The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

Bertram Mitford (continued 5)

Reading edition

“Don’t be a fool, Spence,” said Blachland kindly. “You’d be more hindrance than help to me really—and so would any one except Sybrandt, but we can’t take two scouts away at once.”

The commanding officer thought so too, and was in a correspondingly bad humour. But Blachland was far too valuable a man to gainsay in a matter of this kind, besides, he had a knack of getting his way. Now having got it, he lost no time in preparations or farewells. He simply started.

“His contract’s too big,” said the American, presently. “Guess we’ve nearly seen the last of him.”

“He’ll come through, you’ll see,” rejoined Sybrandt, confidently.

The while Blachland was riding along the backward track: not quite on it, but rather above, where possible; scanning every point with lynx-eyed vigilance. Once a glimpse of something lying across the track caused his pulses to beat quicker. Cautiously he rode down to it. Only an old sack dropped during the march. The spoor of the patrol was plain enough, but he remembered that the missing man suffered from fever, and had been slightly wounded during the earlier stages of the campaign. The possibilities were all that he had been overtaken with sudden faintness and had collapsed, unperceived by the rest—in which case a lonely and desolate end here in the wilds, even if the more merciful assegai of the savage did not cut short his lingerings. And he himself had been too near such an end, deserted and alone, not to know the horror of it.

No blame whatever was due to the commanding officer in refusing to send back—indeed he was perfectly right in so doing. The rules of war, like those of life, are stern and pitiless. For many days the patrol had fought its way through swarming enemies, and in all probability, would have to again. Weakened in strength, in supplies, and at this stage, with ammunition none too plentiful, its leaders could not afford to weaken it still further, and delay its advance, and risk another conflict, with the ultimate chance of possible massacre, for the sake of one man. That much was certain. And he, Hilary Blachland, who at one time would have endorsed the hard necessity without a qualm, hardened, ruthless, inexorable, why should he run such grave and deadly risk for the sake of one man who was only an acquaintance after all—yet here he was doing so as a matter of course. What had changed him? He knew.

And the risk was great—deadly indeed. The savages had hung upon the rear of the patrol right up to the fall of night, and the subsequent retreat. The bush was full of them, and in unknown numbers. It was to him a marvel and a mystery that he had as yet sighted none. Other sign, too, did not escape his practised understanding. There was no game about, none whatever—and even the birds flitting from spray to spray were abnormally shy and wild. Now he could locate, some way ahead of him, the scene of yesterday’s fight.

Then an idea struck him. What if the missing man, confused by the spoor, had made for the river bank, intending to follow it? Deflecting to his right he crossed the track, and rode along it on the farther edge, minutely examining the ground.

Ha! Just as he thought. Footmarks—the imprint of boots—very ragged, half soleless boots—the footprints of one man. These turned out of the spoor, and slightly at right angles took the direction of the river bank. There was no difficulty whatever in following them. In the deep, soft ground, rendered almost boggy in parts by the recent and continuous rains, their imprint was as the face of an open book. Blachland’s heart rose exceedingly. He would soon find the wanderer, mount him behind him on his horse and bring him back safely.

Then another thought struck him. Skelsey was no raw Britisher. He was a Natal man, and had been up-country, prospecting, for the last two or three years. Why the deuce then should he be unable to follow a plain broad spoor, for this seemed the only way of accounting for his deflection? Well, he would very soon overtake him now, so it didn’t matter.

Didn’t it? What was this? And Blachland, pulling in his horse, sat there in his saddle, his face feeling cold and white under its warm bronze. For now there were other footmarks and many of them. And these were the marks of naked feet.

They seemed to have clustered together in a confused pattern, all around the first spoor. It was as plain as the title page of a book. They had struck the two foot marks here and had halted to consult. Then they had gone on again—not along the first spoor, but diagonally from it.

He himself adopted the same course, taking the other side of the single spoor. In this way if the missing man were travelling straight he would reach him first—would reach him and bear him off before the destroyers now pursuing him like hounds should run into him. But it would be a near thing.

The dull hoarse roar of the swollen river sounded close in front. Louder and louder it grew. The missing man could not be far ahead now. Rising in his stirrups he gazed anxiously around. No sign. He dared not shout. The band of Matabele who were in pursuit of Skelsey could not be far distant on his left. He was almost on the river bank, and still no sign of the fugitive. Well, the roar of the water would prevent his voice from reaching far—anyhow he would risk it.

“Skelsey! Where are you?” he called, but not loudly. “Skelsey!”

He listened intently. Was that an answer? Something between a cry and a groan—and—it was behind him.

He turned his horse, and as he did so, the thought occurred to him that he might be walking into a trap—that the savages might already have butchered his comrade, and be lying in wait to take him with the least trouble and risk to themselves. Well, he must chance it, and the chances were about even.

“Skelsey! Where are you, old chap?” he called again in a low tone.

This time an answer came, but faintly.

“Here.”

Lying under a bush was the missing man. He raised his head feebly, and gazed with lack-lustre eyes at his would-be rescuer.

“Get up behind me, quick!” said the latter.

“Can’t. I’ve sprained my ankle. Can’t stand. I was going to crawl to the river and end it all.”

“Well, you’ve got to ride instead. Come, I’ll give you a hand. Quick, man! There are a lot of Matabele after you, I struck their spoors.”

