Harley Greenoak's Charge
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And now it was as well he had had that long sleep in Matamzima’s hut, for the very restfulness of this place after hours of hard walking rendered even his iron frame lax to the point of drowsiness. But it was not far to dawn now.
The stillness was absolute, hardly the cry of bird or beast awoke to break it. The loom of the Kei hills was well-nigh invisible against the stars, so dark had become this darkest hour before the dawn. Then to Harley Greenoak’s ears came a far-away sound, faint but unmistakable. It was the sound of voices, of native voices, singing. From far down on the plains beyond the river it came, and it was drawing nearer and nearer.
The watcher’s nerves thrilled to the sound. The voices were pitched low; purposely so he knew, none better. Knew also that they proceeded from a moving mass of men. Would the dawn never come?
It would, and it did. The world had grown perceptibly lighter. The loom of the hills was now distinct, but the depth of the plain was in darkness. Still the moving sound drew nearer, and now in the tense stillness the listener could even distinguish the tenour of the words. It was a song of war.
None but a large and strongly armed band would have ventured thus to advertise its presence. The inference was clear. The body now marching from the Gcaleka country was the expected incursion. If he had been in any doubt before, Harley Greenoak had now already decided to himself that his information was accurate.
The darkness faded still more, and now upon the fast lightening plain he was able to make out the moving mass. Lighter still! Hundreds of armed savages were advancing to the drift. He could make out detail, and took in the fact that many of them had guns, and now even that indescribable rattle of assegai hafts – curiously unlike any other sound – was borne upward to his ears. But the identity of any in the band he could not arrive at.
The war-song had ceased. They descended to the drift in silence, and without a moment’s hesitation waded into the swirling current, their weapons held high above their heads. This was breast deep, and as they gained the middle of the stream many linked hands in order to steady themselves against its strength. More than once a deep-toned, smothered laugh and a splash told that an odd warrior here and there had slipped and got a ducking. Finally, the last had disappeared. He could not see them land, his own side of the river being shut from view by the tree-tops; but he knew exactly where they would land, and the line they would take for Matanzima’s kraal. Harley Greenoak’s work here was done.
The next phase of it was that of warning. Listening intently, he left his hiding-place. There was no sound of life along the river bank, the invading party had gone in an almost contrary direction. He struck into an old path, which followed the downward course of the river, and for some distance was able to travel with ease and rapidity. Then this ceased, giving way to tumbled and broken rocks, every here and there heavily overgrown with trailers. Above, on one side great rugged krantzes walled him in. Not for many miles further down could he strike the open country again. Greenoak had never been along this river bank before, but his experienced eyes took in the hang of it completely.
Suddenly he stopped dead short, listening intently. In front – and not very far in front – the sound of deep-toned voices. In a moment he had slipped into a cleft between two rocks, and had drawn the trailers over him; and it seemed hardly a moment more when a number of fully armed Kafirs appeared, moving leisurely along the way he had come, but taking the upward course of the bank. But for their utter unguardedness, they would have met him face to face. As it was, they passed so near as almost to brush the trailers which afforded him such precarious concealment. He held his very breath, so near were they.
They were talking at random, and a good deal all at once – and something was said about a roast, and how good it was, and the speakers passed on while others succeeded, talking about nothing in particular. But Harley Greenoak, through the interstices, recognised several of them, among others, Mafutana and Sikonile, whose son he had shot. Then he knew that this hiding-place had received him not a moment too soon.
The last of the Kafirs had gone by, but Greenoak was in no hairy to move. When, finally, he decided that it was time to do so, the sun was already flaming up from beyond the Kei hills, and the birds were breaking into song, twittering and calling from the cool shade of krantzes, or balancing on twig and spray, joyous, perky, in the glow of the new-born day.
Suddenly he halted. No sight, no sound, had thus pulled him up, but – an odour. For there came to his nostrils a strong smell as of cooking, and it came from in front. He remembered how some of the Kafirs had been talking about a “roast.” Of course, he was coming to where they had spent the night, and had feasted – probably upon stolen stock. Well, he would investigate. But – what if there should be others there?
