"John Ames, Native Commissioner" (continued 5)

“Safety? Rescue?” echoed John Ames, in almost an awed tone, but one that was full of a great thankfulness and relief. “Ah, well, my awful anxiety was deserved. Forgive me the interruption.”

Even then it did not occur to him, the level-headed, the thinking, the judicious, that here was a man—a strange one certainly—who had just told him a cock-and-bull story about events he could not possibly know, with the result of driving him perfectly frantic with anxiety and a sense of his own helplessness. Why not? Because the narrative had been unfolded with a knowledge stamped upon the narrator’s countenance that was as undeniable as the presence of the narrator himself. Strange to say, not for a moment did it occur to him to question it.

He looked at the seer; a steadfast, penetrating, earnest glance. The face was a refined one; handsome, clear-cut, furrowing somewhat with age and hardness; but it was the face of one who had renounced all—hence its power; of one who, for some reason or other, was a bitter hater of his species, yet which as surely bore traces of a great overwhelming sorrow, capabilities of a vast and selfless love. Who was this strange being? What his tragic past? John Ames, thus striving to penetrate it, felt all his repulsion for the other melt away into a warm, indefinable sense of sympathy. Then he replied—

“In using the expression ‘wrapped up in,’ you have used the right one. If harm were to befall her I should feel that life had no more value.”

“Then how will you face the—parting of the ways?”

The question chilled upon its hearer. Was it a prophecy?

“The parting of the ways?” he echoed slowly, comprehending the other’s meaning. “Why should there be any parting?”

“Because it is the way of life.”

And with the harsh, jeering, mirthless laugh which accompanied the cynicism, the stranger’s countenance became once more transformed. The stare of hate and repulsion came into it again, and he turned away. But in the mind of his hearer there arose a vision of that last farewell, and he felt reassured—yet not. Coming from any other, he would have laughed at the utterance as a mere cynical commonplace, but from this one it impressed him as a dire prophecy.

“There will come a time when you will look back upon these rough wanderings of yours—the two of you—as a dream of Paradise, John Ames. Hourly danger; scarce able to compass the means of existence; unknown country swarming with enemies; what a fearful experience it seems! Yet—how you will look back to it, will long for it! Ah, yes, I know; for your experience was once mine.”

“Once yours?”

“Once mine.” Then, with sudden change of tone and demeanour—“And now, be advised by me, and restore Nature a little. You will find the wherewithal in that chest, for you may need all your strength.”

Had it been anybody else, John Ames might have thought it somewhat unhostlike of the other to leave him to do all the foraging for himself, but somehow in this case it seemed all right. He could hardly have imagined this strange being bustling about over such commonplace work as rummaging out food. So he opened the chest indicated, and found it well stored with creature comforts. He set out, upon the table which had so startled him at first, enough for his present wants, and turned to speak to his host. But the latter was no longer there. He looked in the other apartment. That, too, was empty!

Weird and uncanny as this disappearance was, it disconcerted John Ames less than it would have done at first. In was in keeping with the place and its strange occupant, for now, as he gazed around, he noted that the rock in places was covered with strange hieroglyphics. He had seen Bushman drawings in the caves of the Drakensberg, executed with wonderful clearness and a considerable amount of rude skill. These, however, seemed the production of a civilised race, and that in the dim ages of a remote past, probably the race which was responsible for the ancient gold workings whereof the land showed such plentiful remains. At any other time the investigation of these hieroglyphics would have afforded him a rare interest, at present he had enough to think about. But if his host—or gaoler—chose to disappear into the earth or air at will it was no concern of his, and he had not as yet found any great encouragement to curiosity in that quarter. Meanwhile, he set to work to make a hearty breakfast—or dinner—or whatever it might be, for he had no idea of time, his watch having been smashed in his fall.

Strangely enough, a feeling of complete confidence had succeeded to his agony of self-reproach and anxiety as to Nidia’s safety. Stranger, too, that such should be inspired by the bare word of this marvellous being who held him, so far, in his power. Yet there it was, this conviction. It surprised him. It was unaccountable. Yet there it was.

Among other creature comforts he had found in the cupboard was a bottle of whisky. He mixed himself a modest “peg.” But somehow the taste brought back the terrible tragedy in Inglefield’s hut, that, perforce, being the last time he had drunk any, and a sort of disgust for the spirit came over him.

So did something else—a sadden and unaccountable drowsiness, to wit. He strove to combat it, but fruitlessly. Returning to his couch, he lay down, and fell into a deep and heavy sleep.

Chapter Twenty Four.

What was Disclosed.

When he awoke, John Ames found himself in the dark; not the ordinary darkness of night, wherein objects are faintly outlined, but black, pitchy, impenetrable gloom—an outer darkness which weighed upon mind and spirits with a sense of living entombment.

Breathed there a mystic atmosphere in this weird place which affected the mind? This darkness seemed to unnerve him, to start him wide awake with a feeling of chill fear. Light! That was the first requisite. But a hurried search in every pocket revealed that he was without the means of procuring that requisite. He could find no matches. Had he by chance put them on the table, and left them there? He had no recollection of doing so, but in any case dared not get up and grope for them, bearing in mind the shaft-like pit at one end of the room. Nothing would be easier than to fall into this in the bewildering blackness. Equally nothing was there for it but to lie still and await the course of events.

More and more did the walled-in blackness weigh him down. The air seemed full of whispering voices—indistinct, ghostly, rising and falling in far-away flute-like wailings; and there came upon him a vision. He saw again the great granite cone with the black hole, dark and forbidding, piercing its centre; but not as he had pointed it out to his fellow-fugitive in the sunlight gold. No; it was night now, and there, around its base, a mighty gathering occupied the open, and from this arose a roar of voices—voices in supplication, voices in questionings, voices singing fierce songs of war. Then there would be silence, and from the cavern mouth would issue one voice—denunciatory, reproachful, prophetic, yet prophesying no good thing. And the voice was as that of the strange being in whose power he lay.

Louder and louder boomed the roar of the war-song. It shook the air; it vibrated as in waves upon the dense opacity of the darkness, echoing from the walls of this mysterious vault, for he was conscious of a dual personality—one side of it without, a witness of the scene conjured up by the vision; the other still within himself, still entombed and helpless within the heart of the earth. And then again the whole faded, into sleep or nirvana.

Once more came awakening. He was no longer in darkness. The rose-light threw quivering shadows from the objects about the place, and he was no longer alone. His host—or gaoler stood contemplating him.

“You have had a long sleep, John Ames.”

“And strange dreams, too,” was the reply, made with a certain significance. “When I woke up in the dark—”

“Are you sure you did wake up in the dark? Are you sure you did not dream you woke up?”

“Upon my word, I can’t tell. I sometimes think that in these days I can be sure of nothing.”

“Well, you shall hear what will give you something to rejoice over. The ‘friend’ you were taking care of is safe.”

“Safe?”

“Yes. I told you exactly what had happened. And now she will be in Bulawayo as soon as yourself.”

“As soon as myself?”

“Yes, for you will soon be there. You see, I have a use to turn you to. I have a message for the outside world, and you shall be the means of transmitting it.”

“That will I do, with the greatest of pleasure. But what if I do not get through? The Matabele seem to be taking to the hills in force, and it’s a long few days to get through from where we are—or were, rather, should I say, for I’m not at all sure where I am now.”

“Quite right, John Ames. You are not. Still you shall get through. And then, when you rejoin your ‘friend’—the girl with the very blue eyes, and the quick lift of the eyelids, and the animated countenance changing vividly with every expression, and the brown-gold hair—I suppose you will think life holds for you no greater good?”

“I say, but you seem to have studied her rather closely,” was the rejoinder, with a dry smile. “Anybody would think you knew her.”

“I have watched her from far more closely than you dream of, John Ames. For instance, every step of your way since leaving Shiminya tied up in his hut, has been known to me and to others too. Your life—both your lives—have been in my hand throughout, what time you have prided yourself upon your astuteness in evading pursuit and discovery. The lives of others have been in my hand in like manner, and—the hand has closed on them. You will soon learn how few have escaped.”

The grim relentlessness succeeding to the even, almost benevolent tone which had characterised the first part of this extraordinary statement impressed John Ames. At the same time he felt correspondingly reduced. He had prided himself, too—in advance—upon bringing Nidia safely in, alone and unaided; now he was done out of this satisfaction, and others would take to themselves the credit. Then he felt smaller still because thoroughly ashamed of himself. How could he harbour such a thought amid the great glad joy of hearing that her safety was assured?

“Are you influencing these rebels, then?” he asked, all his old repulsion for the other returning, as he saw, as in a flash, the fell meaning of the words. “It seems strange that you should aid in the murder of your own countrymen.”

“My own countrymen!” and the expression of the speaker became absolutely fiendish. “‘My own countrymen’ would have doomed me to a living death—a living hell—long years ago, for no crime; for that which injured nobody, but was a mere act of self-defence. Well, ‘my own countrymen’ have yielded up hundreds of lives in satisfaction since then.”

“But—great Heavens! you say ‘would have.’ They would have done this? Why, even if it had happened, such a revenge as yours would have been too monstrous. Now I begin to see. Yet, in aiding these murderers of women and children, you are sacrificing those who never harmed you. But surely you can never have done this!”

