none too many left for the defence of the town.”

“Oh, damn the defence of the town! These two helpless women are in the heart of the country. They ought never to have been allowed to move from here. Fullerton’s a bigger fool than even I took him for.”

“How about Ancram?” struck in Peters, anxious to avert a breeze. “Shall we take him?”

Ancram the while had dropped on a couch the moment he had done breakfast, and had gone fast asleep, thoroughly worn out with exhaustion. He was there still.

“No. He’s no use. Leave him to help in ‘the defence of the town,’” sneered Lamont. “Hallo, Jim Steele. We haven’t had that scrap yet, but it’ll keep a little longer. I want you now to come and help fight someone else. The whole country’s in a blaze! Fullerton’s outfit’s along the Buluwayo road, and Peters and I saw a big impi making straight in that direction this morning.”

“I’ll go, Lamont,” said the big fellow, who had just come in to see what all the row was about. “Oh, this is nuts! We’ll make those black swine spit. How many cartridges shall I take?”

“Just as many as ever you can carry. The same applies to all hands.”

There was a trampling of horses outside. Already the men were beginning to roll up, and soon Lamont found himself at the head of some two dozen, well-armed and fairly well mounted, all alert and willing, and chock-full of eagerness for a fight.

Chapter Twenty Two.

A Grim Running Fight.

Once clear of Gandela, Lamont had subsided into moody silence. Only the eager glow in his eyes, as he sent his horse along at a brisk pace at the head of his troop, told how his thoughts were working. At present they held but two considerations—a vivid picture of the horror he had witnessed and the torturing fear lest he should be too late to prevent a repetition of it. No, that contingency would not bear contemplation, and all unconsciously he urged his horse on to greater speed, till at last something of a murmur arose from one or two of his followers.

“We shall bust our horses if we stretch them out like this at the start.”

He looked round.

“Oh no, we shan’t. And every moment may make all the difference.”

What was it that rendered his every thought a keen torture? Had it been a case of rescuing from horrible danger any other two women in the township, would he have been so eager? Yes, he would. He could safely say that. But he would not have suffered from this overweighting, distracting apprehension begotten of the knowledge that one of these two was Clare Vidal.

But if his chief for the time being was silent, the same could not be said of Peters. For Peters was giving a graphic account of all that had befallen, and especially was he graphic on the barbarous massacre of the Tewson family. His object was to inflame the minds of these men, to work them up to a very fever-heat of desire for revenge; thus would each man feel endowed with the strength and bravery of six, and they would need it too, for after all their force was a puny one—yes, a very puny one, considering the overwhelming odds they would almost certainly have to encounter.

They made Langrishe’s Store in fine time, but—where was Langrishe? No answer was returned to their loud, impatient hail. He could not be away, for the door was half open. Some opined that he was probably drunk, but to two there, at any rate, that silence bore an ominous similarity to that which had signalled their approach to another homestead only yesterday morning. The solution was somewhat startling. From the partly open door half a dozen armed savages shot forth, and darted for the nearest bush with inconceivable swiftness.

But not one of them was destined to reach it. A perfect howl of rage went up from the spectators, and waiting for no word of command a dozen horsemen were on the heels of the fugitives, who were shot down to a man. It was all over in a moment.

“Loosen girths everyone and water the horses while we investigate,” ordered Lamont. “No time to off-saddle.”

It was even as they had dreaded. Lying behind the counter of his store was the body of poor Langrishe, the skull battered in, the clothing riddled with assegai cuts, but the body was still quite warm. Bales and cases, and goods of every description, were piled and heaped about in the last degree of confusion. The murderers had obviously been too busy looting to hear the approach of the party and so secure their own safety in time. The wrath of the latter found vent in bitter curses, and blood-curdling promises of vengeance upon the whole Matabele race.

But the ride had been a forced and a hot one, eke a dusty one and a dry. One of the men came forward.

“Captain,” he said, with a glance at the bar shelves, “some of us are thinking that while the horses are resting a tot all round wouldn’t hurt us any. Might buck us up a bit, and it’s mortal dry.”

“Yes; that’s right,” said Lamont. “But—only one, mind. We mustn’t overdo it, for we shall have all our work cut out for us.”

The said tot having been served out to all hands, and the party having requisitioned some of poor Langrishe’s biscuit in case of accidents—for they had set forth none too well provisioned—the body of the unfortunate storekeeper was left locked up within his own house. Girths were tightened, and the road was resumed.

The fresh spoor of the mule-waggon and the police horses was plain enough in the dry, powdery road, but the rapidity of their pace underwent no diminution. But, like those they followed, they were disgusted to find Skrine’s Store shut up and deserted. Equally, with those they followed, they did not discover the remains of the luckless Skrine and his unknown companions, lying murdered in the bush.

Again girths were loosened for a bare five minutes, and again they cantered forward. And now hopes began to rise. They had covered about half the stage to the Kezane Store. It was late in the afternoon, and Fullerton’s party would be sure to sleep there. They might have to stand a siege there, but that was safety itself compared with being attacked in the open. Then, just as this hope had become almost a certainty, there occurred that which brought a quick exclamation to every mouth. Right ahead on the smooth still air, distant and muffled came the dull rattle of a volley.

“Great Jupiter! they’re attacked,” cried Lamont, putting his horse to a gallop. “Come on, Peters. Come on everybody. For God’s sake, put your best foot forward!”

No need was there for this exhortation. Tingling with excitement every man was sending his steed along for all he knew how—those who were the most indifferently mounted slashing and spurring and cursing. And if any additional stimulant were needed the sound of further firing in front went far to supply it.

“It won’t be far beyond here,” yelled Peters, as they tore through the entrance to the bushy valley, where the fight at close quarters had first commenced. And, even as he spoke, more shots rang out, this time very near indeed, and with them mingled the roars and hisses of the attacking Matabele. Only a bend in the road hid from them the scene of action.

“Come on, boys!” shouted Lamont, half turning in his saddle. “You’ll know what to do when you see what’s going on.”

A minute later, and they did see, and what they saw was this. The waggon was at a standstill. The two leading mules were down—one motionless, the other struggling and kicking frantically. Of the police escort half had been killed, and the remnant, now dismounted, were standing, back to the waggon on either side, with revolver pointed, facing a swarm of dark leaping figures, closing in more and more, uttering their vibrating war-hiss, yet still not quite liking to face those deadly revolvers.

“Charge!” shouted Lamont. “Divide. Half of us each side.”

With a wild, roaring cheer the men spurred forward. The assailants did not wait. Uttering loud cries of warning and dismay they fled helter-skelter for more secure cover, and not all reached it, for the irresistible impetus of their charge had carried the rescuers right in among the discomfited Matabele, whom they shot down right and left, well-nigh at point-blank.

“Quick, some of you cut loose those mules,” ordered Lamont. “Steele, you’re a good man at that sort of thing. Three, all told, will be enough.”

In a trice the two wounded leaders were cut loose, the one still kicking being given its quietus. Wyndham, the while, kept to his business as driver with an unswerving attention that no temptation to bear a hand in the fight caused him to lose sight of for a moment, and in an incredibly short space of time the reduced team was on the move again.

