Marie

DEDICATION

Ditchingham, 1912.

My dear Sir Henry,—

Nearly thirty-seven years have gone by, more than a generation, since first we
saw the shores of Southern Africa rising from the sea. Since then how much has
happened: the Annexation of the Transvaal, the Zulu War, the first Boer War,
the discovery of the Rand, the taking of Rhodesia, the second Boer War, and
many other matters which in these quick-moving times are now reckoned as
ancient history.

Alas! I fear that were we to re-visit that country we should find but few faces
which we knew. Yet of one thing we may be glad. Those historical events, in
some of which you, as the ruler of Natal, played a great part, and I, as it
chanced, a smaller one, so far as we can foresee, have at length brought a
period of peace to Southern Africa. To-day the flag of England flies from the
Zambesi to the Cape. Beneath its shadow may all ancient feuds and blood
jealousies be forgotten. May the natives prosper also and be justly ruled, for
after all in the beginning the land was theirs. Such, I know, are your hopes,
as they are mine.

It is, however, with an earlier Africa that this story deals. In 1836, hate and
suspicion ran high between the Home Government and its Dutch subjects. Owing to
the freeing of the slaves and mutual misunderstandings, the Cape Colony was
then in tumult, almost in rebellion, and the Boers, by thousands, sought new
homes in the unknown, savage-peopled North. Of this blood-stained time I have
tried to tell; of the Great Trek and its tragedies, such as the massacre of the
true-hearted Retief and his companions at the hands of the Zulu king, Dingaan.

But you have read the tale and know its substance. What, then, remains for me
to say? Only that in memory of long-past days I dedicate it to you whose image
ever springs to mind when I strive to picture an English gentleman as he should
be. Your kindness I never shall forget; in memory of it, I offer you this book.

Ever sincerely yours,

H. RIDER HAGGARD.

To Sir Henry Bulwer, G.C.M.G.

PREFACE

The Author hopes that the reader may find some historical interest in the tale
set out in these pages of the massacre of the Boer general, Retief, and his
companions at the hands of the Zulu king, Dingaan. Save for some added
circumstances, he believes it to be accurate in its details.

The same may be said of the account given of the hideous sufferings of the
trek-Boers who wandered into the fever veld, there to perish in the
neighbourhood of Delagoa Bay. Of these sufferings, especially those that were
endured by Triechard and his companions, a few brief contemporary records still
exist, buried in scarce works of reference. It may be mentioned, also, that it
was a common belief among the Boers of that generation that the cruel death of
Retief and his companions, and other misfortunes which befell them, were due to
the treacherous plottings of an Englishman, or of Englishmen, with the despot,
Dingaan.

EDITOR’S NOTE

The following extract explains how the manuscript of “Marie,” and
with it some others, one of which is named “Child of Storm,” came
into the hands of the Editor.

It is from a letter, dated January 17th, 1909, and written by Mr. George
Curtis, the brother of Sir Henry Curtis, Bart., who, it will be remembered, was
one of the late Mr. Allan Quatermain’s friends and companions in
adventure when he discovered King Solomon’s Mines, and who afterwards
disappeared with him in Central Africa.

This extract runs as follows:—

“You may recall that our mutual and dear friend, old Allan Quatermain,
left me the sole executor of his will, which he signed before he set out with
my brother Henry for Zuvendis, where he was killed. The Court, however, not
being satisfied that there was any legal proof of his death, invested the
capital funds in trustee securities, and by my advice let his place in
Yorkshire to a tenant who has remained in occupation of it during the last two
decades. Now that tenant is dead, and at the earnest prayer of the Charities
which benefit under Quatermain’s will, and of myself—for in my
uncertain state of health I have for long been most anxious to wind up this
executorship—about eight months ago the Court at last consented to the
distribution of this large fund in accordance with the terms of the will.

“This, of course, involved the sale of the real property, and before it
was put up to auction I went over the house in company of the solicitor
appointed by the Court. On the top landing, in the room Quatermain used to
occupy, we found a sealed cupboard that I opened. It proved to be full of
various articles which evidently he had prized because of their associations
with his early life. These I need not enumerate here, especially as I have
reserved them as his residuary legatee and, in the event of my death, they will
pass to you under my will.

“Among these relics, however, I found a stout box, made of some red
foreign wood, that contained various documents and letters and a bundle of
manuscripts. Under the tape which fastened these manuscripts together, as you
will see, is a scrap of paper on which is written, in blue pencil, a direction
signed ‘Allan Quatermain,’ that in the event of anything happening
to him, these MSS. are to be sent to you (for whom, as you know, he had a high
regard), and that at your sole discretion you are to burn or publish them as
you may see fit.

“So, after all these years, as we both remain alive, I carry out our old
friend’s instructions and send you his bequest, which I trust may prove
of interest and value. I have read the MS. called ‘Marie,’ and
certainly am of the opinion that it ought to be published, for I think it a
strange and moving tale of a great love—full, moreover, of forgotten
history.

“That named ‘Child of Storm’ also seems very interesting as a
study of savage life, and the others may be the same; but my eyes are troubling
me so much that I have not been able to decipher them. I hope, however, that I
may be spared long enough to see them in print.

“Poor old Allan Quatermain. It is as though he had suddenly reappeared
from the dead! So at least I thought as I perused these stories of a period of
his life of which I do not remember his speaking to me.

“And now my responsibility in this matter is finished and yours begins.
Do what you like about the manuscripts.”

“George Curtis.”

As may be imagined, I, the Editor, was considerably astonished when I received
this letter and the accompanying bundle of closely-written MSS. To me also it
was as though my old friend had risen from the grave and once more stood before
me, telling some history of his stormy and tragic past in that quiet, measured
voice that I have never been able to forget.

The first manuscript I read was that entitled “Marie.” It deals
with Mr. Quatermain’s strange experiences when as a very young man he
accompanied the ill-fated Pieter Retief and the Boer Commission on an embassy
to the Zulu despot, Dingaan. This, it will be remembered, ended in their
massacre, Quatermain himself and his Hottentot servant Hans being the sole
survivors of the slaughter. Also it deals with another matter more personal to
himself, namely, his courtship of and marriage to his first wife, Marie Marais.