“Ha, ha! Really, John Ames, I am beginning to feel I have made a mistake—to feel disappointed in you, in thinking you were made of very different clay to the swaggering, bullet-headed fool, the first article of whose creed is that God made England and the devil the remainder of the world. Well, listen further. To escape from this doom I was forced to flee—to hide myself. And with me went one other. We wandered day after day as you have wandered—we two alone.”

In spite of his repulsion John Ames was interested, vividly interested. Verily here a fellow-feeling came in. A marvellous change had crept into the face of the other. The hard steely expression, the eyes glittering with hate, had given way to such a look of wondrous softness as seemed incredible that that countenance could take on.

“There is a lonely grave in the recesses of the Lebombo Mountains, unmarked, unknown to any but myself. I once had a heart, John Ames, strange to say, and it lies buried there. But every time I return thence it is with the fire renewed within me; and the flames of that fire are the hate of hell for those you were just now describing as ‘my own countrymen.’”

The hopeless pathos, the white-hot revenge running side by side, silenced the listener. There was a fury of passion and of pain here which admitted of no comment. To strive further to drive home his original protest struck him now as impertinent and commonplace. For a while neither spoke.

“This is not the first time ‘my own countrymen’ have felt my unseen hand,” continued the narrator. “They felt it when three miles of plain were watered with British blood, and a line of whitened bones, as the line of a paper-chase, marked out a broad way from Isandhlwana to the Buffalo drift. They felt it when British blood poured into the swollen waters of the Intombi river, and when the ‘neck’ on Hlobane mountain was choked with struggling men and horses fleeing for dear life, and but few escaping. That was for me. They have felt it often since. That was for her. They felt it when the hardest blow of all was dealt to their illimitable self-righteousness a year later; and, in short, almost whenever there has been opportunity for decimating them this side of the equator, my hand has been there. They would have felt it three years ago, when they seized this country we are now in, but for a wholly unavoidable reason, and then even the strong laagers and parks of Maxims would have counted for nought. That was for her. The malice of the devilish laws of ‘my country’ drove me forth, and with me went that one. In the malarial valleys of the foothills of the Lebombo she died. I still live; but I live for a lifelong revenge upon ‘my countrymen’—and hers.”

Listening with the most vivid interest, John Ames was awed. The narrative just then could not but appeal to him powerfully. What if his own wanderings had ended thus, substituting Matopo for Lebombo? He shuddered to think that but for their signal good fortune in being blessed with fine dry weather, such might not inconceivably have been the case. The earlier and more tragic of the historical events referred to had taken place during the period of his English education, but now there recurred to his memory certain tales which he had heard on his return to his native colony of Natal, relating to the disappearance during the Zulu war of a border outlaw under circumstances of romantic interest. Could they have been authentic? Could this mysterious personage be indeed the chief actor in them? But, then, what must have been the strength and power of such a passion as had been this man’s, that he should cherish it full and strong after all these years; to the compassing of illimitable bloodshed, prosecuting the fierce and relentless hatred of his own countrymen to the extent of metamorphosing the memory of its object into a very Kali, sacrificing to that memory in blood! Of a truth it could be nothing less than a mania—a grim and terrible monomania.

“You are already beginning to lose your horror at what I have told you, John Ames,” went on the other, his keen, darting eyes reading his listener’s face like an open page. “Yet why should you ever have entertained it? Is not this blue-eyed girl you were taking care of for so many days all the world to you—more than life itself?”

“She is. She is indeed, God knows,” was the reply, emphatically fervent.

“Then what revenge could you wreak that would be too full, too sweet, upon whosoever should be instrumental in bereaving you of her for ever? You have not yet been tried, John Ames, and yours is a character outside the ordinary.”

Was the speaker right, after all? thought John Ames. He looked at the dark face and silvery beard, and the glitter of the keen grey eyes, and wondered. Yet as he looked, he decided that the owner of that face must be considerably younger than his appearance. Was he himself capable of such a hardening—of so gigantic and ruthless and lifelong a feud? One thing was incontestable. He certainly had lost the first feeling of repulsion and horror; indeed, he could not swear it had not been replaced by one of profound sympathy. The other continued.

“This is what you will do. First of all, you will give me your word to make no attempt to seek out this place, though it would be futile even if made. For remember I have saved your life, and the life of one who is more to you than life, not once, but many times, though unknown to you. Others sought escape in the same way as yourselves. Ask, when you are safe again, how many found it? I did not spare them. I spared you, John Ames, because your wanderings reminded me of my own. I watched you both frequently, unknown to yourselves, and doing so the past came back so vividly as to render me more merciless still towards others in the same plight. But you two I spared.”

“Then it was you I challenged that morning in the dark?”

“Even your vigilance was as nothing against me, John Ames, for did I not step right over you while you slept?”

The other whistled. There could be no doubt about that.

“Then you will take these two packets. The one marked on the outside ‘A’ you will open at once, and with every precaution will forward the enclosure it contains to the address that enclosure bears.”

This John Ames promised to do. He would register it if the post lines were still open. If not, he would take every precaution for its safety until they were.

“But they will be still open,” was the decided reply. “As for the next packet, marked ‘B,’ you will not open it—not yet. Keep it with you. The time may come when you will see everything dark around you, and there is no outlook, and life hardly worth prolonging. Then, and then only, open it. Do you promise to observe my instructions implicitly?”

“I pledge you my word of honour to do so,” replied John Ames, gravely.

“Then our time for parting is very near. Remember that you owe your life—both your lives—to me. Don’t interrupt. It is not unnecessary to remind you again of this, for you will meet with every temptation to reveal that which I charge you to keep to yourself—viz. all relating to my personality and what you have seen and heard.”

“One moment. Pardon my asking,” said John Ames, tentatively. “But have you ever told anybody else what you have told me?”

“Not one living soul. Why have I told you? Perhaps I had my reasons: perhaps the sight of you two wandering as I have wandered. It is immaterial. My work here is nearly done. This rising which has been so disastrous to your countrymen and mine—how disastrous you have yet to learn—my hand has fostered and fed. I have foreseen the opportunity. I waited for it patiently, and when it came I seized it. But there will be more work in other parts, and, mark me, John Ames, my unseen hand will again be there to strike.”

“Tell me one thing more. If it was through your influence the people spared us, how is it they tried to kill me that time I was leaving Madúla, when they drove me over the dwala, and I woke up to find myself here? That was a narrow squeak, I can tell you.”

“It was indeed, John Ames. But that was accidental, and was contrary to my orders.”

“Contrary to your orders? But,”—sitting up, with a stare of blank amazement—“but—who are you?”

“I am Umlimo.”

“What! You Umlimo? It cannot be. I have always held Umlimo to be a sort of fraudulent abstraction, engineered by innyangas like Shiminya and others. You the Umlimo?”

But to the startled eyes of the questioner the form of the questioned seemed to grow larger, taller, like a presence filling the whole place. The old relentless look of implacable hate transformed the features, and the deep eyes glowed, while from the scarcely opened lips boomed forth as in deep thunder-tones—

“I am Umlimo.”

A mist filled the place. The figure with its background of rock-wall seemed to lose form. A sudden stupor seized upon the brain of John Ames, as though the whole atmosphere were pervaded by a strong narcotic. Then he knew no more.

Chapter Twenty Five.

In State of Siege.

There can be no doubt but that, during the period of the rising, and especially during the earlier half of the same, the township of Bulawayo was a very uncomfortable place indeed.

The oft-recurring scares, necessitating the crowding of, at any rate, the bulk of its inhabitants into the laagers at night, contributed in the main to this. With instances of the fell unsparing ferocity which attended the rebel stroke—sudden, swift, and unexpected—fresh in the mind of everybody, citizens were chary of exposing themselves and their families to a like visitation. Private residences straggling over the surburban stands were abandoned for the greater security of the temporary forts which had been hastily but effectively formed out of some of the principal buildings in and around the township itself; and the comfort and privacy of home-life had perforce to be exchanged for an overcrowded, hotch-potch, barrack sort of existence; men, women, and children of all sorts and sizes herding together, hugger-mugged, under every conceivable form of racket and discomfort, and under the most inadequate conditions of area and convenience. Rumour, in its many-tongued and wildest form, filled the air, gathering in volume, and frequently in wildness, with the advent of every fresh batch of refugees. For from all sides these came flying in—prospectors, miners, outlying settlers with their families, some with a portion of their worldly goods, others with none at all, and fortunate in having escaped with their lives where others had not. For it soon became manifest that such events as the massacre of the Hollingworths and the Inglefields, and the fight and resolute defence at Jekyll’s Store, were but samples of what had taken place—or was still going on—all over the country. Haggard fugitives, gaunt with starvation, stony-eyed with days and nights of deadly peril for close companionship, nerves shattered by the most horrible recollections, and apprehension worked up to the acutest phase thereby—continued to arrive, each and all bringing the same tale of treachery and ruthlessness and blood, deepening on every hand the gloom and anxiety of the situation—anxiety on behalf of those not yet accounted for, mingling with an apprehensive looking forward to how it was all going to end, and when. The necessaries of life went up to famine prices, and then the enemy began to invest the town.

Southward, crouching lion-like, among the Matyamhlope rocks; on the north, occupying the site of the old Bulawayo kraal, and in possession of the “Government” House which the presumptuous white man had erected upon the former seat of the departed king, overhanging, like a dark cloud, the township beneath, or again making fierce dashes upon traffic which should attempt the eastward way, he mustered in all his savage might—an ever-present menace. But the way to the west, for some unaccountable reason, was left open.