The while he had been helping the other to rise. Skelsey groaned and ground his teeth with the pain. He was exhausted too, with starvation.

“Can’t help it. You must pull yourself together,” said Blachland, hoisting him into the saddle and himself mounting behind. “Now stick tight on for all you know how, for we’ve got to run for it.”

“Ping-ping!” A bullet hummed overhead, then another. The horse snorted and plunged forward, nearly falling. The ground was rough, the condition of the animal indifferent, and the double burden considerably too much for his strength. There followed another crash or two of rifles from behind, then no more. The savages reckoned their prey secure. They could easily distance a lean horse, badly overloaded, on such ground as this, without further expenditure of ammunition. Now they streamed forward through the bush to overtake and butcher the two fugitives.

Of the above Blachland was as fully aware as the pursuers themselves. There was no safety for two, not a ghost of a chance of it. For one there was a chance, and it fairly good. Which was that one to be?

“Jjí—Jjí!—Jjí—jjí!” The hideous battle-hiss vibrated upon the air in deep-toned stridency. A glance over his shoulder. He could see the foremost of the savages ranging up nearer and nearer, assegais gripped ready to run in and stab. Which was that one to be?

In the flash of that awful moment a vision of Lyn rose before him—Lyn, in her fair, sweet, golden-haired beauty. Was he never to see her again? Why not? A loosening of his hold of the man in the saddle in front of him, a slight push, and he himself was almost certainly safe. No human eye would witness the deed, least of all would it ever be suspected. On the contrary, all would bear witness how he had ridden back into grave peril to try and rescue a missing comrade, and Lyn would approve—and even a happiness he had hardly as yet dared dream of might still be his. And—it should.

“Can you stick on if I don’t have to hold you, Skelsey?”

“Yes. I think so. I’m sure I can.”

“Well, then, stick on for God’s sake, and go,” was the quick eager rejoinder. “I’m hit in two places—mortally. I’m dead already, but you needn’t be. Good-bye.”

He slid to the ground. The horse, relieved of its double burden, shot forward, its pace accelerated by a stone, lightly hurled by its late owner, which struck it on the hindquarters. A glance convinced him that his comrade was now in comparative safely, and Hilary Blachland turned to await the onrushing mass of his ruthless foes—single-handed, alone, and—as yet, absolutely unhurt. His temptation had been sharp, searching and fiery. But his triumph was complete.

Chapter Six.

His Triumph.

In uttering that sublime lie, Hilary Blachland had set the seal to his triumph.

But for it his comrade would have refused to leave him, on that point he was sure, whereas to throw away his life for one who was dead already, would be an act of sheer lunacy on Skelsey’s part. One must die or both, and he had elected to be that one. Yet the actual horror and sting of the death which now stared him in the face was indescribably terrible.

Instinctively he took cover behind a stone—for the ground here was open and broken. The Matabele, reckoning him a sure prey sooner or later, had stayed their forward rush, and, halting within the bush line, began to parley, and not altogether without reason, for there was something rather formidable in the aspect of this well-armed man, who although but one against their swarming numbers, was manifestly determined to sell his life very dearly indeed. They had some experience as to what that meant—and recently.

“Ho, Isipau!” called out a great voice. “Come now and talk with some of your old friends.”

“I think not, Ziboza,” came the answer. “For the looks of most of you are not friendly.”

“Are you come to capture the Great Great One, Isipau?” jeered another voice, and a shout of derision backed up the words.

“No. I came to find a comrade who was left behind sick. I have found him—and now, amadoda, when I return I can speak more than one good word on behalf of the Great Great One, and of those who suffered me to return when they might have given me some trouble.”

“When thou returnest, Isipau!” roared several of the young warriors with a burst of mocking laughter. “When thou returnest! Au! But that will be never.”

“Nobody knows. I do not—you do not. But it will be better for all here if I do return.”

For a while there was no response, save another burst of laughter. Then Ziboza spoke:

“Come now over to us, Isipau. We will take thee to the Black Elephant.”

Blachland pondered. Could he trust them? If they actually meant to take him to the King, then indeed he stood a good chance, for he did not believe that Lo Bengula would allow him to be harmed, and he did believe that once face to face with him he could persuade the fugitive King to surrender. But could he trust them, that was the crux?

Rapidly he ran over the situation within his mind. This Ziboza he knew fairly well as an inveterate hater of the whites, one of those moreover who had perpetually urged upon Lo Bengula the necessity of murdering all white men in his country. He thought too, of the moment, when disarmed and helpless, he should stand at their mercy, and what that “mercy” would mean why more than one act of hideous barbarity which he himself had witnessed, was sufficient to remind him. Moreover, even while thus balancing probabilities, certain scraps of smothered conversation reached his ears. That decided him. He would not place himself within their power. It only remained to sell his life dearly.

If only it were near the close of the day, he could hold them off for a while, and perhaps, under cover of darkness, escape. But it was hardly yet full noon. They could get round him and rake him with a cross fire. Bad marksmen as they were, they could hardly go on missing him all day.

“Come then, Isipau!” called out Ziboza. “Lay down thy weapons and come.”

“No. Go ye now away and leave me. Peace is not far distant and many good words will I speak for you because of this day.”