Of this Marie I never heard him speak, save once. I remember that on a certain
occasion—it was that of a garden fête for a local charity—I was
standing by Quatermain when someone introduced to him a young girl who was
staying in the neighborhood and had distinguished herself by singing very
prettily at the fête. Her surname I forget, but her Christian name was Marie.
He started when he heard it, and asked if she were French. The young lady
answered No, but only of French extraction through her grandmother, who also
was called Marie.

“Indeed?” he said. “Once I knew a maiden not unlike you who
was also of French extraction and called Marie. May you prove more fortunate in
life than she was, though better or nobler you can never be,” and he
bowed to her in his simple, courtly fashion, then turned away. Afterwards, when
we were alone, I asked him who was this Marie of whom he had spoken to the
young lady. He paused a little, then answered:

“She was my first wife, but I beg you not to speak of her to me or to
anyone else, for I cannot bear to hear her name. Perhaps you will learn all
about her one day.” Then, to my grief and astonishment, he broke into
something like a sob and abruptly left the room.

After reading the record of this Marie I can well understand why he was so
moved. I print it practically as it left his hands.

There are other MSS. also, one of which, headed “Child of Storm,”
relates the moving history of a beautiful and, I fear I must add, wicked Zulu
girl named Mameena who did much evil in her day and went unrepentant from the
world.

Another, amongst other things, tells the secret story of the causes of the
defeat of Cetewayo and his armies by the English in 1879, which happened not
long before Quatermain met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good.

These three narratives are, indeed, more or less connected with each other. At
least, a certain aged dwarf, called Zikali, a witch-doctor and a terrible man,
has to do with all of them, although in the first, “Marie,” he is
only vaguely mentioned in connection with the massacre of Retief, whereof he
was doubtless the primary instigator. As “Marie” comes first in
chronological order, and was placed on the top of the pile by its author, I
publish it first. With the others I hope to deal later on, as I may find time
and opportunity.

But the future must take care of itself. We cannot control it, and its events
are not in our hand. Meanwhile, I hope that those who in their youth have read
of King Solomon’s Mines and Zuvendis, and perhaps some others who are
younger, may find as much of interest in these new chapters of the
autobiography of Allan Quatermain as I have done myself.

CHAPTER I.

ALLAN LEARNS FRENCH

Although in my old age I, Allan Quatermain, have taken to writing—after a
fashion—never yet have I set down a single word of the tale of my first
love and of the adventures that are grouped around her beautiful and tragic
history. I suppose this is because it has always seemed to me too holy and
far-off a matter—as holy and far-off as is that heaven which holds the
splendid spirit of Marie Marais. But now, in my age, that which was far-off
draws near again; and at night, in the depths between the stars, sometimes I
seem to see the opening doors through which I must pass, and leaning earthwards
across their threshold, with outstretched arms and dark and dewy eyes, a shadow
long forgotten by all save me—the shadow of Marie Marais.

An old man’s dream, doubtless, no more. Still, I will try to set down
that history which ended in so great a sacrifice, and one so worthy of record,
though I hope that no human eye will read it until I also am forgotten, or, at
any rate, have grown dim in the gathering mists of oblivion. And I am glad that
I have waited to make this attempt, for it seems to me that only of late have I
come to understand and appreciate at its true value the character of her of
whom I tell, and the passionate affection which was her bounteous offering to
one so utterly unworthy as myself. What have I done, I wonder, that to me
should have been decreed the love of two such women as Marie and that of
Stella, also now long dead, to whom alone in the world I told all her tale? I
remember I feared lest she should take it ill, but this was not so. Indeed,
during our brief married days, she thought and talked much of Marie, and some
of her last words to me were that she was going to seek her, and that they
would wait for me together in the land of love, pure and immortal.

So with Stella’s death all that side of life came to an end for me, since
during the long years which stretch between then and now I have never said
another tender word to woman. I admit, however, that once, long afterwards, a
certain little witch of a Zulu did say tender words to me, and for an hour or
so almost turned my head, an art in which she had great skill. This I say
because I wish to be quite honest, although it—I mean my head, for there
was no heart involved in the matter—came straight again at once. Her name
was Mameena, and I have set down her remarkable story elsewhere.

To return. As I have already written in another book, I passed my youth with my
old father, a Church of England clergyman, in what is now the Cradock district
of the Cape Colony.

Then it was a wild place enough, with a very small white population. Among our
few neighbours was a Boer farmer of the name of Henri Marais, who lived about
fifteen miles from our station, on a fine farm called Maraisfontein. I say he
was a Boer, but, as may be guessed from both his Christian and surname, his
origin was Huguenot, his forefather, who was also named Henri
Marais—though I think the Marais was spelt rather differently
then—having been one of the first of that faith who emigrated to South
Africa to escape the cruelties of Louis XIV. at the time of the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes.

Unlike most Boers of similar descent, these particular Marais—for, of
course, there are many other families so called—never forgot their
origin. Indeed, from father to son, they kept up some knowledge of the French
tongue, and among themselves often spoke it after a fashion. At any rate, it
was the habit of Henri Marais, who was excessively religious, to read his
chapter of the Bible (which it is, or was, the custom of the Boers to spell out
every morning, should their learning allow them to do so), not in the
taal or patois Dutch, but in good old French. I have the very
book from which he used to read now, for, curiously enough, in after years,
when all these events had long been gathered to the past, I chanced to buy it
among a parcel of other works at the weekly auction of odds and ends on the
market square of Maritzburg. I remember that when I opened the great tome,
bound over the original leather boards in buckskin, and discovered to whom it
had belonged, I burst into tears. There was no doubt about it, for, as was
customary in old days, this Bible had sundry fly-leaves sewn up with it for the
purpose of the recording of events important to its owner.

The first entries were made by the original Henri Marais, and record how he and
his compatriots were driven from France, his father having lost his life in the
religious persecutions. After this comes a long list of births, marriages and
deaths continued from generation to generation, and amongst them a few notes
telling of such matters as the change of the dwelling-places of the family,
always in French. Towards the end of the list appears the entry of the birth of
the Henri Marais whom I knew, alas! too well, and of his only sister. Then is
written his marriage to Marie Labuschagne, also, be it noted, of the Huguenot
stock. In the next year follows the birth of Marie Marais, my Marie, and, after
a long interval, for no other children were born, the death of her mother.
Immediately below appears the following curious passage:

“Le 3 Janvier, 1836. Je quitte ce pays voulant me sauver du maudit
gouvernement Britannique comme mes ancêtres se sont sauvés de ce
diable—Louis XIV.