Lamont’s glance took in Clare Vidal’s pale, set face with a glow of indescribable relief. She was uninjured, and he noted further that she gripped the revolver he had given her as though she had been using it. She, for her part, was fully appraising this man, whom last she had seen cool, indifferent, rather cynical. Now—grimy, unshaven, fierce-eyed—he was all fire and energy, and she noted further that he seemed in every way as one born to command. The alacrity with which the others sprang to execute his orders did not escape her either—even Jim Steele, whose ambition the other day had been to punch his head.

“Get your mules along as quick as you can, Wyndham,” he said. “We must be a good hour from the Kezane, and when these devils discover we are not the advance guard of a bigger force they’ll make it lively for us again.”

One more quick look, and that was all, then his attention was turned solely and entirely to the matter in hand. Clare Vidal read that look, and was perchance satisfied; anyhow she regarded him—grimy, unshaven, fierce-eyed—with an admiration she had never felt for any living man. The ‘coward’! she said to herself—the man whom her brother-in-law and others had described as a funkstick.

“See here, Lamont,” now sung out Fullerton. “I’m going to get on one of those police horses and help in this racket. I’m dead sick of sitting here.”

For two of the horses of the fallen troopers had been brought on and were being led by the survivors.

“All right. There’ll be no harm in that. Miss Vidal, you’d better get into the back of the waggon and let down the sail. We haven’t done with the enemy yet—and you won’t be such a conspicuous mark when he comes on again.”

For a moment Clare was about to object. But she said—

“Do you really wish me to?”

“Certainly I do.”

Then she complied without another word.

“Cheer up, Lucy, we are safe now,” she said to her sister. “Mr Lamont has come up just in the nick of time.”

“The nick of time indeed,” was the shuddering answer. “If he hadn’t we should have been dead by now.” And she shivered again.

“A miss is as good as a mile, Mrs Fullerton,” said Wyndham cheerily. “That was a near thing, but our time hasn’t come yet. Gee-yup!”

He had managed to knock a sort of jaded amble out of the dispirited mules. The relieving force, divided into two, was advancing through the bush and long grass on either side of the waggon—in open skirmishing order: Peters, by tacit consent, being in virtual command of one. Every man was keenly on the alert, and the faintest movement in the grass or bush would bring rifle or pistol to the ready.

“Lamont,” said Fullerton gravely, as they thus moved forward, “I don’t want to go through such another experience. That’s the very closest thing I’ve ever been in or ever expect to be. It’d have been bad enough, but the consciousness that the wife and Clare were in for it too—eugh! it was awful! And you got us out.”

Lamont frowned.

“You’ll excuse my saying so, Fullerton, but how you could be such a bedevilled idiot as to start across country at this time of day, with two helpless women and a handful of police, bangs me I own.”

“Helpless women!” echoed Fullerton. “Not much of the ‘helpless’ woman about Clare, I can tell you. Why, she accounted for more niggers than I did, with that pistol you gave her. But why didn’t you warn us if you were in the know?”

“I did, and nobody more than half believed me—some not even that.”

“I know now what you did on the day of the race meeting, Lamont,” said Fullerton gravely. “I consider we all owe our lives to you, and I, for one, want to apologise sincerely for having misunderstood you—”

But his words were cut short. Lamont had risen in his stirrups and, swift as thought, discharged his revolver. Fullerton had a quick glancing vision of the head and shoulders of a savage twenty yards distant above the tall grass, and of the flinging aloft of black hands, and the upturned roll of white eyeballs, as, struck full and fair in the chest, the warrior fell backward with a crash. At the same time the hum of missiles overhead, and the report of firearms—but—not those of the force.

“This is a fresh crowd,” he cried. “Those who tackled us first hadn’t a gun among them.”

Then, from among the grass and bushes, dark forms arose, and the spurt of smoke and the ‘whigge’ of great clumsy missiles accompanied the appearance of each. But there were cool heads and fine shots among those white men, and the dusky barbarian found in a surprisingly short space of time that even momentary exposure meant almost certain death. Moreover, from the hurry and flurry of it, all untrained to quick shooting as he was, he could take no aim, and sent his bullet humming away harmlessly to high heaven. Fortunately, too, the outfit had got beyond the valley, and here in the open ground there was no elevated point of vantage whence it could be raked.

Yet the situation was becoming serious. Heartened by their reinforcement, and the moral effect of knowing that they, too, were returning the fire of the Amakiwa, though as yet harmlessly, the original attacking force was pressing forward under cover of the firing and confusion, swarming up stealthily in the bush and long grass, preparing for a final and decisive rush. But somehow that rush never quite came off. The fire of those cool, experienced whites was too determined, too hot, too deadly. Moving with judgment and rapidity, the mounted men would dart right up to any massing of the dark crowd, and pouring their fire literally into their faces would break up any attempt at an organised charge. But they did not come off unscathed. Three were wounded at close quarters, two had their horses stabbed right under them, but with unfailing cool-headedness and magnificent valour these were kept from falling into the hands of the savages.

For half an hour this continued, and indeed it seemed as though some supernatural power was aiding that mere handful of men against swarming odds, as with brain dizzy and the whole world seeming to grow glistening leaping bodies and gleaming blades and great waving shields, the air to buzz with the vibrating war-hiss—that handful fought its way step by step.

The red sun had just touched the far skyline when the assailants slackened, then drew off, and there—not half a mile distant—rose the substantial stockade of the Kezane Store. A ringing cheer went up, and even the played-out mules snuffed the air and pricked up their ears, and pulled forward with a will.

The long, hard, running fight—valiantly fought—was over, and there in front lay rest and safety—for a time.

Chapter Twenty Three.

The Kezane Store.

The Kezane Store—shop, inn, farm, posting-stables rolled into one—was almost a small fort, in that its buildings were enclosed within a stout stockade of mopani poles. This is exactly as its owner intended it should be; and now the said owner—an elderly German who had served in the Franco-Prussian war—came forth, together with three other white men, to welcome the party.

“Ach! dot was very exciting,” he said. “We was hearing the fight—for the last hour—coming nearer and nearer. We was not able to help outside, only four of us, but we was ready to shoot from here if the Matabele had come near enough.”

The excitement of the men was now fairly let loose, and everybody seemed to be talking at once; fighting the battle over again in bulk, or recounting individual experiences. The surviving half of the handful of police were more subdued—the recollection of five dead comrades left behind on the road having something to do with it.

“Good old Grunberger,” sang out Jim Steele. “You ought to have been with us, a jolly old soldier like you. You’d have been a tiger.”

“Ach! I do not know,” replied the old German quite flattered. “Now, chentlemen, you will all come and haf some drinks wit me. Wit me, you understand.”

“Good for you, Grunberger,” said Peters. “But we can’t leave everything entirely without a guard. Why, they might come on again at any moment. Who’ll volunteer for first guard?”

There was perforce no actual discipline among this scratch corps, and the speaker, or even Lamont himself, had no power to enforce obedience to any single order they might issue. But these men had gone through a splendid experience together. Quite half of them had never before seen a life taken, or a shot fired in anger, in their lives; yet when put to it they had made a gallant running fight, against tremendous odds, with judgment and pluck such as no similar number of trained soldiers could have excelled them in. They had succeeded in their object, and had succeeded brilliantly, and the glow of satisfaction which this inspired was heightened by the absolute certainty that had they overtaken the mule-waggon ten minutes later their arrival would have been too late. All this had implanted in them an instinctive soldierly spirit, and not a man there would have dreamed of questioning an order issued by Lamont, or even Peters. Yet the latter now invited some of them to ‘volunteer.’ The whole corps responded.