Those in charge of the safety of the township had their hands full. They might sally forth in force, as they frequently did, with the object of rolling back the danger that threatened; an object sometimes accomplished, sometimes not, for the rolling back was not invariably all on one side. But whichever way the attempt would go, the wily foe was sure to be in position again almost immediately, whence, massed around the very edifice that symbolised the domination of those threatened, the defiant thunder of his war-song would reach their ears.

Of all the narrow escapes from the widespread massacre which at that time were in everybody’s mouth, none perhaps commanded general attention so much as that of Nidia Commerell. It was so fraught with the dramatic element, being in fact not one escape, but a series of them. Her personality, too, imparted to it an additional interest; this refined and attractive girl, brought up amid every comfort, suddenly to be thrown by rude contrast from the luxurious appointments of her peaceful English home into the red surroundings of massacre and of death. Again, the circumstances of her wanderings appealed strongly to the romantic side, and people looked knowingly at each other, and pronounced John Ames to be a singularly fortunate individual—would be, at least, were it not for the fact that nobody knew whether he was alive or dead; indeed, the latter contingency seemed the more probable.

There was one to whom Nidia’s reappearance was as little short of restoration to life for herself, and that one was Mrs Bateman, for to her the girl was more than all the world put together—far more than her own husband, and she had no children. When the first tidings of the outbreak, and the massacre of the Hollingworths, had come in, the poor woman had been simply frantic. The fact that Nidia had not been included in the tragedy, but had disappeared, brought with it small comfort. She pictured her darling in the power of brutal savages, or wandering alone in the wilderness to perish miserably of starvation and exhaustion; perhaps, even, to fall a prey to wild animals. Was it for this she had allowed her to leave her English home “for a peep into wild life,” as they had put it when the much debated question had arisen? Not even the dreadful task of breaking the news to Nidia’s relatives occurred to her now, her grief was too whole-hearted, too unmixed. Her husband came in for a convenient safety-valve, though. Why had he induced either of them to come near such a hateful country? He was the real murderer, not these vile savages; and having with admirable and usual feminine logic clapped the saddle on the wrong horse to her heart’s content, and caused that estimable engineer mildly to wish he had never been born, she hunted him off with one of the relief forces, together with every man she could succeed in pressing into her service. Indeed, it used to be said that, could she have had her way, just about every available man in Bulawayo would have been started off on that particular search, leaving all the other women and children, herself included, to take their chance. And then, when her grief had reached the acutest pitch of desperation, the missing girl had been found. Thenceforward nothing mattered. The place might be attacked nightly by all the Matabele in Rhodesia for all she cared. She had got her darling back again.

Back again—yes. But this was not the same Nidia. The bright sunny flow of spirits was gone, likewise the sweet equanimity and caressing, teasing, provocative little ways. This Nidia had come back so changed. There was a tired, hunted look in her eyes, a listlessness of speech and manner such as might have suited her twenty years thence, after an indifferent experience of life interim, but now was simply startling as a contrast. She talked but little, and of her escape and the manner of it, seemed to care to talk least of all. The part John Ames had borne in that escape she took care to make widely known, but when alone with her friend reference to him had the effect of causing her to burst into tears in the most unexpected and therefore alarming fashion. This seemed not unnatural. The terrible experiences the poor girl had gone through were calculated to unhinge her; nor was it strange she should grieve over the tragic fate which had almost certainly overtaken the man who had been her sole guide and protector during those terrible days, whose sagacity and resource had brought her in safety through every peril that threatened. It was in the nature of things she should so grieve, even had they not been on very friendly terms before. There was nothing for it but time, thought Susie Bateman—time and change of scene; and with a view to the latter she hinted at the advisability of risking the journey down-country, for, strange to say, the enemy had refrained from intercepting the coach traffic on the Mafeking road. This proposal, however, was met by Nidia with a very decided negative.

These two were fortunately exempt from the crowding and discomfort of the laagers, through the fact that the house owned by the absent Bateman was situated within about a stone’s throw of one of the latter. Should occasion really arise, they would, of course, be obliged to take refuge therein; but in the mean time they could afford to ignore unsubstantiated scares, for there were not wanting those who made it—literally in some instances—a labour of love to keep extra and special watch over this particular household. Moseley and Tarrant, for instance, who were among the defenders of the township; Carbutt, the tall, good-looking man who had figured prominently in the fight at Jekyll’s Store; and several others. Leave it to them, had been their assurance. If real necessity arose, they would see to it that the two ladies should be within the laager in ample time. Meanwhile they need take no notice of the ordinary regulation scare, but just sit still in peace and quietness.

They were thus sitting a few days after Nidia’s return, when the latter startled her friend by an apparently insane proposal. “Let’s go for a bike ride, Susie; a real good long one.”

“Great Heavens! Is the child mad? Why, we’d run into those hateful black wretches before we’d gone a couple of miles. They’re all round us thick as bees. Why, we could see them no further than Government House only this morning.”

“That’s just the way I wanted to go. It would be such fun to see how near we could get, and then skim away downhill again. They’d look so sold.”

“Haven’t you had enough of that sort of thing yet, Nidia? If I had been through one-tenth of what you have, I’d never want to go adventuring any more.”

“Perhaps I’ve contracted a taste that way now,” was the reply, with a weariful laugh. “But anything rather than sit still as we are doing. I want a little excitement—a stirring up.”

The other stared in wild amazement. Was the child really going off her head? she thought again. But a knock on the open door announced the advent of visitors, and lo! two men bronzed and coatless, according to the fashion in Rhodesia, swept off their broad-brimmed hats and entered. They were, in fact, Tarrant and Carbutt, and at sight of them Nidia brightened up somewhat.

“Well, and what’s the latest in the way of scares?” she began, after the exchange of greetings.

“None at present, Miss Commerell,” replied Carbutt. “Things are slack. We shall have to go and have another slap at the niggers up yonder, to keep the rust off. They are getting altogether too cheeky, squatting around Government House its very self.”

“That’ll make a little excitement,” said Nidia. “We can watch your deeds of derring-do from here through the glasses.”

“Heavens, no!” said Mrs Bateman, with fervour. “I don’t want to see or hear anything more of those dreadful wretches, except that they’ve all been shot.”

“By the way, there is a small item in the way of the latest,” said Tarrant, carelessly. “Another man has rolled in who had been given up as a dead ’un.”

“Yes. Is it anybody we know?” asked Nidia, quickly.

“I rather think it is,” returned Tarrant, watching her face yet while not seeming to. “Ames of Sikumbutana.”

Nidia caught her breath with a sort of gasp, and her whole face lit up.

“Not John Ames?” she cried, as though hanging on the answer. Then, as Tarrant nodded assent, “Oh, I am glad!”

And then all of Nidia’s old self seemed to return. She poured forth question upon question, hardly waiting to be answered. How had he escaped? Where was he, and when was he coming to see her? and so on—and so on.

“He’s rather close on the subject, Miss Commerell,” Tarrant replied. “He has a yarn about being chevvied by niggers and tumbling over a dwala, and lying unconscious—and then some niggers who knew him piloting him in. He asked after you the first thing, just as if you had never been away from here; and the odd part of it is, he didn’t seem in the least surprised to hear you were safe and sound, and quite all right.”

But the oddness of John Ames’ lack of astonishment did not strike Nidia just then. She talked on, quite in her old way—now freely, too—on the subject of her escape and wanderings, making much of the humorous side thereof, and more of the judgment and courage and resource of her guide. Her voice had a glad note about it; a very carol of joy and relief seemed to ring out in every tone. Ever unconventional, it never occurred to her to make the slightest attempt to disguise her feelings. If she was glad that the man who had done so much for her had returned safe and sound, it was not in her to conceal that fact.

“Phew! she’s giving away the show,” Tarrant was thinking to himself. “That first shot of mine re John Ames was a plumb centre. I’ll have the crow over old Moseley now. Lucky John Ames!”

But at heart he was conscious of a certain not altogether to be controlled sinking. He was not without a weakness for Nidia himself; now, however, in a flash he recognised its utter futility, and was far too much a man of the world not to realise that the sooner he cured himself of it the better.

Upon one other the change in Nidia’s manner was not lost, and the discovery struck Susie Bateman with such wild amazement that she at first refused to entertain it. Here, then, lay the secret of the girl’s fits of depression and generally low spirits. Such were not due to her recent terrible experiences. She had been secretly grieving on account of the man who had shared them, or why this sudden and almost miraculous restoration which the news of his safety had effected? She recalled her half-playful, half-serious warning to Nidia during their earlier acquaintance with this man—a warning more than once repeated, too. That had been out of consideration for the man; but that it should ever have been needed on Nidia’s own account—oh, Heavens! the idea was ghastly, if it were not so incredible Nidia, who had renounced airily the most alluring possibilities more than once, now to throw herself away upon a mere nobody! Nidia, who had never taken any of them seriously in her life, to succumb in this fashion! No, it could not be allowed. It could be nothing but the result of propinquity, and danger mutually shared. She must be saved from this at all costs. And then the good woman recognised uneasily that John Ames would be rather a difficult person to defeat, once he had made up his mind to opposition. Ah! but she had one card to play, one weapon wherewith to deal a blow to which one of his mould would be peculiarly vulnerable.