“A bas les rois et les ministres tyrannique! Vive la
liberté!”

Which indicates very clearly the character and the opinions of Henri Marais,
and the feeling among the trek-Boers at that time.

Thus the record closes and the story of the Marais ends—that is, so far
as the writings in the Bible go, for that branch of the family is now extinct.

Their last chapter I will tell in due course.

There was nothing remarkable about my introduction to Marie Marais. I did not
rescue her from any attack of a wild beast or pull her out of a raging river in
a fashion suited to romance. Indeed, we interchanged our young ideas across a
small and extremely massive table, which, in fact, had once done duty as a
block for the chopping up of meat. To this hour I can see the hundreds of lines
running criss-cross upon its surface, especially those opposite to where I used
to sit.

One day, several years after my father had emigrated to the Cape, the Heer
Marais arrived at our house in search, I think, of some lost oxen. He was a
thin, bearded man with rather wild, dark eyes set close together, and a quick
nervous manner, not in the least like that of a Dutch Boer—or so I recall
him. My father received him courteously and asked him to stop to dine, which he
did.

They talked together in French, a tongue that my father knew well, although he
had not used it for years; Dutch he could not, or, rather, would not, speak if
he could help it, and Mr. Marais preferred not to talk English. To meet someone
who could converse in French delighted him, and although his version of the
language was that of two centuries before and my father’s was largely
derived from reading, they got on very well together, if not too fast.

At length, after a pause, Mr. Marais, pointing to myself, a small and
stubbly-haired youth with a sharp nose, asked my father whether he would like
me to be instructed in the French tongue. The answer was that nothing would
please him better.

“Although,” he added severely, “to judge by my own experience
where Latin and Greek are concerned, I doubt his capacity to learn
anything.”

So an arrangement was made that I should go over for two days in each week to
Maraisfontein, sleeping there on the intervening night, and acquire a knowledge
of the French tongue from a tutor whom Mr. Marais had hired to instruct his
daughter in that language and other subjects. I remember that my father agreed
to pay a certain proportion of this tutor’s salary, a plan which suited
the thrifty Boer very well indeed.

Thither, accordingly, I went in due course, nothing loth, for on the veld
between our station and Maraisfontein many pauw and
koran—that is, big and small bustards—were to be found, to
say nothing of occasional buck, and I was allowed to carry a gun, which even in
those days I could use fairly well. So to Maraisfontein I rode on the appointed
day, attended by a Hottentot after-rider, a certain Hans, of whom I shall have
a good deal to tell. I enjoyed very good sport on the road, arriving at the
stead laden with one pauw, two koran, and a little
klipspringer buck which I had been lucky enough to shoot as it bounded
out of some rocks in front of me.

There was a peach orchard planted round Maraisfontein, which just then was a
mass of lovely pink blossom, and as I rode through it slowly, not being sure of
my way to the house, a lanky child appeared in front of me, clad in a frock
which exactly matched the colour of the peach bloom. I can see her now, her
dark hair hanging down her back, and her big, shy eyes staring at me from the
shadow of the Dutch kappie which she wore. Indeed, she seemed to be all
eyes, like a dikkop or thick-headed plover; at any rate, I noted little
else about her.

I pulled up my pony and stared at her, feeling very shy and not knowing what to
say. For a while she stared back at me, being afflicted, presumably, with the
same complaint, then spoke with an effort, in a voice that was very soft and
pleasant.

“Are you the little Allan Quatermain who is coming to learn French with
me?” she asked in Dutch.

“Of course,” I answered in the same tongue, which I knew well;
“but why do you call me little, missie? I am taller than you,” I
added indignantly, for when I was young my lack of height was always a sore
point with me.

“I think not,” she replied. “But get off that horse, and we
will measure here against this wall.”

So I dismounted, and, having assured herself that I had no heels to my boots (I
was wearing the kind of raw-hide slippers that the Boers call
veld-shoon), she took the writing slate which she was carrying—it
had no frame, I remember, being, in fact, but a piece of the material used for
roofing—and, pressing it down tight on my stubbly hair, which stuck up
then as now, made a deep mark in the soft sandstone of the wall with the hard
pointed pencil.

“There,” she said, “that is justly done. Now, little Allan,
it is your turn to measure me.”

So I measured her, and, behold! she was the taller by a whole half-inch.

“You are standing on tiptoe,” I said in my vexation.

“Little Allan,” she replied, “to stand on tiptoe would be to
lie before the good Lord, and when you come to know me better you will learn
that, though I have a dreadful temper and many other sins, I do not lie.”

I suppose that I looked snubbed and mortified, for she went on in her grave,
grown-up way: “Why are you angry because God made me taller than you?
especially as I am whole months older, for my father told me so. Come, let us
write our names against these marks, so that in a year or two you may see how
you outgrow me.” Then with the slate pencil she scratched
“Marie” against her mark very deeply, so that it might last, she
said; after which I wrote “Allan” against mine.

Alas! Within the last dozen years chance took me past Maraisfontein once more.
The house had long been rebuilt, but this particular wall yet stood. I rode to
it and looked, and there faintly could still be seen the name Marie, against
the little line, and by it the mark that I had made. My own name and with it
subsequent measurements were gone, for in the intervening forty years or so the
sandstone had flaked away in places. Only her autograph remained, and when I
saw it I think that I felt even worse than I did on finding whose was the old
Bible that I had bought upon the market square at Maritzburg.

I know that I rode away hurriedly without even stopping to inquire into whose
hands the farm had passed. Through the peach orchard I rode, where the
trees—perhaps the same, perhaps others—were once more in bloom, for
the season of the year was that when Marie and I first met, nor did I draw rein
for half a score of miles.

But here I may state that Marie always stayed just half an inch the taller in
body, and how much taller in mind and spirit I cannot tell.