“Half a dozen ’ll do,” was the answer, and those who seemed the most willing were duly told off. The while the ladies were being looked after by the storekeeper’s wife.

Lamont was helping to look after the wounded. Fortunately, among the three men who found themselves at Kezane when they arrived was a young doctor from Buluwayo; and his services being readily and skilfully given, there was no cause whatever for anxiety on the part of these less lucky ones.

“Where’s the captain?” sang out Jim Steele, as the residue of the corps were doing full and jovial justice to the hospitable German’s invitation. “We must have the captain. We want to drink his jolly good health. Here it is. Here’s to Captain Lamont, and ripping good luck to him.”

The toast was drunk with a roar of cheering.

“He’s helping look after the wounded,” said Peters. “There’s a doctor here luckily, and he’s having them seen to all right.”

A sort of compunctious silence fell upon the others at this announcement. Here they were, refreshing and making merry and enjoying themselves, while the man who had led them, and taken a tiger’s share in the fight, had gone straight away to care for their wounded comrades.

“Chaps,” said Jim Steele shortly, “we are sweeps. D’you hear? Sweeps.”

“It’s all right, Jim,” said Peters. “Lamont told me to look after you all, even apart from Grunberger’s jolly hospitable invitation. Don’t you bother about him.”

“Bother about him?” echoed Jim Steele. “But that’s just what we’re going to do. We must have him here and drink his jolly good health. This time it’ll be my round, boys, and we’re going to do it with musical honours. So, Peters, cut away and rout him out, like the good chap you are.”

Peters, nothing loth, went out. He found Lamont just coming out of the house, having seen the wounded men made as snug and comfortable as they could be under the circumstances. Indeed, he had been giving the doctor actual aid with his own hands, in one case where an amputation had been necessary.

“Certainly I’ll come, Peters,” he said. “I want to thank these fellows for coming with me when I asked them. Heavens! to think what would have happened if they’d hung back, for you and I would have been nowhere against such odds. But—it won’t bear thinking about.”

A huge cheer greeted his entrance. All hands were awaiting him, glasses ready. A gigantic tumbler of whisky-and-soda was thrust into his hand by Jim Steele.

“Toss that down first, captain,” said that worthy. “You’ve had nothing yet.”

Lamont, entering into the fun of the thing, complied. Then Jim Steele went on—

“Boys, I’m going to give you the health of our captain, the biggest tiger in a fight any fellow could wish to find himself alongside of—”

The vociferous chorus of ‘Hear—hear!’ having subsided, he went on—

“But before doing that, I want to apologise to him—yes, to apologise, and I don’t know how to do it quite low enough. The day of the race meeting I insulted you, captain. I called you a coward. A coward I think of that, boys, after what we’ve seen to-day. Well, now I want to say you may kick me—now, in front of everyone here, and I won’t move. So, go ahead.”

“Oh, stow that, Jim Steele,” interrupted Lamont, “and don’t make a silly ass of yourself. You were a little bit screwed, you know, and didn’t know what the devil you were saying.” Here the listeners roared. “Don’t you imagine I’ve given that another thought, because I haven’t. And calling a man anything doesn’t make him so. We’ll rub out that little disagreement right here.”

He put out his hand, and the next moment almost wished he hadn’t, when Jim Steele was doing his best to wring it off. The cheering was wildly renewed.

“Boys,” went on the latter, raising his glass. “Here’s Captain Lamont, and his jolly good health. And if he’ll raise a corps to take the veldt and help straighten out this racket, I’m going to be the first man to join. I don’t suppose there’s a man jack in this room that won’t join. Is there?”

“No—no.”

The answer was an enthusiastic roar. And as they drank his health they struck up the usual chorus under the circumstances—‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’—until the room rang again. And if the watchful savage was crawling about the dark veldt outside, in a scouting capacity—and who shall say he was not—he must have decided that Makiwa was singing war-songs with extraordinary go and zest—not to say indulging in a Tyay’igama dance (see note), by way of celebrating his victory.

Then Lamont made a little speech. He thanked them for responding so readily to his call for volunteers, but he knew that they would thank themselves for the rest of their lives that it had been given to them to be the means of averting the horrible tragedy they had been the means of averting. The whole country now was up in arms. These savages spared neither age nor sex, he had already seen enough—and Peters would bear him out there—to prove that. Probably they would hear of more and similar massacres elsewhere before long, but at any rate he, for one, was going to help the country in which he had lived since its opening up—to help it to the best of his ability; and whether they served with him or not he hoped and believed every man jack in that room was going to do the same.

As for himself, Jim Steele had been good enough to emphasise anything he might have done, but exactly the same and more might be said of every man who had fought that day in defence of their two fellow-countrywomen, and of none more than of Wyndham, who although he had had no opportunity of firing a shot at the would-be woman-slayers, had none the less by his coolness and skill contributed to the safety of the party as thoroughly as though he had shot a score of Matabele with his own hand.

Wyndham had just come in, and a shout of cheering greeted his appearance at these words. When this had abated Lamont went on.

They were not out of the wood yet, he said. They had either got to wait here until relieved or take the ladies back to Gandela themselves, and he himself favoured the first plan. Were they alone they would reckon it part of the day’s work to fight their way, if necessary, to whatever point at which their services were most required. But the events of the afternoon had shown they were an inadequate force for escort purposes, though providentially they had been brought through that time. Again, he repeated, he could not claim to have done more than any other man who was with him, where all did so well; and to the end of his days, be they many or few, one of the proudest recollections of his life would be that of the couple of dozen or so of men who fought side by side with him, against tremendous odds, to save their fellow-countrywomen from falling into the barbarous hands of murderous and treacherous savages.

Roars of cheers greeted the closing of this speech; and then they fell to the discussion of Jim Steele’s notion. For the idea had caught on. It was determined that those who had fought that day should form the nucleus of a corps to take the field under Lamont and Peters, and that the said corps should be known as Lamont’s Tigers.

“Dat is a goot name,” said Grunberger, nodding his head approvingly. “We will now drink de health of Lamont’s Tigers. Chentlemen, name your drinks.”

This announcement was received with great applause. Then, paper and pen having been requisitioned, every man there put down his name, pledging himself to serve in the corps and also to do all he could to induce desirable men to join it too.

Lamont had left them after his address, and was now examining the defences of the place. As he stood in the gathering darkness it was with a strange tingle of the pulses that he reflected upon the scene he had just left. This popularity to which he had thus suddenly sprung was not a little strange, in fact it was a little aweing. In what light would Clare Vidal view it? And then, at the thought of Clare, he felt more than devoutly grateful that he had been the means of saving her from a horrible death—and with it there intruded for the first time another thought. Had he thus saved her for himself?

Yes. The frozen horror with which he had received the announcement that morning, that she was advancing deeper and deeper into certain peril, and causing him to lose sight of his own fatigue and recent hardships, to start off then and there to her aid, had opened his eyes; but—was it for good or for ill?