A jeering roar, now of rage, now of disappointment, greeted his words. At the same time Blachland sighted one of them kneeling down with his piece levelled, and taking deliberate aim at him. An instinct moved him to drop down behind the stone, and the instinct was a true one, for as he did so a bullet sang through the spot where his head and shoulders had been but a fraction of a second before. Two others hummed over him, but high.

He put his hat up above the stone, holding it by the brim. “Whigge!”—another bullet hummed by, almost grazing it.

“Some devil there can shoot, anyway,” he growled to himself. “If only I could get a glint of him. Ah!”

A stratagem had occurred to him. He managed to fix the hat just so that the top of it should project, then creeping to the edge of the boulder, he peered round, his piece sighted and ready. Just as he thought. The head and shoulders of a savage, taking aim at the hat—and then with the crash of his own rifle that savage was spinning round and turning a convulsive somersault, shot fair and square through the head. His slayer set his teeth, with a growl that was half exulting, half a curse. His foes were going to find that they had cornered a lion indeed—so much he could promise them.

The mutterings of wrath and dismay which arose among them over this neat shot, were drowned in a furious volley. Every man who possessed a firearm seemed animated with a kind of frenzied desire to discharge it as quickly and as often as possible at and around the rock behind which he lay. For a few moments the position was very sultry indeed. It might have been worse but that the moral of that deadly shot rendered his assailants exceedingly unwilling to leave their cover or expose themselves in any way.

On his right the river bank was but a couple of hundred yards, and running up from this was a bush-fringed donga, which might be any or no depth, but which ended at about half that distance. Upon this Blachland had got his eye and was puzzling out as to how he might turn it to account. Now he discovered that the same idea was occurring to his assailants, for although the intervening space was almost devoid of bush, the grass was long and tangled from the bush line to the chasm, and it was shaking and quivering in a very suspicious manner.

“Great minds jump together,” he muttered grimly, all his attention centred on this point, and entirely disregarding a terrific fire which was suddenly opened upon him, with the object, he suspected, of diverting it. “Just as I thought.”

One glimpse only, of the naked, crawling savage, flattened to the earth, but even that was sufficient. The thud of the bullet ploughing through ribs and vitals, was music to his ears as that savage flattened out more completely, beating the earth in his death throes; and a very shout of exultant snarling laughter escaped him—mingling with the roar of rage that went up from his enemies. He was growing terrible now—ferocious, bloodthirsty, as his ruthless foes, yet cool and firm as the rock behind which he lay.

“Two shots, two birds!” he exclaimed. “If I can keep on at this rate it’s good enough.”

The assailants were now mad with rage. They howled out taunts and jeers, and blood-curdling promises of the vengeance they would wreak upon him when they got him into their power. At this he laughed—laughed long and loud.

“That will be never!” he cried. “Ho, Ziboza, thou valiant fighting induna. How many of the King’s hunting dogs does it take to pull down one lion? Are the Ingubu all killed or have they driven thee from their midst to follow a new leader? But I tell thee, Ziboza, thou art a dead man this day. I may be, but thou art surely.”

“Ah—ah—’Sipau!” snarled the chief. “It is easy to boast, but thou art cornered. We have thee now.”

“Not yet. And a cornered animal is a dangerous one. Come and take me.”

To this interchange of amenities succeeded a lull. Clearly they were planning some fresh surprise. And then Blachland started, with a pang of sharp pain. His left hand was streaming blood. Then his spirits rose again. It was only a cut. A splinter of stone, chipped by one of their bullets, had struck him, but the wound was a trivial one. With the discovery, however, came another, and one which was by no means trivial. The bullet had been fired at a different angle from those hitherto. The ground on the left front rose slightly. His enemies were getting round him on that side. Soon he would be exposed to a complete flanking fire.

The worst of it was that in that direction he could see nobody. The cover was too good. He wondered they had not occupied this before, unless it were that they deemed it of the highest importance to cut off all chance of his escape by the river. Yet what chance had he there? A mere choice of deaths, for it was rolling down in flood, and between this and their fire from the bank, why, there was none at all.

And now the sun, which had been shining warm and glowing above this scene of stern and deadly strife, upon the beleaguered man, desperate, fighting to the last, beset by a swarm of persistent and ruthless foes—suddenly grew dark. A shadow had curtained its face, black and lowering. Blachland sent a hasty glance upward. One of those storms, almost of daily occurrence now in the rainy season, would shortly break over them. Would it bring him any advantage, however trifling—was his eager thought? At any rate it could not alter his position for the worse. And the hoarse and sullen boom of thunder mingled with the vengeful spit of the rifles of his enemies, now more frequent and more deadly because taking him from a new and almost unprotected quarter.

Ha! What was this? Under cover of this last diversion his enemies had been stealing up. They were coming on in dozens, in scores, from the first point of attack. Selecting two of the foremost, one behind the other, he fired—and his aim was true, but at the same time his rifle fell from his grasp, and his arm and shoulder felt as though crushed beneath a waggon wheel. With fiendish yells, drowning the gasping cry of the stricken warriors, the whole body of them poured forward. At the same time, those on the rise behind, left their cover, and charged down upon him, rending the air with their ear-splitting whistles.

He saw what had happened. The rifle had been struck by a bullet, and the concussion had for the moment paralysed him. Only for the moment though. Quick as the vivid flash which flamed down upon him from the now darkened heavens, his mind was made up. With a suddenness and a fleetness which took even his enemies by surprise, he had broken from his cover, and was racing headlong for the point of the donga which led down to the river.