The while she watched Nidia closely. But for the discovery she had made, she would have rejoiced to see her darling so completely her old self, all brightness and animation as she chatted away with the two visitors; now that very gladsomeness was as a poisoned and rankling dart to the dismayed observer, for it confirmed all her direst suspicions. Susie Bateman’s Christianity was about on a par with that of the average British female, in that she would have looked sourly askance at anybody who should refuse to attend church, yet just then she would have given a great deal to learn that Tarrant’s report was erroneous, and that John Ames was at that moment lying among the granite wilds of the Matopos, as lifeless as the granite itself, with half a dozen Matabele assegais through him.

Such aspirations, however, were as futile as they usually are, and the best proof of the truth of Tarrant’s story lay in the real objective presence of the subject thereof; for hardly had the two men departed when they were replaced by a third—even John Ames him-self.

Chapter Twenty Six.

The Packet Marked “B.”

With her usual frank naturalness and absence of conventionality, Nidia went to meet him in the doorway. Then, as he took her extended hands, it seemed as though he were going to hold them for ever. Yet no word had passed between them.

How well he looked! she was thinking. The light, not unpicturesque attire there prevailing, and so becoming to a good-looking, well-made man, suited him, she decided. She had first seen him in the ordinary garments of urban civilisation. She had seen him last a tattered fugitive, haggard and unshaven. Now the up-country costume—silk shirt and leather belt, and riding-trousers with gaiters—endowed his lithe well set-up form with an air of freedom and ease, and looking into the clear-cut face and full grey eyes, framed by the wide, straight brim of the up-country hat, she thought she had never seen him looking so well. “How glad I am to see you again!” she said, “Ten thousand welcomes. Do you know, I have been feeling ever since as if I were responsible for—for whatever had befallen you.”

“Yes? Imagine, then, what I must have felt at the thought of you, alone in the mountains, not knowing what to do or where to turn. I wonder it didn’t drive me stark staring mad. Imagine it, Nidia. Just try to imagine it! Words won’t convey it.”

“I did have a dreadful time. But I knew nothing would have kept you from returning to me, had you been able. And then your boy, Pukele, arrived, and took such care of me. I sent him out to find you, and he said you had been among the Matabele, but had been able to leave them again—”

“Who? My boy? Pukele?” repeated John Ames, wonderingly.

“Yes. He brought me out of the mountains. One day he went out to hunt. I heard him, as I thought, fire a couple of shots, and came up to find myself among friends again.”

“Nidia,” called a voice from within—a voice not untinged with acerbity—“won’t Mr Ames come inside?”

John Ames started, and the effect seemed to freeze him somewhat. The coldness of the greeting extended to him as he complied, completed the effect. Instinctively he set it down to its true cause.

“We met last under very different circumstances, didn’t we, Mrs Bateman?” he said easily. “None of us quite foresaw all that has happened since.”

“I should think not. The wonder is that one of us is alive to tell the tale,” was the rejoinder, in a tone which seemed to imply that no thanks were due to John Ames that ‘one of us’ was—in short, that he was responsible for the whole rising.

“And do you remember my asking if there wasn’t a chance of the natives rising and killing us all?” said Nidia. “I have often thought of that. What times we have been through!” with a little shudder. “Yet, in some ways it seems almost like a dream. Doesn’t it, Susie?”

“A dream we are not awakened from, unfortunately,” was the reply. “We don’t seem through our troubles yet. Well, as for as we are concerned, we soon shall be. I want to take Miss Commerell out of this wretched country, Mr Ames, as soon as ever it can be managed. Don’t you think it the best plan?”

“I think you are both far safer where you are, since you ask me,” he answered. “Any amount of reinforcements are on their way, and meanwhile the laager here, though uncomfortable, is absolutely safe, because absolutely impregnable. Whereas the Mafeking road, if still open, is so simply on sufferance of the rebels. Any day we may hear of the Mangwe being blocked.”

“I disagree with you entirely,” came the decisive reply. “I hear, on first-rate authority, that the coaches are running regularly, under escort, and that the risk is very slight. I think that will be our best plan. I suppose you will be joining one of the forces taking the field as soon as possible, won’t you, Mr Ames?”

If there was one thing that impressed itself upon John Ames when he first entered, it was that this woman intended to make herself supremely disagreeable; now he could not but own that she was thoroughly succeeding, and, as we said, he had instinctively seen her bent. She was, in fact, warning him off. The tone and manner, the obtrusive way in which she was mapping out his own movements for him, stirred within him a resentment he could hardly disguise, but her suggestion with regard to disposing of those of Nidia struck him with a pang of dismay, and that accentuated by considerations which will hereinafter appear. Now he replied—

“My plans are so absolutely in the clouds that I can hardly say what I may decide to do, Mrs Bateman. I might even decide to cut my connection with this country. Take a run home to England, perhaps. What if I were so fortunate as to come in as your escort?”

This he said out of sheer devilment, and he was rewarded, for if ever a human countenance betrayed disgust, repressed wrath, baffled scheming, all at once, that countenance belonged to Susie Bateman at that moment Nidia came to the rescue.

“You have not told us your adventures yet,” she said. “I want to know all that happened since you left me. I only hope none of these tiresome men will come in and interrupt.”

All that happened! He could not tell her all, for he had pledged his word to the Umlimo. The latter had predicted that he would meet with every temptation to violate that pledge, and here was one of them. No, not even to her could he reveal all. But he told her of his fall from the dwala, his unconsciousness, and, leaving out that strange and startling experience, he went on to tell her what the reader has yet to learn—how he awoke in the broad light of day to find himself surrounded by armed natives, friendly to himself, however, who, of course, acting under orders from the Umlimo, had escorted him to within safe distance of Bulawayo.

Unconsciously their tones—he narrating, she commenting upon the narrative—became soft. Their glances, too, seemed to say something more than words. Both, in fact, were back again in imagination, roaming the wilds together, alone. They seemed to lose themselves in the recollection, oblivious of the presence of a third party.

The said third party, however, was by no means oblivious of them. Her ear weighed every tone, her keen eye noted every glance, every expression, and she grew proportionately venomous. Yet, looking at the man, she could hardly wonder at Nidia’s preference, and the uncomfortable consciousness was forced upon her that whoever might be the object of it, this man or any other, her own feeling would be just the same—one of acute powerless jealousy, to wit, that any should ever stand before herself in her darling’s preferences.

“Don’t go,” said Nidia, putting forth a hand to detain him, for his story had run on late, and he was rising with an apology. “Stay and have dinner with us. It’s siege fare, but even then a little more varied than our precarious ration under the rocks—not that one did not positively enjoy that at the time,” she added with a laugh. He joined in.

“Did you? I’m sure I did. Considering we were without any adjuncts, your cooking was marvellous, Nidia.”

“Nidia” again! Heavens! It had come to that, then! Susie Bateman’s hair nearly rose on end.

“Well, you shall see if it is any better now,” went on the girl, airily. “Oh, I do hope none of those stupid men will drop in. I want to have a nice long talk.”

“You haven’t found them so stupid up till now, Nidia,” struck in Susie Bateman. “Why, there isn’t an evening some of them haven’t been in to cheer us up.”

This for the benefit of John Ames, to whom the speaker divined it might in some way not be palatable. He for his part noted that she did not second the invitation, but he had reached that stage when he really didn’t care to consider any Susie Bateman overmuch. Wherefore he accepted. But the latter, for her part, was resolved to pursue the campaign, and that vigorously, and to this end she never left them for one moment alone together. Likewise was she rather oftener than necessary very emphatic in referring to “Miss Commerell;” and when, later on, some of “those stupid men” did drop in, her joy was unbounded, equally so that they stayed late enough to leave John Ames no pretext for sitting them out.

Resisting a pressing invite to finish up the evening at the Silver Grill, the latter went back to his quarters in by no means an elated frame of mind. Yet he had to some extent foreseen what had happened. Nidia had been kind and cordial to him, but there it was—as one of a crowd. There was no longer that sweet day-to-day companionship, they two isolated from the world. We repeat that he had foreseen this eventuality, yet now that it had arrived he liked it not one whit the more; nor was there consolation in the thought that here was another confirmation of the general accuracy of his forecasting faculty. Already he began to realise the Umlimo’s forecast: “There will come a time when you will look back upon these rough wanderings of yours—the two of you—as a dream of paradise.” Of a truth that strange being possessed the gift of prophecy to an extraordinary degree.

Now, too, and in the days that followed, he found subject-matter for some very serious thinking, and one of the main subjects of his thoughts was that of the Umlimo. No abstraction, then, was this cult, such as he and others had supposed. Probably it had been originally, but he who now used the title had seized the opportunity of turning it into a most formidable weapon against his enemies, in furtherance of one of the most ruthless, daring, and far-reaching schemes of vengeance which the mind of man could ever conceive and foster; and the object of this terrible monomania, the man’s own nationality. John Ames was in a quandary. Here he stood, possessed of most important knowledge, yet powerless to divulge it; cognisant of a fact of most vital moment to those who employed him, and whose pay he was receiving, yet tied and bound by his pledged word.