“There you are at last, Mr Lamont,” said Clare, as he entered the living-room of the place. “We have been wondering what had become of you.”

She was alone. There was a something in her tone, even in her look, which he had not noticed before—a sort of gravity, as though the old fun and brightness had taken to itself wings.

“I’ve been going around seeing to things. Where’s Mrs Fullerton?”

“Gone to bed. She’s got a splitting headache, and seems to have got a kind of frightened shock. Dick is with her now, but I’m going directly.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. It has been a trying enough day for any woman, Heaven knows. But you, Miss Vidal. There isn’t a man in the whole outfit that isn’t talking of your splendid pluck.”

She smiled, rather wanly he thought, and shook her head.

“I wish they’d forget it then. I wish I could. Oh, Mr Lamont—I have killed—men.”

She uttered the words slowly, and in a tone of mingled horror and sadness. This, then, accounted for the changed expression of her face.

“Strictly and in absolute self-defence. Not only in self-defence but in defence of your helpless sister too. There is no room for one atom of self-reproach in that,” he went on, speaking rapidly, vehemently. “Not only that, but your courage and readiness were important factors in saving the situation until we arrived. Wyndham has been telling me all about it.”

She smiled, but it was a hollow sort of smile, and shook her head.

“It is good of you to try and comfort me. But do you mean it really?”

“Every word, really and entirely. ‘Men’ you said just now. Beasts in the shape of men you ought to have said, and would have if you had seen what Peters and I saw only yesterday morning, only I don’t want to shock you any further. Yes, on second thoughts I will though, if only to set those qualms of a too-sensitive conscience at rest. Well, we found the mutilated remains of poor Tewson, and his womenkind and children—little children, mind—whom these devils had murdered in their own home. I could tell you even more that would bring it home to you, but I won’t. Now, have you any further scruples of conscience?”

“No, I haven’t,” she answered, both face and tone hardening as she realised the atrocity in its full horror. “Thank you for telling me. It has made a difference already. And now, Mr Lamont, I must go to my sister. You have saved us from a horrible death, and I don’t know how to find words to thank you.”

“Oh, as to that, you can incidentally count in about three dozen other men. Not a man jack of them but did just as much as I did—some even more.”

She looked at him with such a sweet light glowing in her eyes, as well-nigh to unsteady him.

“I’ll believe that,” she said, “when you’ve answered one question.”

“And it—?”

“Who got together these men the moment he knew we were in danger? Who, forgetting his own fatigue, started at a moment’s notice, and, inspiring the others with the same energy and bravery, rescued us from a ghastly death? Who was it?”

“It was only what any man would have done. Oh, Clare, you can never realise what that moment meant to me when I heard that that blighting idiot Fullerton had started this morning—literally to hurl you on to the assegais of these devils. You!”

In his vehemence he hardly noticed that he had used her Christian name. She did, however, and smiled, and the smile was very soft and sweet.

“Me!” she echoed. “Didn’t you think of poor Lucy too? Why only me?”

“Because I love you.”

It was out now. His secret had been surprised from him. What would she say? They stood facing each other, in that rough room with its cheap oleographs of the Queen, the Kaiser, and Cecil Rhodes staring down upon them from the walls in the dingy light of an unfragrant oil-lamp, any moment liable to interruption. The smile upon her face became a shade sweeter.

“Say that again,” she said.

“I love you.”

She was now in his embrace, but she sought not to release herself from it. Bending down his head she put her lips to his ear and whispered, “Consider the compliment returned.”

They said more than that, these two, who had thus so unpremeditatedly come together, but we do not feel under the necessity of divulging what they said. Perchance also they—did.

“I must really go now,” she said at last, as footsteps were heard approaching. “Good-night—my darling.”

And she disappeared with a happy laugh, leaving the other standing there in a condition little short of dazed, and sticking a pin into himself to make sure that he was actually awake and not merely dreaming.

Note. Literally ‘flogging the name.’ When a Zulu regiment returned from battle, those who had specially distinguished themselves were pointed at by the commanding induna and named to the King. Each thus named came forward separately and danced before the King, recapitulating his deeds. The while his comrades in arms signalled his distinction by striking their shields with their knob-sticks and roaring out his name.

Chapter Twenty Four.

As an Oasis.

Day dawned, cloudless and golden, in its full African splendour. The night had passed without any alarm, but, to make sure, the force had divided the night between it to mount guard, that section of it off duty sleeping in the open—arms ready to hand.

Their leader appeared to be made of iron. Stirring events, peril, fatigue, had been crowded into his experience since his last night’s sleep, four nights ago, but all seemed to go for nothing. He was here, there, everywhere, the night through, seeming to need no sleep. And with the first sign of a glimmer of dawn, the whole force was up and under arms, waiting and ready, for that is the hour—when sleep is heaviest, and vigilance in consequence relaxed—that the untiring savage favours for making his attack. But no such attack was made, and the night passed quietly and without alarm, as we have said.

“Dash it all, Lamont! Why don’t you turn in, man? You’re overdoing it, you know. You haven’t had forty winks for about four nights. You’ll bust up all of a sudden, and at the wrong time, if you don’t watch it. How’s that?”

Thus Peters, what time the tired and worn-out men were simply subsiding on the bare ground, and dropping off into log-like slumber the moment they touched it; and that under the glorious blue of the heavens and the sweeping gold of the newly risen sun.

“I couldn’t sleep, Peters—no, not if I were paid to,” was the answer. “But I’m going to see if I can scare up a tub and a razor. At present I must be looking the most desperate ruffian you could not wish to meet in a lonely lane.”

Peters looked after him and shook his head, slowly and mournfully.

“He’s got it,” he said to himself. “By the Lord, he’s got it. I could see that when, like the blithering ass I am, I interrupted them that evening. No, it isn’t sheer aptitude for tough campaigning that keeps his peepers open when nobody else can keep theirs.”

Peters was absolutely right. His friend and comrade was in a state of mental exaltation that reacted physically. He could hardly believe in his happiness, even yet. How had it come about? In his pride and cynicism it might have been months before he would have brought matters to the testing point—it is even conceivable it might have been never. Yet, all unpremeditated and on the spur of the moment, he had done so—and now, and now—

Good Heavens! life was too golden henceforward, and as the flaming wheel of the sun rose higher and higher in the unflecked blue, the glory of the newborn day seemed to Lamont to attune itself to the glow of happiness and peace which had settled down upon his whole being. The bloodshed and strife and massacre! of which he had been a witness, was as a thing outside, a thing put completely behind.

It was decided that no move should be made that day. A bare suggestion that they should attempt the return to Gandela revived all poor Lucy Fullerton’s terrors. She would sooner die at once, she declared, than go through the horrors of yesterday all over again.

“Yes, you seemed to have got the funks to some considerable purpose,” grumbled Fullerton. “Hang it, Lucy, I thought you had more pluck. Look at Clare, now. She was positively enjoying it.”

“Oh no, she wasn’t,” corrected that young person, who had just entered. “No, not in the very least. But I suppose different people take on different forms of scare. Mine took that of a sort of desperate excitement.”

“Yours? Form of scare! By jingo! that’s a ‘form of scare’ we could do with plenty of during these jolly lively days,” returned Fullerton.

