Diamond Dyke. George Manville Fenn
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George Manville Fenn
Diamond Dyke
The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066210878
Table of Contents
Chapter Two.
Dyke rouses up.
That was months before the opening of our story, when Dyke was making his way in disgust toward the moist shade of the kopje, where, deep down from cracks of the granite rock, the spring gurgled out.
Only a part ran for a few yards, and then disappeared in the sand, without once reaching to where the sun blazed down.
Joe Emson shouted once more, but Dyke would not turn his head.
“Let him follow me if he wants me,” muttered the boy. “He isn’t half so hot as I am.”
Hot or not hot, the big fellow took off his broad Panama hat, gave his head a vicious rub, replaced it, and turned to shout again. “Jack! Ahoy, Jack!”
There was no reply to this, for Kaffir Jack lay behind the house in a very hot place, fast asleep upon the sand, with his dark skin glistening in the sunshine, the pigment within keeping off the blistering sunburn which would have followed had the skin been white.
“I shall have to go after him,” muttered Joe Emson; and, casting off the feeling of languor which had impelled him to call others instead of acting himself, he braced himself up, left the scorching iron house behind, and trotted after Dyke, scaring a group of stupid-looking young ostriches into a run behind the wire fence.
He knew where he would find his half-brother, and there he was, lying upon his breast, with a cushion of green mossy growth beneath him, a huge hanging rock overhead casting a broad shade, and the water gurgling cool and clear so close that he had but to stretch out his hand to scoop it up and drink from the palm.
Outside there was the scorching, blinding sunshine, however, and among the rocks all looked black, and seemed rather cool.
“Oh, you lazy young sybarite!” cried Joe Emson, as he came up. “You always know the best places. Why didn’t you answer me?”
“What’s the good of answering?” cried Dyke. “I can’t help old Goblin getting away again. He will go, and nothing will stop him.”
“But something shall stop him,” said Joe. “I’ll have an iron bar driven into the ground, and tether him with a rope.”
“No good,” said Dyke drowsily: “he’d eat the rope and swallow the bar.”
“Then I’ll tether him with a piece of chain.”
“He’d roll it up and swallow it.—I say Joe, I feel sure he had that curb chain and the two buckles we missed.”
“Nonsense! Come, get up, and help drive him in.”
“I’m too tired, and it isn’t nonsense. He’s always on the lookout for bits of iron and broken crockery. I took a hammer and a cracked willow-pattern plate one day, and broke it up in bits and fed him with them. He ate them all.”
“Well, of course: birds do pick up stones and things to fill their gizzards.”
“And that’s just how I feel,” said Dyke.
“Eh? How?”
“As if my gizzard was filled with sharp bits of stone, and it makes me irritable and cross.”
“And lazy. Come: jump up.”
“I can’t, Joe. I said last time I’d never go after the goblin again, and I won’t.”
“Yes, you will; you’ll come