There was one way out of this difficulty, and that way, not being an unscrupulous man, he decided to take. He resigned his position in the service of the Chartered Company. Even then his mind was by no means at ease. There seemed still to be a duty to perform to humanity in general. Were he to keep this knowledge to himself, how many lives would be sacrificed which otherwise might have been saved? The capture or death of the Umlimo—would it not be effectual to stop the rising? and was he not in duty bound to further this end in the interests of his fellow-countrymen? Conscience told him he might do this; for with all the care and secrecy that had attended both his entrance to and exit from the cave of mystery, he could not disguise from himself that, by careful calculations as to time and locality, he might be able to find the spot again. But then would rise before him his pledged word. He had given it when in the power of this extraordinary being, when both his own life and that of Nidia had lain in his hand, and he could not now go back on it—no, not on any consideration. His countrymen must take their chance. He had done all that could reasonably be expected of him in resigning his position and its emoluments.

In doing this, however, it was pre-eminently a case of looking to virtue as its own reward. Certainly it brought him no nearer the realisation of his hopes; for so slender were his private means of existence, that only by the exercise of the most rigid economy could he get along at all, and the necessaries of life, be it remembered, were at famine prices. Decidedly, indeed, his prospects were looking blacker and yet more black.

And what of Nidia herself? As the days went by she seemed to draw no nearer. Seldom now was he suffered to be alone with her, and then only for a minute or so, when an ever-present feeling of gêne and flurry would be there to mar the effect of any opportunity he might have had to improve the occasion, and, indeed, he was beginning to regard matters as hopeless. The persistent hostility of Mrs Bateman was ever on the watch to defeat his every move; and as to this, even, there were times when it seemed to him that Nidia was a trifle too acquiescent in the latter’s objectionable and scarcely concealed efforts at railing him off. Then, too, Nidia was constantly surrounded by a knot of men, many of them fine gallant-looking fellows, already distinguished for some feat of intrepidity. There was the commander of the relief troop which had brought her in, for instance, and Carbutt and Tarrant and several others. He, John Ames, so far from being the one to bring her in, as he used to pride himself would be the case, had merely imperilled her the more by his own sheer incautious blundering. Sick at heart, he would fain be lying where he had fallen—a battered, lifeless heap at the base of the great dwala.

From this his thoughts would wander to the mysterious rock-dwelling, and to him who inhabited it. Why, and with what object to serve, had the Umlimo spared and tended him? That he might deliver his message to the outside world? Well, he had done that. And then—and the very thought sent a thrill as of needles and pins throughout his whole system. He had delivered the one message, but what of the other enclosure, the one which in some mysterious way concerned himself, the packet marked “B”? He got it out and eyed it. The Umlimo’s words were vividly imprinted in his memory. “The time may come when you will see everything dark around you, and there is no outlook, and life hardly worth prolonging. Then, and then only, open it.”

Solemn and weighty now did those words seem. Great Heaven! had not just such a time come? Was not everything dark enough in all conscience, and what outlook did life afford? Yes, he would do it. His heart beat fast as he undid the sealed oilskin wrappings of the packet. What would it contain, and how could such contents in any way conduce to his own welfare? The last wrapping was off, revealing an enclosure. Only a sealed letter, directed to the same names and address as that in the packet marked “A”—a firm in Cape Town—of solicitors or agents, he conjectured. One word of instructions accompanied this, one single word—

“Forward.”

“And that is all?” he said to himself, perhaps a trifle disappointedly, turning the enclosure round and round. “Well, that’s no trouble. I’ll go and do it.”

Chapter Twenty Seven.

The Fight Outside.

MacFurdon’s troop, about two hundred strong, was sweeping up the long slope which ran northward from the township of Bulawayo, and the line it was taking would bring it out a little to the right of Government House and the site of the old kraal.

It was bitterly cold, for the dawn had not yet risen. The insurgents had waxed bolder and yet more bold. They were holding the ridge, and were in calm possession of Government House itself, and now the idea was to teach them that the time had come when they could no longer have everything their own way. To this end it had been decided to get well within striking distance of them at break of day.

MacFurdon’s troop was rather a scratch concern, got together in a hurry, but consisting of good material. With it went many volunteers. It was, however, in this instance, as much a reconnoitring party as one for fighting purposes. On its right flank moved a contingent of the Cape Boy corps, feeling the ground towards the Umguza. This, too, was rather a scratch force, composed of every conceivable kind of South African native, but, like the other, of excellent fighting material.

“Say, Ames—what sort of show you think we got?” whispered one of the volunteers aforesaid, as they drew near the crest of the rise. “Now, if they was Indians, I guess we’d boost them out of yon White House of yours in no time, striking them in the dark so.”

The speaker was an American, by name Shackleton, commonly called “The Major,” by virtue of his having claimed to hold that rank in Uncle Sam’s regular army. He likewise claimed to have seen service in the Indian wars on the Plains. In more peaceful times he was a prospector by occupation.

“Show? Oh, the usual thing,” answered John Ames. “We shall get in touch with each other, and there’ll be a big swap in bullets, and a general hooroosh. They’ll all sneak away in the grass, and we shall get back into camp feeling as if our clothes all wanted letting out. If there are more of them than we can take care of all at once, why, we shan’t be feeling so vast.”

“That so? You ever fight Matabele before?”

“Yes. I was up here with the column in ’93. That used to be the programme then.”

The wind was singing in frosty puffs through the grass, bitterly cold. Riding along in the darkness, the numbed feet of most there advancing could hardly feel the stirrups. Then upon the raw air arose a sound—a strange, long-drawn wailing sound, not devoid of rhythm, and interspersed every now and then with a kind of humming hiss.

“They are holding a war-dance, so there must be plenty of them there,” whispered John Ames. “Listen! I can hear the words now.”

It was even as he said. They were near enough for that. Louder and louder the war-song of Lobengula swelled forth upon the darkness, coming from just beyond the rise—

“Woz ’ubone! Woz ’ubone, kiti kwazula! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba yemkonto—Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!

“Nants ’indaba. Indaba yezizwe. Akwazimúntu. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba kwa Matyobane. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!”

(“Jjí-jjí” is the cry on striking a foe.)

A translation of the war-song: “Come behold, come behold, at the High Place! Come behold. That is the tale - the tale of the spear. That is the tale - the tale of the nation. Nobody knows. Come behold. That is the tale - the tale of Matyobane.”

The barbaric strophes rolled in a wave of sound, rising higher with each repetition, and to the measured accompaniment of the dull thunder of stamping feet, the effect was weirdly grand in the darkness.

“It makes something very like nonsense if turned into English,” whispered John Ames, in reply to his comrade’s query, “but it contains allusions well understood by themselves. There isn’t anything particularly bloodthirsty about it, either. That sort of hiss, every now and then, is what we shall hear if we get to close quarters.”

“Their kind of war-whoop, maybe. I recollect at Wounded Knee Creek, when Big Foot’s band made believe to come in—”

But what the speaker recollected at Wounded Knee Creek was destined never to be imparted to John Ames, for at that juncture a peremptory word was passed for silence in the ranks.

Now the dawn was beginning to show, revealing eager faces, set and grim, and rifles were grasped anew. Then what happened nobody seemed to know individually. A straggling volley was poured into the advancing troop from the crest of the rise, and the bugle rang out the order to charge. As John Ames had described it, there followed a sort of “hooroosh” in which each man was acting very much to his own hand, as, the troop having whirled over the ridge, the order was given to dismount, and the men stood pouring volley upon volley after the loose masses of flying savages.

This, however, was not destined to last. The first shock over of surprise and dismay, the Matabele dropped down into cover and began to return the fire with considerable spirit. They were in some force, too, and it behoved the attacking whites to seize what shelter they could, each man taking advantage of whatever lay to his hand, whether stone or bush or ant heap, or even a depression in the ground.

Then, for a space, things grew very lively. The sharp spit of rifles was never silent, with the singing of missiles overhead. The enemy had the advantage in the matter of cover, and now and then a dark form, gliding like a snake among the grass and thorns, would be seen to make a convulsive spring and fall over kicking. One trooper was shot dead, and more than one wounded, and meanwhile masses of the enemy could be descried working up to the south-west. Reinforcements? It looked like it, remembering that the force at first engaged was not inconsiderable. The word went forth to retreat.

This was done in good order—at first. But now appeared a great outflanking mass, pouring up from the northern side, and its object was clear. A long wire fence ran down from the apex of the rise. It was necessary to retreat round the upper end of this. Did this outflanking mass reach it first, the white force would probably be destroyed, for they could not get their horses through the wire, and would have crushing odds to overwhelm them. It became a race for the end of the fence, which, however, the cool intrepidity and sound judgment of the leaders prevented from being a helter-skelter one.

John Ames and “The Major” and a trooper were on the extreme left flank, now become the right one, all intent on a knot of savages, who were keeping them busily employed from a thick bit of thorn bush, and did not at once become alive to the retreat. When they did, they became alive to something else, and that was that by nothing short of a miracle could they gain the upper end of that fence in time.

“Your horse jump, Ames?” said the American.

“Don’t know. Never tried.”

“You got to try now, then, by God! Our only chance. Look!”

John Ames did look, and so did the other man. At the upper end of the fence a mass of savages were in possession, pouring a volley after the retreating troop. Below on their right the three men saw the other outflanking “horn” now closing in upon them, and a line of warriors coming through the grass and thorns in front at a trot. It was a strong impi, and a large one.