Cautiously he advanced, weapons ready, peering before him, listening, the strange odour stronger with every step, and he found himself hoping they might have left some of their repast, for he could do with a broil himself. And then —
Not altogether unfamiliar with scenes of horrific ghastliness himself, at what he now saw, peering cautiously over a great rock, Harley Greenoak felt his blood run cold and his flesh creep.
Beneath lay a hollow, overhung by the beetling cliff. The place was evidently the resort of a gang of cattle stealers, for the ground was thickly strewn with the skulls and bones of cattle and sheep, but, needless to say, the sight of these was not what had perturbed him.
In the centre of the place, slung to a thick, stout pole whose ends rested on two rocks, was a human figure – what was left of one, that is. It hung horizontally, bound to the pole by wrists and ankles, back downwards, forming a bow, and underneath were the still smouldering ashes of a large fire. The head hung down and the wretched creature was quite dead, but the middle of the body, upon which the fire had played, presented a sight that was indescribably horrible.
This, then, was the “roast” to which those human fiends had made allusion, decided Greenoak; but why should the poor wretch have incurred such devilish vengeance, for the body was that of a native, not that of a white man? Mastering his horror and disgust, Greenoak stepped quickly forward to investigate – and then the mystery stood explained. In the agonised, drawn face of the dead man he recognised that of Mantisa, the Police detective.
Like light the truth was borne in upon his brain. He pieced together everything. The presence of Mafutana and Sikonile with the party supplied the link. They had been lying in wait for himself, and in the darkness had pounced upon Mantisa in mistake for himself, nor could it have been long after the former had gone on with the horse. Yet why should they have brought the poor wretch here to put him to such a ghastly death? An assegai or two would have answered all purposes there on the spot. And then a conviction of the real truth came home to Harley Greenoak. They had tortured their prisoner to force him to reveal his own whereabouts, and Mantisa had been unable or unwilling to do so. A great wave of pity and admiration swept through Greenoak’s heart as he gazed upon the miserable mangled remains.
“Poor, plucky devil!” he said to himself as he turned away, for the nature of the ground precluded any kind of attempt at burial. “Poor, plucky, heroic devil! Well, he’s gone aloft, that’s certain, if any one ever did get there, black or white.”
As he left the place of horror, he wondered what had become of his horse. Had it been captured too? But as against this, he recalled the fact that it was not in the possession of the perpetrators of this atrocity what time they passed his hiding-place. Well, he supposed he must give it up as lost, but coming at this juncture the loss was serious, for he had intended making a quick round in order to warn as many of the settlers as he could reach.
An hour of further travelling and the bush line would draw to an end in favour of more open country above. Just before reaching this, however, a sound reached him. It was the quick whinny of a horse, the shaking of the saddle-flaps, then a neigh. Of course, to one of Greenoak’s rapid powers of deduction this meant a riderless horse. What if it was his – what if it had broken away, while the savages were occupied with their prisoner? A few more minutes and he came in sight of the animal, and – it was his.
But, holding the end of the bridle-rein, was a man, a native – a thick-set, ugly, scrabbly bearded savage, and armed. Greenoak’s gun was up in a moment, covering the fellow.
But somehow or other, it did not seem to produce the effect he had expected. The ugly face split into a white stripe of grin, and a voice said in excellent English —
“Not shoot, Mr Greenoak. I John Voss.”
Well might Greenoak start. This, then, was the fellow who had been stealthily following him. The make-up was perfect. It happened that normally John Voss was a singularly neat and smart-looking native, with an intelligent face and, for a native, a very respectable beard, of which he was not a little proud. The sacrifice of this latter alone, in order to transform himself into an evil-looking, squalid savage, argued a whole-hearted zeal deserving of recognition, and he had certainly succeeded, for himself, to a dangerous degree at that moment.
“Well, John, you’ve had a narrow escape,” said Greenoak. “But that I was afraid the horse would have schreked at the shot and cleared, you’d have been down with a bullet through you at this moment, I believe. Now let’s hear all about it.”