In a second he will gain it. They cannot fire, every nerve is strained to overtake him, to head him off. He sees their foremost line. Now it is in front of him. No, not quite! His revolver is out, and the heavy bullet crashes almost point blank through the foremost. Another springs up in front of him, a gigantic warrior, his broad spear upraised. Before it can descend the fugitive is upon him, and the momentum is too great. Grappled together they topple over the edge, and go crashing down, the white man and the savage, into unknown depths.

The bushes close over their heads and they are in almost total darkness. There is a mighty splash of water and both are engulfed—yet, still grappled, they rise to the surface again, and the blue glare of the lightning, darting down, reveals the slanting earth walls of the chasm, reveals to each the face of the other as they rise above the turgid water, gasping and sputtering. The savage has lost his assegai in the fall, and the white man is groping hungrily, eagerly, for his sheath knife.

“Ah, ah! Ziboza! Did I not tell thee thou wert dead?”

“Not yet, dog Makiwa!” growls the other, in the ferocity of desperation striving to bury his great teeth in his adversary’s face. But Blachland is in condition as hard as steel, and far more at home in the water than the Matabele chief, so while gripping the latter by the wrists, he ducks his head beneath the surface, endeavouring to drown him if possible. He dare not let go his hold lest he should be the one grasped, and those above dare not fire down for fear of shooting their chief—even if they could see the contending parties—which they cannot. But the awful reverberations of the thunder-peal boom and shiver within that pit as of hell, and the lightnings gleam upon the brown turgid surface, and the straining faces of the combatants are even as those of striving fiends.

They touch ground now, then lose it again, for the bottom is but a foothold of slippery mud. Nearer, nearer to the main stream their struggles have carried them, until the sombre roar of the flood sounds deafening in their ears, and still the awful strife goes on.

“Ah—ah, Ziboza. I told thee thou shouldst meet death this day. Ha! Nantzia! (that is it) Ha!”

And with each throaty, bloodthirsty gasp he plunges the knife, which he has at last managed to free, into the body of the nearly exhausted chief, drawing it down finally in a terrible ripping stroke. A single gasping groan, and Ziboza sinks, as his adversary throws him from him. And then the said adversary knows no more. The swirl of the flood sweeping into the chasm, seems to rope him out, and the body of Hilary Blachland, together with that of his savage antagonist, is borne down within the raging rush of waters, rolling over and over on its way to the Zambesi and the sea.

Chapter Seven.

“That Irreclaimable Scamp!”

For some while after his departure from Lannercost, their recent guest occupied a very large share in the conversation and thoughts of its inmates. He had been so long with them, had become so much one of themselves in their quiet, rather isolated life, and now his absence had left a very real void.

He had written to them with fair frequency, telling of up-country doings—of the growing aggressiveness of the Matabele, and of the contemplated expedition, with the object of bringing Lo Bengula to book, then of the actual formation of such expedition, by that time on the eve of a start, and how he and young West had volunteered upon the Salisbury Column, and were to serve in the scouting section. Then correspondence had ceased. The expedition had set out.

It was then that Bayfield found himself importuned to increase the circulation of two or three other newspapers, in addition to those regularly sent him, by one subscriber, in order that no chance might be missed of seeing the very latest concerning the Matabele war, and upon such, Lyn and small Fred would fasten every post day.

“I say, Lyn!” cried the latter, disinterring his nose from a newly opened sheet, “but won’t Mr Blachland make Lo Bengula scoot, when once he gets at him? Man! but I’d like to be there.”

“But he and the King are great friends, Fred.”

“Pooh! How can they be friends if they’re at war? Nouw ja—but he just will scoot old Lo Ben! I’d like to be there.”

“I hope they’ll take all sorts of proper precautions against surprises,” said Lyn seriously, for she was just old enough to remember the shudder of gloom which ran through the whole country when the disastrous news of Isandhlwana had come upon it like a storm-burst fourteen years previously. It had struck vividly upon her childish imagination then and she had not forgotten it.

“Surprises! I’d like to see them surprise a commando that Mr Blachland’s on,” returned Fred, magnificent in his whole-souled contempt that any one could even imagine any such possibility. “And these Matabele chaps ain’t a patch on the Zulus. I’ve heard Mr Blachland say so again and again. Ja, he’s a fine chap! Won’t he make old Lo Ben sit up!”

Lyn would smile at this kind of oft-repeated expression of her young brother’s honest and whole-hearted idolatry, in which, although more reticent herself, she secretly shared. And the object of it? He was always in her thoughts. She delighted to think about him—to talk about him. Why not? He was her ideal, this man who had been an inmate of their roof for so long, who had been her daily companion throughout that time and had stored her mind with new thoughts, new ideas, which all unconsciously to herself, had expanded and enlarged it—and not one of which but had improved it. He represented something like perfection to her, this man, no longer young, weather-beaten, somewhat lined, who had come there in the capacity of her father’s friend. Strange, you see, but then, life is teeming with eccentricities.

