.
biscuit. It ain’t soft tack but it’s better than nothing, and I’m too old a sailor – prospector, I mean – to be navigating these seas without a shot in the locker.”
The other munched fiercely at the brown, uninviting bit of biscuit. His succourer looked approvingly on.
“That’s right,” he said. “Now we’ll serve out some more water. Then I’ll put you on my horse – he’s anchored t’other side of the sluit– and we’ll shape a course for my donkey-carts. They’re out-spanned on the road.”
“The road? Are we near the road?” stammered the other.
“Mile or so. But keep your tongue down, sonny, until we get there. You don’t want to talk a lot till you’ve had some proper skoff.”
Chapter Two.
A Pioneer Farm
The walls of the room were hung with dark blue “limbo,” which gave an impression of refreshing coolness and restful, subdued light, in grateful contrast to the hot, white glare outside. The furniture of the room was pre-eminently of the useful order, consisting of a plain ‘stinkwood’ table, three or four ditto chairs much the worse for wear, a sideboard consisting of two packing-cases knocked into one, a bookshelf, and a camp bedstead whereon now reclined the, at present, sole occupant and – in general – proprietor of the place.
He had been indulging in a siesta, which had run into hours. The naturally dark face was tanned a rich brown by the up-country sun and winds, and it was just the face that the up-country life would go to strengthen – with its firm eyes and square, determined chin. As now seen it was clear that the thoughts of its owner were not of a pleasant nature. Briefly, they might be summed up somewhat in this wise —
“Is that foolery destined to haunt me for the remainder of my natural life? I shut it down and turned my back on it more than a year ago – and yet, and yet, I can’t even take an afternoon snooze without dreaming all that idiocy over again.”
The jaded lassitude usually attendant on immediately awakening out of a day sleep to those who seldom indulge in one was upon this man. Moreover, the last vision of his dreams had been one of a lovely, reproachful face – a recollection of a bitter parting and love turned to hate; a rehearsal of the whole heart-breaking experience, reproduced with that vivid reality which a dream can infuse. All of which hardly conduced to a cheerful frame of mind.
“Wonder when Peters will be back,” ran on his reflections. “He said this evening. Peters is a most effectual antidote to the blues, and – By the way, there’s nothing much for skoff. I’d better take a look round ‘the poultry yard.’”
With a yawn he rose from the couch and stood upright. His erect, firmly-knit form was well set off by the prevailing costume of the country, namely, a light shirt, breeches and gaiters, and leather belt. He flung on the usual broad-brimmed cowboy hat, and, taking a gun and a handful of cartridges, stood in the doorway for a moment, looking forth.
The glare of the hot hours was already toning off into that exquisitely soft and mellow light, where afternoon merges into the African evening. He looked forth upon an expanse of park-like country, rolling away from his very door. Three or four great granite kopjes rose farther on, and, beyond these, a dark line, extending as far as the eye could reach, marked the margin of a vast forest tract. Taking a few steps forward he turned. Here an entirely different scene was before his gaze. Behind the rude house of plaster and thatch, from which he had just emerged, was a large circular enclosure, stockaded with mopani poles and thorny mimosa boughs, while another and smaller stockade, similarly constructed, enclosed several conical huts. He had laughed at his native servants when they had urged the necessity of building such a stockade. Lions? Hyenas? Why, no wild animal would venture inside a hut. Look at his own house. It was not stockaded. To which they had replied in true native fashion that that might be so. The Inkosi was a very great and powerful white man, but they were only poor helpless black men; and, moreover, that wild animals had been known to take people out of their huts. So he had laughed and let them have their way.
Such was Piers Lamont’s pioneer farm in Matabeleland. It had been granted him by reason of his services during the war of occupation in ’93, and he had sold it – for a song – when he wanted a run home. He had bought it back – very much on the same terms – a few months previously, on his return to the old up-country life.
“Ho, Zingela!” he called.
“Nkose!” and a young native appeared from the enclosure containing the conical huts. He was tall and slim, and straight as a dart, and had a pleasing face.
“Come with me,” said Lamont, speaking the Sindabele very fairly; “I am going down to the river bank to collect a few birds for the pot. You shall carry them.”
“Nkose!” sung out the boy with great heartiness.
The South African native is a born sportsman, and if there is a service congenial to him it is the participation, even vicariously, in any form of sport.
They strolled leisurely down among the tree-stems by the river bank. The francolin, or bush pheasant, whirred up out of the tall tambuti grass one or two at a time. Crack! crack! went the gun, and in less than half an hour Lamont’s cartridges, of which he had taken ten, were exhausted, and Zingela was carrying nine birds as they retraced their steps homeward.
“Cook them all, Zingela. The other Inkosi will be home to-night, and will be hungry.” Then as the boy, with a murmur of assent, withdrew, Lamont dropped into one of the cane chairs on the low stoep, beneath the projecting verandah of thatch, and lit a pipe.
The sun sank lower and lower, and the evening light became more golden and entrancing. It was an hour and a scene to promote meditation, retrospection, and he did not want retrospection. Still it was there. Like most things we don’t want, it would intrude. The influence of his recent dream was still upon him, and from it there was no getting away.
Rather more than a year ago, and Violet Courtland had indignantly, and in public, branded him as a coward. He had striven to put the incident from his mind and her and her recollection from his life – and had mostly succeeded. There were times when her recollection would be forced back upon him, though such occasions were becoming rarer and their effect fainter. Every occasion of the kind had been succeeded by a fierce reaction of vindictive rancour against one who could so have misjudged him, and so would this. Yet it was more vivid, more saturating, than any of them.
“Not if she went on her knees to me would I ever forgive her that one thing,” he would say fiercely to himself on the occasion of such reactions, thus unconsciously paraphrasing the very words that had been said about him, more than a year ago, and upwards of seven thousand miles away. And there would occur to him the idea that life here was too easy, too stagnant. Yet he had not had things all his own way. The dread scourge which had swept steadily down from the north had not spared him; that rinderpest which had decimated his neighbours’ cattle, as well as that of the natives, had decimated – was still decimating – his own. Even this, however, could not avail to afford him the anxiety which might constitute the one nail destined to drive out the other; for its ravages, however much they might spell loss, and serious loss, could never to him spell utter ruin, as was the case with some others.
Now a sound of distant lowing, and the occasional clear shout of the driver, told that his own herd was being driven in for the night; and then the calves which had already been brought in woke up, in responsive bellow, to greet the approaching herd. Lamont rose and went round to the kraal. Here was a possible source of anxiety, and narrowly and eagerly did he scan the animals as they passed him, lest haply he might discern symptoms of the dread pestilence. But none appeared, nor did a closer investigation as he moved about within the kraal show further cause for anxiety. So preoccupied was he with this that he entirely failed to notice the approach of a horseman in the growing dusk, until the circumstance was brought to his notice by the sharp crack of a whip and a cheery hail.
“Evenin’, Lamont.”
“Peters, by George! Well, I said you’d be back to-night. You’re as punctual as a jolly clock, old man.”
The