The other told him – how he had followed Mantisa, and witnessed his capture; how in the excitement of that event he had mingled with the Kafirs in the darkness, and had ridden away upon the horse when their attention was more fully occupied, intending to wait for its owner at the point where he judged the latter would reappear. Then Greenoak told him of the crossing from Gcalekaland, and the barbarous vengeance which had been taken upon poor Mantisa. It happened that John Voss had not been into the location at all, so had been powerless to warn either of the ambush laid, for the simple reason that he knew nothing of it.
And as they travelled, these two laid their plans as to how best warn the neighbourhood.
Chapter Thirty One.
Conditional
“Another ‘whited sepulchre,’ Faugh!” said Hazel, dropping in disgust the two halves of the outwardly magnificent peach she had just broken open, but which within was a mass of squirming maggots.
“Try these,” said Dick Selmes, pulling down a bough of the tree, on which grew several, and holding it for her while she made a selection.
“I thought so,” she went on, rapidly breaking open and throwing away another, and then another. “No, I give it up. This is a bad year for peaches.”
The two were alone together among the fragrant boskiness of the fruit-laden garden. The midsummer day was hot and cloudless, yet just a puff of cool air every now and then, from the not very far distant Indian Ocean, redeemed it from downright sultriness. Birds piped and whistled away up among the leaves, but shy of showing themselves over much. There had been too much havoc wrought among their kind in defence of the fruit to encourage them to court human propinquity.
“How jolly this is!” went on Dick, looking around.
“Are you ever anything but jolly?” she asked.
“Oh yes! I can get the blues, I can tell you. For instance – ”
“For instance – when?” she repeated, as he broke off.
“For instance – well, I don’t mind saying it. That time we left Haakdoornfontein I felt anything but jolly.”
“Yet Haakdoorn isn’t a wildly exciting place at the best of times. Ah, I see. You missed the hunting.”
This was exasperating. She was in a bright, mischievous, teasing mood, but oh – how entrancing she looked, the lift of the heavily lashed eyelid, the little flash of white teeth in the bantering smile, the rich mantling of the sun-kissed, oval face.
“I missed you. Hazel, you know that perfectly well. And just think. I had you all to myself in those days, and here not. All these jokers who were here for Christmas – well, I found them a bore, for that reason.”
Christmas had just past, and on and around it several people from far and near had been to spend it with the Waybridges; and of these visitors the bulk had been men – and in proportion had seemed fully to appreciate Hazel’s attractions. Dick Selmes could not but own to himself that he had not enjoyed his Christmas over much, though he would not have let it be known for worlds.
“Hadn’t you enough of me all to yourself at Haakdoorn?” she said softly, but still with that mischievous sparkle in her eyes.
“As if that question requires any answer. Darling, you know I want you all to myself always – all through our lives. You must have seen it. Haven’t you?”
“Perhaps. I won’t tease you any more now. But you must listen to me.” The girl had grown very grave now – very earnest. Her eyes, dilated with varying emotions, were full upon his face, and the predominant emotion, was unqualified approval. “First of all, what would your father have to say?”
“The dad? Why, he’d be delighted, of course.”
“Yes, but would he? I’m not so sure. He has never heard of my existence, and would think you had been entrapped by some nobody in the course of your travels – ” Here a slight wave of colour had come over her face. “Now, I won’t have that thought of me, or said by any one.”
“But, Hazel darling,” he pleaded eagerly, “I think you are setting up a kind of – er – bogey. The old dad is the dearest old chap in the world, and a jolly sight too good to me, and for me.”
She looked at him and softened. She liked him more – more than ever – for what he had just said. Perhaps she showed it.
“I can quite believe that,” she answered. “Still, it doesn’t alter what I say.”
His face fell. So blank was it that for a moment he felt positively miserable.
“But, Hazel dearest, don’t you care for me a little bit?”
Her heart went out to him.
“Dick, you know I am very fond of you,” she answered, adding to herself, “as who could help being?” – “No – no, not yet,” putting out a hand as he made a step forward.
“But – now we are engaged,” he protested rapturously.
“We are not,” she answered, and his face fell again. “And the only condition on which we will be is the one I told you. Get your father’s consent.”
“It strikes me, Hazel, that you are forgetting I am not exactly under age. I am quite independent into the bargain.”
“All the more reason why I should refuse to be the means of bringing dissension between you. Why, it would be murderous – absolutely murderous, after what you have told me. I am not forgetting either that you have a certain position.”
