Harley Greenoak's Charge
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Heavens! could this go on for ever? thought the entranced spectator, standing back in the black gloom, awaiting his turn. Surely those outside would become suspicious – in popular parlance, would “smell a rat.” But he forgot that the essence of their plan was to effect an entrance one by one and in silence, and to that end they would wait until each was safely inside, and, so as not to press or hurry the foregoing one, would not wait immediately against the door. So, in a trice, a third appeared, and met with exactly the same fate. Sandili, the chief, had lost three fighting men, and still at the hand of a woman.
The extraordinary dexterity and noiselessness with which each savage had been felled, had awakened no sort of suspicion among those without. But with the arrival of the fourth within the room, Elsie had somehow miscalculated by ever so little, and instead of laying this one out, rigid and motionless, the heavy iron head of the axe had descended full upon the skull instead of upon the lower base thereof; consequently, although the Kafir went down like a felled ox, the stroke was not sufficiently vital in its effect as to prevent him from emitting a groan, such as will sometimes proceed from a felled ox lying prone beneath the hammer. And it carried to the ears of those outside.
These were seen to start and stand stock still, as though listening intently. Then massing together, they came straight for the door, at a sort of stealthy, creeping run.
“Shute, lad! Shute now!” whispered Elsie, quickly. Dick advanced a step or two, just keeping still out of sight. A sharp, detonating roar, and the heavy charge of Treble A. raked the bunched-up mass. Another roar, and the effect was terrific, indescribable. The ground was covered with dark, struggling forms, others staggering and tumbling over these. At such close quarters the execution done had been deadly, awful. The night air was rent with screams and yells. Some, leaping up, fell immediately, even before they could carry out their intention of limping away. Others lay still, as if never to move again. It seemed that there was hardly one untouched among that stricken heap.
But there was, and although the move escaped Dick, a rapid signal was given. Then from the further shade there rushed forth a number of dark forms, and in open line – for they had taken in the lesson and avoided massing – these spread out, so as to surround the house. But Dick Selmes had reloaded in a second, and now, quick to take in a favourable moment, he raked the line at such a point that three or four dropped beneath the deadly buckshot. And now the night air rang with demoniacal yells. The vengeful savages, drunk with fury, sprang round to the front of the house and swarmed up the steps of the stoep.
“Go ye round to the front,” said Elsie. “All keep ’em out of here.”
She had swung up her axe again. Dick, in a second, had gained the front. The house, situated on a slope, was considerably higher than the level of the ground on this side, and there were no end windows. There were, however, two commanding the stoep, one on either side of the front door. It took hardly a moment to throw open one of these, and not another to rake the mass of Kafirs pouring up the steps, with a charge of the deadly buckshot. Yelling, struggling, such as could move, that is, they would have fallen back, but those behind prevented this. Again the other barrel spoke, this time with the same effect. Thoroughly demoralised now, those who could do so glided away, and sought the nearest cover. And then upon Dick’s ears came a loud cry of alarm, and it came from Hazel’s room.
This was at the end of the house, projecting beyond the stoep, the window looking out in front. With a bound he had gained the door, and burst it open.
Hazel was standing back in a corner of the room, transfixed with terror. As a matter of fact, she had summoned up rare courage in deciding to remain quietly where she was instead of rushing out, and so, seriously to hamper and embarrass the defenders, as her natural impulse would have been. What Dick now saw was a big Kafir worming himself through the window, half in, half out. But, quick as thought, somebody pushed past him, and in the now flooding moonlight he saw the lift of the Scotswoman’s brawny arms, and, with a crunching thud, down came the axe-head on the skull of the venturesome savage, with the same result as before.
“You’ve left your side, Elsie,” he said.
“Go ye back to it,” was the answer. “A’m staying here.”
There was a crisp, uncompromising decisiveness about this statement that Dick well knew there would be no disputing. So he obeyed. Now, through the upper half of the door, the quince hedge was visible in the moonlight, and so, apparently, was he, for now a roar of firearms broke forth from that cover, and a shower of bullets and pot-legs came rattling against the walls of the house; one indeed inside, not far, he could have sworn, from his ear.