In that brief flash of time, John Ames was curiously alive to detail. He could see the ostrich-feather mútyas worn by the warriors, the parti-coloured shields and the gleam of spears, and decided this was a crack regiment. He could see, too, the township of Bulawayo lying in its basin below, and the retreating horsemen now already far away. He noted the look of fear on the face of the trooper, and that of desperate resolve in the keen eyes of the American.

“Now for it!” he cried. “Put your horses at it here. I’ll give you a lead.”

A wire fence is a trying thing to jump, with an uncertain steed. To his surprise, John Ames lighted in safety on the other side. Not so Shackleton. His horse’s hoofs caught the top wire, and turning a complete somersault, threw its rider heavily, but on the right side of the fence, while that of the trooper refused point-blank and trotted off, snorting idiotically, right down the fence into the very teeth of the advancing enemy.

John Ames turned, then rode back.

“Get up, Major, for Heaven’s sake!”

Shackleton had already been on his feet, but subsided again with a groan.

“Can’t. Ankle gone. Guess my time’s here—right here,” he panted. “You go on.”

“We don’t do things that way, damn it!” John Ames answered, in his strong excitement. “Here, get up on my horse.”

He had dismounted. Shackleton’s fool of an animal had already recovered itself and made itself scarce. The advancing impi was barely three hundred yards distant, pouring onward, shivering the air with its deep vibrating “Jjí-jjí!”

“You go on!” repeated the American. “I won’t be taken alive.”

John Ames said no more. He did. Shackleton, fortunately, was rather a small man, and light. The other seized him under the shoulders, and by dint of half lifting, half pushing, got him bodily into the saddle.

“Now go!” he shouted. “I’ll hold on the stirrup.”

All this had taken something under a minute.

They went. The impi was now pouring through the fence, whose momentary obstruction almost made a difference of life or death to the fugitives. How they escaped John Ames never knew. Sky, earth, the distant township beneath, all whirled round and round before him. Twice he nearly lost hold of the stirrup-leather and would have fallen; then at last became aware of slackening pace. Turning, dizzy and exhausted, he saw that the enemy had abandoned pursuit.

And what of the unfortunate trooper? Not much, and that soon over, luckily. Abandoning his mount, he made a rush for the fence, but too late. A very hail of assegais was showered upon him, and he fell, half in, half out, across the wire. With a roar of exultation the savages were around him. Assegais gleamed in the air, first bright, then red, and in a second nothing was left but a shapeless and mangled mass.

Such tragedies, however, come but under the simple word “losses,” and these, all things considered, had not been great. On the other hand, the enemy had suffered severely, and if, by sheer force of overwhelming numbers, he had succeeded in driving them back, those forming the reconnaissance were not disposed to feel it acutely. They were quite ready to go in at him another day, and thus make things even.

But Shackleton, otherwise “The Major,” was not going to let the thing down so easily. His sprained ankle kept him tied by the leg for some days, but on the subject of the fight and the retreat he became somewhat of a bore. On the subject of John Ames he became even more of one. He was never tired of extolling that worthy’s readiness and nerve, and his self-devotion in risking his life to save a comrade.

“You British have got a little iron notion,” he would say, “a thing you call a Victoria Cross, I reckon. Well, when you going to get it for John Ames? He boosted me on to his broncho like a sack right away, and run afoot himself. But for him where’d I be now? Cut into bully beef by those treacherous savages. Yes, sir.”

But as these incisive utterances were invariably accompanied by an invitation to liquor, there were some who were not above drawing. The Major upon his favourite topic. To most, however, he became a bore, but to none so much as the subject thereof. Said the latter one day—

“Do you know, Major, I begin to wish I had left you where you were. It’s a fact that you’re making a perfect fool of me, and I wish you’d drop it.”

“Shucks! Now you quit that fool-talk, John Ames, and reach down that whisky over there—if you can call such drug-store mixture as your Scotch stuff by the same name as real old Kentucky. I’m going on at it until they give you that little nickel thing you British think such a heap of.”

“But I don’t want it, can’t you understand?” he retorted angrily; “nor anything else either. I believe I’ll get out of this country mighty soon. I’m sick of the whole show.”

Shackleton looked at his friend, and shook his head gravely. John Ames petulant, meant something very wrong indeed with John Ames. Then an idea struck “The Major”—a bright idea, he reckoned—and in the result he seized an early opportunity of making a call, and during that call he retold his favourite tale to just two persons—to one of whom it was pleasant and to one of whom it was not. You see, he was a shrewd observer, was Shackleton, otherwise “The Major.”

Chapter Twenty Eight.

The King and the Age.

“Do try and be serious a little while if you can, Nidia, if only that I have something very serious to say to you.”

“Drive ahead, then, Govvie. I promise not even to laugh.”

Susie Bateman looked at the girl as she sat there, with hands clasped together and downcast eyes, striving to look the very picture of be-lectured demureness, and tried to feel angry with her. Yet, somehow, she could not—no, not even when she thought to detect a suspicious heave of the shoulders which denoted a powerful fund of compressed laughter. With the absent object of her intended “straight talk” she felt venomously savage. With this one—no, she could not.

“Well, what I want to say is this,” she went on. “Nidia, is it fair to encourage that man as you do?”

“Which man? There are so many men. Do I encourage them?”

“Oh, child, don’t be so wildly exasperating. You know perfectly well who I mean.”

Then Nidia lifted her eyes with a gleam of delightful mischief in them.

“I have a notion you are ungrammatical, Govvie. I am almost sure you ought to have said ‘whom I mean.’ Well, we won’t be particular about that. But, as my American adorer, ‘Major’ Shackleton, would say, ‘Oh, do drive on,’ By the way, is he the man I am encouraging?”

What was to be done with such a girl as this? But Susie Bateman was not to be put off.

“You know perfectly well that I mean John Ames.”

“Oh! Now you’re talking, as my ‘Major’ aforesaid would rejoin. And so I encourage John Ames, do I? Poor fellow! he seems to need it.”

There was an unconscious softness wherewith these words were uttered. It drove the other frantic, “Need it indeed! On the contrary, what he needs is discouragement, and plenty of it. Well, he gets it from me, at any rate.”

“Oh yes, he does,” came the softly spoken interpolation.

“Well, but, Nidia, how much further is this thing to go? Why, the man comes here and talks to you as if you belonged to him; has a sort of taken-possession-of-you way about him that it’s high time to put an end to.”

“And if he had not ‘taken possession’ of me in that ghastly place on the Umgwane, and kept it ever since, where would I be now?” came the placid rejoinder.

“Yes, I know. That is where the mischief came in. It was partly my fault for ever encouraging the man’s acquaintance. I might have known he would be dangerous. There is that about him so different to the general run of them that would make him that way to one like yourself, Nidia. Yes; I blame myself.”

“Yes; he is different to the general ruck, isn’t he?” rejoined Nidia, with a softness in her wide-opened eyes that rather intensified than diminished the bitterness of her friend and mentor.

“Well, at any rate he is nobody in particular,” flashed out the latter, “and probably hasn’t got a shilling to his name; and now I hear he has resigned his appointment”—again that provoking smile, “Once for all, Nidia; do you intend to marry him?”

“Marry who? John Ames?”

“Yes,” with a snap.

“He hasn’t asked me.”

The innocent artlessness of the tone, the look of absolute and childlike simplicity in the blue eyes as the answer came tranquilly forth, would have sent a bystander into convulsions. It sent Mrs Bateman out of the room in a whirlwind of wrath. After her went the offender.

“Don’t get mad, Susie. I can’t help being a tease, can I? I was built that way. Come along out, and we’ll drop in on some other frightened and beleaguered female, and swap camp and laager gossip.”

But the other refused. She was seriously put out, she said, and never felt less like going anywhere. So Nidia, who understood her—at times, somewhat crusty—friend thoroughly, and managed her accordingly, put on her hat and went alone.

To do her justice, Mrs Bateman, from her point of view, was not without cause for concern. Nidia’s father—she had lost her mother—was the senior partner of an exceedingly wealthy firm of shipowners, and had certainly a more brilliant future planned for his only and idolised daughter than an alliance with a penniless nobody; for so, with a certain spiteful emphasis, Mrs Bateman delighted to designate the object of her abhorrence. The girl had been allowed to accompany her only after long and much-expressed opposition on the paternal side, and now she felt simply weighted down with responsibility. And this was the way in which she had fulfilled her trust!

But fortune seemed inclined to favour her to-day. Scarcely had Nidia been gone ten minutes, than there came a knock at the door of their diminutive abode. John Ames himself! Susie Bateman snorted like the metaphoric warhorse, for she scented battle. She was about to indulge this obnoxious person with a very considerable fragment of her mind. Nevertheless she welcomed him pleasantly—almost too pleasantly, thus overdoing the part. But she had no intention of sending him off at a tangent, as she knew full well would be the result of letting him know that Nidia was not in.

Observing him keenly, she noted the quick shade of disappointment as he became alive to the fact that the room was empty save for herself. She knew exactly what was passing in his mind, and found a cruel enjoyment in observing every sign of expectation evoked by this or that sound outside, for she had not told him that Nidia was out, and knew that he was still hoping she might only be in another room. At length he enquired.

“Miss Commerell has gone out,” she replied. “She went round to see some people; I didn’t even hear who they were. She won’t be back till lunch-time, if then; and perhaps it is just as well, Mr Ames, for I have been wanting to have a little quiet conversation with you. Now we can have it.”