“Oh, hang the ‘position’!” cried Dick. “But you are very cool and – er – judicial over it all, Hazel. If you cared as much as I do.”
“Perhaps, dear, I am speaking and acting in your own interests,” answered the girl, softly. “I am setting you a test. It might be that when you get back home again something might transpire which would make you devoutly thankful to me for having refused to allow you to engage yourself to some little nobody whom you had found amusing in the course of your wanderings.”
“Hazel! Now you hurt me.”
He looked it. There was no doubt about it that his feelings were deeply wounded, but there was a dignity about the way in which he took it that appealed to her so powerfully as well-nigh to bring about her surrender there and then.
“I didn’t mean to, God knows,” she answered earnestly and more softly still. “But I am looking at things from a sheer common-sense standpoint. You are very brave and strong, Dick, but in one way, I believe I am stronger than you. I am only putting before you a little trial of strength, of endurance. Surely you won’t shrink from that?”
“Let us understand each other, Hazel,” he said gravely, all his boyish light-heartedness gone. “You won’t engage yourself to me until I get my father’s consent?”
“That’s it.”
“But you will, conditionally, on my getting it?”
She thought a minute.
“I will wait until you do get it, or it is refused. But, Dick, understand that this doesn’t bind you in the slightest degree.”
“Oh, but it does bind me. Whoever heard of a one-sided engagement?” some of his light-heartedness returning. “I’ll write to the dear old dad on the very first opportunity.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to go yourself than to write?”
“And leave you all that time? No – no, Hazel. I’m not going to give you that chance of forgetting me.”
“Or yourself?” with a significant smile.
“Now you are repeating the offence, and I shan’t forgive you unless you give me just one k – Oh, damn!”
The change of tone, the change of attitude were in keeping, and Dick found himself in a sort of “standing at attention” rigidity, as small Jacky Waybridge came lounging down the garden path, a catapult in his hand. We fear that Dick came near wishing he had left that unwelcome urchin to the sharks on a former occasion, but that in such case he himself would not now be here – with Hazel.
“Been shooting any birds, Jacky?” said Dick. “Look. Just over there I saw a rare clump of mouse-birds light just now; over there, just this side of the mealie land.”
The spot indicated would take the small intruder fairly out of sight.
“No good, catapult’s broken.”
“Why don’t you go to the house and get another?”
“They’re all broken. Mr Selmes, couldn’t you mend it for me?”
“I’ll try. Let’s see. Ah, got a bit of reimpje about you?”
The youngster felt in his pockets.
“No, I haven’t,” he said.
“Well, you’d better cut away to the house and get one,” said Dick.
There is a modicum of cussedness, sometimes vague, sometimes more pronounced, inherent in most children.
This one had his share of it. He was fond of Hazel, and attached to his rescuer, yet there was something about the two which had aroused his infantile curiosity. When he saw them alone together – which he did pretty frequently – a sort of instinct to watch them would come uppermost in his unformed mind, and this was upon him now. So he said —
“Never mind about the catapult, Mr Selmes. I’m tired. I’ll sit and talk to you and Hazel.”
“Well, what shall we talk about, Jacky?” said Dick, making a virtue of necessity.
“Oh, let’s go on talking about – what you were talking about while I came.”
This was funny. The two looked at each other.
“But that wouldn’t interest you in the least, Jacky,” answered the girl. “In fact, you wouldn’t understand it.”
The sharp eyes of the youngster were full upon her face, and did not fail to notice that she changed colour slightly. When he himself had done something which he ought not to have done, and was taxed with it, he would change colour too; wherefore now he drew his own deductions. What could Hazel have been doing that came within that category?
“Never mind,” he said. “I won’t tell. No, I won’t.”
“Won’t tell?” repeated Hazel. “Won’t tell what, Jacky?”
“I won’t tell,” was all they could get out of him. Dick Selmes burst out laughing.