The moon, though far from at full, threw upon the house a great deal too much light, and, on the other hand, not enough to dispel the shade of the quince hedge. To this extent the enemy had the advantage, and the flash and roar, and the vicious spit of missile on wall or roof – or a humming whistle above either, as it hurtled away harmlessly into space – was continuous. Kafirs, as a rule, are execrable shots, though here and there a rare exception is to be found. Such a rare exception now Dick Selmes began to fear was present among this crowd, for every now and then a single bullet would hum through the upper half of the door, always striking in the same place, and always when he, judging position from some recent discharge, had returned the fire, using the rifle this time.
But now that he had to play a waiting game, his blood cooled. The nights were short at this time of year. With the first light of morning their weakness would become apparent. The Kafirs would find some means of rushing them. It was clear that Thompson’s prediction had been verified. This was no sporadic outbreak of irresponsible savagery. The whole Gaika location was up in arms, and the glow succeeding glow which he and Hazel had seen earlier in the evening, was that of flaming homesteads, deserted or the reverse, which the barbarians had fired to signal their rising. As for relief from without, why, it was probable that Komgha itself was threatened, or if not, to send forth a small force among thousands of savages pillaging and burning would be madness, whereas to send out a large one would be to expose the settlement itself to attack and massacre. Things looked dark enough, anyway, and now the first heat and excitement of actual and active fight over, a reaction of foreboding set in upon him. A soft rustle of garments beside him in the darkness made him start.
“Mr Selmes. I have a plan. It might be worth trying.”
“Good God, Mrs Waybridge, go out of here! There’s one beast who can shoot, and you’re bang in the line of fire. Ah!”
With the very words a missile came humming between the two, splashing itself into the wall. Dick pulled her suddenly and forcibly out of the line of the open half-door.
“This is it,” she said, as coolly as though nothing had happened. “The rockets. Why not do something with the rockets?”
“The rockets! Ah!”
The words escaped him with a gasp, and the explanation of the idea was this. By way of adding to their Christmas festivities, now barely a week back, the Waybridges had imported a big box of fireworks. But they had not been used, thanks to an opportune suggestion from Harley Greenoak to the effect that, in the current state of alarm, the firing off of rockets might be misunderstood and cause a scare, under the impression that they were being sent up as signals of distress. Now they would come in for just that very purpose.
“The idea is splendid, Mrs Waybridge,” said Dick. “Will you get them out. I can’t leave my post.”
“I have got them out. One minute.”
She went into the other room, and immediately returned with quite a bundle of rockets, all attached ready to the sticks.
“Is Hazel all right?” he whispered eagerly.
“Yes. Elsie is watching over her. I know I would about as soon try and steal its cub from a lioness under the same circumstances,” she added, with a laugh.
“And you? You are splendidly cool and plucky. What about the children? Aren’t they scared?”
“They are, of course, poor chicks. But they’ve learnt to do as they are told. They are inside – and quite quiet.”
The plan was soon formed. Dick was to go outside and stick up the rockets just in front of the stoep. None of the enemy seemed to be on that side, the ground was too open and devoid of cover in the clear moonlight. The while Mrs Waybridge, gun in hand, would watch his present post.
“It’s done,” whispered Dick, returning in a minute. “There are half a dozen of them there. But before I touch them off I’ve got a jolly little surprise for our friends yonder. Now look, and you’ll see some fun.”
Slightly opening one of the windows, with the aid of a chair he adjusted a rocket horizontally on the sill, in such wise as to rake the quince hedge, as near as he could judge, at the point whence the man who was a marksman had been making things lively for them. Then, striking a match, and carefully shading it, he touched the fuse.
It sputtered a moment. Then there was a deafening and appalling hiss, and a great fiery snake of sparks sped straight for the point designed, bursting with a crackling boom in among the quince hedge. The effect was ample. A hubbub of cries and shouts arose among the lurking savages, and immediately Dick had placed another rocket into position and touched it off with similar effect. Utterly panic-stricken now, the Kafirs thought of nothing but wild flight, and the crashing of their demoralised retreat through the garden was the most welcome sound the beleaguered listeners had at one time ever expected to hear again. Quick as thought Dick slipped out to the front, and applied a light to the upright rockets, one after another. Band after band of snake-red flame leapt up into the heavens, bursting with shell-like boom into beautiful blue and red and golden stars.
