"John Ames, Native Commissioner" (continued 2)

But such levity is promptly checked by a sense of the serious nature of the gathering. It is clear that all are assembled who mean to come. And now the gloom lightens with amazing rapidity, as the broad disc of a full moon sails majestically forth above the jumble of serrated crags; and to it turns that sea of wild dark faces stamped with an unwonted expectation and awe, for as yet the bulk of those present have but a dim idea of the end and object of this mysterious convention.

In the lamplike glow of this new light faces are clearly discernible, and amid the group of chiefs are those of Madúla, and Zazwe, and Sikombo, and Umlugula, and several others holding foremost rank among their tribesmen. On this occasion, however, they are not foremost, for it is upon another group that the main interest and expectation centres.

The members of this are decked out in the weird array of sorcerers, are hung around with entrails and claws, mysterious bunches of “charms,” white cowhair and feather adornments, and the grinning skulls of wild animals. One alone is destitute of all ornamentation, but the grim hawk-like countenance, the snaky ferocity of the cruel stare, the lithe stealthiness of movement, stamps this man with an individuality all his own, and he is none other than Shiminya. These are the “Abantwana ’Mlimo,” the hierarchy of the venerated Abstraction, the “Children of Umlimo.” Of them there are perhaps two score. They are seated in a circle, droning a song, or rather a refrain, and, in the midst, Shiminya walks up and down discanting. The chiefs occupy a subsidiary place to-night, for the seat of the oracle is very near, and these are the mouthpieces of the oracle.

By degrees the assembly gathers around. Voices are hushed. All attention is bent upon these squatting, droning figures. Suddenly they rise, and, bursting through the surrounding ranks, which promptly open to give them way, start off at a run. The crowd follows as though magnet drawn. But the run soon slows down to a kind of dancing step; and, following, the dark assemblage sweeps up the valley bottom, the long dry grass crackling as the excited multitude crushes its way through. On the outskirts of the column a great venomous snake, disturbed, trodden on, rears its hideous head, and, quick as lightning, strikes its death-dealing fangs into the legs of two of the crowd, but in the exaltation of the hour no thought is given to these. They may drop out and die; none can afford to waste time over them.

For nearly an hour the advance continues, the black mass pouring, like ants, over every obstacle—over stones, rocks, uprooted tree-trunks—winding through a tortuous valley bottom, the granite crags, towering aloft in their immensity, looking down as though in cold scornful indifference upon this pigmy outburst of mere human excitement, and then the way opens, becoming comparatively clear. The “Abantwana ’Mlimo” slacken their pace, and then the whole body is brought to a halt.

The spot is a comparatively open one save for the long dry grass. In front is a belt of acacias; but behind, and towering above this, there rises an immense mass of solid granite, its apex about two hundred feet above the bottom of the hollow—a remarkable pile, smoother and more compact than the surrounding crags, and right in the centre of its face is a black spot about twelve feet square.

The blackness, however, is the effect of gloom. This spot is the mouth of a hole or cave.

In dead silence now the multitude crouches, all eyes fixed expectantly upon the black yawning mouth. Yet, what can appear there within, for the rock face is inaccessible to any save winged creatures? A cleft, passing the hole, traverses obliquely the entire pile, but as unavailable for purposes of ascent as the granite face itself. No living being can climb up thence. Another vertical crack descends from above. That, too, is equally unavailable. Yet, with awe-stricken countenances, the whole assembly, crouching in semicircular formation, are straining their eyeballs upon the gaping aperture.

In front are the hierarchs of the grim Abstraction. If here indeed is the home of the latter it is well chosen, for a scene of more utter wildness and desolation than this weird, granite-surrounded fastness is hardly imaginable. The great round moon, floating on high, seems to the impressionable multitude to lower and spread—almost to burn.

And now the “Abantwana ’Mlimo” rise from their squatting posture, and, forming into a double line, their faces lifted towards the black, gaping hole, begin to sing. Their chant rolls forth in a regular rhythm, but the usual accompaniment of the stamping of feet is at first absent. But the song, the wild savage harmony of voices fitting well into their parts, is more tuneful, more melodious, than most barbaric outbursts of the kind. Its burden may be rendered somewhat in this wise—

“Voice from the air, Lighten our way! Word of the Wise, Say! shall we slay? Voice of the Great, Speaking from gloom; Say! shall we wait Darkness of doom?”

The echoes ring out upon the still night air, rolling in eddies of sound among the granite crags. The company of sorcerers, every nerve and muscle at its highest tension, softly move their feet to the time, as again and again they repeat their awesome invocation, and with each repetition the sound gathers volume, until it reaches a mighty roar. The multitude, stricken motionless with the awe of a great expectation, gaze upward with protruding eyeballs, awaiting a reply. It comes.

The singing of the Abantwana ’Mlimo has ceased. There is a silence that may be felt, only broken by a strained breathing from hundreds of throats. Then, from the black cave, high above, sounds forth a voice—a single voice, but of amazing volume and power, the voice of the Great Abstraction—of the Umlimo himself. And the answer is delivered in the same rhythm as the invocation—

“Dire is the scourge, Sweeping from far: Bed is the spear, Warming for war. Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies; Nation’s new birth—Manhood arise!”

Strong and firm the Voice rolls forth, booming from that black portal as with a thunder note—clear to a marvel in its articulation, cold, remorseless in the decision of its darkly prophesying utterance. Indescribably awe-inspiring as it pours forth its trumpet notes upon the dead silence, small wonder that to the subdued eager listeners it is the voice of a god. Thrice is the rhythm repeated, until every word has burned deep into their minds as melted lead into a beam of soft-grained wood.

And now in the silence which ensues there steps forth from the ranks of the Abantwana ’Mlimo one man. Standing alone a little in front of the rest, he faces upward to the great cave overhead. In the absence of weird adornment, and with the moon upon his bird-like countenance, stands revealed Shiminya.

“Great Great One! Voice of the Wise!” he cries. “Thy children hear thee. They are brought even unto death. The scourge which Makiwa has brought upon them strikes hard. It is striking their cattle down by scores already. There will be no more left.”

There is a pause. With outstretched arms in the moonlight, the mediator stands motionless, awaiting the answer. It comes:—

“There will first be no more Makiwa.”

A heave of marvel and suppressed excitement sways the crowd. There is no misunderstanding this oracular pronouncement, for it is in the main what all are there to hear. Shiminya goes on.

“Oh, Great Great One, the land is burned dry for lack of rain, and thy children die of hunger. Will the land never again yield corn?”

“Makiwa has laid his hand upon it;” and the dull, hollow, remorseless tone, issuing from the darkness, now seems swept by a very tempest of hate, then replies, “Remove the hand!”

Sticks are clutched and shields shaken to the accompaniment of a deep growl of wrath forced from between clenched teeth.

“Remove the hand!” runs in a humming murmur through the multitude. “Ah, ah! Remove the hand!”

Again, with hollow boom, the Voice rolls forth.

“Even the very skies are darkening. Behold!”

Every head is quickly jerked back.

“Whou!”

Just the one ejaculation, volleyed from every throat, and in it there is but one consent, one expression, that of marvel and quaking dread. For in the tense excitement of awaiting the utterances of the oracle none have noticed that the flooding light of the moon has been gradually fading to darkness, albeit not a cloud is in the heavens. Now, as they look up, lo! the silvern orb is half covered with a black shadow. Onward it steals, creeping further and further, until the broad disc is entirely shrouded. A weird unnatural darkness lies upon the earth.

In silent awe the superstitious savages gaze blankly upon the phenomenon. There are those among them who have beheld it before, and to such under ordinary circumstances it would be looked upon with little concern. Now, however, worked up as they are, it is different. There are even some among them who have heard of the darkening of the sun during the first struggle of the great parent race of Zulu against the white invasion. Then it presaged great slaughter of their white enemies. And, as though reading the thoughts of such, the awful voice of the Great Abstraction broke in upon the oppressive, unnatural gloom—

“Children of Matyobane, (Father of Umzilikazi, founder and first king of the Matabelo nation), hearken. When Makíwa thought to eat up the mighty stock from which ye are sprung the very sun withdrew his light, and the plains between Isandhlwana and Umzinyati were red with the blood of Makiwa. Such as were not slain fled from the land. For the children of Zulu the sun grew black. For the children of Matyobane the moon. Lo, the blackening of the moon is the hiding of the nation, crushed, blackened, beneath the might of Makiwa. But the blackness does not last; so is the foot of Makiwa removed from the neck of the people of Matyobane. Behold!”

Every face, which has been turned towards the bark mouth of the oracle, again looks skyward. The black disc is moving back. The outer rim of the broad moon once more shines forth in a shaft of light. Broader and broader does this become, the strained eyeballs of the wrought-up savages bent upon it with concentrated stare. Then the Abantwana ’Mlimo, falling prone to the earth, once more raise the chant, and this time the whole multitude joins, in a great rolling volume of chorus:—

“Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies; Nation’s new birth— Manhood arise!”

In wild uncontrollable excitement the multitude watches the now fast lightening orb; then, when the shadow has entirely left it, shining in bright, clear radiance as before, all faces are once more turned upward to the great granite pile, looming huge against the stars, its front a dull grey in the moonlight. Once more is the silence dead—expectant.

“Oh, Great Great One!” cries Shiminya, standing with arms outstretched, “we behold a nation’s new birth. But the time, O Word of the Wise? The time?”

“The time!” And now the Voice rolled from the black cavern mouth in a very thunder roar that reverberated among the mighty granite walls in a shock of echo that struck the entranced auditors speechless. “The time, Children of Matyobane? The time? Before next moon is dead.”

Chapter Eight.

The Parting of the Ways.

John Ames was seated beneath the verandah at Cogill’s Hotel with a blue official document in his hand and a very disgusted look upon his face.