When we had finished our measuring match Marie turned to lead me to the house,
and, pretending to observe for the first time the beautiful bustard and the two
koran hanging from my saddle, also the klipspringer buck that
Hans the Hottentot carried behind him on his horse, asked:

“Did you shoot all these, Allan Quatermain?”

“Yes,” I answered proudly; “I killed them in four shots, and
the pauw and koran were flying, not sitting, which is more than
you could have done, although you are taller, Miss Marie.”

“I do not know,” she answered reflectively. “I can shoot very
well with a rifle, for my father has taught me, but I never would shoot at
living things unless I must because I was hungry, for I think that to kill is
cruel. But, of course, it is different with men,” she added hastily,
“and no doubt you will be a great hunter one day, Allan Quatermain, since
you can already aim so well.”

“I hope so,” I answered, blushing at the compliment, “for I
love hunting, and when there are so many wild things it does not matter if we
kill a few. I shot these for you and your father to eat.”

“Come, then, and give them to him. He will thank you,” and she led
the way through the gate in the sandstone wall into the yard, where the
outbuildings stood in which the riding horses and the best of the breeding
cattle were kept at night, and so past the end of the long, one-storied house,
that was stone-built and whitewashed, to the stoep or veranda in front of it.

On the broad stoep, which commanded a pleasant view over rolling, park-like
country, where mimosa and other trees grew in clumps, two men were seated,
drinking strong coffee, although it was not yet ten o’clock in the
morning.

Hearing the sound of the horses, one of these, Mynheer Marais, whom I already
knew, rose from his hide-strung chair. He was, as I think I have said, not in
the least like one of the phlegmatic Boers, either in person or in temperament,
but, rather, a typical Frenchman, although no member of his race had set foot
in France for a hundred and fifty years. At least so I discovered afterwards,
for, of course, in those days I knew nothing of Frenchmen.

His companion was also French, Leblanc by name, but of a very different stamp.
In person he was short and stout. His large head was bald except for a fringe
of curling, iron-grey hair which grew round it just above the ears and fell
upon his shoulders, giving him the appearance of a tonsured but dishevelled
priest. His eyes were blue and watery, his mouth was rather weak, and his
cheeks were pale, full and flabby. When the Heer Marais rose, I, being an
observant youth, noted that Monsieur Leblanc took the opportunity to stretch
out a rather shaky hand and fill up his coffee cup out of a black bottle, which
from the smell I judged to contain peach brandy.

In fact, it may as well be said at once that the poor man was a drunkard, which
explains how he, with all his high education and great ability, came to hold
the humble post of tutor on a remote Boer farm. Years before, when under the
influence of drink, he had committed some crime in France—I don’t
know what it was, and never inquired—and fled to the Cape to avoid
prosecution. Here he obtained a professorship at one of the colleges, but after
a while appeared in the lecture-room quite drunk and lost his employment. The
same thing happened in other towns, till at last he drifted to distant
Maraisfontein, where his employer tolerated his weakness for the sake of the
intellectual companionship for which something in his own nature seemed to
crave. Also, he looked upon him as a compatriot in distress, and a great bond
of union between them was their mutual and virulent hatred of England and the
English, which in the case of Monsieur Leblanc, who in his youth had fought at
Waterloo and been acquainted with the great Emperor, was not altogether
unnatural.

Henri Marais’s case was different, but of that I shall have more to say
later.

“Ah, Marie,” said her father, speaking in Dutch, “so you have
found him at last,” and he nodded towards me, adding: “You should
be flattered, little man. Look you, this missie has been sitting for two hours
in the sun waiting for you, although I told her you would not arrive much
before ten o’clock, as your father the prédicant said you would
breakfast before you started. Well, it is natural, for she is lonely here, and
you are of an age, although of a different race”; and his face darkened
as he spoke the words.

“Father,” answered Marie, whose blushes I could see even in the
shadow of her cap, “I was not sitting in the sun, but under the shade of
a peach tree. Also, I was working out the sums that Monsieur Leblanc set me on
my slate. See, here they are,” and she held up the slate, which was
covered with figures, somewhat smudged, it is true, by the rubbing of my stiff
hair and of her cap.

Then Monsieur Leblanc broke in, speaking in French, of which, as it chanced I
understood the sense, for my father had grounded me in that tongue, and I am
naturally quick at modern languages. At any rate, I made out that he was asking
if I was the little cochon d’anglais, or English pig, whom for his
sins he had to teach. He added that he judged I must be, as my hair stuck up on
my head—I had taken off my hat out of politeness—as it naturally
would do on a pig’s back.

This was too much for me, so, before either of the others could speak, I
answered in Dutch, for rage made me eloquent and bold:

“Yes, I am he; but, mynheer, if you are to be my master, I hope you will
not call the English pigs any more to me.”

“Indeed, gamin” (that is, little scamp), “and pray,
what will happen if I am so bold as to repeat that truth?”

“I think, mynheer,” I replied, growing white with rage at this new
insult, “the same that has happened to yonder buck,” and I pointed
to the klipspringer behind Hans’s saddle. “I mean that I
shall shoot you.”

“Peste! Au moins il a du courage, cet enfant” (At least the
child is plucky), exclaimed Monsieur Leblanc, astonished. From that moment, I
may add, he respected me, and never again insulted my country to my face.

Then Marais broke out, speaking in Dutch that I might understand:

“It is you who should be called pig, Leblanc, not this boy, for, early as
it is, you have been drinking. Look! the brandy bottle is half empty. Is that
the example you set to the young? Speak so again and I turn you out to starve
on the veld. Allan Quatermain, although, as you may have heard, I do not like
the English, I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive the words this sot
spoke, thinking that you did not understand,” and he took off his hat and
bowed to me quite in a grand manner, as his ancestors might have done to a king
of France.

Leblanc’s face fell. Then he rose and walked away rather unsteadily; as I
learned afterwards, to plunge his head in a tub of cold water and swallow a
pint of new milk, which were his favourite antidotes after too much strong
drink. At any rate, when he appeared again, half an hour later, to begin our
lesson, he was quite sober, and extremely polite.