“There!” he said, coming back, and choking with laughter, in sheer reaction, “I believe Jack Kafir thinks the end of the world has come, or the Police artillery – doesn’t matter which. Your idea has been the saving of this camp, Mrs Waybridge, if he doesn’t get over his scare and come back.”
Chapter Thirty Five.
“Is it too late?”
Waybridge, having delivered his contract stock, had intended staying the night at Fort Isiwa, but some news which was brought in at that post decided him to start for home at no longer notice than it took him to saddle up, and to get there as fast as his steed could carry him.
It was rather late when he clattered into Komgha, but, late as it was, quite a number of men were astir. There was no help for it. He must perforce off-saddle if only for a quarter of an hour, after the pace at which he had pushed his horse, and that all uphill.
“Anything in this news?” he asked eagerly as he gained the stoep at Pagets and called for a very long brandy and soda.
“Or is it all a yarn?”
“Yarn? Not much. The Gaikas have broken out, and are burning all the farms within reach. Yours among ’em, I expect, Waybridge.”
“Mine among ’em! But, good Lord! man, my people are still there.”
The other whistled blankly.
“Didn’t they come in?” he said.
“No. We didn’t believe in the scare, you see. Devil take that confounded horse of mine! I shall have to give him a few minutes more, and then I’ll push him along if I kill him. Won’t any of you fellows come with me? Women in danger, you know.”
“Rather, I’ll go,” answered the man he had been talking to. Others joined, and soon a compact dozen started off to get their horses – if they could find them, and somebody else’s if they couldn’t – and whatever arms they happened to own.
“That you, Waybridge? Yes, it’s time you started. They are beginning to send up rockets at your place.” And Harley Greenoak, who had ridden up unperceived in the excitement, dismounted, and walked up the steps.
“I should think so,” said Waybridge, impatiently. “By the way, Greenoak, I wish you’d sent us some sort of warning. I’d have taken it from you.”
“Couldn’t, earlier than this moment.”
The rescue party now assembled. There were fifteen in all. But the presence of Harley Greenoak had the effect of sending up their confidence in themselves and each other. They felt as if their little force had suddenly been doubled.
“Have you been with Sandili, Greenoak?” said Waybridge, as they rode forth.
“No. With that fighting son of his, Matanzima. He’s practically baas, and he means mischief. He’d have let me be killed, but I happened to do him an important service some time back, and whatever may be said about there being no gratitude in a Kafir, there is. I’ve seen it in too many instances. Look. There are no less than six places ablaze.”
They were travelling at a smart canter. Glow after glow had arisen, at intervals over the dim moonlight waste. The barbarous orgy was in full swing. But no such glare hovered over the site of Waybridge’s homestead. Clearly, therefore, the Gaikas had not succeeded in capturing the place. The rocket flights had now ceased.
“That young Selmes is a plucky chap,” muttered Waybridge, more to himself than to the others. “It’s a Godsend he should be on the place.”
“He’s all that,” said Greenoak. “We shall find your crowd all safe, never fear.”
A little more than an hour’s sharp riding and they topped the last rise. There stood the homestead, white in the moonlight. An exclamation of relief escaped Waybridge. But on a nearer approach this feeling was dashed.
“There’s been a fight,” he said quickly. “Those are dead Kafirs, and, there are no lights showing.”
The dark, motionless forms lying in front of the house, and discernible in the moonlight, told their own tale. What other motionless forms would they find within? Instinctively they put their horses at a gallop now.
“Easy, easy!” warned Greenoak; “that line of quince hedge may cover any number. We don’t need to rush bang headlong into a trap.”
The warning told. Wildly excited as the men were now, such was the influence of its utterer that they slackened pace. Waybridge thought he had never known what tense, poignant anxiety was until that moment.
“I’ll go forward and make sure,” he said thickly. “If – if – anything has happened in there – it can’t matter what happens to me, and – ”
He rammed the spurs into his horse’s flanks. But before he had shot ahead fifty yards, a sight met his eyes – met the eyes of all of them – which caused such a wild burst of relief that it could only find vent in a ringing cheer.