This state of Lyn’s mind was not without one interested spectator, and that her father. Half amused, half concerned, he watched it—and put two and two together. That outburst of grief in which he had surprised her had never been repeated, and, watching her with loving care, he failed to descry any symptom of it having been, even in secret. But the girl’s clear mind was as open and as honest as a mirror. There was no shadow of hesitation or embarrassment in her manner or speech when they talked of their late guest—even before strangers. George Bayfield was puzzled. But through it all, as an undercurrent, there ran an idea. He recalled the entire pleasure which Blachland had taken in Lyn’s society, the frank, open admiration he had never failed to express when she or her doings formed the topic of conversation between them—the excellent and complete understanding between him and the girl. What if—Too old! Not a bit of it. He himself had married very young, and Blachland was quite half a dozen years his junior. Why, he himself was in his prime—and as for the other, apart from that shake of fever, he was as hard as nails.

Now this idea, the more and more it struck root in Bayfield’s mind, was anything but distasteful to him. The certainty that he must some day lose Lyn, was the one ever-haunting grief of his life. He had pictured some externally showy, but shallow-pated youth—on the principle that such things go by opposites—who should one day carry off his Lyn, and amid new surroundings and new interests, teach her—unconsciously perhaps, but none the less effectually—to forget her old home, and the father who loved and adored her from the crown of her sweet golden head to her little feet. But here was a man whose experience of the world was greater than his own, a man with an exhaustive knowledge of life, who had immediately seen and appreciated this pearl of great price, a strong man who had lived and done—no mere empty-headed, self-sufficient, egotistical youth; and this man was his friend. He was thoroughbred too, and the worst that could be said of him was that he had sown some wild oats. But apart from the culminating stage in the sowing of that crop—and even there probably there were great extenuating circumstances—nothing mean, nothing dishonourable had ever been laid to Hilary Blachland’s charge. Personally, he had an immense liking and regard for him, and, as he had said to himself before, Lyn’s instinct was never at fault. He remembered now that Blachland had declared he could never stand English life again—and—he remembered too, something else, up till now forgotten—how Blachland had half chaffingly commissioned him to find out the lowest terms its owner would accept for a certain farm which adjoined Lannercost, and which was for sale, because he believed he would squat down for a little quiet life when he returned from up-country. All this came back to him now, and with a feeling of thankful relief, for it meant, in the event of his idea proving well-founded, that his little Lyn would not be taken right away from him after all.

So the months went by after Hilary Blachland’s departure, but still his memory was kept green and fresh within that household of three.

One day, when Bayfield was outside, indulging in some such speculation as the above, out to him ran Lyn, flourishing one of the newly arrived newspapers. She seemed in a state of quite unwonted excitement, and at her heels came small Fred.

“Father, look, here’s news! Look. Read that. Isn’t it splendid?”

Bayfield took the paper, but before looking at the paragraph she was trying to point out, he glanced admiringly at the girl, thinking what a sweet picture she made, her golden hair shining in the sun, her blue eyes wide with animation, and a glow of colour suffusing her lovely clear-cut face. Then he read:

“Gallantry of a Scout.”

It was just such a paragraph as is sure to occur from time to time in the chronicling of any of the little wars in which the forces of the British Empire are almost unceasingly engaged, in some quarter or other of the same, and it set forth in stereotyped journalese, how Hilary Blachland of the Scouting Section attached to the Salisbury Column, had deliberately turned his horse and ridden back into what looked like certain death, in order to rescue Trooper Spence, whose horse had been killed, and who was left behind dismounted, and at the mercy of a large force of charging Matabele, then but a hundred or two yards distant—and how at immense risk to his rescuer, whose horse was hardly equal to the double load, Spence had been brought back to the laager, unharmed, though closely pursued and fired upon all the way. Bayfield gave a surprised whistle.

“What, father? Isn’t it splendid?” cried Lyn, wondering.

“Yes. Of course.” What had evoked the outburst of amazement was the name—the identity of the rescued man—but of this to be sure, Lyn knew nothing. So of all others it was destined to be the man who had played him a scurvy dog’s trick that Blachland was destined to imperil his own life to save: true that the said trick had been a very great blessing in disguise, but that feet did not touch the motive thereof. It remained.

“Bah! The swine wasn’t worth it,” went on Bayfield, unconsciously.

“No, very likely not,” assented Lyn. “But that makes it all the more splendid—doesn’t it, father?”

“Eh, what? Yes, yes—of course it does,” agreed Bayfield, becoming alive to the fact that he had been thinking out loud. “By Jove, Lyn, you’ll have to design a new order of merit for him when he gets back. What shall it be?”

“Man, Lyn! Didn’t I tell you he’d make old Lo Ben scoot?” said Fred triumphantly, craning over to have another look at the paragraph, which his father was reading over again. It did not give much detail, but from the facts set forth it was evident that the deed had been one of intrepid gallantry. Bayfield, yet deeper in the know, opined that it deserved even an additional name, and his regard and respect for his friend increased tenfold. For the other two—well, there was less chance than ever of Hilary Blachland’s name and memory being allowed to grow dim in that household.

“Why, he’ll soon be back now,” said Lyn. “The war must be nearly over now they’ve got to Bulawayo.”

“Perhaps. But—they haven’t got Lo Ben yet,” replied her father, unconsciously repeating Blachland’s own words. “They’ll have to get him. Fancy him blowing up his own place and clearing!”

“Ja. I knew he’d make old Lo Ben scoot,” reiterated Fred.