When he had gone, my childish anger being appeased, I presented the Heer Marais
with my father’s compliments, also with the buck and the birds, whereof
the latter seemed to please him more than the former. Then my saddle-bags were
taken to my room, a little cupboard of a place next to that occupied by
Monsieur Leblanc, and Hans was sent to turn the horses out with the others
belonging to the farm, having first knee-haltered them tightly, so that they
should not run away home.

This done, the Heer Marais showed me the room in which we were to have our
lessons, one of the sitkammer, or sitting chambers, whereof, unlike most
Boer steads, this house boasted two. I remember that the floor was made of
daga, that is, ant-heap earth mixed with cow-dung, into which thousands
of peach-stones had been thrown while it was still soft, in order to resist
footwear—a rude but fairly efficient expedient, and one not unpleasing to
the eye. For the rest, there was one window opening on to the veranda, which,
in that bright climate, admitted a shaded but sufficient light, especially as
it always stood open; the ceiling was of unplastered reeds; a large bookcase
stood in the corner containing many French works, most of them the property of
Monsieur Leblanc, and in the centre of the room was the strong, rough table
made of native yellow-wood, that once had served as a butcher’s block. I
recollect also a coloured print of the great Napoleon commanding at some battle
in which he was victorious, seated upon a white horse and waving a
field-marshal’s baton over piles of dead and wounded; and near the
window, hanging to the reeds of the ceiling, the nest of a pair of red-tailed
swallows, pretty creatures that, notwithstanding the mess they made, afforded
to Marie and me endless amusement in the intervals of our work.

When, on that day, I shuffled shyly into this homely place, and, thinking
myself alone there, fell to examining it, suddenly I was brought to a
standstill by a curious choking sound which seemed to proceed from the shadows
behind the bookcase. Wondering as to its cause, I advanced cautiously to
discover a pink-clad shape standing in the corner like a naughty child, with
her head resting against the wall, and sobbing slowly.

“Marie Marais, why do you cry?” I asked.

She turned, tossing back the locks of long, black hair which hung about her
face, and answered:

“Allan Quatermain, I cry because of the shame which has been put upon you
and upon our house by that drunken Frenchman.”

“What of that?” I asked. “He only called me a pig, but I
think I have shown him that even a pig has tusks.”

“Yes,” she replied, “but it was not you he meant; it was all
the English, whom he hates; and the worst of it is that my father is of his
mind. He, too, hates the English, and, oh! I am sure that trouble will come of
his hatred, trouble and death to many.”

“Well, if so, we have nothing to do with it, have we?” I replied
with the cheerfulness of extreme youth.

“What makes you so sure?” she said solemnly. “Hush! here
comes Monsieur Leblanc.”

CHAPTER II.

THE ATTACK ON MARAISFONTEIN

I do not propose to set out the history of the years which I spent in acquiring
a knowledge of French and various other subjects, under the tuition of the
learned but prejudiced Monsieur Leblanc. Indeed, there is “none to tell,
sir.” When Monsieur Leblanc was sober, he was a most excellent and
well-informed tutor, although one apt to digress into many side issues, which
in themselves were not uninstructive. When tipsy, he grew excited and harangued
us, generally upon politics and religion, or rather its reverse, for he was an
advanced freethinker, although this was a side to his character which, however
intoxicated he might be, he always managed to conceal from the Heer Marais. I
may add that a certain childish code of honour prevented us from betraying his
views on this and sundry other matters. When absolutely drunk, which, on an
average, was not more than once a month, he simply slept, and we did what we
pleased—a fact which our childish code of honour also prevented us from
betraying.

But, on the whole, we got on very well together, for, after the incident of our
first meeting, Monsieur Leblanc was always polite to me. Marie he adored, as
did every one about the place, from her father down to the meanest slave. Need
I add that I adored her more than all of them put together, first with the love
that some children have for each other, and afterwards, as we became adult,
with that wider love by which it is at once transcended and made complete.
Strange would it have been if this were not so, seeing that we spent nearly
half of every week practically alone together, and that, from the first, Marie,
whose nature was as open as the clear noon, never concealed her affection for
me. True, it was a very discreet affection, almost sisterly, or even motherly,
in its outward and visible aspects, as though she could never forget that extra
half-inch of height or month or two of age.

Moreover, from a child she was a woman, as an Irishman might say, for
circumstances and character had shaped her thus. Not much more than a year
before we met, her mother, whose only child she was, and whom she loved with
all her strong and passionate heart, died after a lingering illness, leaving
her in charge of her father and his house. I think it was this heavy
bereavement in early youth which coloured her nature with a grey tinge of
sadness and made her seem so much older than her years.

So the time went on, I worshipping Marie in my secret thought, but saying
nothing about it, and Marie talking of and acting towards me as though I were
her dear younger brother. Nobody, not even her father or mine, or Monsieur
Leblanc, took the slightest notice of this queer relationship, or seemed to
dream that it might lead to ultimate complications which, in fact, would have
been very distasteful to them all for reasons that I will explain.

Needless to say, in due course, as they were bound to do, those complications
arose, and under pressure of great physical and moral excitement the truth came
out. It happened thus.

Every reader of the history of the Cape Colony has heard of the great Kaffir
War of 1835. That war took place for the most part in the districts of Albany
and Somerset, so that we inhabitants of Cradock, on the whole, suffered little.
Therefore, with the natural optimism and carelessness of danger of dwellers in
wild places, we began to think ourselves fairly safe from attack. Indeed, so we
should have been, had it not been for a foolish action on the part of Monsieur
Leblanc.

It seems that on a certain Sunday, a day that I always spent at home with my
father, Monsieur Leblanc rode out alone to some hills about five miles distant
from Maraisfontein. He had often been cautioned that this was an unsafe thing
to do, but the truth is that the foolish man thought he had found a rich copper
mine in these hills, and was anxious that no one should share his secret.
Therefore, on Sundays, when there were no lessons, and the Heer Marais was in
the habit of celebrating family prayers, which Leblanc disliked, it was
customary for him to ride to these hills and there collect geological specimens
and locate the strike of his copper vein. On this particular Sabbath, which was
very hot, after he had done whatever he intended to do, he dismounted from his
horse, a tame old beast. Leaving it loose, he partook of the meal he had
brought with him, which seems to have included a bottle of peach brandy that
induced slumber.