“Oh, and look here, Dick,” went on the girl. “I must ask you not to talk about it—I mean not to go bragging around to everybody that your sister-in-law shot twenty or forty or sixty Matabele—or whatever you are going to make it—in the fight at the Kezane Store.”

“Why in thunder not? Why shouldn’t you have your share of the kudos as well as anyone else in the same racket?”

“Because I don’t want it. Because I want to forget my share in it. The consciousness of having taken life, even in the very extremity of self-defence, can never be a subject of self-congratulation, especially to a woman. I, for one, don’t want ever to hear it referred to.”

“Well, you are squeamish, Clare. Let me tell you that the rest of us don’t share your opinions. There isn’t a man jack, from Lamont downwards, who hasn’t been blowing your trumpet loud enough to wake the dead.”

A softer look came into her face at the name. Perhaps her brother-in-law partially read it, perhaps he didn’t.

“By the way, Dick,” she went on, “I suppose by this time you have found reason for somewhat altering your opinion of Mr Lamont’s courage, have you? It used to be rather unfavourable, if I remember right.”

“Rather, I should think I had. I told him so too, during a lull in the scrimmage.”

“Oh, you told him so. And what did he answer?”

“Nothing. He sloshed a pistol-bullet into a big buck nigger who’d romped up in the long grass to blaze into us. By George, here he is.”

“Who? The ‘nigger’?”

“Morning, Lamont. Come to have breakfast, of course?” for they had just sat down. “We were just talking about you.”

“I’ll change the subject to a more interesting one then,” was the answer. “How are you, Mrs Fullerton, and did you have a restful night, for I’m sure you deserved one?”

“Not very. I’m a shocking coward, but I’m afraid it’s constitutional,” answered poor Lucy. But he laughingly reassured her, and talked about the fineness of the day, and the extent of the view around Kezane, and soon got away from yesterday’s battle entirely.

Lamont’s morning greeting, as far as Clare was concerned, was a fine piece of acting, for they had arranged not to make public their understanding until safe back at Gandela. Yet the swift flash as glance met glance, and a subtle hand-pressure, were as eloquent as words to those most concerned.

Watching him, though not appearing to, Clare’s heart was aglow with illimitable pride and love. The emergency had brought out the man beyond even her estimate of him, and that had been not small. She had read him from the very first, had seen what was in him, and her instinct had been justified to the full. She was proud to remember how she had always believed in him, and that the more detraction reached her ears the more did it strengthen rather than sap that belief. And now—and now—he was hers and she was his.

Others dropped in—Peters, and Jim Steele, and Strange the doctor, and two or three more, and soon the talk became general. At a hint from Lamont the subject of the fight of yesterday was left out, and they got on to others, just as if nothing had occurred to disturb the peace in the midst of which, a short twenty-four hours back, they had imagined themselves to dwell. But it seemed to Lamont that Grunberger’s wife, a pleasant-looking Englishwoman who was taking care of their wants, was eyeing him with a mingling of covert amusement and interest. “Shall we stroll about outside, Miss Vidal?” he said, a little later, when they were out in the air again. “What do you think, Mrs Fullerton? A constitutional won’t hurt us.”

But Lucy protested that no consideration on earth would induce her to set foot outside the gates—as they knew she would. No, no. These horrible savages had a knack of springing up out of nowhere. Clare seemed to know how to take care of herself, but she, assuredly, did not. It was in vain for Lamont to impress upon her that the ground around the place was quite open, and that there were pickets posted at intervals where the not very thick bush began. She was obdurate—as he knew she would be.

The question of making some sort of patrol had been discussed, but it had been decided that it was not worth the risk. Their force was none too strong to defend the place if attacked by numbers, which was very likely to happen, for the Kezane was one of the largest and most important stores along the line of coaches, and was always well supplied with everything likely to tempt the cupidity of the savages. A patrol might venture too far and in the wrong direction, and get cut off; then what a serious weakening of their forces that would mean. So pickets were posted instead.

“Then you haven’t awoke to the conclusion you were rather hasty last night, Clare?”

“Have you?” she answered sweetly.

“Good God! Need you ask? But it is a fitting reply to an idiotic question.”

“Don’t be profane, and don’t call yourself undeserved names, dearest. But you don’t look as if you had had any sleep. Have you?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I couldn’t have slept if I’d tried,” he said, the soft caressing solicitude of the remark stirring through his whole being. “But that’ll all come right. I’m hard as nails, remember.”

“I should think you were,” flashing up at him another admiring glance. “Oh, darling, I loved to see you yesterday. The sight of you went far to neutralise all the horrors of the situation.”

“Don’t, don’t,” he said, rather unsteadily, positively intoxicated with the sweetness of her tones, her looks. “Don’t quite try to give me ‘swelled head’ as those good chaps were trying to do last night. Because you might succeed, you know.”

“You could never get that. But—I have something to say to you, and I don’t believe you’re going to grant me the very first thing I’ve ever asked you.”

“And that—?”

“I want you not to run into danger any more. You belong to me now—we belong to each other. If this is going to be a regular war—perhaps a long one—there can be no necessity for you to take part in it—I mean, to join expeditions, and all that. You will be helping quite enough by staying to defend Gandela, and taking care of me.”

He looked troubled.

“Oh, Clare, my darling one, what shall I say? Do you know, last night all these good fellows formed themselves into the nucleus of a corps on condition that I should lead them. And I promised. How can I climb down now?”

She looked at him, for a moment, full in the eyes, and her own kindled.

“You can’t. No, of course you can’t. I am not such a selfish idiot as to dream of expecting such a thing. Why, it is a distinct call to usefulness, to distinction. I would not try to hold you back from it now, no, not even if I could.”

“But, understand this,” he went on. “I will not move in the matter until I have seen you in safety—in entire and complete safety. Then—it is a duty. What would you think of me if I shirked that sort of duty? Would it not be to put a stamp of truth on the lies some of my kind friends have been spreading about me?”

“I won’t say I would think nothing of you, for I can’t imagine, let alone contemplate, such a contingency. But—now we are on the subject—I would like to hear your side of—of—all these stories. Don’t think that I doubt you—never think that, dearest—but I would like to be able to fling the lie in their faces.”

He was silent for a few moments as they paced up and down. They were out of earshot of the stockade but in full view of all within it. To all intents and purposes they were only two people walking up and down in ordinary converse, as a couple of ship-board acquaintances might walk up and down the deck of a passenger ship.

“Some years ago,” he resumed, “I had a quarrel with a man—a man who had been my friend. He had played me a dirty trick—a very dirty trick—the nature of it doesn’t matter, any more than his identity, now. I am not an angel, and have my share of original sin, which includes a temper, though since then I have tried my level best to keep it within bounds. Well, from words we got to blows, and I was a fair boxer—” here Clare half smiled, in the midst of her vivid interest, as she remembered the tribute her brother-in-law had paid to his powers in that line, even while decrying his courage.

“In the course of the scrimmage I struck him a blow that felled him. He lay motionless, and I and others thought he was dead. We brought him round though, but he had a bad concussion of the brain, and for weeks hovered between life and death. Moreover, he has never been the same man since. If I lived for a thousand years I could never forget what I went through during that time. Well, in the result I made a vow, a most solemn vow, that never again, even under the extremest of provocation, would I lift hand in anger against anybody, except under the most absolute necessity of self-defence—or in defence of others. And I never have.”