The former accounted for the latter inasmuch as it was the direct cause thereof. In cold official terminology it regretted the necessity of abridging the period of his leave, and in terse official terminology requested that he would be good enough to return to his post with all possible dispatch.

He looked up from his third reading of this abominable document, and his brows were knitted in a frown. He looked at the thick plumbago hedge opposite, spangled with its pale blue blossoms, at the smooth red stems of the tall firs, up again at the deep blue of the cloudless sky overhead, then down once more upon the detestable missive, and said:—

“Damn!”

John Ames was not addicted to the use of strong language. Now, however, he reckoned the occasion justified it.

“With all possible dispatch.” That would mean taking his departure that night—that very night. And here he was, ready and waiting to do the usual escort duty, this time for a long day out on the bicycle. If he were to start that night it would mean exactly halving that long day. With a savage closing of the hand he crushed the official letter into a blue ball, and once more ejaculated—

“Damn!”

“Sssh!”

Thereat he started. Nidia Commerell was standing in the doorway right beside him, drawing on a pair of suede gloves, her blue eyes dancing with mirth. She was clad in a bicycle skirt and light blouse, and wore a plain white sailor hat.

“Sssh! You using naughty swear words? I am surprised at you!”

The smile which rippled brightly from the mobile lips showed, however, that the surprise, if any, was not of a derogatory nature. John Ames laughed ruefully.

“I’m sorry. But really it was under great provocation. I’ve received marching orders.”

“No? Not really? Oh, how disgusting!”

The utterance was quick. His eyes were full upon her face. How would she receive the communication? Was that really a flash of consternation, of regret, that swept over it?

“When must you go?” she continued, still, it seemed to him, speaking rather quickly.

“I ought to start by to-night’s train”—then, breaking off—“Where is Mrs Bateman? Is she ready?”

“We shall have to go without her. She can’t come—says she’s getting headachy.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry!”

Nidia had to turn away her head to avoid a splutter outright. Never had she heard words intended to be sympathetic uttered in tones of more jubilant relief. To herself she said: “You are a sad tarradiddler, John Ames.” To him she said, “Yes; it’s a pity, isn’t it?” He, for his part, was thinking that this time the official order need not be interpreted too literally. It had plainly intimated that a state of things had transpired which necessitated the presence of every official at his post, but this time the state of things could dispense with his adjusting hand for twenty-four hours longer. “With all possible dispatch.” Well, to start that night under the circumstances would not be possible, under others it would. Throughout the whole day Nidia would be alone with him, and he meant that day to be one that he should remember.

They started. At first the exhilarating spin along the smooth fir-shaded road, together with the consciousness that the day was only beginning, caused him partly to forget that most unwelcome recall. They had arranged to use by-roads where the riding was good, and, taking the train at Mowbray, proceed to Cape Town, and ride out thence as far beyond Camp’s Bay as they felt inclined. Now, as they spun along through the sunlit air, between leafy gardens radiant with bright flowers and the piping of gladsome birds, the noble mountain wall away on the left towering majestic though not stern and forbidding, its cliffs softened in the summer haze, its slopes silvered with the beautiful wattle, and great seas of verdure—the bright green of oak foliage throwing out in relief the darker pine and blue eucalyptus—surging up against its mighty base, the very contrast afforded by this glorious scene of well-nigh Paradisical beauty, and the mental vision of a hot steamy wilderness, not unpicturesque, but depressing in the sense of remote loneliness conveyed, was borne forcibly home to the mind of one of them. It was a question of hours, and all would have fled. He grew silent. Depression had reasserted itself.

Yet, was it merely a sense of the external contrast which was afflicting him? He had traversed this very scene before, and not once or even twice only. He had always admired it, but listlessly. But now? The magic wand had been waved over the whole. But why transform the ordinary and mundane into a paradise for one who was to be suffered but one glimpse therein, and now was to be cast forth? A paradise—ah yes; but a fool’s paradise, he told himself bitterly.

“Well?”

He started. The query had come from Nidia, and was uttered artlessly, innocently, but with a spice of mischief.

“Yes? I was wondering?” she went on.

“What were you wondering?”

“Oh, nothing! Only—er—as it is rather—er—slow for me, don’t you think so—supposing you give me an inkling of the problem that is absorbing you so profoundly? You haven’t said a word for at least ten minutes. And I like talking.”

“I am so sorry. Yes; I might have remembered that. How shall I earn forgiveness?”

“By telling me exactly what you were thinking about, absolutely and without reservations. On no other conditions, mind.”

“Oh, only what a nuisance it is being called away just now.”

The tone was meant to be offhand, but the quick ear of Nidia was not so easy to deceive. When John Ames did look down into the bright laughing face it had taken an expression of sympathy, that with a quick bound of the heart he read for one that was almost tender.

“Yes. It is horrid!” she agreed. “You had a long time to run yet, hadn’t you?”

“Nearly a month.”

“I call it perfectly abominable. Can’t you tell them it is absolutely impossible to come back just now, that—er—in short, on no account can you?”

He looked at her. “Do you wish it?” was on his lips; but he left the words unsaid. He shook his head sadly.

“I’m afraid it can’t be done. You see, I am entirely at their beck and call. And then, from what they say, I believe they really do want me.”

“Yes; I was forgetting that. It is something, after all, to be of some use, as I was telling you the other night; do you remember?”

Did he remember? Was there one word she had ever said to him—one look she had ever given him—that he did not remember, that he had not thought of, and weighed, and pondered over, in the dark silent hours of the night, and in the fresh, but far from silent, hours of early morning? No, indeed; not one.

“I remember every single word you have ever said to me,” he answered gravely, with his full straight glance meeting hers. And then it was Nidia Commerell’s turn to subside into silence, for there struck across her mind, in all its force, the badinage she had exchanged with her friend in the privacy of their chamber. If he had never before, as she defined it, “hung out the signals,” John Ames was beginning to do so now—of that she felt very sure; yet somehow the thought, unlike in other cases, inspired in her no derision, but a quickened beating of the heart, and even a little pain, though why the latter she could not have told.

“Come,” she said suddenly, consulting her watch, “we must put on some pace or we shall miss the train. We have some way to go yet.”

On over the breezy flat of the Rondebosch camp-ground and between long rows of cool firs meeting overhead; then a sharp turn and a spin of straight road; and in spite of the recurring impediments of a stupidly driven van drawn right across the way, and a long double file of khaki-clad mounted infantry crossing at right angles and a foot’s pace, they reached the station in time, but only just. Then, as Nidia, laughing and panting with the hurry of exertion she had been subjected to, flung herself down upon the cushion of the compartment, and her escort, having seen the bicycles safely stowed, at considerable risk to life and limb, thanks to a now fast-moving train, clambered in after her, both felt that the spell which had been moving them to grave and serious talk was broken between them—for the present.

But later—when the midday glow had somewhat lost its force, when the golden lights of afternoon were painting with an even more vivid green the vernal slopes piling up to the great crags overhanging Camp’s Bay, the same seriousness would recur, would somehow intrude and force its way in. They had left their bicycles at the inn where they had lunched, and had half strolled, half scrambled down to the place they now were in—a snug resting-place indeed, if somewhat hard, being an immense rock, flat-topped and solid. Overhead, two other boulders meeting, formed a sort of cave, affording a welcome shelter from the yet oppressive sun. Beneath, the ocean swell was raving with hoarse sullen murmur among the iron rocks, dark with trailing masses of seaweed, which seemed as a setting designed to throw into more gorgeous relief the vivid, dazzling blue of each little inlet. Before, the vast sheeny ocean plain, billowing to the ruffle of the soft south wind.

“Really, you are incorrigible,” said Nidia at last, breaking the silence. “What shall I do to make you talk?”

“Yes; I am very slow to-day—I sorrowfully admit it,” he answered, with a laugh which somehow or other lacked the ring of merriment.

“I know,” went on Nidia. “I must start discussing the Raid. There! You will have to be interesting then.”

“That’s ruled out,” he replied, the point being that from the very first days of their acquaintance the Raid was a topic he had resolutely declined to argue or to express any opinion upon. “Besides, it’s such a threadbare subject. You are right, though. I am treating you very badly. In fact, it is not fair, and I am haunted by a shrivelling conviction that you are sorry you came out to-day, and at this moment are heartily wishing yourself at home. Am I not right?”

“No; quite wrong. I have, you know, a great respect for your convictions—at times, but for this last one I have nothing but contempt; yes, contempt—profound contempt. There! Will that satisfy you?”

Her tone was decisive, without being vehement. In it—in the glance of her eyes—he detected a ring of sympathy, of feeling. Could she read his inner thoughts, he wondered, that each hour of this day as it wore away did but tighten the grip of the bitter desolating pain that had closed around his heart? He watched her as she reclined there, the very embodiment of dainty and graceful ease. He noted the stirring of each little wave of gold-brown hair as it caressed her forehead to the breath of the soft sea wind; the quick lifting of the lashes revealing the deep blue of the soulful eyes, so free and frank and fearless as they met his; the rich tint of the smooth skin, glowing with the kiss of the air and sun; every curve, too, of the mobile expressive lips; and the self-restraint he was forced to put upon himself became something superhuman. And it was their last day together! She, for her part, was thinking, “John Ames is a fool, but the most self-controlled fool I ever met. How I shall miss him! Yes, indeed, how I shall miss him!” Aloud she said—

“I wonder when we shall be going up-country?”

“Never, I predict,” was the somewhat decisive rejoinder.

Nidia raised herself on one elbow. “You seem pretty certain as to that,” she said, “so certain that I begin to think the wish is father to the thought.”

“Thank you.”

“There, there, don’t be cross. I am only teasing you. I can be an awful tease at times, can’t I? Ask Susie if I can’t—if you haven’t found it out already, that is.”