Waking up towards evening, he found that his horse had gone, and at once jumped
to the conclusion that it had been stolen by Kaffirs, although in truth the
animal had but strolled over a ridge in search of grass. Running hither and
thither to seek it, he presently crossed this ridge and met the horse,
apparently being led away by two of the Red Kaffirs, who, as was usual, were
armed with assegais. As a matter of fact these men had found the beast, and,
knowing well to whom it belonged, were seeking its owner, whom, earlier in the
day, they had seen upon the hills, in order to restore it to him. This,
however, never occurred to the mind of Monsieur Leblanc, excited as it was by
the fumes of the peach brandy.

Lifting the double-barrelled gun he carried, he fired at the first Kaffir, a
young man who chanced to be the eldest son and heir of the chief of the tribe,
and, as the range was very close, shot him dead. Thereon his companion, leaving
go of the horse, ran for his life. At him Leblanc fired also, wounding him
slightly in the thigh, but no more, so that he escaped to tell the tale of what
he and every other native for miles round considered a wanton and premeditated
murder. The deed done, the fiery old Frenchman mounted his nag and rode quietly
home. On the road, however, as the peach brandy evaporated from his brain,
doubts entered it, with the result that he determined to say nothing of his
adventure to Henri Marais, who he knew was particularly anxious to avoid any
cause of quarrel with the Kaffirs.

So he kept his own counsel and went to bed. Before he was up next morning the
Heer Marais, suspecting neither trouble nor danger, had ridden off to a farm
thirty miles or more away to pay its owner for some cattle which he had
recently bought, leaving his home and his daughter quite unprotected, except by
Leblanc and the few native servants, who were really slaves, that lived about
the place.

Now on the Monday night I went to bed as usual, and slept, as I have always
done through life, like a top, till about four in the morning, when I was
awakened by someone tapping at the glass of my window. Slipping from the bed, I
felt for my pistol, as it was quite dark, crept to the window, opened it, and
keeping my head below the level of the sill, fearing lest its appearance should
be greeted with an assegai, asked who was there.

“Me, baas,” said the voice of Hans, our Hottentot servant, who, it
will be remembered, had accompanied me as after-rider when first I went to
Maraisfontein. “I have bad news. Listen. The baas knows that I have been
out searching for the red cow which was lost. Well, I found her, and was
sleeping by her side under a tree on the veld when, about two hours ago, a
woman whom I know came up to my camp fire and woke me. I asked her what she was
doing at that hour of the night, and she answered that she had come to tell me
something. She said that some young men of the tribe of the chief Quabie, who
lives in the hills yonder, had been visiting at their kraal, and that a few
hours before a messenger had arrived from the chief saying that they must
return at once, as this morning at dawn he and all his men were going to attack
Maraisfontein and kill everyone in it and take the cattle!”

“Good God!” I ejaculated. “Why?”

“Because, young baas,” drawled the Hottentot from the other side of
the window, “because someone from Maraisfontein—I think it was the
Vulture” (the natives gave this name to Leblanc on account of his bald
head and hooked nose)—“shot Quabie’s son on Sunday when he
was holding his horse.”

“Good God!” I said again, “the old fool must have been drunk.
When did you say the attack was to be—at dawn?” and I glanced at
the stars, adding, “Why, that will be within less than an hour, and the
Baas Marais is away.”

“Yes,” croaked Hans; “and Missie Marie—think of what
the Red Kaffirs will do with Missie Marie when their blood is up.”

I thrust my fist through the window and struck the Hottentot’s toad-like
face on which the starlight gleamed faintly.

“Dog!” I said, “saddle my mare and the roan horse and get
your gun. In two minutes I come. Be swift or I kill you.”

“I go,” he answered, and shot out into the night like a frightened
snake.

Then I began to dress, shouting as I dressed, till my father and the Kaffirs
ran into the room. As I threw on my things I told them all.

“Send out messengers,” I said, “to Marais—he is at
Botha’s farm—and to all the neighbours. Send, for your lives;
gather up the friendly Kaffirs and ride like hell for Maraisfontein.
Don’t talk to me, father; don’t talk! Go and do what I tell you.
Stay! Give me two guns, fill the saddle-bags with powder tins and
loopers, and tie them to my mare. Oh! be quick, be quick!”

Now at length they understood, and flew this way and that with candles and
lanterns. Two minutes later—it could scarcely have been more—I was
in front of the stables just as Hans led out the bay mare, a famous beast that
for two years I had saved all my money to buy. Someone strapped on the
saddle-bags while I tested the girths; someone else appeared with the stout
roan stallion that I knew would follow the mare to the death. There was not
time to saddle him, so Hans clambered on to his back like a monkey, holding two
guns under his arm, for I carried but one and my double-barrelled pistol.

“Send off the messengers,” I shouted to my father. “If you
would see me again send them swiftly, and follow with every man you can
raise.”

Then we were away with fifteen miles to do and five-and-thirty minutes before
the dawn.

“Softly up the slope,” I said to Hans, “till the beasts get
their wind, and then ride as you never rode before.”

Those first two miles of rising ground! I thought we should never come to the
end of them, and yet I dared not let the mare out lest she should bucket
herself. Happily she and her companion, the stallion—a most enduring
horse, though not so very swift—had stood idle for the last thirty hours,
and, of course, had not eaten or drunk since sunset. Therefore being in fine
fettle, they were keen for the business; also we were light weights.

I held in the mare as she spurted up the rise, and the horse kept his pace to
hers. We reached its crest, and before us lay the great level plain, eleven
miles of it, and then two miles down hill to Maraisfontein.

“Now,” I said to Hans, shaking loose the reins, “keep up if
you can!”

Away sped the mare till the keen air of the night sung past my ears, and behind
her strained the good roan horse with the Hottentot monkey on its back. Oh!
what a ride was that!

Further I have gone for a like cause, but never at such speed, for I knew the
strength of the beasts and how long it would last them. Half an hour of it they
might endure; more, and at this pace they must founder or die.

And yet such was the agony of my fear, that it seemed to me as though I only
crept along the ground like a tortoise.

