The Rhodesian. Gertrude Page
href="#ulink_8a297c87-e405-58d4-9142-0a856975c21e">XXVIII
London: HUTCHINSON & CO., Paternoster Row.
TO
THE PATHFINDERS
"Fate lies hid,
But not the deeds that true men dared and did."
THE RHODESIAN.
I
THE POLICE CAMP
The velvety darkness of a southern night, with its sense of rich, luscious, breathing intensity, lay over that romantic spot in Southern Rhodesia where the grey walls of the Zimbabwe ruins, with a sublime, imperturbable indifference, continue to baffle the ingenuity and ravish the curiosity of all who would read their story. Scientists, archæologists, tourists come and go, but the stern old walls, guarded by the sentinel hills, give back no answer to eager questioning, eager delving, eager surmise.
But in the meantime the Valley of Ruins no longer lies alone and unheeded in the sunlight; and no longer do the hills look down upon rich plains left solely to the idle pleasure of a careless black people. The forerunners of to-day's great civilising army have marched into the valley, and beside the ancient walls there is now a police camp of the British South Africa Police, presided over by two robust young troopers.
In the velvety darkness on the night in question there is a single bright light pouring through the open doorway of a dwelling-hut. Through the enfolding silence breaks the bizarre music of an indifferent gramophone, recklessly mocking the sublime grandeur of the age-old antiquities. Laughter and gay music and devil-may-care colonists awaking echoes that have been more or less silent to civilisation for how many thousand years?
But on this particular evening it is as though some shadow had fallen upon the little camp. Nothing tangible—nothing that changed the general habits or surroundings—but a vague regret and introspective sadness upon the faces of two young men, usually full of careless content. Cecil Stanley, the more refined, a gentleman by birth and education, lounged low in his chair, with his hands behind his head and his feet on the table, and ever and anon his eyes looked with pained regret into the surrounding depths of night. Patrick Moore, with a grave face, cleaned his gun in a deeper silence than usual, proceeding with an occupation that was his joy on many evenings, whether the gun needed cleaning or not, rather as if it eased his mind to have his hands busy.
"I wonder if the Major will come through to-night?" he remarked, as if the silence were growing over-oppressive.
"Sure to," laconically. "The moon will be up directly, and he can't be very far away."
"I suppose he won't have heard?"
"Not likely to have done. Gad! I feel as if I'd give anything to have had a chance to stand three hours in that queue. It will hit him hard. If it's bad for us, who have at least known all along, it will be worse for him, hearing it suddenly at this late hour. Those newspapers to-day have made me feel like a kid on his first day at boarding-school. I'd like to cry if I weren't ashamed to."
"I liked that professor," said Moore, changing the subject. "Decent old Johnny, wasn't he? Jolly nice of him to bring all those papers in case he came across anyone glad of them."
"Quite a good old bird. That's a rum theory of his about the corpses in the temple being buried deeper than anyone has yet dug, and hung with valuable ornaments. Wouldn't it be a jolly lark to dig down for one and have a look at it! … "
He gave a low, half-hearted chuckle over his gruesome suggestion, and lazily getting to his feet, selected another tune for his gramophone.
Moore, busy still with his gun, gave a corresponding chuckle, and remarked:
"Begorra, lad! … if we could get a few out one at a time on moonlight nights, and fill up the blooming holes again, we shouldn't want any blasted machinery for our gold mine, except a pickaxe and a shovel."
"We'd want a bit of pluck, though. The ghosts of the corpses might come dancing round to have their say in the matter."
"We'd chance the ghosties. Shure! if they've been hanging round for three or four thousand years, they'd maybe like a new sensation by this time."
Stanley put on "The Stars and Stripes," wound up the gramophone, and slid into his lounge chair again.
Moore glanced up as the music started.
"What! … that thing again! … I'm beginning to feel like those old ghosts about it. The same moth-eaten tune for three or four thousand years. I'd like a new sensation."
"It can't be much staler than cleaning that old gun."
"Shure, she's a daisy." The Irishman looked tenderly at his treasure. "An' she just loves me to be fondlin' her like."
"If it weren't for the Major I don't know what is to prevent us proving the old man's theory," said Stanley, evidently harping again on his corpses.
"Him, and the bloomin' Company! The old gentlemen sittin' on the Board in London suddenly find that the Yankees have been snaffling a lot of valuable trinkets and things from the ruins while they took forty winks, and then they up and says no one's to look for anything more at all; not even a boney fidey Rhodesian, sweating in the police camp outside the walls."
"Still,