The mischief had all left her voice, the laughing eyes were soft and sympathetic again. He laughed, too, but somewhat sadly.

“Because things up there are not over bright, and are likely to be less so. The cattle is all dying off from this new disease—rinderpest. The natives have never been thoroughly conquered, and there are still plenty of them. The loss of their cattle will make them desperate, and therefore dangerous. The outlook is gloomy all round.”

“Oh, but you will be able to put things right when you get back.”

John Ames stared, as well he might. Either she meant what she said or she did not. In the first event, she had a higher opinion of him than ever he had dreamed; in the second, the remark was silly to the last degree; and silliness was a fault, any trace of which he had not as yet discovered in Nidia Commerell.

“You cannot really mean that,” he said. “If so, you must be under an entire misconception as to my position. I am only one of several. We each of us try to do our best, but none of us can do anything very great.”

Listening intently, Nidia was saying to herself, “How true he rings! Note. The swagger and egotism of the up-to-date Apollo is conspicuously absent here.” Then, aloud—

“No; I was not chaffing. I believe you can do a great deal. Remember, we have been very much together of late, and I rather pride myself upon a faculty for character reading.”

The delicate insinuation of flattery in her tone constituted the last straw. John Ames felt his resolution growing very weak. Passionate words of adoration rose to his lips—when—

A screech and chatter of child voices and scurrying feet, right behind the rock under whose shadow the two were resting, then the sound of scrambling, and their resting-place was theirs no more. A round half-dozen uproarious infants were spreading themselves over the rock slabs around, their shrill shrieks of glee hardly arrested, as with a start they discovered the presence of others upon their new playground. And that they were there to stay they speedily made known by dint of yelling response to the calls of the parent-bird, whose own voice drew nearer around the rock.

The spell was broken. At that moment John Ames would have given anything to have seen the rocks below swept by a sudden tidal wave. The spell was broken. The moment had come and gone, and he was aware, as by an intuitive flash, that it would not come again.

Nidia rose. Did she welcome the fortuitous relief or not? he wondered, as he glanced at her keenly.

“Let us stroll quietly back,” she said. “We shall get no more peace with that nursery romping round us. Besides, it’s time we thought of beginning the return ride.

“What an ideal day it has been!” resumed Nidia, when the ground became even enough to carry on conversation with any degree of facility. “Hasn’t it?”

“M’yes. Very ‘ideal,’ in that like other ideals it doesn’t last. An ideal is like a wine-glass, sooner or later destined to be shattered.”

“That’s quite true. I wonder are there any exceptions to the rule?”

“Safely, no. People set one up for themselves and adore it; then crash—bang! some fine day they knock it down, and it shatters into smithereens. Then there is a pedestal empty—a pedestal to let.”

“And up goes another image, with like result,” laughed the girl.

“Precisely. But how cynical we are becoming. By the way, to go back to what I was saying a little while ago, you will probably not be coming up-country at all. Then we shall never see each other again.”

“Even then, why should we not?”

“Why? Why, because the chance that—that made us meet now is not likely to recur. That sort of blessed luck is not apt to duplicate in this vale of woe. Not much.”

She smiled, softly, tenderly. The self-contained John Ames was waxing vehement. His words were tumbling over each other. He could hardly get them out quick enough.

“And would you mind so very much if it did not?”

“Yes.”

“So would I.”

Then silence for a few moments. They were walking along a high-road. At very short intervals the ubiquitous cyclist—singly or in pairs—shot noiselessly by, or here and there a coloured pedestrian, seated by the roadside, eyed them indifferently.

“Why should we lose sight of each other?” said John Ames at length. “Do you know—this time we have had together has been—has been one that I could never have dreamed of as within the bounds of possibility.”

“We have had a good time, haven’t we?” assented Nidia, demurely, though conscious of a quickening pulse. “And now, I don’t mind telling you something—because I have failed to discover one atom of conceit in your composition—so I don’t mind telling you—”

“What?”

The interruption was startling. The voice was dry, the face stony. Had he but known it the interrupter was going up many degrees in the speaker’s estimation.

“Only that I shall miss you dreadfully—when you are gone.”

Nidia’s mischievous demureness simply bubbled with enjoyment at the look of relief which came over the other’s features. She continued—

“As you say, why should we lose sight of each other? You may write to me occasionally—when you can spare the time required for the saving of your country from all the ills that threaten it. But—let’s see, I—oh, well, never mind—I was going to say something, but I won’t. And now—we must not be serious any more. We have had a lovely day, the loveliest day we could possibly have had, and we are going to have a lovely ride back. Here we are at the hotel again.”

The significance of the tone, the veiled emphasis which underlay the remark, was not lost upon the listener. John Ames was one who knew when to let well alone. Patience, tact, a judicious mind, were all among his qualifications for his responsible and difficult post. Should they fail him in a matter where private feeling, however deep, was concerned? So he acquiesced.

Nidia, for her part, was conscious of mingled feelings. She did not know whether to be glad or not that they had been summarily interrupted; on the whole, she thought she was glad. On the other hand, she had not exaggerated in saying she would miss him dreadfully, and already she had some idea as to how she would miss him. Here was a man who was outside her experience, who represented an entirely new phase of character. With her, too, this time that they had spent so much together stood forth.

But although no more was said during their homeward ride of a nature to trench on grave matters, the tone between both of them was one that seemed unconsciously to breathe of confidence and rest. The deep murmur of the ocean swell had sunk its hoarse raving as it lapped the rocks below the skirting road; the golden glory of the heaving waters had turned to a deeper sapphire blue suffused with pink as the sun sank behind the rampart crags, and already two or three stars, twinkling forth, seemed to rest upon, then hover over, the rock crest of the great Lion Mountain, heaving up, a majestic sentinel, over the liquid plain. Yes; both were content, for in the hearts of both still rang the gladness and the quietude of a very conscious refrain:—“We shall meet again, soon.”

Thus the parting of the ways. But before they should meet again—what? In that surrounding of peace and evening calm, small wonder that no suggestion should find place as to a very different surrounding, where, far to the north, from the drear mountain wilderness, even at that moment, thundered forth—as another Voice from Sinai of old—a dire and terrible voice telling of scourge and of war—a voice, indeed, of woe and of wrath, sounding its dread tocsin o’er an entire land.

“Burned is the earth, Gloom in the skies Nation’s new birth— Manhood arise!”

Chapter Nine.

The Scourge—and After.

Madúla’s kraal, in the Sikumbutana, was again in a state of profound malcontentment and unrest, and again for much the same reason as before. Then that reason had been the imminent loss of its cattle, now that loss had become a certainty. The dread scourge had swept over the land, in all its dire unsparingness, and now Madúla and his people were convened to witness the destruction of their worldly wealth.

For the edict of the ruling power had gone forth. The animals were to be destroyed, and that wholesale. Segregated into small herds, they were carefully watched. With the first case of sickness becoming apparent the whole herd containing it was doomed. And now nearly the whole of Madúla’s herds had been declared infected.

The place appointed for this wholesale slaughter was an open plain some little distance from the kraal. About threescore dead oxen lay where they had fallen, the nostrils of a few still frothy with the fatal running which denoted the fell pestilence. John Ames, grounding his smoking rifle, turned to talk with Inglefield and another white man, the latter being one of the Government cattle inspectors. Both these carried rifles, too, and behind them was drawn up a troop of native police. In a great semicircle Madúla’s people squatted around, their countenances heavy with sullen rankling, their hearts bitter and vengeful. In the mind of the chief the dexterous venom of Shiminya was taking full effect. The fact of a few cattle being sick was seized upon by their rulers as a pretext for the destruction of all; and what would become of the people then? In the minds of the people the predictions of Umlimo were being fulfilled to the letter. Now, however, they could afford to wait. Soon there would be no more cattle; soon—very soon—there would be no more whites.

John Ames, laying down his weapon, addressed the muttering, brooding savages. It was a most revolting task that which had been put upon him, he explained; not one that he would have undertaken of his own free will. To shoot down miserable unresisting animals in cold blood, one after another, could not be otherwise. It would seem to the people that to destroy the whole as well as the sick was an act of sheer wanton tyranny, but they must not look at it in that light. The Government was their father, and had their interests at heart; and although it was found necessary to reduce them to seeming poverty for the time being, yet they would not be losers in the long run. Then, again, they were in no worse case than the white men themselves, whose cattle was destroyed in the same way if disease broke out; but, above all, they must be patient, and bear in mind that by right of conquest all the cattle in the land belonged to the Government, and what they had was only allowed them by favour. This disease was a cloud they were all passing through, white and black alike. It would pass, and the sun would shine forth again. Let them be patient.

John Ames, in the plenitude of his experience, noted the sullen apathy wherewith his words were received, yet he attached no greater importance to it than he reckoned it deserved; he could appreciate the outrage on their feelings which this wholesale destruction of their most cherished possessions must involve. Then Madúla spoke.

“What Jonemi had told them must be true, since Jonemi said it. But what the people could not understand was why Government should have restored them their cattle, if only to destroy it all before their eyes; should give it back with one hand to take it away with the other. That did not seem like the fatherly act of a fatherly Government. Nor could they understand why the beasts that were not sick should be shot just the same as those that were. Let them be spared until the signs of sickness showed, then shoot them. Those signs might never show themselves.” And more to the same effect.

With infinite patience John Ames laid himself out to explain, for the twentieth time, all he had said before. It was like reasoning with a wall. “Let the people only have patience,” he concluded. “Let the people have patience.”

“M—m!” hummed his auditors, assenting. “Let the people have patience.”

But there was a significance in their tone which was lost on him then, though afterwards he was destined to grasp it.

“It’s a disgusting business all this butchery,” he observed, as he and the other two white men were riding homeward together. “I don’t wonder the people are exasperated. As Madúla says, they’ll never understand how the Government can give them back the cattle with one hand only to take it all away with the other.”