There was another household something over six thousand miles distant from Bayfield’s in which the name of Hilary Blachland was held in honour, which is strange, because the last time we glanced within the walls of this establishment, the reverse was the case. “That out and out irreclaimable scamp!” was the definition of the absent one then. It was hard winter around Jerningham Lodge when the news of Spence’s rescue arrived there, and it was sprung upon Sir Luke Canterby in precisely the same manner as he had learned the whereabouts of his erring nephew on that occasion—through the daily papers to wit. He had congratulated himself mightily on the success of Percival’s mission. The latter’s correspondence was full of Hilary, and what great times they were having together up-country. Then the war broke out and the tidings which reached Sir Luke of his absent nephews were few and far between. Thereupon he waxed testy, and mightily expatiated to his old friend Canon Lenthall.

“They’re ungrateful dogs the pair of them. Yes, sir—Ungrateful dogs I said, and I’ll say it again. What business had they to go running their necks into this noose?”

The Canon suggested that in all probability they couldn’t help themselves, that they couldn’t exactly turn tail and run away. Sir Luke refused to be mollified.

“It was their duty to. Hang it, Canon. What did I send Percy out there for? To bring the other rascal home, didn’t I? And now—and now he stays away himself too. It’s outrageous.”

Then had come the news of the capture and occupation of Bulawayo, and the events incidental to the progress of the column thither, and Sir Luke’s enthusiasm over his favourite nephew’s deed knew no bounds. He became something like a bore on the subject whenever he could buttonhole a listener, indeed to hear him would lead the said listener to suppose that never a deed of self-sacrificing gallantry had been done before, and certainly never would be again, unless perchance by that formerly contemned and now favoured individual hight Hilary Blachland.

“That out and out irreclaimable scamp,” murmured the Canon with a very comic twinkle in his eyes. Then, as his old friend looked rather foolish—“See here, Canterby, I don’t think I gave you bad advice when I recommended you to put that draft behind the fire.”

“Bad advice! No, sir. I’m a fool sometimes—in fact, very often. But—oh hang it, Dick, this is splendid news. Shake hands on it, sir, shake hands on it, and you’ve got to stay and dine with me to-night, and we’ll put up a bottle of the very best to drink his health.”

And the two old friends shook hands very heartily.

Chapter Eight.

A Fearsome Voyage.

On rushed the mighty stream, roaring its swollen course down to the Zambesi, rolling with it the body of dead Ziboza, hacked and ripped, the grand frame of the athletic savage a mere chip when tossed about by the hissing waves of the turbid flood. On, too, rolled the body of his slayer, as yet uninjured and still containing life. And in the noon-tide night, darkened by the black rain-burst which beat down in torrents, and, well-nigh ceaseless, the blue lightning sheeted over the furious boil of brown water and tree trunks and driftwood: and with the awful roar above, even the baffled savages were cowed, for it seemed as though the elements themselves were wrath over the death of a mighty chief.

Strange are the trifles which turn the scale of momentous happenings. Strange, too, and ironical withal, that the body of dead Ziboza should be the means of restoring to life its very nearly dead slayer. For the current, bringing the corpse of the chief against a large uprooted tree, upset the balance of this, causing it to rise half out of the water and turn right over. This in its turn impeded a quantity of driftwood, and the whole mass, coming in violent contact with the bank, threw back a great wave, the swirl of which, catching the body of the still-living man, heaved it into a lateral cleft, then poured forth again to rejoin the momentarily impeded current.

A glimmer of returning consciousness moved Hilary Blachland to grasp a trailing bough which swept down into the cleft, a clearer instinct moved him to hold on to it with all his might and main. Thus he saved himself from being sucked back into the stream again.

For a few minutes thus he crouched, collecting his returning faculties—and the first thing that came home to him was that he was in one of those cavernlike inlets on the river bank similar to that in which his struggle with Ziboza had taken place. Stay! Was it the same? He had a confused recollection of being swept out into stream, but that might have been an illusion. He peered around. The place was very dark but it was not a cave. The overhanging of one side of the cleft, and the interlacing of bushes and trees above, however, rendered it very like one. But this fissure was much smaller than the one he had fallen into with the Matabele chief, nor was it anything like as deep.

Had he been swept far down the river, he wondered? Then he decided such could not have been the case, or he would have been drowned or knocked to pieces among the driftwood, whereas here he was, practically unharmed, only very exhausted. A thrill of exultation ran through his dripping frame as he realised that he was uninjured. But it did not last, for—he realised something further.

He realised that he was weaponless. His rifle had been shot from his hand. He had lost his revolver in his fall, and even the sheath knife, wherewith he had slain Ziboza, he had relaxed his grasp of at the moment of being swept away. He was that most helpless animal of all—an unarmed man.

He realised further that he was in the remotest and most unknown part of little known Matabeleland, that he had formed one of a retreating column, which was fighting its own way out, and which would have given him up as dead long ago: that no further advance was likely to be made in this direction for some time to come, and that meanwhile every human being in the country was simply a ruthless and uncompromising foe. He realised, too, that save for a few scraps of grimy biscuit, now soaked to pulp in his jacket pocket, and plentifully spiced with tobacco dust, he was without food—and entirely without means of procuring any—and that he dared not leave his present shelter until nightfall, if then. In sum he realised that at last, even he, Hilary Blachland, was in very hard and desperate case indeed.