Clare’s colour heightened and her eyes shone. Instinctively she put forth her hand to take his, and withdrew it instantly as she remembered that they were in full view of everybody.

“Once, not long ago, up here, I put on the gloves with another man, a first-rate performer, for a friendly spar. But even with gloves on you can do a good deal of grim slogging. Somehow it came upon me—I believe I was getting the best of it, I’m not sure—that the thing was getting too real, and a vivid recollection of that other affair seemed to rise up like a ghost, and then and there I chucked up the sponge. Again they said I had funked.”

“Yes, I heard about that,” she said. “But it didn’t make any difference to me. I knew better all along, and told them so.”

“You told them so?”

“Of course I did. You see, I knew you better than that—even though we hadn’t done very much talking together, had we? And so that was your reason. Well you have adhered to your resolve—yes, grandly.”

“Do you remember that morning up on Ehlatini, you were warning me about Ancram? Well, that story was nearly all true. I did think my life was too good to put in pawn for the sake of that of a peculiarly abominable specimen of the genus gutter-brat—a specimen which was bound to be hung sooner or later—probably sooner. I think so still.”

She shook her head, trying to look solemn.

“All life is sacred,” she began.

“Is it? Mine wasn’t—not much. But I’m pretty sure that the immersed gutter-snipe’s was less so.”

No, there was no keeping up the solemnity line. Clare went off into a rippling peal of laughter.

“I can’t help it,” she exclaimed. “But don’t imagine I approve. It was very wrong indeed to let slip an opportunity of saving life.”

“Oh, for the matter of that, if the wretched little beast had been quite alone the case would have been different. As it was, there were plenty of others to haul him out if they chose, so I let them. Then I was insulted and abused by the last person in the world who should have done so, and that in front of a gang of gaping clodhoppers. I hope Ancram didn’t leave that part of the story out, because then you will know I have been engaged before.”

“Yes, I knew that,” answered Clare, who was secretly admiring the straightforward, unhesitating manner in which he told his tale. No stuttering or beating about the bush. He had something to say, and he said it in the most natural and concise manner possible. And she liked that.

“I’m glad. That makes it easier,” he returned.

“But,” she went on, “are you sure you have no lingering regrets on that score? Not even a little one deep down in your heart?”

“Not the very ghost of one. I am a vindictive animal, I suppose, but that sort of treatment leaves no room for lingering regrets, though it does for lingering resentment. But even of that there is none left now. You will never turn against me, darling?”

“Never,” she answered decisively and without hesitation, although startled by the sudden directness of the question.

“No matter what I did? Even to a repetition of the incident I have been telling you?”

“Not even then. No—nothing could ever make me turn from you,” she repeated, with a sudden burst of passion.

It was a strange contrast, these two walking there, talking, thinking of love. Down by a stagnant water-hole in the nearly dry river-bed, the horses and mules were grazing, under an armed guard, and yonder the gleam of rifles where vedettes were posted. Outside and within the stockade men lounged and chatted, all ready to fly to arms at the first alarm.

So to these two it was as an oasis—this peace of a great happiness. They had found it between the lurid storms of war, and good—very good—was it for them that they had.

Chapter Twenty Five.

The Impi.

The vedettes had signalled. Away over the veldt to the westward a pillar of dust was visible; and it was moving, drawing nearer. A group, outside the stockade, was watching it intently.

“What d’you make of it, Grunberger?” said Fullerton impatiently.

“I think dot was someone coming,” answered the storekeeper, who was looking through a pair of field-glasses. This instructive utterance evolved a laugh.

“That’s what we all think, old chap,” said Jim Steele. “What we want to know is who it’s likely to be. White or black, or blue or green, or what?”

“Dot was one white man and one Matabele,” said the storekeeper, still intently scanning the approaching dust. “Ach! und they ride like de devil.”

“Here, let’s have a look in, Grunberger,” cried Fullerton. “I may know who it is.”

The other resigned the glasses, and after a long look, during which the two mounted figures drew rapidly nearer, Fullerton exclaimed—

“By Jove, I do! It’s Driffield—Driffield and a boy.”

The excitement became intense. Nobody would push his horses at that pace on a hot day unless he were a born fool—which Driffield was not. Clearly there must be somebody behind him, from whom he had a strong interest in getting away.

“How about telling the captain?” suggested someone.

“Not yet,” cut in Peters, who had just joined the group. “Lamont’s sound asleep, and he needs it too, for to my knowledge he hasn’t shut his eyes for four nights. Time enough when we hear what’s in the wind.”

And that was not to be long. Driffield rolled from his horse panting with excitement and hard riding, and his tale was very soon told, and his experience was closely akin to that of Peters. He had been set upon in his camp that morning by three of his boys, but at the same time he had discovered a number of natives making for his camp at no great distance. He killed two assailants with his shot-gun, and the third took to his heels. Meanwhile, with great presence of mind, the other boy, who had remained faithful, had quickly saddled up the ponies, and the two had got away, but only just in time, for the crowd was beginning to fire at them. But on the road they were forced to make a sudden détour to avoid a big impi, which was heading straight in this direction.

“That’s news!” said Peters. “They’re likely coming for this place, expecting only to find Grunberger, all childlike and confiding. Ah!”

Again the vedette was signalling, and all eyes turned instinctively in the same direction as before. There, sure enough, where the first dust column had been sighted, arose another; no narrow thread this time but a very volume.

“That’s them, right enough,” said Driffield, while refreshing. “Let my boy have some skoff, will you, Grunberger. He’s jolly well earned it.”

If the news brought by the Native Commissioner was a source of vivid excitement to all present, no less was theirs to him. He had calculated on warning Grunberger, and if needful giving him a hand in moving his family to Gandela, which he would have had time to do while the Matabele were looting his possessions; instead of which he found the place quite strongly garrisoned, and indeed, considering its defensive facilities, it might be held against very considerable odds. And thus to hold it was the resolve of all there.

“By Jove, but you fellows were in luck,” he said regretfully. “I wish I had been there. And Miss Vidal—why, she’s splendid.”

“I can tell you she saved the whole outfit, by preventing the niggers getting at the mules before we came up,” went on his informant. “I had it from Fullerton she shot three with her own hand.”

“Three mules?”

“No—niggers—don’t be a silly ass, Driffield. Only don’t make any allusion to it when you see her. She wants to forget it.”

“Of course. Any nice girl would. And she—by Jove, she’s splendid!”

“You’re not alone in that opinion,” said the other so significantly as to draw the obvious query—

“Why?”

“Well,” lowering his voice, “Lamont seems to be making powerful running in that quarter. In fact he pretty well gave the show away in his wild eagerness to start after them the moment he heard Fullerton’s crowd was on the road at all.”

Whereby it is manifest that Lamont’s secret was not quite such a secret as he—and the sharer of it—imagined.

He, the while, together with others, was watching the approaching dust-cloud, and a council of war was held. Most were in favour of allowing the raiders to approach quite close, and then surprise them with a raking volley. This followed up quickly by another and another could not fail to demoralise them utterly. Meanwhile the pickets came riding rapidly in.