Upon the stoep several figures were now standing, and prominent among them the tall form of Dick Selmes. Harley Greenoak, whose feeling of relief was certainly not inferior to that of the others, shook a disapproving head.
“We want to bring this off quietly,” he said. “We don’t want to let the whole Gaika nation know we’re here, and that’s about what all this hullabaloo is likely to effect.”
“It’s all right, old chap. We’ll give ’em fits if they give us the chance,” said one man, airily. Him Greenoak at once set down as a fool.
They galloped up to the house, and there was a vast amount of handshaking and congratulation all round. Harley Greenoak held aloof.
“Who’s on guard at the back, Dick?” he said drily, when he could get in a word.
“At the back? Oh, we don’t want a guard now, old chap,” was the airy response. “We’ve beat ’em off, made ’em run like so many curs. It was the rockets did it, and the rockets were Mrs Waybridge’s idea. But it was Elsie who generalled the whole scrap. My hat, but you should have seen her swinging that axe! She ‘downed’ them one after another as hard as they came in. It was fine strategy, I can tell you.”
“And didn’t A’ tell ye that A’d mak ony sax o’ yon heathen black sauvages wish they’d never been born?” said the Scotswoman, complacently. “And A’ just stopped short at one.”
“Well, you didn’t give them time to wish they’d never been born, or anything else,” answered Dick.
“Ay, but they’ll be wishin’ it the noo, A’m thinking,” was the dry rejoinder, which, with its uncompromising Calvinism, evoked a great laugh.
“Take care that Hazel doesn’t go in there, Elsie,” Dick managed to whisper, referring to the kitchen, which had been the opening scene of the drama, and where lay the four bodies of those first slain by that intrepid Amazon.
The said bodies, however, were promptly dragged outside, and the sight of these, together with those lying around the house, rendered it unmistakably clear that a most gallant defence had been made. The while the feminine side of the garrison was busy getting out liquid and other refreshment for the relief party, though its consumption must of necessity be hurried, for Greenoak had advised immediate removal to the settlement, and Waybridge was already inspanning the Cape cart. Fortunately the Kafirs had not been able to get at the horses, the stable door being commanded by the firing-line. And the urgency of such advice was to receive prompt confirmation.
An exploration of the garden had been judged advisable, and this, accompanied by several others, was undertaken by Greenoak. Here they found one more body – and a badly wounded Kafir. He was shot through both legs, but had managed to drag himself into cover.
“It is Kulondeka,” he said, recognising his questioner. “Then I will speak. There are several more wounded lying about – yes. The people have gone, but they will come again, with many others, before sunrise. Take the white women and go, Kulondeka – now, at once. I know you. You and the other saved me, yonder, the day we fought Ndimba’s people with sticks. Go. Lose no time.”
Greenoak rejoined the others, feeling pretty anxious. They were by no means out of the wood yet. A large marauding band might appear at any moment, and, after all, their number was a mere handful. So it was with a modicum of relief that he saw the cart inspanned, and its inmates duly installed. But having seen them once started, with their escort, Greenoak slipped back to the garden with the remains of a bottle of brandy in his hand, and administered an invigorating drink to the badly wounded savage.
“Your people will find you here,” he said, “and the others. Now, you have felt how hard the white man’s blow can fall. Tell them.”
After the peril and relief a reaction ensued.
“I suppose those horrible wretches will burn down the house,” Mrs Waybridge remarked, as they sped along. “Or, at any rate, plunder it of everything.”
Hazel, for her part, thought the enemy would do both, when he saw the extent of his losses during the defence, for, of course, under the circumstances, the dead had been left just as they fell. But, not aspiring to the part of Job’s comforter, she refrained from recording an opinion.
Those forming the relief party laughed good-naturedly among themselves as they noted how uncommonly close to the Cape cart Dick Selmes would persist in riding, some of the younger ones with a tinge of envy. He, for his part, was keeping up a string of lively talk and banter with its occupants, and he was doing it with an object. Hazel had shown wonderful pluck during the stirring events of the night, but the ghastly sights she had witnessed, and the terror she had undergone, would be likely to come back to her now in the reaction of feeling safe, and he wanted her to forget them. So he rattled on, keeping their attention turned in a more salutary direction; whereby shows out another side of that missing link which the girl had decided had been supplied. He had learnt to think.