Were his enemies still searching for him, he wondered, or had they concluded he had met his death in the raging waters of the flooded river, as indeed it seemed to him little short of a miracle that he had not? The rain was still pouring down, and the lightning flashes lit up the slippery sides of his hiding-place with a steely glare: however, the fury of the storm seemed to have spent itself, or passed over, but the bellowing, vomiting voice of the flood as it surged past the retreat, was sufficient to drown all other sounds. Then it occurred to him that he could be seen from above by any one peering over. He must get further in.

He was more than knee deep in water. Towards its head, however, the cleft was dry. It terminated in a cavity just large enough for him to crouch within—overhung too, with thorn bush from above. An ideal hiding-place.

The situation reminded him of something. Once he had shot a guinea-fowl on a river bank, and the bird had dropped into just such a cleft as this. After a long and careful search, he had discovered it, crouching, just as he was now crouching. It was only winged, however, and fled further into the cleft. He remembered the fierce eagerness with which he had pursued the wounded bird, fearing to lose it, how he had pounced upon and seized it when it came to the end of the cleft and could get no further. Well, events had a knack of repeating themselves. He was the hunted one now.

Wet through now, he shivered to the very bones. The pangs of hunger were gnawing him. He dived a hand into his pocket. The pulpy biscuit was well-nigh uneatable, and black with tobacco dust. There was no help for it. He swallowed the stuff greedily, and it produced a horrible nausea. Soaked, chilled through and through, he crouched throughout that long terrible day, and a sort of lightheadedness came over him. Once more he was within Umzilikazi’s sepulchre, and the awful coils of the black mamba were waving, over yonder in the gloom, then, with a prolonged hiss, the terror plunged into the flood which was bearing him along. It had seized his legs beneath the surface and was dragging him down—and then it changed to Hermia. She was in the stream with him, and he was striving to save her, and yet fiercely combating a longing to let her drown, but ever around his heart was one yearning, aching pain, an awful, unsatisfied longing for a presence, a glimpse of a face—he hardly realised whose—and it would not come. Had he gone mad—he wondered dully, or was this delirium, the beginning of the end, or the terrible unsatisfied longings of another world? Then even that amount of brain consciousness faded, and he slept. Chilled, soaked, starred—his case desperate—down there in that clay-girt hole, he slept.

When he awoke it was quite dark, and the roar of the flood seemed to have decreased considerably in intensity. Clearly the river had ran down. How long he had been asleep he could form no approximate idea, but the thought moved him to hold his watch to his ear even though he could not see it. But it did not tick. The water had stopped it of course.

Yes, the river had gone down, for no water was left in the cranny now. Moreover, the entrance to his hiding-place was several feet above the surface. The next thing was to get out. Simple it sounds, doesn’t it? But the sides of the cleft, wet and slimy from the rain, offered no foothold. There were boughs hanging from above—but on clambering up these, lo, the lip of the cleft was overhung with a complete chevaux-de-frise of haakdoorn, a mass of terrible fishhooks, turned every way, as their manner is, so as to be absolutely impenetrable, save to him who should be armed with a sharp cane knife with abundant room and purchase for plying it. To an enfeebled and exhausted man, obliged to use one if not both hands for holding on to his support and armed with nothing at all, the obstacle was simply unnegotiable. He was at the bottom of a gigantic natural beetle trap—with this difference that there remained one way out: the way by which he had got in—the river to wit.

From this alternative he shrank. The flood had very considerably decreased; yet there was abundance of water still running down, quite enough to tax the full resources of an average strong swimmer—moreover, he knew that the banks were clayey and overhanging for a considerable distance down—and over and above that, the rains would have bordered the said banks, even where shelving, with dangerous quicksands. Yet another peril lay in the fact that the stream was inhabited by the evil-minded, carnivorous crocodile. It was one thing to choose the river as a means to avoid an even surer peril still, it was quite another to take to it in cold blood, for it might mean all the difference between getting in and getting out again. But a further careful investigation of his prison decided him that it was the only way.

Letting himself cautiously down, so as to drop with as little splash as possible, he was in the river once more, but somehow the water seemed warmer than the atmosphere in his chilled state, as, partly swimming, partly holding on to a log of driftwood, he allowed the stream to carry him down. It was a weird experience, whirled along by the current in the darkness, the high banks bounding a broad riband of stars overhead, but it was one to be got through as quickly as possible, for have we not said that the river was inhabited by crocodiles? Carefully selecting a likely place, the fugitive succeeded in landing.

Many a man in his position, alone, unarmed, and without food, in the heart of a trackless wilderness whose every inhabitant was uncompromisingly hostile, would have lost his head and got turned round indeed. But Hilary Blachland was made of different stuff. He was far too experienced and resourceful an up-country man to lose his head in the smallest degree. He understood how to shape his bearings by the stars, and fortunately the sky was unclouded; and in the daytime by the sun and the trend of the watercourses whether dry or not. So he began his retreat, facing almost due south.

Fortune favoured him, for in the early morning light he espied a large hare sitting up on its haunches, stupidly looking about it. A deft, quick, stone throw, and the too confiding animal lay kicking. Here was a food supply which at a pinch would last him a couple of days. Selecting as shut in a spot as he could find, he built a fire, being careful to avoid unnecessary smoke, and cooked the hare—his matches had been soaked in the river, but he was far too experienced to be without flint and steel.