“Large force of Matabele coming up the road, sir,” reported the first.

“Right. Every man to his post,” ordered Lamont. His expression of countenance grew anxious, as soon the impi swung into view, marching in close formation, and divided into three companies—the largest and central of which kept the road, hence the dust-cloud. For he estimated that it could not be less than a thousand strong, and how was his small force going to hold its own against a determined rush on the part of such overwhelming odds?

The impi, as it drew near, presented an imposing spectacle. The warriors were in their national fighting gear. Quite half of them had been herders or mine boys for the settlers and prospectors—some perchance store-hands in the townships, but all had discarded the tattered shirt and trousers, or ragged hat, and their bronze bodies were bedecked with feather and bead adornments, and cow-tails, and monkey skins, and jackal-teeth necklaces—all of which, from a spectacular point of view, constituted an immense improvement. Then, too, the forest of great tufted shields, white or black, red or variegated, the quivering rattle of assegai hafts, making weird accompaniment to the gong-like roar of the deep voices as they marched, singing—assuredly the sight was a martial and inspiring one; but of those who beheld it their leader was not the only one to think that he might have appreciated it more fully if this enclosure contained not less than a hundred good white men instead of a bare three dozen.

The latter were watching through the chinks in the stockade—these in many places formed natural loopholes, where they did not they were made to. How long would it be before the word was given to fire? was the one thought in possession of each tense, strained mind. Then, suddenly, the advancing host came to a halt.

Clearly the Matabele were not quite satisfied as to the place being so innocent-looking and deserted as they had expected. For one thing, there were no horses or cattle grazing about anywhere within sight, these, of course, having been brought within at the earliest alarm. This looked suspicious.

They were obviously holding a consultation, but had lowered their voices so as not to be heard by whoever might be inside. Then about a score of them, leaving the others, came a little nearer.

“Ho, Gumbega,” called out one, hailing the storekeeper by the nearest approach to his name that the native tongue could roll itself round. “Are you from home that your gate is all barred up and made extra strong?”

“No, I am here,” replied Grunberger, in obedience to a whisper from Lamont. “But that was done by the captain’s orders.”

“The captain! What captain?”

“The captain of about a hundred men who arrived here yesterday. Look at all the rifles.”

There was no mistake as to this. Rifle barrels protruded through the chinks so that the whole of that side of the stockade seemed to glisten with them. The savages were obviously nonplussed. A strongly defended place containing a hundred well-armed whites—or even half that number—constituted a nut which, large as their own force was, they did not care to crack—at any rate not just then. So without a word those who had come forward returned to the main body, and the whole impi resumed its way, taking care to let them see, however, that it had no intention of drawing any nearer to the place.

“Come out and look, Lucy,” said Clare, who had been dividing her attention between watching what was going on and trying to reassure her terrified sister. “It’s a splendid sight, and we don’t get an opportunity of seeing a big Matabele regiment on the march every day, and in full war-paint too.”

“A splendid sight! Ugh, the horrible wretches! I never want to set eyes on them again.”

And the speaker shuddered, and stopped her ears as though to shut out the receding thunder of the marching song.

“But, Mrs Fullerton, there’s nothing to be frightened of,” urged the storekeeper’s wife. “They’re going right away.”

An idea struck Clare. Going outside, the first person she ran against was Lamont.

“Piers,” she said in a low tone, “where are they going?”

“I suspect they are making straight for Gandela.”

“Will they—take it?”

“No reason why they should, if only Orwell and Isard have condescended to act on my repeated warning, and put the place into a state of defence.”

“And if not—?”

He looked at her for a moment without answering. Then he said—

“In that case these will have things all their own way.”

“How awful!”

“Well, we must hope for the best.”

“What if we had started to return there to-day?” she said suddenly, “We should have had to reckon with these. The mules are in no condition to travel out properly, and they could soon have overhauled us.”

“Ah!”

Then she subsided into silence. Even her courageous spirit had fallen upon a kind of reaction. The morning had been so bright and happy, and now a shadow of horror and gloom seemed to have darkened upon the land. Bloodshed, massacre everywhere, would it never pass? The other seemed to read her thoughts.

“Do not give way to depression, my Clare,” he said. “Keep up your own brave heart. We are quite safe here, with ordinary precaution, and you may be sure that nothing of that will be wanting. This cloud will pass, and all will be brighter than ever.”

“I seem to have a presentiment. Oh, it is horrible! And there is bloodshed on my hands too.”

“There is none,” he replied emphatically. “No, none. What you were forced to do to defend the life of your helpless sister does not count for one single moment. Darling, did we not settle all that last evening?”

“Yes, we did. You are a born comforter, dearest. But I believe it is my love for you that is making a coward of me. What if—if I lost you before this horrible war is over?”

“Now—now—now!” adopting a rallying tone, although thrilled to the heart by her words. “You must not indulge in these fancies or my bright and winsome Clare will be quite somebody else. I shall have to call Peters to cheer you up. See how he is keeping those jokers in a roar over there.”

This was a fact, but not an accident. Peters, ever watchful where his idolised friend was concerned, had gathered together quite a crowd, a little way apart, and was clearly regaling it with abundant humour—which he possessed—and this with the sole intent that these two should have a little time together uninterrupted.

“Yes, he can be very entertaining,” said Clare. “And I like him so much. Do you know, darling, he simply adores you.”

“I know he does his level best to make me beastly conceited.”

“He told me how you risked your life to save his during the retreat on the Shangani.”

“Did he, confound him! Then it was a distinct act of mutiny, for he’s under strict orders to let that well-worn chestnut be forgotten. I’ll have him put under arrest for disobedience to orders, since by popular vote I seem to have been put in command here.”

“But you weren’t in command here when he told me, so you can’t come down upon him. How’s that?” and she laughed brightly.

“In that case I suppose I can’t,” he allowed, rejoicing greatly that she had shaken off her vein of depression. “But you know, dearest, that sort of thing was done over and over again during that very Shangani business, for one, by other men, and nobody thought of making a fuss about it. It was taken quite as a matter of course, and naturally it genuinely annoys me when Peters tries to make a sort of scissors and paste-pot hero of me.”

“I shall claim the right to reserve my own opinion, all the same,” she declared with mock loftiness. “By the way, who is Mr Peters? He seems something of a mystery.”

“Yes. He delights in humbugging the curious. Nobody is ever an atom the wiser concerning him.”

“But—you know.”

“Yes, I know all about him.”

“And—you won’t tell me?”

“No.”

It came out quite naturally but quite decisively.

“Then you will have secrets from me?”

“Other people’s secrets—certainly.”

“And—your own?”

“I haven’t got any.”

During this apparent skirmish they had been looking each other straight in the eyes. But the skirmish was only apparent. “Oh, I do love a man who knows his own mind,” said the girl delightedly. “Why, I was not even trying you, for I knew beforehand what your answer would be.”

“I know you were not. Well, if you really want to know anything about Peters, the only possible way of doing so is to—ask Peters.”

Then they both laughed—laughed long and heartily.

Chapter Twenty Six.

The Attack at Dawn.