The roan was left behind, the sound of his foot-beats died away, and I was
alone with the night and my fear. Mile added itself to mile, for now and again
the starlight showed me a stone or the skeleton of some dead beast that I knew.
Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so suddenly, that a springbok,
unable to stop itself, leapt right over me. Once the mare put her foot in an
ant-bear hole and nearly fell, but recovered herself—thanks be to God,
unharmed—and I worked myself back into the saddle whence I had been
almost shaken. If I had fallen; oh! if I had fallen!

We were near the end of the flat, and she began to fail. I had over-pressed
her; the pace was too tremendous. Her speed lessened to an ordinary fast gallop
as she faced the gentle rise that led to the brow. And now, behind me, once
more I heard the sound of the hoofs of the roan. The tireless beast was coming
up. By the time we reached the edge of the plateau he was quite near, not fifty
yards behind, for I heard him whinny faintly.

Then began the descent. The morning star was setting, the east grew grey with
light. Oh! could we get there before the dawn? Could we get there before the
dawn? That is what my horse’s hoofs beat out to me.

Now I could see the mass of the trees about the stead. And now I dashed into
something, though until I was through it, I did not know that it was a line of
men, for the faint light gleamed upon the spear of one of them who had been
overthrown!

So it was no lie! The Kaffirs were there! As I thought it, a fresh horror
filled my heart; perhaps their murdering work was already done and they were
departing.

The minute of suspense—or was it but seconds?—seemed an eternity.
But it ended at last. Now I was at the door in the high wall that enclosed the
outbuildings at the back of the house, and there, by an inspiration, pulled up
the mare—glad enough she was to stop, poor thing—for it occurred to
me that if I rode to the front I should very probably be assegaied and of no
further use. I tried the door, which was made of stout stinkwood planks. By
design, or accident, it had been left unbolted. As I thrust it open Hans
arrived with a rush, clinging to the roan with his face hidden in its mane. The
beast pulled up by the side of the mare which it had been pursuing, and in the
faint light I saw that an assegai was fixed in its flank.

Five seconds later we were in the yard and locking and barring the door behind
us. Then, snatching the saddle-bags of ammunition from the horses, we left them
standing there, and I ran for the back entrance of the house, bidding Hans
rouse the natives, who slept in the outbuildings, and follow with them. If any
one of them showed signs of treachery he was to shoot him at once. I remember
that as I went I tore the spear out of the stallion’s flank and brought
it away with me.

Now I was hammering upon the back door of the house, which I could not open.
After a pause that seemed long, a window was thrown wide, and a voice—it
was Marie’s—asked in frightened tones who was there.

“I, Allan Quatermain,” I answered. “Open at once, Marie. You
are in great danger; the Red Kaffirs are going to attack the house.”

She flew to the door in her nightdress, and at length I was in the place.

“Thank God! you are still safe,” I gasped. “Put on your
clothes while I call Leblanc. No, stay, do you call him; I must wait here for
Hans and your slaves.”

Away she sped without a word, and presently Hans arrived, bringing with him
eight frightened men, who as yet scarcely knew whether they slept or woke.

“Is that all?” I asked. “Then bar the door and follow me to
the sitkammer, where the baas keeps his guns.”

Just as we reached it, Leblanc entered, clad in his shirt and trousers, and was
followed presently by Marie with a candle.

“What is it?” he asked.

I took the candle from Marie’s hand, and set it on the floor close to the
wall, lest it should prove a target for an assegai or a bullet. Even in those
days the Kaffirs had a few firearms, for the most part captured or stolen from
white men. Then in a few words I told them all.

“And when did you learn all this?” asked Leblanc in French.

“At the Mission Station a little more than half an hour ago,” I
answered, looking at my watch.

“At the station a little more than half an hour ago! Peste! it is
not possible. You dream or are drunken,” he cried excitedly.

“All right, monsieur, we will argue afterwards,” I answered.
“Meanwhile the Kaffirs are here, for I rode through them; and if you want
to save your life, stop talking and act. Marie, how many guns are there?”

“Four,” she answered, “of my father’s; two roers
and two smaller ones.”

“And how many of these men”—and I pointed to the
Kaffirs—“can shoot?”

“Three well and one badly, Allan.”

“Good,” I said. “Let them load the guns with
loopers”—that is, slugs, not bullets—“and let
the rest stand in the passage with their assegais, in case the Quabies should
try to force the back door.”

Now, in this house there were in all but six windows, one to each sitting-room,
one to each of the larger bedrooms, these four opening on to the veranda, and
one at either end of the house, to give light and air to the two small
bedrooms, which were approached through the larger bedrooms. At the back,
fortunately, there were no windows, for the stead was but one room deep with a
passage running from the front to the back door, a distance of little over
fifteen feet.

As soon as the guns were loaded I divided up the men, a man with a gun at each
window. The right-hand sitting-room window I took myself with two guns, Marie
coming with me to load, which, like all girls in that wild country, she could
do well enough. So we arranged ourselves in a rough-and-ready fashion, and
while we were doing it felt quite cheerful—that is, all except Monsieur
Leblanc, who, I noticed, seemed very much disturbed.

I do not for one moment mean to suggest that he was afraid, as he might well
have been, for he was an extremely brave and even rash man; but I think the
knowledge that his drunken act had brought this terrible danger upon us all
weighed on his mind. Also there may have been more; some subtle fore-knowledge
of the approaching end to a life that, when all allowances were made, could
scarcely be called well spent. At any rate he fidgeted at his window-place
cursing beneath his breath, and soon, as I saw out of the corner of my eye,
began to have recourse to his favourite bottle of peach brandy, which he
fetched out of a cupboard.

The slaves, too, were gloomy, as all natives are when suddenly awakened in the
night; but as the light grew they became more cheerful. It is a poor Kaffir
that does not love fighting, especially when he has a gun and a white man or
two to lead him.