“It strikes me that Mr Madúla says a great deal too much,” said Inglefield, dropping the bridle on his horse’s neck, while shielding a match with both hands so as to light his pipe. “A little experience of the inside of Bulawayo gaol would do him all the good in the world, in my opinion.”

“You can’t work these people that way, Inglefield, as I’m always telling you,” rejoined John Ames. “You’ve got to remember that a man like Madúla wants some humouring. He was a bigwig here before either you or I held our commissions in this country, possibly before we had, practically, ever heard of it. Now, for my part, I always try and bear that in mind when dealing with the old-time indunas, and I’m confident it pays.”

“Oh, you go on the coddling plan,” was the thoughtless retort. “For my part—well—a nigger’s a nigger, whether he’s an induna or whether he isn’t, and he ought to be taught to respect white men. I wouldn’t make any difference whatever he was. An induna! Faugh! A dirty snuffy nigger with a greasy black curtain ring stuck on top of his head. Pooh! Fancy treating such a brute as that with respect!”

“All right, Inglefield. I don’t in the least agree with you. Perhaps when you’ve had a little experience you may be in a position to form an opinion as to which of our lines is the most workable one.”

“Oh, draw it mild, Ames,” retorted the police officer, ill-humouredly. “It doesn’t follow that because a fellow can patter by the hour to a lot of niggers that he knows everything. I say, old chap, why don’t you chip in for some of old Madúla’s daughters—marry ’em, don’t you know? He has some spanking fine ones, anyway.”

The tone was ill-tempered and sneering to the last degree. Inglefield could be bumptious and quarrelsome at times, but he had a poor life of it, with a detestable wife, and an appointment of no great emolument, nor holding out any particular prospect of advancement. All of which bearing in mind, John Ames controlled his not unnatural resentment, and answered equably:—

“Because I hope to make a better thing of life, Inglefield. But that sort of thing is rather apt to stick to a man, and crop up just when least convenient. I’m no prig or puritan, so putting it on that ground alone, it’s better not touched.”

“Oh, all right, old chap; only don’t be so beastly satirical. I can’t help grousing like the devil at times when I think how I’m stuck away here in this infernal God-forsaken hole. Wish I could fall into a bunk at Bulawayo or Salisbury or anywhere. Even Crosse here has a better time of it going around sniffing out rinderpest.”

“Don’t know about that,” said the cattle inspector. “I’ll swap you bunks, anyway, Inglefield.”

“Wish we could, that’s all,” replied the police officer, who was in a decidedly “grousy” vein, as he owned himself, half petulantly, half laughingly, when presently the conical huts of Sikumbutana hove in sight over the brow of the rise. “Well, now, Ames, you’ll roll up to ‘skoff’ at seven, won’t you, unless you’ll change your mind and come in now?”

“I’ll roll up all right. But not now, I’ve got some work on hand, and it’s early yet.”

“Very well. Seven, then. Don’t go sending over some tinpot excuse, you unreliable beggar.”

“No; I’ll be there. So long. So long, Crosse.” And he turned his horse’s head into the track that led to his own compound. “Rum chap that fellow Ames,” said Inglefield, when he and the cattle inspector were alone together. “He’s a rattling good chap at bottom, and we are really great pals, but we fight like the devil whenever we have to do with each other officially.”

“How’s that?” said Crosse, a quiet, self-contained man, with a large sandy beard and steady, reliable eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s so beastly officious—he calls it conscientious. Always prating about ‘conscientious discharge of his duties’—‘can’t conscientiously do it’—and so on. You know. Now, only the other day—or, rather, just before he went on leave—he must needs get my pet sergeant reduced—a fellow worth his weight in gold to me as a hunter. Now, of course, the chap has turned sulky, and swears he’s no good—can’t tell where game is or is likely to be, or anything.”

“So. How did he get him reduced?”

“Oh, some rotten bother with that old nigger who was out to-day, Madúla. Nanzicele—Oh, blazes! I can’t manage these infernal clicks.”

“Never mind; you’ll learn some day,” said Crosse. “Well, what did Nanzicele do?”

“Nothing. That’s the point of the whole joke. He was sent to collar some cattle from Madúla, and he—didn’t collar it.”

“And is that why he was reduced?”

“No fear. It was for trying to collar it. The niggers came in and complained to Ames, and Ames insisted on an inquiry. He took two mortal days over it, too; a rotten trumpery affair that ought to have been let rip. Then a lot of darn red tape, and my sergeant was reduced. No; Ames always pampers the niggers, and some day he’ll find out his mistake. If they come around—especially these indunas—he talks to them as if they were somebody. I’d sjambok them out of the compound.”

Crosse, listening, was chuckling to himself, for he knew whose judgment was likely to be the soundest, that of the speaker or that of Ames. Then he said:—

“And this Nanzicele—is he that big tall Kafir who was nearest us, on the outside of the line, during the cattle-shooting?”

“Yes; that’s the chap. By George! he’s a splendid chap, as plucky as the very devil. Many a time I’ve had him out with me, and he’d go through anything. He was with me once when I missed a charging lion out beyond Inyati. He didn’t miss him, though—not much. I’d trust my life to that fellow any day in the week.”

“Trust your life to him, would you?”

“Yes. Rather.”

“M—m!”

“Yes, I would. You don’t know the chap, Crosse. I do. See?”

“’M—yes.”

The while, John Ames, having turned his horse over to his boy, entered his office. There was not much to do that day, as it happened, so after spending half an hour looking over some papers, he locked up for the day, and adjourned to the hut which served him for sitting and dining room combined, in which we have already seen him.

He threw himself into a chair and lighted a pipe. There was an absent, thoughtful look in his eyes, which had been there ever since he found himself alone; wherefore it is hardly surprising that in lieu of seeking solace in literature, he should have sat, to all outward appearances, doing nothing. In reality, he was thinking—thinking hard and deeply.

A month had gone by since his unexpected and most unwelcome recall; but unwelcome as it had been, he could not quarrel with it on the ground of its superfluity. Times had been lively since his return—more than lively—but not in an exhilarating sense. The rinderpest had taken firm root in the land, and was in a fair way of clearing it of horned cattle from end to end. Not at domestic cattle did it stay its ravages either. The wild game went down before its fell breath; every variety of stately and beautiful antelope, formerly preserved with judicious care beneath the rule of the barbarian king, underwent decimation. But it was in the mowing down of the cattle that the serious side of the scourge came, because, apart from the actual loss to the white settlers, the enforced destruction of the native stock rendered the savages both desperate and dangerous. Already rumours of rising were in the air. The sullen, brooding demeanour exhibited by Madúla’s people was but a sample of the whole.

To the perilous side of the position, as regarded himself individually, John Ames was not blind. He was far too experienced for that. And his position was full of peril. Apart from a rising, he was marked out as the actual agent in executing the most hateful law ever forced upon a conquered people. His was the hand by which actually perished its animal wealth. Every bullock or heifer shot down sent a pang of fierce vindictiveness through more than one savage heart. In blind, barbaric reasoning, what more plausible than that to destroy the instrument would be to render inoperative the cause which set that instrument in motion? A blow from behind, a sudden stab, in the desperate impulse of the moment—what more likely?

Not of peril, present or potential, however, was he thinking, as he sat there alone, but of the change, absorbing and entire, which had come over his life since returning from his all too brief furlough. He had left, cool, well-balanced, even-minded; he had returned, so far as his inner moments were concerned, in a trance, a state of absorption. It was wonderful. He hardly recognised himself. But what a new glad sunshine was now irradiating his lonely life. The recollection! Why, he could sit for hours going over it all again. Not again only, but again and again. Everything, from the first accidental meeting to that last bright and golden day by an enchanted sea—to the last farewell. Every word, every tone was recalled and weighed. Ah, he had not known what it was to live before! He had grovelled like a blind grub in the dust and darkness—now he was soaring in arrowy gleams upon wings of light. But—no words had been uttered, no promises exchanged. What matter? If at times of physical depression he felt misgivings he put them from him.

True to her promise, Nidia had written—once—and with that letter he had had no cause to find fault. She had even sent him a dainty little portrait of herself, the only one she had, she explained; but where that was habitually kept we decline to say, “We shall meet again,” she had declared. Yet if that utterance were to be unfulfilled, if indeed this dream were to fade, to go the way of too many such dreams, and to end in a drear awakening, even then was it not something to have lived in the dream, to have looked upon life as so new and golden and altogether priceless? With such considerations would he comfort himself in moments of depression.

“We shall meet again.”

Often he would picture to himself that meeting. There would be others present most probably, but she, in his sight, would be alone. She would be surrounded by adorers, of course, but as her eyes met his she would know there was in reality but one. In all the adjuncts to her serene loveliness which taste and daintiness could surround her with, she would stand before him. Such would be their meeting, and upon it he dwelt; and to it his imagination reached through space, as to the culminating ecstasy of the goal of a life attained.

From such soarings, however, comes a descent, as abrupt as it is profound, in this hard work-a-day world. John Ames sat bolt upright with a start of dismay, for the clock opposite told its own tale. His musings had carried him over some hours. It was nearly dark, and he was due—almost overdue—at Inglefield’s.

Chapter Ten.

The Igniting of the Flame.

“That man’s late again. He always is. Tom, don’t ever ask him again. He seems to treat me with studied rudeness.”

Thus Mrs Inglefield, consulting her watch. She was an acid looking person, who might once have been passable in aspect. Now the deepening of her habitual frown was far from prepossessing.

“It’s only on the stroke of seven,” said Inglefield, shortly. “Give him a little law, Annie. He’ll be here directly. Perhaps some nigger turned up at the last moment on particular business.”

The suggestion was like throwing paraffin upon flames.