“Yes?” he said enquiringly. But tranquil as the tone was, she had not failed to note the scarcely perceptible start of conscious dismay evoked by the announcement. Yet now it had come to the point, she for her part hardly knew how to begin, and he was not going to help her. Besides, his tranquil self-possession was somewhat disconcerting. However, she started in at it, characteristically, headlong.

“Now, you must not be angry with me, Mr Ames; but I want to talk to you as a woman of the world to a man of the world. In short, about Miss Commerell.”

“Such a subject cannot but be interesting, Mrs Bateman.”

“She is under my charge, you know.”

“Yes. You are to be congratulated on the delightful nature of such a charge.”

“But you admit that it is one which entails a grave responsibility?”

“The gravest responsibility,” he replied.

“Well, then, the gravity of that responsibility must be my excuse for what I am about to say. Don’t you think you come here rather often?”

She was exasperated by his imperturbability. She could see he meant fencing, wherefore she clubbed him without further preliminary.

“Do I?” he answered, in the same even tone.

She could hardly restrain her wrath, and her voice took a higher pitch.

“Do you?” she echoed somewhat stupidly, because fast losing her temper. “Well, when I tell you people are beginning to talk about it?”

“Yes; they would be sure to do that. You see, they have so little to talk about, all crowded up together here.”

She was taken wildly aback. The unparalleled impudence of the man, taking everything for granted in this way!

“Well, I can’t have Miss Commerell talked about, and I won’t. And that’s all about it.”

“Oh, it’s about Miss Commerell they are talking? I understood you to mean it was about my coming here.”

Then Mrs Bateman lost her temper, and, as women of her stamp usually do under such circumstances, she became rude.

“Bless the man, is he quite a fool?” she broke forth, fairly quivering with rage. “Don’t you, or won’t you, understand that you are the cause of getting Nidia talked about? You! And I won’t have it. Indeed, under the circumstances, your acquaintance with Miss Commerell had better cease. She is in my charge, remember.”

“Yes. But she is not a child. I should first like to hear Miss Commerell’s own views in the matter; indeed, shall do so before deciding on whether to fall in with yours or not, and so I tell you frankly, Mrs Bateman. Of course this is your house, and I need hardly say I shall visit it no more.”

“One moment. I have not quite done,” she went on, for he had risen to go. “Again you must forgive me for plain-speaking; but let me advise you, as a friend, to entertain no hopes that can only end in disappointment. You are probably aware that Miss Commerell’s father is a very wealthy man, and therefore you will not be surprised to learn that he has mapped out a brilliant future for his only daughter.”

The speaker was alive to the slight stirring of dismay that passed like a ripple over the countenance of her hearer. She knew him well enough to be sure that the bolt had gone home, and at heart secretly respected him. In making this statement she had thrown her king of trumps.

“It is very painful for me to be obliged to speak like this, Mr Ames,” she went on, deftly infusing a little less acerbity into her tone, “especially when I think of all you have done for Miss Commerell throughout a time of terrible danger. But as to this, you will certainly not find her people ungrateful; you may take my assurance as to that. Let me see. You have resigned your appointment, have you not? At least, so I have been told.”

She paused. She had thrown her ace.

John Ames, his face white to the lips with this culminating outrage, replied—

“Pardon me if I decline to discuss my own private affairs with anybody, Mrs Bateman. For the rest, there is a pitch of perfection in everything, even in the art of plain-speaking, and perfection in that art I must congratulate you on having attained. Good morning!”

He bowed and left the house, with, at any rate, all the honours of war on his side; and this she could not but recognise, feeling rather small and uncomfortable as she looked after his retreating figure. But she had thrown her ace of trumps, anyway.

“How will you face the parting of the ways?”

The Umlimo’s question came back to his mind as he walked away from the house in a very fury of turmoil. The Umlimo’s predictions seemed to fulfil themselves to the letter in every particular. In his then frame of mind John Ames found his thoughts reverting to that strange personality with a kind of fascination, of deepened sympathy. He himself began to feel the same hatred of his kind, the same intuition that even as the hand of everybody was against him, so should his hand be against everybody. It was significant that Nidia should have been out of the way. Could it be that she had deputed this cursed, parrot-faced, interfering woman to take up her part and so clear the ground for her? His part was played. He had been Nidia’s Providence during that perilous flight, but now his part was played. She had no longer any use for him. The “brilliant future mapped out for her”—the words seemed burnt into his brain—what part or lot had he in such, he a mere penniless nobody? And then all the outrageous insult conveyed by the woman’s words—a sort of patronising assurance that he would be compensated, yes, compensated—paid—why did she not call it? Faugh! It was sickening. Well, again, as the Umlimo had pronounced, it was the way of life. Black and bitter were his thoughts. All was dark—blankly dark. He knew not which way to turn. And at this juncture “The Major,” otherwise Shackleton, his ankle now restored sufficiently to enable its owner to hobble about, barred his material way with a pressing invitation to come round and lunch. Lunch, indeed! Mentally he consigned that estimable American to the devil, and, leaving him astonished, went on to his own quarters, like a wounded animal, to hide his pain and heartbreak alone. Besides, he was sick of the story of his own “heroism.” Damn such “heroism”! He thought of the luckless trooper who had been with them in their peril, probably conjured up by the sight of Shackleton, and envied him. Why had he not been the one to end his hopes and fears then in that swift and easy manner? That poor devil probably had plenty of life’s sweets in front of him. He had none. That was all over and done with.

He gained his quarters. The post had come in, and on his table lay a pile of official-looking letters, most of them addressed to him by his late official style. He glanced through them listlessly, one after another, and then—What was it that caused his hand to shake and the colour to leave his face, and started him bolt upright? He stared at the sheet again and again. Yes, there it was. He was not dreaming. The sheet of paper was material, substantial; the words on it, written in a somewhat flourishing, clerkly hand, were plain enough, and they were to the effect that there had been placed to his credit, and lay at his disposal, in the Standard Bank in Cape Town, the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds.

Twenty-five thousand pounds! At his disposal! Heavens, what did it mean? Some hoax? Some practical joke? Of course. But with the bank communication was an enclosure. This he opened with trembling fingers, and thus it ran—

“In carrying out my instructions, John Ames, as you have done to the very letter, you have rendered me a service beyond any money value. Go now and be happy with her whom you love, and this end the accompanying communication will materially further. Do not spoil your happiness by any cursed foolish pride, or insane ideas of being under an obligation, for this sum is less to me than a five-pound note would be to you probably at this moment”—again that well-nigh superhuman gift of forecast—“and take no more risks, but go in peace while you, or rather while ye, may—the road is still open—and by your lifelong happiness continue to justify the forecasts of:—

“Umlimo.”

This, then, was what meant the opening of the packet marked “B.”

Chapter Twenty Nine.

...And the Odd Trick.

John Ames stared at this communication till his eyes were dizzy, and a wild rush of joy surged through his being. Its genuineness he could not doubt. The bank paper, the bank seal—even the signature of the letter he knew by name. Now he was no longer a penniless nobody, but the possessor of what was really a small fortune. Why, indeed, should any false pride stand in the way of his acceptance of it? People received bequests, even from unknown testators—received them thankfully; why should not he? The testator was living, yet practically dead to his kind. Again, there was a sort of appeal in the very wording of this strange communication. Why should he wreck his life’s happiness upon any rock of false pride? He could now press his suit upon, at any rate, independent terms.

Then, to dash his exultation, in came that ugly thought again. Could it really be that that odious woman was deputed by Nidia? Horrible! What was this sudden access to competence in such a case? “A brilliant future mapped out for her.” Even now, under his changed fortunes, such was not within his reach to offer her. John Ames was a proud man and a sensitive one. Could it be that his ideal had stopped down from her pedestal? Then, by a comic twist of thought, came back that conversation down by the blue sea at Camp’s Bay. This pedestal to let! Yes, it was comical.

But again, by another twist of thought, came back that day in all its idyllic aspects; in all the golden glow of love and faith, and vague, indefinable hope. Came back also that parting in the solitudes of a grim wilderness, that pressure of the hands, that last long look into the eyes. Surely there was truth; there, far from artificial restraints, was the soul laid bare. John Ames became sane again.

Yet it was in no great exaltation of mind that he wended his way, a couple of days later, to the dwelling occupied by Mrs Bateman. He had declared he would enter it no more, but now, under the circumstances, he would do so once. He would be firm and decided, too, in the attainment of his object, and that was to see Nidia alone. He would take no denial.

This time, however, he was spared the necessity of further conflict. Nidia was there to welcome him, and she was alone. She looked at him searchingly, and her eyes were grave.

“What is the matter?” she said. “You are looking careworn and anxious. Why?”

“Am I? Oh, it’s nothing. Some active service will soon send that away.”

“Active service?”

“Yes. I’m going to volunteer.”

“Haven’t you had enough of that yet?”

“I haven’t had any. My active service up till now has been strictly confined to running away, and uncommonly ‘active’ service it has been, let me assure you.”

“Running away?” she repeated. “Yes; it is the sort of running away that one has a particular admiration for. Running away on foot, for instance, with about a thousand savages a hundred yards behind, so that a wounded comrade may ride away on one’s horse.”

He flushed. That wretched Shackleton had been firing off that stale yarn here too. Of course, it would look as though he himself had inspired it.

