Jasper Lyle. Ward
intent on repossessing themselves of their own property.
A bed covered with skins stood at one end, a chest, a bench, and a common table of yellow-wood at the other; a few household utensils completed the furniture; the window was darkened by a rude shutter, and the ashes of a wood fire were on the hearth.
Drawing a few sticks together from the scattered embers, the host, a man of determined aspect, re-lit the fire, replenishing it with a billet of wood, and in a short time the three men were seated together on the ground with closed doors. A repast of dried buck and some mouldy bread, which did not look particularly inviting even to wayworn travellers, was spread before them; and the large chest being removed, some clay, which had been spread to give the surface the same appearance as the floor, was cleared away, a heavy stone was lifted, and the master of the hut, descending an aperture, brought up a tiny keg of Cape brandy, filled the flask he carried in his huge pocket, and, replacing the keg, the stone, the trap-floor, and the chest, handed a tin cupful of the burning liquid first to Lee and then to Gray.
All this, of course, had not been done in silence. The host, who called himself Brennard, recounted how he had been absent on a trading excursion for some days to Fort Beaufort, a garrison in the northern part of the colony; how, on his return, his horses and oxen had fallen lame, and he had left them at a brother-trader’s station; how he had talked homewards with a pack-ox carrying some of his stores—the ox was now fastened to a stout oak far down the adjoining kloof; how he had advanced to reconnoitre, having heard the Fingoes were on march against Umgee’s people, who had stolen Fingo cattle; and how, after watching the phalanx advance upon their silent path to his own property, which they despoiled sad left, he had been astonished to meet two white men on his ground, one of whom was evidently no stranger there.
Gray remained contented as an auditor to a conversation begun by Brennard in Dutch, and carried on by Lee, who admitted in English that he had been in the country before, and that he had known Tanner, the first trader on the station; but the dialogue was soon wholly carried on in Dutch, which was incomprehensible to the deserter. He learned, however, that Tanner had been shot on the other side of the Kei in a conflict with the tribes there. Brennard, who had been his agent beyond the Bashee, knowing that the head-quarters of the business needed looking after, left a deputy on the coast, near the Umtata river, and removed himself to the hut in the hills.
In a word, Brennard was a dealer in gunpowder, which he sold secretly to the tribes on the English frontier; and the men on the coast were the established consignees of arms from British artificers.
Lee, of course, soon enlightened Brennard on the subject of his former acquaintance with Tanner; but how it first came about was a mystery to the trader. He was beginning to consider how he might sift this out, and both convicts were on the point of reminding him that they should be glad of some change of raiment, when a long low whistle, from the side of the hut nearest the hill, interrupted their plan of operations, and the trader, rising, prepared to leave the hut.
His pistol lay on the bench, Gray seized it.
“Put it down, Gray,” said Lee; “I know my man now; besides, you fool, do you suppose he would have left a loaded weapon behind him if he was bringing an enemy upon us? Put it down, I say,” and he took it out of the hand of the deserter, who, as his prospects opened before him, began to deplore his state, and longed, with thoughts half-bewildered, to free himself from the net he felt gradually closing round him.
Lee read mistrust, and what he called fear, in the face of his unfortunate companion. The mistrust was unmistakable, but the fear was that which a heart, born as honest as human nature can be, feels when involved in wrong-doing, from which there is no escape.
“Stay, Brennard,” said Lee, indicating an assumption of confidence in Gray. “I suspect I know what that whistle means. I have no secret from my friend here,” laying his hand on the shoulder of the deserter as he spoke. “I have told you as much as need be of my tale, and now let us make a bargain—there is nothing like plain speaking in great emergencies; and as I have a pretty strong notion that through your information we might be handed over to the authorities, I do not mind reminding you that we might do the same by you; and that while our fate would only be re-transportation—for we have escaped from the wreck of the Trafalgar—perhaps yours would be a dance in the air. Whether the hut in the kloof is still in its old place, I cannot tell; but a commando out here would soon rout out your stores, and either take you prisoner, or set a price on your head. At any rate, the game would be up with you as a respectable British trader,”—Lee laughed heartily—“and you would be at the mercy of the Kafirs or the Dutch, into whatever territory you might wander.”
He whom the convict so addressed was a man of powerful frame—deep-chested, and rather short-armed, every limb proved strength; backed by a couple of Kafirs, he might have despatched his visitors; but, although a dealer in contraband stores, and accustomed to danger, and at times to scenes of warfare, in which he was supposed to take a part against the very population he helped to arm,—although, in fact, he, like Lee, was a traitor, he would have hesitated at a deed of cold-blooded murder on his own hearth.
In a word, no two men could have better understood each other than Lee, the convict, and John Brennard, the trader of the Witches’ Krantz (Cliff). As for Gray, he might truly be considered, what a late ruffian was described to be, “the victim of circumstances,”—with wearied body and aching heart, he sat by, a passive listener; passive, because he could not help himself.
The low whistle was repeated, and Brennard, opening the window-shutter, responded in the tone of a wandering, hungry wolf: then the signal came clear but slow, and with evident caution, and moving in am upward direction, died away in some hollow of the hill. Then Brennard, closing the aperture carefully, proposed entering on a solemn compact with his new acquaintances, to which they agreed.
Strange indeed is that species of oath, which binds bad men together, and which may truly be considered as founded on a superstition, of which the devil is the founder. There are many to whom the nature of such an oath is sacred, who will rob, murder, desolate the home of the industrious and virtuous, and commit every crime which by that oath they are bound to enter upon, in partnership with others as “blind of heart” as themselves. In these compacts, they swear by the Bible, thus blasphemously making the word of God a witness and a guarantee for sin. Aye, and such compacts have been kept inviolate, even at the gibbet’s foot, and beneath the bloody guillotine.
And, after all, what is an oath, in the opinion of a truly honest man? A seal set upon the word of a villain, who only tells the truth because the fear of punishment on earth compels him to do it. He who lies to God daily, would hardly hesitate to lie to man, but that he lets “I dare, not wait upon I would,” and trembles, like the Chinese and the Kafir, not at commission of crime, but at the disgrace and punishment which must follow its discovery.
They stood up, did those three desperate men, in the low and narrow room; the owner of the wild domicile held the book in his hand, for there was a Bible in the chest. They opened the unholy compact with the words “I swear.” As they spoke, their eyes were fixed distrustingly on each other, not on Heaven, the witness they invoked, and Brennard was proceeding to dictate a certain form, with its set phrases of “betrayal of brotherhood,” “rights of partnership,” etc, when the whistle came back from the krantz above, descended gradually down the hill-side, paused, chirruped like a bird, a gay, innocent bird, and a low tap at the door was followed by a voice of most musical sweetness.
“Vuka u zishukumise”—“Awake and be stirring,” said the voice. It was a woman’s.
“Urga lungenalake?”—“Are you ready?” asked Brennard.
“Ewa—urga kuza ni nina?”—“Yes—when are you coming?”
“Dirge za”—“I am coming now,” replied the trader.
On which another voice added, “Lexesha kaloku”—“Now is the time.”
A quick but gentle sound of unshod feet patted past the window, there was silence again in the outer air, and the three Englishmen resumed their attitude; Brennard in the centre with the Bible—it had the names of brothers and sisters beneath his own in the fly-leaf—he had kept it by him in the wilderness—and