“That makes it worse,” exploded the lady. “To keep me—to keep us—waiting to suit the convenience of a few filthy blacks—”

“Well, give the chap a show,” snapped Inglefield, not in the best of humours himself. The while, Crosse, the cattle inspector, sat profoundly pitying Inglefield, thinking, too, that the defaulter, when he did come, was not going to enjoy his dinner overmuch.

“Hope I’m not late,” said a voice in the doorway.

“Not a bit, Ames; at least, only two minutes, and that doesn’t count,” cried Inglefield, cordially, feeling very much “in opposition.”

“Roll up, man, and have an appetiser, Crosse, you’ll cut in?”

John Ames, ignoring the coldness of his hostess’ greeting, noticed that fully a quarter of an hour went by before they sat down to table. When they did sit down the interior of the hut looked snug enough. The bright lamp shed a cheerful glow upon the white napery and silver forks; and pictures and knick-knacks upon the walls and about the room—or rather, the hut, for such it was—rendered the place pleasant and homelike, suggestive of anything but the wilds of savage Matabeleland. Any remark, however, which he addressed to his hostess was met by a curt monosyllable, she turning immediately to converse with Crosse, affably voluble. It mattered nothing. He had only consented to come upon Inglefield’s urgent and repeated invitation, having experienced that sample of behaviour before.

“What sort of a time did you have down in Cape Town, Ames?” said Crosse presently, when he could conversationally break away.

“Rather a good one. It was a great nuisance having to come back.”

“Mr Coates was such a nice man,” interpolated Mrs Inglefield, with meaning, referring to John Ames’s locum tenens. “We used to see a great deal of him.”

“Find any nice girls down there, eh, Ames?” said Inglefield, slily, fully alive to the unveiled rudeness of his spouse.

“Oh yes—several.”

“And one in particular, eh?” went on the other, waggishly, drawing a bow at a venture; for John Ames was not one to wear his heart upon his sleeve or to embark in chatter upon the subject nearest and dearest to that organ.

“Nice girls! I didn’t know there were any nowadays,” snapped Mrs Inglefield. “A pack of bicycling, cigarette-smoking, forward tomboys!”

“Oh, come, Mrs Inglefield,” laughed Crosse, “you mustn’t be so down on them. They’re only up to date, you know.”

“Up to date! Then, thank Heaven I’m not up to date; I’m only old-fashioned,” she retorted.

“I’d be sorry to wear the boots of the chip who told you so, Annie,” pronounced Inglefield. “Besides, you’re romping hard over Ames’s feelings; at least, I surmise you are. He’s too close a bird to give the show away. But—as poor old Corney Grain used to say.”

“Oh, I always say what I mean,” she answered, with an air which plainly added: “if people don’t like it so much the worse for the people.” And John Ames was thinking that never again, under any circumstances whatever, would he sit at the table of this abominably ill-bred and offensive woman. He was right. He never would; but for a reason that it was as well he—and all of them seated there—did not so much as dream.

Then, partly that subject-matter for conversation is, to isolated dwellers in a remote wilderness, necessarily limited, partly because he deemed it a safe topic, Inglefield led the talk round to the day’s doings—the destruction of Madúla’s cattle.

“It’s an infernally wasteful way of getting rid of them,” he said. “I dare say you’ve blazed away nearer a thousand cartridges than a hundred, eh, Ames?”

“Quite that. As you say, it is an abominable waste, and if ever the time comes when we shall sorely need every one of those cartridges for our own defence—”

“Oh, now you’re croaking again, old chap,” interrupted Inglefield; while his spouse remarked—

“Faugh! I’d as soon be a slaughter-house butcher at once. Sooner.”

“Somebody must do it, you know, Mrs Inglefield,” replied John Ames, placidly. “If the job were turned over to natives they’d waste five times the number of cartridges, and the poor beasts would suffer all the more.”

“Suppose we change this very unpleasant subject,” she remarked, looking pointedly at him, quite ignoring the fact that it had been started by her husband, and she it was who had done the most towards keeping it going.

“Policeman he want to see Inkose.”

The interruption proceeded from one of the two small boys who acted as waiters, and who had just entered.

“Tell him to wait until I’ve done dinner, Piccanin,” replied Inglefield, placidly.

“It may be something important,” hazarded John Ames.

“Oh, it’ll keep till after dinner,” was the airy rejoinder. “Er—which policeman is it, Piccanin?”

“Big policeman, ’Nkose; him name Nanzicele. Him come up from barracks now.”

The men’s quarters—which, by the way, were not barracks but native huts—lay about three hundred yards below those occupied by their officer.

“Then tell ‘him’ to go back to them again, and wait until I’ve done dinner,” replied Inglefield, briskly; for he was of an obstinate turn, besides instinctively resenting anything like interference on the part of his brother official.

The small boy retired, and for a moment voices were heard outside. Then there entered—Nanzicele.

“Great Caesar!” cried Inglefield, reddening. “What the devil do you mean, sir, by disobeying orders? Go back to the barracks at once! Here, Puma! Hambasuka! Footsack!”

But ignoring the pointing finger of his irate superior, Nanzicele took one step to the side—leaving the door clear—and, standing at attention, ejaculated in loud and sonorous tones—

“Baba—’Nkose!”

Was it a signal? Crosse, who was seated opposite the door, lurched forward, falling with his face on the table, simultaneously with the crash of two shots fired from outside. John Ames, pinned to his chair by a grip as powerful as steel, was impotent to do more than ineffectually struggle. Half a dozen stalwart savages rushed into the hut, and, dividing their forces, four of them threw themselves upon Inglefield, the remaining two turning their attention to the latter’s wife. It was all done in a moment. The suddenness of it, the total, utter unpreparedness of those who, but two seconds ago, had been unsuspectingly dining, left not the smallest chance of resistance. Inglefield, starting up, instinctively to seize the carving-knife, was stabbed again and again with sword-bayonets before he could raise a hand, and fell to the floor. The wretched woman, too petrified with the suddenness and terror of it all even to shriek, was promptly despatched; one savage drawing his weapon across her throat with a slash that nearly severed the head. It was all over in a moment. Yet one victim remained:

John Ames, now bound fast to his chair with straps, felt himself grow dizzy and sick with the horror of this appalling butchery. Blood dripped to the floor, then splashed in bright red drops on the garments of the murderers. And those garments were the uniform of the Native Police.

All seemed to heave in misty dimness before his eyes. In a moment he would faint. Then, with a vast effort of will, he recovered himself. Why had he been spared? In a moment the whole situation flashed through his brain. This was the beginning of a general rising. The Native Police had no grudge against their officers, let alone against Inglefield, who was, if anything, too easy-going. If they were in open revolt, then the rising was general, even as he and one or two others had feared might one day be the case. The fiercely sullen demeanour of Madúla and his people at the destruction of their cattle now assumed an aspect of deadly significance. The destruction of their cattle! Ah, there was the last straw! But—why had he been spared?

Then amid this scene of horror hope came uppermost. His administration had always been signalled by strict and impartial justice to the natives, even when white interests were concerned—a line, be it whispered, not invariably the rule in those days, when the policy known as “supporting the white man against the black” at any cost, was deemed wise and necessary. He was known to several of the chiefs, and by chiefs and people alike respected. It might well be that he was marked out for exemption from a general massacre.

But now a voice, lifted up, seemed to shatter to fragments any such hopes—a great jeering voice, vengeful, triumphant, menacing. It was the voice of Nanzicele, addressing him in voluble Sindabele.

“Ho, Jonemi! Where are you now? And these? ‘Let the people have patience. Let the people have patience,’ Your words, Jonemi. Great words, Jonemi! Well, the people have had patience, and now their day is come. By this time to-morrow all the whites in the land will be dead.”

“Will be dead,” echoed those around, with an emphatic hum.

“Why have you—have you all done this thing, Nanzicele?” said John Ames, striving to repress the shudder of loathing and disgust which shook his voice. “Have you not been treated well—treated with every consideration and justice by your officer? And yet—”

“Justice!” growled the savage. “Justice! Now nay, Jonemi; now nay. I was a chief in the Amapolise, now I am a common man again. Who made me so? Not this”—pushing with his foot the bleeding corpse of Inglefield. “But for thy counsels he would not have brought me down. It was thou, Jonemi—thou. Now shall thy blood pour over my hand.”

Nanzicele all this while had been working himself up to a state of fury, as he talked into the face of his helpless prisoner, or victim, the others standing around emphatically applauding. Now he seized a poultry knife from the table, and, jerking back John Ames’ head, held the edge against his throat.

It was a horrible moment, that expectation of an agonising death, and an ignominious one to boot—one of those moments which could concentrate a lifetime of horror. The helpless man could do nothing. Every second he thought to feel the keen blade slashing through vein and muscle, carotid and windpipe. But the barbarian seemed in no hurry. He threw down the knife again.

“I have a better way with thee than that, Jonemi. When we have finished we will burn down this hut, leaving thee here. Ah—ah!” Then he turned his attention to the table, where the other murderers were promptly demolishing the remnants of the feast.

But for the tragedy just perpetrated the sight would have been comic. Two had got hold of a roast fowl and were quarrelling over it like a couple of dogs over a bone. A third had cut a huge chunk out of a leg of sable antelope, and having plastered it thickly with mustard, was devouring it in great bites, the tears streaming down his face the while. Pepper, too, had discomfited another; and yet another, trying to use it, had driven a fork nearly through his cheek, all talking and spluttering the while. Yet all were foul with the blood which had just been shed; even the white cloth was splashed and smeared with it. Among them John Ames recognised his own body-servant, Pukele. The latter had taken no active part in the murders, having, with two other men, come in later. Still, there he was among them, the man whose faithfulness, to himself at any rate, he had always deemed beyond suspicion; the man with whom he would have entrusted his life, even as poor Inglefield had said but an hour or two ago with regard to Nanzicele. Yet that fiend had been the first to murder him in cold blood. In truth, one could trust nobody. Little, therefore, was he surprised now when Pukele, turning to him, joined the others in abusing and threatening him.