“Don’t look annoyed,” said Nidia, softly; “because I haven’t half done. ‘Running away,’ too, in order to take care of a certain helpless fugitive belonging to the helpless sex, who would otherwise certainly have been murdered, or certainly have come to some miserable end a dozen times over, is another kind of flight which appeals.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake leave that part of it! It was no thanks to me and my blundering asinine stupidity that you came in safe at all.”

“No. But, you see, I happen to hold a different opinion. And now, John, I have a little sore grievance against you, and I want to work it off. We don’t see much of you now. Why not?”

“Well, ‘we’ don’t want to. Do you happen to know that only a couple of days ago I was requested not to come here any more?”

“Do I happen to know? Why, of course I don’t. This is the first I’ve heard of it,” answered Nidia, speaking quickly and with some indignation. “I did not even know you had been here a couple of days ago. I only know how I have missed you since.”

“It is hardly fair, though, to give that as a reason. There may be others. One is, perhaps, that I thought you might have too much of a not very good thing; that you might have had enough of me during all the time we were together, and change is congenial sometimes. Again, perhaps, it is that I have not been feeling particularly cheerful of late, and feared to inflict it upon you.”

Nidia’s face, which at first had taken on a hurt look, now grew very soft.

“What have you been troubled about? Can you not tell me? Me, remember?”

The very tone was a caress. But somehow it recalled the abominable hint thrown out by Mrs Bateman that very morning—the imputation that had stung and insulted him to the very core of his finest feelings—and the recollection hardened him.

“Whatever I have been troubled about will trouble me as long as life itself,” he answered, looking her in the eyes full and straight. “But I did not come here to whine to you, trouble or not. I came to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?”

“Yes. I have volunteered for active service, and am under orders to be in readiness to take the field at a moment’s notice.”

“Then you may consider those orders cancelled. You are under orders to remain where you are until further notice.”

“What?” he said, looking down at her where she stood, for he had risen preparatory to taking his leave. “To remain where I am? What do you mean, Nidia?”

“I mean that you can’t go, and I don’t intend that you shall. Heavens, what do you want to go getting yourself killed for? Wasn’t it bad enough when you nearly did—when I—when we—all thought you were? You have got to stay here and take care of me.”

What was this? Nidia’s self-possession breaking down so signally? Were his eyes and ears utterly deceiving him? There was what sounded suspiciously like the catch of a sob in her voice, and in her eyes that same look of appeal, of wistfulness, he had seen there when they bade each other that last farewell in the wilds of the Matopos. His face flushed beneath its bronze, then went white; but his voice was firm as ever as he imprisoned her with his arms.

“To take care of you? Then I must do so for life, Nidia.”

“Yes; I think you had better, as you know how to do it so well,” she replied, raising her lips.

It was their first kiss; but it was even as the welding of two souls. It was their first kiss, but for a very brief space the only one. With no further necessity for self-containment, John Ames seemed to pour forth his whole soul, his whole nature, in adoration of this girl, the first sight of whom had turned the whole current of his thoughts and inner life. All of this Nidia learned, and was infinitely, radiantly happy.

“Shall I tell you something—darling?” she said. “Strange as it may sound, I have never loved anybody before—have never felt the slightest inclination to. But when I saw you, I knew the possibility was there. You were—are—so different to everybody else. I missed you so frightfully when you left to come up here. There, I never told you that before. And all the time we were out together in the mountains I loved being with you—felt so safe with you, somehow, and—Oh!”

The last ejaculation was evoked by the appearance of a third party on the scene. In the doorway stood Mrs Bateman, speechless, her high-featured countenance livid with amazement, rage, and baffled spite.

“Come here, Susie, and say, ‘Bless you, my children,’” called out Nidia, a lovely blush coming over her face, as she realised the very near propinquity in which she stood to the other occupant of the room, who, for his part, said nothing.

But there came no answer. The other turned and walked away in silence. She had thrown her king and her ace, but the odd trick remained, and this John Ames held.

Shiminya, the sorcerer, was seated in his múti kraal on the Umgwane river, but he was not alone. With him sat Nanzicele, ex-sergeant of the native police.

From the tone of their voices they seemed not on very good terms. Not to put too fine a point upon it, they were quarrelling.

Now, the cause of the difference lay in the fact that Nanzicele aspired to join the ranks of the Abantwana ’Mlimo. Shiminya, on the other hand, was resolved that the hierarchy of the Great Abstraction would be better without him, and was breaking this resolve as gently as might be.

But Nanzicele had been drinking. He had obtained some gin among certain overlooked loot of a sacked store, and Nanzicele, foiled in his objects, and half drunk, was a very unpleasant customer indeed, not to say a sufficiently formidable one.

Now he was raising his voice threateningly, jeering Shiminya, and more than hinting that he was a rank impostor—he and all his cloth. The seer’s snake-like eyes sparkled with vindictive hate, for he was no more fond of being reviled and insulted than other and commoner mortals.

Another consideration actuating this precious pair was that each was in a position to give the other away. Both knew that the result of the rising was but a question of time, and each had an idea that he might purchase safety at the expense of the other.

A large bowl of tywala was on the ground between them. Suddenly, as Shiminya stooped to raise this, his confederate whirled up his stick, intending to bring it down upon the sorcerer’s head in such wise that the Umlimo would be without one of his most valuable myrmidons. But the move was not quick enough. The blow, instead of shattering skull, came down on shoulder, with numbing, crushing effect. Lithe as an eel, Shiminya twisted, and sprang to his feet. At him sprang Nanzicele. The sorcerer had no weapon to hand. The big Matabele, pressing him hard against the thorn fence, had him at his mercy.

Not quite. As the second blow descended, something entered Nanzicele’s side, sharp, fiery, scathing. Then Shiminya fell, his limbs squirming in spasmodic quiver, and from his relaxed grasp there fell a small knife. This Nanzicele pushed aside with his foot, uttering a contemptuous grunt.

“Au! That does not kill,” he growled, surveying his ribs, whence the blood flowed freely, but from a mere flesh-wound. Then shifting his knobstick into his left hand, the vengeful savage seized a broad-bladed assegai, and plunged it into the vitals of his prostrate confederate.

“Yeh-bo!” he cried. “Fare thee well, Shiminya. The Umtwana ’Mlimo can bleed as well as an ordinary man—can die! Hlala-gahle Umtwana ’Mlimo!”

The body of the sorcerer lay motionless. Gazing upon it for a moment, Nanzicele turned away to the huts. There was plunder there, plenty of it, and for some little while he turned his attention thitherward, finding and appropriating to his own use a good many things of vast value in his eyes, arms and ammunition, wearing apparel, tobacco, and what not. But as he opened one of the huts there darted out against his legs something grey and hairy and snarling, nearly upsetting him with the shock and the scare. Before he had recovered from his startled surprise the thing had vanished and now Nanzicele deemed it time to do likewise.

The sun’s rays grew longer and longer, throwing shadows over the ill-omened abode of dark dealings, and the motionless body that lay there. Then the body was motionless no longer. The limbs moved; next the head was raised, but feebly. Shiminya sat up.

“Ah, ah! The Umtwana ’Mlimo is not so easy to kill, Nanzicele; and thou—for this thou shalt die a thousand deaths,” he murmured.

He reached over for the tywala bowl, but it had been upset in the scuffle and was empty. Parched with a feverish and burning thirst, the sorcerer dragged himself on hands and knees to the hut wherein he knew there was more of the liquor. He reached it at length, trailing broad splashes of blood behind him. Creeping within, he found the great calabash. It was empty. Nanzicele had drained it.

In a tremble of exhaustion Shiminya sank to the ground. The cold dews of death were upon his face. The awful coldness throughout his frame, the result of a prodigious loss of blood, became an agony. Air! A great craving for air was upon him. His brain reeled, and his lungs gasped. He felt as though he could no longer move.

Then the door was darkened, and something brushed in. With a superhuman effort he collected his energies.

“Hamba, Lupiswana!” he gurgled. “Hamba-ke!”

But the brute took no notice of the voice before which it was wont to cower and tremble. It crouched, snarling. Then it put its head down and licked the blood-gouts which had fallen upon the ground from the veins of its evil master.

The latter began to experience some of the agonies he had delighted to witness in his victims. The savage beast had tasted blood—his blood. And he himself was too weak to have resisted the onslaught of a rat.

Again he called, trying to infuse strength into his voice. But the crafty beast knew his state exactly, it had learnt to gauge helplessness in the case of too many other victims, perhaps. It only crawled a little nearer, still growling.

For a while they lay thus, man and beast, mutually eyeing each other. The eyes of the former were becoming glazed with the agony of utter weakness but active apprehension. Those of the latter glared yellow and baleful in the semi-gloom of the hut. It was a horrid sight.

“Hamba, Lupiswana!” repeated the sorcerer, instinctively groping for a weapon. But with a shrill snarl the brute was at his throat, tearing and worrying, and, although a small animal, so furious was its frenzy over this new and copious feast of blood, that it shook the light form of the wizard, almost as it would have done that of a newly dropped fawn. And then in the semi-gloom was the horrible spectacle of a man with his throat half torn out, feebly battling with the enraged furious beast covered with blood and uttering its guttural snarls, as it tore and clawed at his already lacerated vitals. But the struggle did not last. The grim “familiar spirit” had triumphed over its evil master. Shiminya the sorcerer lay dead in his múti kraal, and the horrible brute lay growling and snarling as it gorged itself to repletion upon his mangled body.