Over the slumbering land the dawn has not yet broken, though but for the chill mist lying upon bush and earth the first faint streaks might be lining the eastern sky. Nor are the voices of the night stilled as yet, and the weird laughter of the faraway jackals, and the crying of invisible plover circling above, blend with ghostly mysterious rustlings among the bush and damp grass-bents. For, like dark ghosts, innumerable figures are flitting, well-nigh shoulder to shoulder in the mist, moving rapidly in noiseless, springy advance.

Now these halt, and listen intently. Not a sound is audible on the stillness; rather, would not be save to such as they. But to them, well-nigh inaudible in the distance, comes the steady ‘crunch crunch’ of ruminating cattle, and the occasional snort and stamp of a horse.

They move forward again, and although not one can see more than a dozen yards on either side, the crescent-moon formation advances unbroken. They move forward, but now no longer erect. In bent, crouching attitude, head turned on one side, intently listening, yet none the less swiftly, none the less noiselessly, do they move; so noiselessly indeed that not even the faintest rattle of assegai haft against shield stick is heard throughout the whole length of that terrible battle line, and of voices not even the faintest breath of a whisper. No need for such at this stage. The tactics are simplicity itself, the plan already laid.

Out of the misty gloom in front—though this is now growing perceptibly less—the chewing of the ruminating cattle sounds nearer, but of any sound betokening the proximity of human beings there is none. Soon, of human beings other than these there will be none; none left in life, that is; and the eyeballs of these human wolves roll, in the delirious transport of the awaiting blood-feast; and weapons of destruction are gripped and ready. Of a truth this mist is not there by accident. It has been invoked by Umlimo that his children might steal upon these hated Amakiwa, and rid the land of so many more of them, according to his bidding.

And yet, the concealing mist is thinning somewhat. Well, it has served its purpose, and having done so they will be better without it, to make their work the surer and the more complete. And now, through its lifting folds, rises in dark loom the jagged silhouette of the mopani stockade. Then the crescent line seems to tighten itself as for a spring, and, still in dead silence, the swarming dark figures hurl themselves forward. They have barely a couple of hundred yards to cover, and they will be pouring over the fence in their numbers, and overwhelming those within by their sheer weight. Half the distance is already covered, and in each savage ruthless heart is the anticipating delight of a demon—when, lo—

It is as though the earth itself were splitting in the detonnade which rends the stillness, crashing forth from that dark silent barrier. Aimed low, hardly a single bullet misses its mark, in many cases doing double, even treble, execution at that short range. Those thus stricken leap in the air or fall heavily forward, in any case staggering, and upsetting those immediately behind or around; and still with unflagging rapidity and unerring accuracy that deadly fire plays upon the whole advancing line. Advancing? No! Now no longer; for like the roll of a vast billow, met by a cliff face, this dark wave staggers, hurling itself on high, then falls back; and ever that pitiless hail adds to the destruction, at the rate of so many lives per second. The confusion is awful, absolute, complete.

Howls and yells, roars and shrieks from those stricken down, and those in their immediate vicinity, mingle with the wild hissing of those behind, pressing forward in fierce eagerness to pour over the defences before those within shall have time to reload. But those within seem not under the necessity of doing anything of the kind, for somehow that terrific fire never slackens, and the crashing detonnade is marked by the same deadly execution upon those without. Human intrepidity has its limits, and these fall back, gliding, wriggling like snakes so as to render themselves as inconspicuous a mark as possible. And aided by the—to them—friendly mist, many escape who would otherwise have shrilled their last battle-hiss.

“Time!” called Peters, with a grim laugh, and then a smothered cuss word, as the hot barrel of his magazine rifle which he was reloading came in contact with a knuckle. “Time! That’s the first round, and I guess we’ve knocked our friend the enemy some.”

“First round!” echoed Jim Steele. “Why, we’ve knocked him out.”

“Not yet—by any means. And when it gets quite light, and he realises how few we are, it’ll take us all our time to do it.”

The excitement of the men was something indescribable, and intensified the more by their anxiety to keep cool. It found vent in the restless gleaming of their eyes, and a few muttered explosions of profanity. There had been a little discontentment the evening before when Lamont and Peters had decided that all should not only remain under arms, but that each man should spend the night at his post; in short, that the whole garrison should, as it were, stand on sentry-go. Surely a double guard would be sufficient, they had argued. But the two leaders, backed up by others equally well versed in the ways of the wily savage, had decided otherwise. Not for nothing had that formidable impi left them so quietly and peacefully the day before, they had pointed out. Just such a move as this would have been intended. Now those who had been the least contented were the first to recognise the wisdom of the plan.

But, as Peters has said, it was only the first round, for now a swarming crowd of savages, advancing at a lightning run, hurled themselves upon the stockade at the other side, with intent to effect an entrance in overwhelming force before the defenders should have time to create sufficient havoc to turn them. It was a weak point too, for the back wall of a long, low stable constituted a break in the line of mopani poles, and once under cover of this a considerable number of them would be sheltered from the effects of any cross-fire, and could even set alight the thatched roof. And as if to second their efforts an extra dense cloud of mist, borne down by the wind, rolled right up to the stable wall.

Here, too, the crackling volleys mowed them down, but doing nothing like the execution that had been at first effected.

“Good Lord! here’s a go,” muttered the police sergeant, who with his men formed a section of the defenders on this side. “There’s quite a lot of the cusses under here, and we can’t get at ’em. Stop. I’ll have a try.”

He hoisted himself up to the top of the palisade, and, reaching over, pumped his revolver into the concentrated mass. An awful roar of rage and dismay arose from below, raked thus at close quarters; then one agile warrior, taking in the situation, leaped upward, and drove his assegai clean through the throat of the unfortunate policeman, who fell back stone dead, his vertebrae completely severed by the impact of the stroke.

But hardly time had those around to take in this than a diversion occurred. Grunberger appeared from within his store bearing a strange unwieldy object, followed by Driffield’s Makalaka boy armed with a crowbar. Both entered the stable, and but for the crackle of firing and hissing and yells of the Matabele, a sound might have been heard like that of drilling a hole in a mud wall. A moment later a sound was heard; a roar from within the stable like that of a discharge of cannon, together with the squealing and stamping of mules. A crowd of savages who had been lurking there under secure cover, as they thought, awaiting their chance, rushed helter-skelter forth to regain the main rank—and not all reached it. Soon after, the German reappeared, choking with laughter.

“Dot is one goot old shspring-gun,” he explained. “I fill him up mit black powder und loopers, den I make one leetle hole, und shtick him through, ja so, mit de muzzle pointing upwards. Herr Gott! but de Matabele think dot a cannon haf gone off.”

“Well done, Grunberger, well done!” cried Lamont. “You’re a man of resource. They ought to have made you a colonel in your own army before they’d done with you.”

“Ach, so,” said the old soldier, greatly pleased. “Well, I load him up again. Dot place behind the stable they find no longer safe.”

“What’s the row, Driffield? Not hit?” cried Lamont sharply. For a sudden fusillade had opened on that side, and the chips were flying wildly from the mopani poles.

“Oh, I don’t know,” answered the Native Commissioner dazedly, staggering back from one of the improvised loopholes. “At least—no—I think not.”

A bullet had struck the barrel of his rifle, and the shock had produced a numbing sensation, causing him to drop the weapon.