A bottle of whisky, half emptied, stood on the table, and another, unopened, on the sideboard, together with two of “squareface.” Most of those present understood the corkscrew of civilisation, and in a few moments were choking and gasping with the effects of their fiery libations. As this unwonted indulgence began to take effect, the uproar created by the murderous crew became simply indescribable. Plates and dishes were smashed, glasses thrown at each other, and one of the bottles with its precious contents was smashed. And foremost of all, amid the madness of the riot, was Pukele—the quiet Pukele, the faithful Pukele.

Already two of the murderers had rolled under the table dead drunk, falling upon and clutching the gashed bodies of their victims. Others, snatching up knives from the table, with reeling step and blood-lust in their drunken faces, staggered towards their victim. But between the latter and them, somehow, was always interposed the form of the faithful Pukele, of the riotous Pukele, of the treacherous, murdering Pukele.

To John Ames it seemed that death’s bitterness should already be past, for whatever the method of it, death itself was sure. He knew he would never leave that hut alive, and could almost have prayed that all were over. Then his thoughts reverted to Nidia Commerell. How thankful he was that she was in safety twelve hundred miles away. Would she feel more than a transient sorrow or regret when she heard of his end? He would have died at his post anyhow. And then he recalled the words of flattering approval she had more than once uttered when expressing an interest in his career. And that last long golden day they had passed together. Well, even at this terrible moment he felt thankful he had lived to go through that experience. But—what was this?

The strap which bound his right arm to that of the chair had snapped. Snapped? No; it had been cut. The large form of Pukele stood in front of him, was standing with his hands behind his back, and one of those hands held a sword-bayonet such as was used by the Native Police, its haft towards John Ames. Now he saw who had cut the strap.

He reached forth cautiously, and gently withdrew the weapon from Pukele’s grasp; then, having cut the strap confining his other arm, bent down, and in a moment his legs were free. Pukele the while was discoursing volubly with the other Police rebels, fanning a heated discussion and egging them on to drink. But ever between them and the prisoner he stood. A horrible sight they presented, their once smart uniforms filthy with blood and grease, their faces lolling with intoxicated imbecility, their speech thick and their legs tottering. But the treacherous Pukele, the riotous, drunken, abusive Pukele, now seemed, strange to say, as sober as the proverbial judge. He stood firm, unless perhaps a gradual swaying of his body to the left were perceptible; and the door of the hut was behind him—a little to the left.

John Ames, between him and the door aforesaid, watched every move. The savage roysterers were becoming alternately more and more riotous and maudlin. Then the faithful Pukele made a movement with his hand behind him. It was unmistakable. John Ames slid from the chair, and in a moment was through the door, and round behind the hut just in time to avoid running right into the arms of a new—and sober—body of the now revolted police, who had come up to join in the fun and to loot their murdered officer’s quarters. He had escaped with his life. After all, there was some fidelity left among these barbarians, he thought, as he stepped briskly, yet cautiously, through the darkness. He had escaped with his life, yet here he was, in the heart of a rebel country—every one of whose white settlers had probably by this time fallen in savage massacre—without food or means of procuring any, and with no other weapon than a sword-bayonet. The outlook was far from reassuring.

Chapter Eleven.

Hollingworth’s Farm.

“Roll out, Dibs. Roll out, you lazy beggar. It’ll take us at least three hours.”

Thus Moseley, surveyor, to Tarrant, ditto. The campfire had gone out during the small hours, and the line of action enjoined upon the latter by his chum was not a congenial one, for the atmosphere half an hour before sunrise was chill and shivery. Yet, early as it was, the horses and pack-donkeys had already been turned out of the “scherm,” or extemporised enclosure, in which they had spent the night, and were cropping the grass with an enjoyment born of the night’s abstinence.

“No hurry,” returned he thus unceremoniously disturbed, rolling his rugs closer around him.

“But there is hurry, Dibs, if we want to get to Hollingworth’s by breakfast-time.”

“But I don’t want to get to Hollingworth’s by breakfast-time, or any other time for the matter of that.”

“Oh yes, you do, once you’re up. Come now, old man. Roll out.”

The two were old schoolfellows—hence the nickname which still stuck to one of them—and had met up-country by the merest chance, Moseley we have already seen, in the capacity of newly landed passenger from the English mail-steamer. Tarrant was a lean, dark man, with a pointed beard and a dry expression of countenance. He was inclined to take things easily, declaring that everything was bound to come right if only it were left alone. Moseley, on the other hand, was one of those painfully energetic persons, bursting with an all-pervading and utterly superfluous vitality. They had been out surveying claims, and were now on their return to Bulawayo.

The night’s camp had been pitched in a romantic glen, with nothing between the sleepers and the starry heaven but the spreading branches of a wild fig, nothing between them and Mother Earth but some cut grass and a rug. Stiff and cold, Tarrant rose from amid his blankets, and stood rubbing his eyes.

“I’ll never come out on survey with you again, Moseley,” he declared. “You’re a bore of the first water.”

“Won’t you, old chap? I seem to have heard something of that sort before—often before.”

“I mean it this time. Er—Mafuta. Tshetsha with that fire. Tshetsha umlilo, Umfaan. You savvy? Tshetsha!”

Whether the native boy understood this adjuration in the dialect known as “kitchen Kafir” or not, he continued stolidly striving to blow into flame some ends of stick still smouldering from last night’s blaze, it not seeming to occur to him that a couple of handfuls of dry grass would do the trick in as many seconds. The while the dialogue between his white masters continued.

“Who the devil is Hollingworth when he’s at home, Moseley?”

“Down-country man, up here trying to farm. Served in the war against Lo Ben, and had ground given him. Rattling good chap. By the way, he’s got rather a pretty wife.”

“Kids?”

“Yes; three or four. I forget which.”

“Faugh! Hate kids. Always a nuisance. Always yelling. Yell when they’re not happy; yell ten times more when they are. Besides, they smudge their faces with jam. Damn Hollingworth! I won’t go there.”

This statement was received by the other with all serenity and without reply. He knew his chum’s little weakness, therefore knew that the bait thrown out would be not merely nibbled at but swallowed, the objectionable progeny notwithstanding. So he continued pulling on his long boots and otherwise completing his not extravagant toilet with complete equanimity. And then Mafuta, who at length had got the fire to burn, came along with some steaming coffee.

“That’s better,” pronounced Tarrant, having got outside the invigorating brew. “Wonder if there are any crocs in these water puddles, Moseley? I’m going to tub.”

“Tub? Man alive, we’re just ready to start. What on earth do you want to tub now for?”

“I thought you said Hollingworth had a pretty wife,” tranquilly rejoined the other, digging into his kitbag for a towel. “You can’t make acquaintance with a pretty woman when you’re in an untubbed state, you know.”

Moseley roared.

“Oh, skittles!” he said. “You can tub when you get there.”

“I believe you’re right; and the water looks dashed cold at this time of day.”

“And I thought you said you wouldn’t go there.”

“Did I? Oh, well, I suppose I must if you do. It wouldn’t look well, would it?”

“Why, of course not. Hurry up now. The boys want to load up your kit.”

The pack-donkeys had been driven up, and the horses stood ready saddled. In an incredibly short space of time all personal baggage and camp impedimenta had been removed and stowed upon the backs of the patient little Neddies—in the long run and the land of horse-sickness and “fly,” perhaps more serviceable all round than that noble animal the horse. And then, as the first arrowy gleams of the sun began to warm the world, they started from their night’s camp.

It was pleasant country that through which they now rode. Dewdrops still hung from the sprays of the feathery acacias, gleaming like diamonds in the rising sunlight; and the thorn-brake was musical with bird voices, or the clucking of bush-pheasants scuttling alarmed amid the long grass and undergrowth; and here and there a troop of guinea-fowl darting away with the rapidity of spiders at the sound of hoofstrokes, as the wayfarers wended their way along the edge of a native “land.” Kraals, too, the conical roofs of the huts shining yellow in the sunlight; but from these no reek of blue smoke mounted to the heavens. Of cattle, either, was there no sign, nor indeed of human occupancy. The land seemed deserted—dead. What did it mean? Turning back, Moseley called to the boy to find out what he thought about it.

Mafuta came trotting up. Where were all the cattle? There were no cattle. They were all dead of the disease. Where were all the people? They had moved to other parts of the country, or possibly some were still lying asleep as there were no cattle to tend. He, Mafuta, did not know. This was not his part. He came from a kraal a long way off—away beyond the Gwai.

This Mafuta was a young Matabele, who had served in the Ingubo regiment when Lo Bengula was king, and had entered the white man’s service to earn money in order to buy a wife. He was an intelligent and warrior-looking youth, but with an expression of countenance as of one who had gazed on—perhaps taken part in—scenes of cruelty and bloodshed, and would not in the least object to doing so again. He was carrying Tarrant’s Martini rifle and cartridge-belt, and looked thoroughly at home with them, as in fact he was, for his masters would often send him out to shoot game for camp consumption, when the heat disinclined them for needless activity. Moseley had a shot-gun, which he preferred to carry himself.

Now, however, they were not on sport intent, but held steadily on their way; and, after about two hours’ riding, a thread of blue smoke appeared. A little further and they made out a homestead, standing on a slope beyond the high precipitous banks of a dry river.

“It’ll be something to get our heels under a table again,” remarked Tarrant, as they urged their horses up the steep path of the drift. “Eating your ‘skoff’ in a sort of tied-in-a-knot attitude, with your plate tobogganing away from you on the very slightest provocation, may be romantic enough on paper, but it’s a beastly bore in actual practice. Is that Hollingworth?”

“Yes.”