For four days thus he wandered, without seeing an enemy. A small deserted kraal furnished him with more food, for he knew where to find the grain pits, and then, just as he was beginning to congratulate himself that safety was nearly within his grasp, he ran right into a party of armed Matabele.

There was only one thing to be done and he did it. Advancing with an apparent fearlessness he was far from feeling, he greeted the leader of the party, whom he knew. The demeanour of the savages was sullen rather than overtly hostile, and this was a good sign, still Blachland knew that his life hung upon a hair. There was yet another thing he knew, and it was well he did. This petty chief, Ngeleza, was abnormally imbued with a characteristic common to all savages—acquisitiveness to wit. This was the string upon which to play. So he represented how anxious he was to return to Bulawayo, as soon as possible, ignoring the fact that the war was not over, or indeed that there was any war at all, and that they could not do better than guide him thither. He gave Ngeleza to understand that he would pay well for such a service, and not only that, but that all who had the smallest share in its rendering, should receive a good reward—this for the enlightenment of the rest of the band, which numbered a round dozen men. It was well, too, that Ngeleza knew him—knew him for a man of substance, and a man of his word.

Chapter Nine.

Conclusion.

The New Year is very young now, and Lannercost is well-nigh hidden in its wealth of leafiness, and very different is the rich languorous midsummer air to the bracing crispness under which we last saw it. Other things are different too, as we, perchance, shall see, but what is not different is the warmth of welcome accorded to Hilary Blachland to that which he expected it to be—for the war in far-away Matabeleland is practically over, and this man who has borne so full a part in it, is enjoying a much-needed and well-earned rest.

The news of his first deed of self-sacrificing daring had hardly had time to cool before it was followed by that of the second, more heroic because more hopeless still, but the fact of him being given up for dead by those who witnessed it, did not transpire until after his return to safety, for, as it happened, he reached Bulawayo at about the same time as the returning patrol.

Of the bare mention of these two deeds, however, he most concerned in them is heartily sick and tired. Skelsey and Spence between them had started the ball and kept it rolling, being enthusiastically aided and abetted therein by Percival West. Here at Lannercost he had stipulated that the subject be absolutely taboo, an understanding however, not always strictly carried out, the greatest offender being small Fred.

“Quite sure you’re not making a mistake in putting off going to England, Blachland?” Bayfield was saying, as the two men, seated together under a tree in front of the stoep, were talking over a transaction just effected.

“Dead cert. I’ve earned a rest, and bucketing off on an infernal sea voyage is anything but that. I’ll go later. Percy can make my peace for me so long, and he’ll do it too, for he’s about as effective a trumpeter as—well, all the rest of you, Bayfield. No. Now I’ve taken on that farm, I’m going to try my hobby, and see how many kinds of up-country animals I can keep there. Shall have to go to England some day, and then I think we’d better all go together.”

“Don’t know. We might. Did you hear that, Lyn? We are all to go to England together.”

The girl had just appeared on the stoep. She was looking exquisitely fair and sweet. There were times when Hilary Blachland could hardly believe that he was wide awake, and not merely dreaming, that the presence which had been with him in spirit throughout his wanderings, in hardship and direst peril, was actually and really with him now, from day to day, and this was one of them.

“I think it would be rather nice,” she answered, coming over to join them. “But you don’t really mean it, father? When?”

“Ask Blachland,” was the quizzical rejoinder. “It’s his scheme—Eh—What’s up, Jafta?”

For that estimable Hottentot had appeared on the scene with intent to bespeak his master’s presence and attention as to some everyday matter.

“Oh, well, I suppose I must go and see about it,” said Bayfield, getting up.

Over the green gold of the hilltops the summer sunlight swept gloriously—and the valley bottom lay in a hot shimmer, but here in the leafy shade it was only warm enough to convey the idea of restful ease. Bright butterflies flitted amid the flowers, and the hum of bees mingled with the twittering of noisy finks and the piping of spreuws—not having the fear of Fred’s air-gun before their eyes—in the bosky recesses of the garden.

Hilary Blachland, lounging there in his cane chair—the very personification of reposeful ease in his cool white attire—was watching the beautiful face opposite, noting every turn of the sweet golden head. There was a difference in Lyn, he decided. It was difficult to define it exactly, but the difference was there. Was it that something of the old, frank, childlike ingenuousness seemed to have disappeared?

“Do you remember what we were talking about here, Lyn, that evening we got back from the Earles’?” he said. “You were wishing that I and your father were partners.”

“Yes. I remember,” and the lighting up of her face was not lost upon him. “And you predicted we should soon find you a most desperate bore. See how well I remember the very words.”

“Quite right, little Lyn. Well, both predictions are going to be fulfilled.”

“But—how?”

“And—I shall be here always, as you were wishing then. Are you still pleased, little Lyn?”

“Oh, you know I am.”

It came out so spontaneously, so whole-heartedly. He went on:

“You see that beacon away yonder on top of the rand? Well, that’s my boundary. Mine! I’m your next-door neighbour now. Your father and I spent three mortal hours this morning haggling with five generations of Van Aardts, and now that eight thousand morgen is mine. So I shall always be here, as you said then. Now I wonder if you will always be as pleased as you are now.”

So do we, reader, but the conditions of life are desperately uncertain, wherefore who can tell? That it is unsafe to prophesy unless you know, is eke a wise saw, which for present purposes we propose to bear in mind. Nevertheless—

The End.