“Before you can ‘tell’ anything, kid, you must first of all have something to tell,” he said. “You’ve been talking a lot of bosh. Now, I think we’d better go in, for it must be getting on for dinner-time.” The two got up, and as they strolled along beneath the high quince hedge, hanging out round fruit, like the balls upon a Christmas tree, both hoped for an opportunity of at any rate satisfactorily closing their conversation. But it was not to be. That little wretch stuck to them like their shadow, nor did either want to inflame his curiosity by telling him positively to clear.
“Then it is to be conditional,” Dick said, just before they reached the door.
“That’s the word.”
“On the terms named?”
“Exactly on the terms named.”
“Good. I accept them – except as to the one-sided part of the business.”
“That, too, I insist upon,” she answered, with a smile and a bright nod, as she left him.
Alone, for a brief space, Dick Selmes went over in his mind the interview, so untowardly and exasperatingly interrupted, and was obliged to admit to himself that his love and admiration for Hazel Brandon were, if possible, deepened and intensified. Her beauty and bright, sweetness of disposition had fascinated and captured him, but now he had awakened to the fact that she possessed a rare depth of character indeed. He knew now that she cared for him – yes, and that very deeply; he had read it in the course of that interview by several unmistakable signs. Yet she had deliberately, and of set purpose insisted upon that conditional delay. It showed a worldly wisdom, a knowledge of human nature beyond his own, he was constrained to admit; and in every way it was creditable to her. Of the obstacle he made entirely light, for it was in reality no obstacle at all except for the period of waiting involved.
And over himself some change had come. What was it? He felt a gravity he had never felt before. The old, thistledown, light-hearted recklessness seemed to have left him. His mind, attuned to a new and set purpose, seemed to have altered, to have solidified. And yet, realising this development, he rejoiced in it. He would not have foregone it for the world. Henceforward his was a new being.
Chapter Thirty Two.
Signs and Omens
“Which way shall we go?” said Hazel. “Shall we ride over to Komgha?”
“I vote we go bang in the other direction,” answered Dick Selmes. “The township’s all clatter and dust – and altogether abominable. Mrs Waybridge was an angel of light when she cropped up and dragged me out of it.”
“Yes, you wanted some dragging, didn’t you?” was the somewhat mischievous rejoinder.
“As if I knew. Good Lord! what a narrow thing it was. And there I was, cudgelling my muddy brains for some excuse, because I thought you were staying in the town.”
The two were on horseback. They had started off for an afternoon ride together, all undecided as to where they should go. But there was one place Dick Selmes was resolved they should not go to – unless Hazel particularly wanted to, and somehow he did not think she would – and that was the township. It was full of his own sex, and he wanted the girl all to himself, to-day at any rate. He had a lively recollection of the Christmas gathering which he had not enjoyed, for the reason that then he never could get her all to himself. He had voted them a set of unmitigated bores, and, rare thing indeed with him, had become almost irritable. Yet if ever any one was what is known as a “man’s man,” that was Dick Selmes. Given the absence of Hazel on that festive occasion, he would have voted them all thundering good fellows. But – circumstances alter cases.
Since the understanding of that morning, and the compact entered into between them, a more restful feeling had come over these two; a feeling as though they belonged to each other; and though some patience was needed, at any rate there was an end to uncertainty.
“We might go round by old Umjuza’s kraal and Sampson’s store,” suggested Dick, “unless you would like to look anybody up. There are the Paynes, for instance.”
“No; I don’t want to see any one. We’ll keep to the veldt.”
“Them’s my sentiments,” cried Dick, gaily, emphasising the said gaiety by a swish of his whip that caused his steed to prance and snort. His wounded arm was quite healed by now. “What a difference there is about the veldt here; no jolly old koorhaans crowing and squawking – or a buck every now and then jumping up under your feet, not even an odd pair of blue cranes. Only those silly old bromvogels, and they wouldn’t be there either, but that even John Kafir won’t eat them.”
A pair of the great black hornbills were strutting among the sparse mimosa on the opposite slope, emitting their deep, booming grunt. But although deficient in game, the veldt was fair and pleasant to the eye, with its roll of sunlit plain and round-topped hills, and if the crowing of koorhaans or the grating cackle of the wild guinea-fowl were wanting, the cooing of doves, and the triple call of the hoepoe from the bush-grown kloofs made soft music on the slumbrous calm.