A tall man was advancing towards them from the house. He wore a large beard, and his attire was the same as theirs—a silk shirt, and riding-trousers tucked into long boots, leather belt, and broad-brimmed hat.

“Hallo, Moseley!” he sung out. “Back again, eh? What’s the news?”

“Oh, rinderpest—always rinderpest. Here, I say, d’you know Tarrant? No? Well, here he is. Not a bad chap at bottom, but you’ve got to keep him at it.”

The usual hand-shake followed, and then Hollingworth, farmer-like, began to growl.

“Rinderpest? I should think so. Why, I’ve hardly a hoof left. No fear. I’m going to chuck farming and go prospecting again. But come along in and have a drop of something after your ride. It’ll be breakfast-time directly.”

“Er—could one have a tub—among other things?” said Tarrant.

“Tub? Why, of course. Here—this way.” And their host piloted them behind the scenes.

When the two men re-appeared, refreshed both inwardly and out, the residue of the household were gathered. Tarrant, already appraising his hostess, decided that Moseley’s judgment was not at fault. She was a pretty little woman, dark-eyed and sparkling, albeit somewhat overtanned by sun and air; but it took him just two minutes to determine that she had not an idea or thought outside her very restive progeny, which, in proportion of one to the other, were even as a row of organ-pipes. Then a diversion occurred—a diversion strange and startling. The door behind him opened, and there entered somebody; yet was that any reason why Moseley should suddenly jump up from his seat like a lunatic, at the risk of upsetting no end of things, and vociferate—“Great Heavens! Miss Commerell, who’d have thought of meeting you here? When on earth did you get here? Well, I am glad!” No; there was no need for Moseley to kick up such a fuss. It was beastly bad form; but then, Moseley always was such an impulsive chap.

“So you’ve met before?” cried Mrs Hollingworth, who had been about to introduce them.

“Rather. I should rather think we had met before,” sung out Moseley, in what his travelling chum was wont to call his “hail-the-maintop” voice. “Why, we were fellow-passengers, fellow-actors, fellow-all-sorts-of-things, weren’t we, Miss Commerell? But how did you find your way up here, and when?”

“You’ve asked me about four questions at once, Mr Moseley,” said Nidia, in her bright, laughing way, “but I’ll only ask you one—How am I going to answer them all at once?”

Tarrant, the while, was murmuring to himself, “Oh, never mind me. Perhaps in half an hour or so he may remember that we are pards, and that I’m entitled to share his acquaintance with the young lady.” And indeed at that moment the same idea occurred to Moseley himself, and he proceeded to introduce them.

Nidia was looking her very best. Here, in a settler’s homestead, perforce rough, in the hot steamy wilds of Matabeleland, she looked as cool and fresh as with all the appliances of comfort and civilisation ready to hand. Tarrant, who rather fancied himself as a connoisseur in that line, was struck. Here was something quite out of the common, he thought to himself, as his glance took in the animated, expressive face, the lighting up of the blue eyes, the readiness wherewith the lips would curve into the most captivating of smiles, the dainty figure, and the cool, neat, tasteful attire. Mrs Hollingworth was a pretty woman, Moseley had declared, and rightly; but his chum had never prepared him for anything like this.

The while Nidia herself was replying to the questions volubly fired into her by Moseley. They had come up to Bulawayo in due course. Fatiguing! No; on the whole she had rather enjoyed the journey—the novelty and so on—and everybody they met had been very kind to them, and had done all they knew to make things easy. How was Mrs Bateman? Oh, flourishing. In fact, when Mr Bateman returned she herself had, of course, felt de trop, and so had come to inflict herself on Mrs Hollingworth, and see some of the real wild side of the country.

The last in her most arch and quizzical manner.

“It’s a poor time you’ve chosen to look at it in, Miss Commerell,” remarked Hollingworth. “Rinderpest has about done for us all, and bar that the whole show has been as dry as chips.”

“Yet, it’s all very interesting to me, at any rate,” she returned. “And the savages. I can hardly believe they are the wicked ferocious beings you all make out, poor, patient, put-upon looking mortals! Some of the old men have such really fine faces, and their voices are so soft and kindly—though, of course, I can’t understand a word they say,” she broke off, with a whimsical candour that made everybody laugh.

Hollingworth whistled.

“‘Soft and kindly!’ Why, they are just about as sulky and discontented as they can well be—though, poor devils, one can hardly blame them. It must be hard, rough luck to see their cattle shot down by hundreds—by thousands—under their very noses. Of course they abuse the Government for giving them back the cattle with one hand only to take it away with the other. It’s only what we should do ourselves.”

“I should think so. Poor things! Really, Mr Hollingworth, I think you seem to have treated them all very badly.”

Such a sentiment was not popular in Matabeleland then, nor, for the matter of that, has it ever been. In fact, it is about as heterodox an utterance as though some rash wight were to pronounce the former realm of Lo Bengula a non-gold-producing country. But it was impossible to be angry with the owner of the voice that now made it.

“I don’t know that we have, Miss Commerell,” replied Hollingworth. “Indeed, I think, on the whole, we haven’t. Now, I can always get boys enough—so can my neighbours—and that’s the best test. A nigger won’t stop a week with anybody who treats him badly.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that way, Mr Hollingworth. I meant as a nation.”

“Even there, Lo Bengula and the old chiefs didn’t rule them with sugar and honey, let me tell you. But, squarely, I believe they did prefer the kicks of Lo Ben to the halfpence of the Chartered Company; and I suppose it’s natural. A nigger’s ways are not a white man’s ways, and never will be.”

And then as the shrill yells and other vociferations raised by the Hollingworth posterity in fierce debate over the limit of its jam allowance rendered further conversation impossible, an adjournment was made outside.

“Were you all the time at the Cape before coming up here, Miss Commerell?” began Moseley, as they found seats beneath the shade of a large fig-tree.

“Yes. We remained on at Cogill’s. It was rather fun. I think there was hardly a corner of the whole neighbourhood we didn’t explore.”

”—With John Ames.”

The tone, slightly bantering, was thoroughly good-natured. Even one more touchy than Nidia Commerell could hardly have taken offence. But nothing was further from her thoughts.

“You know him, then?” And the expressive face lighted up with genuine pleasure.

“Not personally; only by name.”

“Then, how did you know—”

”—About the explorations? The Cape Peninsula is a very gossipy place.”

“I suppose so. Most places are,” said Nidia, tranquilly; “but that sort of thing never troubles me one little bit. Mr Ames lives somewhere up here, doesn’t he? I wonder where he is now?”

Cool and at ease they sat there chatting. Had she been a clairvoyante a vision might have been vouchsafed to Nidia—the vision of a man, crouching in a thicket of “wacht-een-bietje” thorns, his face and hands lacerated, his clothes torn—a hunted man, with the look of some recent horror stamped upon his pale, set face; the last degree of desperation, of despair, yet of resolution, shining from his eyes; his hand grasping a sword-bayonet, already foul with the dried stains of human blood; and flitting through the brake, their dark forms decked with cowhair and other fantastic adornments, glistening in the sun, a band of armed savages bent on the shedding of blood. But not being blessed—or the reverse—with the faculty of clairvoyance, all she did see was the eminently peaceful scene around her—the two men lazily smoking their pipes beneath the shade of the great tree, while the third moved about attending to some of the hundred and one details of his farm business; the figure of her hostess, her head protected by an ample white “kapje,” coming forth to see that four of her young, disporting themselves in the open in front of the house, were not getting into more mischief than usual, and retiring precipitately within to assuage the yells of the fifth, and haply to attend to some household duty, “Where he is now?” repeated Moseley. “Why, he can’t be far from here. He’s Native Commissioner of Sikumbutana. I don’t suppose his place can be more than twenty or twenty-two miles off. Eh, Dibs?”

“About that,” assented Tarrant, laconically.

“I should so like to see him again,” pursued Nidia.

“Nothing easier, Miss Commerell. Get Hollingworth to send over a boy with a note, or a message to that effect, and I predict Ames will be here like a shot.”

“I’m sure he would,” assented Nidia, in such a genuinely and naturally pleased tone as to set Tarrant the cynic, Tarrant the laconic, Tarrant the incipient admirer of herself, staring. “We were great friends down at the Cape, and made no end of expeditions together. Yes; I would like to see him again.”

“Phew!” whistled Tarrant to himself, not entirely deceived by her consummate ingenuousness. “Lucky Ames! Well, there’s no show for me in that quarter, that’s manifest.”

“Isn’t he that rather good-looking chap who was sitting at our table the day I had lunch with you at Cogill’s?” said Moseley.

“Yes. That’s the man. We soon got to know him, and saw a great deal of him.”

“And thought a great deal of him?”

“Well, yes. I can see that you’re trying to tease me, Mr Moseley, but I don’t care. I don’t know when I’ve seen a man I liked better.”

“‘Present company—’ of course?”

“No; not even present company. No; but really, I would like to let Mr Ames know I am here. But I don’t like to ask Mr Hollingworth. It’s a long way to send, and he may not be able to spare a boy.”

Thought Tarrant, “She’s a puzzler! She’s playing on the innocent stop for all the instrument will carry, or—she’s genuine. Can’t make her out.”

But Moseley lifted up his voice and hailed—

“Hollingworth!”

“What is it?” sung out that worthy. “Sun over the yard-arm yet? All right. You know where to find it. No soda, though; you’ll have to do with selzogene. If you want ‘squareface’ you must get the missis to dig it out of the store. There’s none out. Maitland and Harvey between them got outside what there was yesterday.”

“No, no; that’s not what we want, though it’ll come in directly,” laughed Moseley. “Look here, Hollingworth”—the latter had drawn near by this time—“Miss Commerell has found an old friend up here—Ames at Sikumbutana—and she doesn’t like to ask you to send a boy over to let him know she’s here.”

“But, Mr Moseley, I didn’t tell you to ask Mr Hollingworth,” laughed Nidia.