The following day, and for days after, all manner of scare rumours kept coming in, of homesteads burnt, of such inmates as were unable to escape in time surprised and massacred, of stock swept away, and crops destroyed. And then the savages began to watch the main road, to cut off express-riders, or small parties; indeed, it was not long before they waxed bolder, and news came of a fierce attack upon several companies of a regiment of foot, on its march to the Komgha. To make things worse, the so-called “conquered” paramount tribe swarmed back into Gcalekaland again, joining hands with the now revolted Gaika clans within the Colonial border. Thus the war, officially declared to be over, had, in actual fact, only just begun.
A few nights after its plucky defence, Waybridge’s homestead went the way of the rest, but not before he had managed, with the aid of a few daring spirits, to make a dash out there and bring away some of the more portable effects, and to bury, or otherwise hide, others. But he did not complain. The marvellous escape of his household, where others had died cruel deaths, alone precluded that. In other ways, too, he had been lucky, in that for some time past he had gradually been selling off most of his stock, so that his loss was comparatively small.
As the days went by Dick Selmes began to look with wistful eyes at this or that commando passing through, or at this or that patrol starting to reconnoitre the countryside or keep the road open. Hazel, reading what was in his mind, was furtively watching him. One day, when they were alone together, she said —
“Dick, my darling. You are eating your heart out because you want to go off again to this wretched war, and perhaps get killed. You are not content to stay and take care of poor little me.”
She had grown wondrously tender towards him since the night of peril they had shared, in pursuance whereof she had laid an embargo upon any more needless adventures on his part.
“It isn’t that, sweetheart,” he answered. “I’m only too happy here – with you. But I seem to be hanging back – sort of skulking – while every other fellow who can shoot straight, or not, is in the field.”
She laughed softly.
“Skulking! You? Why, you’ve done the share of any ten men since the beginning of the war. No – no – Dick. If that’s all that’s troubling you, why it needn’t. And now, look here, you are to go on escort duty. You are to escort me – home.”
Dick’s face brightened.
“But, dearest, you are forgetting,” he said, with a puzzled look. “The road isn’t safe yet – not by a long chalk – for you to travel under such a small escort as myself and Greenoak.”
“It’ll be a bigger one. The Commandant is sending a lot of Police to King Williamstown in a day or two, and he says I may travel under their escort. Will you make one of it?”
“Won’t I!” he answered delightedly.
Chapter Thirty Six.
Envoi
The partridges were lying well, springing up in fine coveys from the turnips, or from corn-sheaves on the stubble, or in twos and threes, as the coveys were broken up. A soft haze hung over the fair English landscape, with its green meadow or golden stubble and vernal woodland, the latter hardly beginning to show the gorgeous wealth of autumn colour which would soon enwrap it; for it was the Glorious First.
“By Jove, Greenoak,” said Sir Anson Selmes, “we thought we’d got a few record bird-shots this side of the water. But even they don’t touch you. Why, man, I don’t believe you’ve let a bird go by this morning; all killed dead too – no runners.”
The two were walking together, gun on shoulder, an old and favourite pointer of Sir Anson’s trotting at their heels. The morning’s shoot was over and they were making for the spot where, in the cool shade of a spreading tree, luncheon was laid out and waiting. About half a field off our friend Dick was converging on the rendezvous, with the keepers and dogs, apparently engaged in animated converse with the former.
“Oh, as to that, Sir Anson, you couldn’t miss a bird with a gun like this,” was the modest reply; the gun being, in fact, one of a valuable pair which had been sprung upon Harley Greenoak as a surprise present from Dick and his father conjointly.
“And as to that,” rejoined the latter, “there are a good many men who’d miss a good many birds with a gun like that or any other. But how things shape themselves. When I turned the lad over to you, I knew he’d find plenty of adventure, and perhaps some risk, but the last thing I ever dreamed of him finding was a bride – and such a bride – ha-ha! And the daughter of an old brother officer of mine, at that. Why, I had almost forgotten Brandon’s very existence.”