“Pooh! Why didn’t you like to ask me, Miss Commerell? Of course I can send over. Though—if it will be all the same to you, I’d rather send to-morrow,” Hollingworth added dubiously.

“Certainly it will. Thanks awfully. Are you sure it won’t inconvenience you?” said Nidia, in her most winning way.

“Not to-morrow. To-day, you see, I have two boys away. But I’ll start one off the first thing in the morning.”

She reiterated her thanks; and Tarrant, keenly observant, said to himself: “No; clearly I’ve no show. Damn Ames!”

Chapter Twelve.

The Spreading of the Flame.

“Well, good-bye, Moseley. Pity you’re in such a hurry; you might just as well have stayed the night. However, since you’re determined, you’d better not ride too slow. It’ll take you three mortal hours to fetch Jekyll’s place.”

Thus Hollingworth, soon after the midday dinner. The horses stood ready saddled, the pack-donkeys having been sent on in the forenoon.

“I’ll see you in Bulawayo week after next, I suppose. I’ve got to go in about that disputed ‘pegging’ case. Beastly nuisance! Besides, I’ve got to take Miss Commerell back.”

Tarrant pricked up his ears at this. He had not done much to improve the shining hour with Nidia during that long, cool, lazy morning. He had confined himself to observing her, now and then putting in a word or two, but not often. But he had plans.

And now the farewells became general, all talking at once, as people will on such occasions; for the whole household had turned out to see them off. Suddenly Hollingworth said:—

“You’ve forgotten your rifle, Tarrant. Never mind; don’t get down”—for the other was already mounted. “I’ll get it for you. Which corner did you leave it in?”

“Didn’t leave it. Mafuta’s gone on ahead with it.”

“Oh! No chance of him clearing with it, eh?” said Hollingworth.

“No; he’s a reliable boy. Had him a long time. He’s quite safe.”

Thus in that lurid March of ’96 did the settlers in Matabeleland rejoice in their security.

“You put that on rather well, old man,” said Tarrant, as the two rode along.

“What did I put on?”

“Oh, the surprise part of the business. Now I see why you were so desperately bent on fetching up at Hollingworth’s.”

“Smart boy, Dibs. See through a brick wall, and all that sort of thing,” replied Moseley, good-humouredly. “This time you’ve seen through too far, though. I had no more notion Miss Commerell was there than you had, or even that she was in the country at all. Nice girl, isn’t she?”

“Ye-es. I was studying her rather closely. She’s either the most consummate actress or the most out of the ordinary sample of her sex I’ve encountered for a long, long time, if ever.”

“Well, she’s the last, then. If there’s one thing about Nidia Commerell that appeals to me it is that she’s so perfectly natural, and therefore, of course, unconventional.”

“Oh, she does ‘appeal’ to you, then? I rather thought she did,” said Tarrant, serenely. “But you’ve no show, old man. It’s the other Johnny—what’s his name—”

”—Ames.”

”—Yes. He seems to have got the floor just now.”

“As to the first—skittles; as to the last—why do you think so?”

“Didn’t I tell you I was studying her rather closely? When you first mentioned—er—Ames, she just, ever so little, overdid it. You may rely upon it that joker made his hay while the sun shone.”

Moseley burst into a great contemptuous laugh. “Oh, bosh, Dibs! You’ve got the keenest nose for a mare’s nest I ever saw. I tell you that’s Miss Commerell’s way. If she likes any one she doesn’t in the least mind saying so. That alone shows there’s nothing deeper in it.”

“Her way, is it? Oh, well, then, so much the worse for—er—Ames.”

The while those they had just left were comparing opinions upon them.

“That friend of Mr Moseley’s seems a very quiet man,” Mrs Hollingworth was saying. “Who is he, George?”

“Never saw him before in my life. In the same line of business, I take it. His ‘quietness,’ though, seemed to me to cover a suspicion of ‘side.’ Sort of ‘know everything’ manner.”

“Yes. Perhaps I am wrong, but there seemed a sort of conscious superiority about him. What did you think, Nidia?”

“Just what you do. But we may be wrong. The other is all rights though, so jolly and good-natured always. We came out on the same ship.”

“Moseley. Yes; he’s a good chap, but he’s got a detestable wife,” said Hollingworth.

“It’s astonishing what a number of ‘good chaps’ have,” laughed Nidia. “But where is she?”

“In England now. Moseley drives his trade here, and she has a good time on the lion’s share of the proceeds there. She won’t stay in this country. Yes? What is it?”

This to his son and heir, aetat ten, who was trying to get in a chance of asking to be allowed to go out and shoot a buck.

“Don’t know. You’re too much of a kiddie, Jim. Your mother fidgeted herself—and me—to death last time you went.”

“I got the buck, though,” was the reply, half defiant, half triumphant.

“So you did, sonny. Well, you can go. Be careful with the gun, and don’t be late. It’s a good thing for them to learn to shoot straight in a country like this,” he added, as the boy skipped away without waiting for the possibility of any recall of this edict: and a moment later they saw him disappearing in the bush, away beyond the mealie-lands.

“Fancy you and Ames being old pals, Miss Commerell,” said Hollingworth. “Where did you know each other?”

“Down at the Cape. We were in the same hotel at Wynberg. I saw a good deal of him, and liked him very much. Is he getting on well up here, Mr Hollingworth?”

“Yes, I think so. He’s thought a good deal of in his own line. Shouldn’t wonder if he gets into something better before long. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Commerell, I’ll go and take my usual forty winks, if those ‘kinders’ will let me.”

This was a figure of speech on Hollingworth’s part. Had his progeny been ten times more riotous and restive than it was he would have slept tranquilly through all the racket they could make. There are persons who can sleep through anything—from a fox-terrier in a backyard to a big gun practice—and Hollingworth was one of them.

Nidia, left alone, did not feel in the least inclined to follow his example. A strange restlessness was upon her, a desire for solitude; and where could she obtain this better than amid the wild bush by which the homestead was surrounded? Going inside, she threw on a straw hat, then taking a light umzimbiti walking-stick, she struck into one of the forest paths.

She felt not the slightest fear or misgiving. The natives at that time were deferential and submissive, and seldom encountered outside their own locations. Wild beasts avoided the near proximity of human habitations, at any rate in the full blaze of the afternoon sun, and if she came upon a snake she could always run away; for she was not one of those who imagine that the average serpent can leap—say, fifty feet—through the air, or spends its time lying in wait for human beings for the fun of biting them. So she wandered on beneath the feathery acacias and gnarled wild fig, now stopping to disengage her skirt from the sharp claws of a projecting spray of “haak-doorn,” now bending down to examine some strange and brilliant-winged beetle. A pair of “go-away” birds, uttering their cat-like call, darted from tree to tree, keeping ever a short distance before her. When she drew near the spray on which they were perched on they would go again, and she could mark their conical crests as again they plunged forward in arrow-like flight, only to perch again as before.

A small stony kopje rose above the level of the brake. To this she ascended, and, finding a shady spot, sat down upon a granite boulder to rest. Away and around the gaze could range over a great expanse of country, here smoothly undulating in a green sea of verdure, there broken-up into stony hillocks. She could not see the homestead—that was hidden by the gradual depression towards the river-bank, but the river-bed was discernible by the winding slit its course left in the expanse of foliage. And away in the golden haze of the blue horizon a line of hills which she instinctively guessed were those of the Sikumbutana.

So John Ames was so near and she would see him again; a matter of twenty miles or so was no distance in up-country estimation! Yet, why should this consciousness bring with it a feeling of elation? She was not in the least in love with the man. She could mention his name, or hear it mentioned, without a tremor in her voice or a stirring of the pulse. She had not even gone to the pains of inquiring after him, or as to his whereabouts, since her arrival at Bulawayo; yet now, suddenly an impulse was upon her to see him again which amounted almost to a longing. She had missed him greatly after his departure, even as she had said she would, but only as she would have missed anybody in whose society she had found pleasure and entertainment; yet now she found herself looking forward to meeting him again with such a curious mingling of feelings as she had never known before. She had seen him amid conventional, and, to him strange, surroundings, now she wanted to see him at home as it were, and in his own everyday sphere.

How would they meet? She supposed he would ride over directly he received her note. Would he look surprised and pleased? Would that grave, firm face relax as he greeted her, the straight glance of the grey eyes soften ever so little as it met hers? Thus she pondered. Yet she was not in the least in love with John Ames.

For long she sat, pondering thus. Then, upon the distant stillness, rolled forth a shot, followed by another. It broke the current of her thoughts.

“Jimmie is getting some sport,” she said to herself, standing up to look in the direction of the double report. “But he must be finding it very near home. That shot sounded almost as if it were at the house.”

She glanced at the sun. Its distance above the horizon reminded her that she must be getting back herself. Rising, she descended the granite kopje, and took her way along the bush-path she had come by. This was a matter of no difficulty, even if she were now following it for the first time, for those among whom she had lately moved had taught her something of the mysteries of “spoor.”

How peaceful it looked in the golden light of the afternoon stillness! The homestead, truly, was of the roughest description, with its thatched roof and “dagga” walls, yet it, and the pointed conical huts behind it, were all in keeping. A settler’s dwelling in a new land! A halo of romance overspread it in Nidia’s mind as she emerged from the bush-path into the clearing.

Stay. What was that? Blood! She had just time to switch her skirt aside. Blood? Yes; a great patch of it—then another and another, and a long trail in the dust as though something heavy had been dragged along the ground. Ah, Jimmie had been in luck again and had brought down another buck. That was the meaning of the double shot she had heard. The animal had been too heavy for the little chap to carry. He had been obliged to drag it, hence the trail along the ground. And in her rejoicing over the small boy’s venatorial triumph, Nidia forgot her natural disgust at sight of the blood-gouts which lay thick and hideously red along the trail.