Now that we had made such little preparations as we could, which, by the way, I
supplemented by causing some furniture to be piled up against the front and
back doors, there came a pause, which, speaking for my own part—being,
after all, only a lad at the time—I found very trying to the nerves.
There I stood at my window with the two guns, one a double-barrel and one a
single roer, or elephant gun, that took a tremendous charge, but both,
be it remembered, flint locks; for, although percussion caps had been
introduced, we were a little behind the times in Cradock. There, too, crouched
on the ground beside me, holding the ammunition ready for re-loading, her long,
black hair flowing about her shoulders, was Marie Marais, now a well-grown
young woman. In the intense silence she whispered to me:

“Why did you come here, Allan? You were safe yonder, and now you will
probably be killed.”

“To try to save you,” I answered simply. “What would you have
had me do?”

“To try to save me? Oh! that is good of you, but you should have thought
of yourself.”

“Then I should still have thought of you, Marie.”

“Why, Allan?”

“Because you are myself and more than myself. If anything happened to
you, what would my life be to me?”

“I don’t quite understand, Allan,” she replied, staring down
at the floor. “Tell me, what do you mean?”

“Mean, you silly girl,” I said; “what can I mean, except that
I love you, which I thought you knew long ago.”

“Oh!” she said; “now I understand.” Then she
raised herself upon her knees, and held up her face to me to kiss, adding,
“There, that’s my answer, the first and perhaps the last. Thank
you, Allan dear; I am glad to have heard that, for you see one or both of us
may die soon.”

As she spoke the words, an assegai flashed through the window-place, passing
just between our heads. So we gave over love-making and turned our attention to
war.

Now the light was beginning to grow, flowing out of the pearly eastern sky; but
no attack had yet been delivered, although that one was imminent that spear
fixed in the plaster of the wall behind us showed clearly. Perhaps the Kaffirs
had been frightened by the galloping of horses through their line in the dark,
not knowing how many of them there might have been. Or perhaps they were
waiting to see better where to deliver their onset. These were the ideas that
occurred to me, but both were wrong.

They were staying their hands until the mist lifted a little from the hollow
below the stead where the cattle kraals were situated, for while the fog
remained they could not see to get the beasts out. These they wished to make
sure of and drive away before the fight began, lest during its progress
something should happen to rob them of their booty.

Presently, from these kraals, where the Heer Marais’s horned beasts and
sheep were penned at night, about one hundred and fifty of the former and some
two thousand of the latter, to say nothing of the horses, for he was a large
and prosperous farmer, there arose a sound of bellowing, neighing, and baaing,
and with it that of the shouting of men.

“They are driving off the stock,” said Marie. “Oh! my poor
father, he is ruined; it will break his heart.”

“Bad enough,” I answered, “but there are things that might be
worse. Hark!”

As I spoke there came a sound of stamping feet and of a wild war chant. Then in
the edge of the mist that hung above the hollow where the cattle kraals were,
figures appeared, moving swiftly to and fro, looking ghostly and unreal. The
Kaffirs were marshalling their men for the attack. A minute more and it had
begun. On up the slope they came in long, wavering lines, several hundreds of
them, whistling and screaming, shaking their spears, their war-plumes and hair
trappings blown back by the breeze, the lust of slaughter in their rolling
eyes. Two or three of them had guns, which they fired as they ran, but where
the bullets went I do not know, over the house probably.

I called out to Leblanc and the Kaffirs not to shoot till I did, for I knew
that they were poor marksmen and that much depended upon our first volley being
effective. Then as the captain of this attack came within thirty yards of the
stoep—for now the light, growing swiftly, was strong enough to enable me
to distinguish him by his apparel and the rifle which he held—I loosed at
him with the roer and shot him dead. Indeed the heavy bullet passing
through his body mortally wounded another of the Quabies behind. These were the
first men that I ever killed in war.

As they fell, Leblanc and the rest of our people fired also, the slugs from
their guns doing great execution at that range, which was just long enough to
allow them to scatter. When the smoke cleared a little I saw that nearly a
dozen men were down, and that the rest, dismayed by this reception, had halted.
If they had come on then, while we were loading, doubtless they might have
rushed the place; but, being unused to the terrible effects of firearms, they
paused, amazed. A number of them, twenty or thirty perhaps, clustered about the
bodies of the fallen Kaffirs, and, seizing my second gun, I fired both barrels
at these with such fearful effect that the whole regiment took to their heels
and fled, leaving their dead and wounded on the ground. As they ran our
servants cheered, but I called to them to be silent and load swiftly, knowing
well that the enemy would soon return.

For a time, however, nothing happened, although we could hear them talking
somewhere near the cattle kraal, about a hundred and fifty yards away. Marie
took advantage of this pause, I remember, to fetch food and distribute it among
us. I, for one, was glad enough to get it.

Now the sun was up, a sight for which I thanked Heaven, for, at any rate, we
could no longer be surprised. Also, with the daylight, some of my fear passed
away, since darkness always makes danger twice as terrible to man and beast.
Whilst we were still eating and fortifying the window-places as best we could,
so as to make them difficult to enter, a single Kaffir appeared, waving above
his head a stick to which was tied a white ox-tail as a sign of truce. I
ordered that no one should fire, and when the man, who was a bold fellow, had
reached the spot where the dead captain lay, called to him, asking his
business, for I could speak his language well.

He answered that he had come with a message from Quabie. This was the message:
that Quabie’s eldest son had been cruelly murdered by the fat white man
called “Vulture” who lived with the Heer Marais, and that he,
Quabie, would have blood for blood. Still, he did not wish to kill the young
white chieftainess (that was Marie) or the others in the house, with whom he
had no quarrel. Therefore if we would give up the fat white man that he might
make him “die slowly,” Quabie would be content with his life and
with the cattle that he had already taken by way of a fine, and leave us and
the house unmolested.

Now, when Leblanc understood the nature of this offer he went perfectly mad
with mingled fear and rage, and began to shout and swear in French.

“Be silent,” I said; “we do not mean to surrender you,
although you have brought all this trouble on us. Your chance of life is as
good as ours. Are you not ashamed to act so before these black people?”

When at last he grew more or less quiet I called to the messenger that we white
folk were not in the habit of abandoning each other, and that we would live or
die together. Still, I bade him tell Quabie that if we did die, the vengeance
taken on him and all his people would be to wipe them out till not one of them
was left, and therefore that he would do well not to cause any of our blood to
flow. Also, I added, that we had thirty men in the house (which, of course, was
a lie) and plenty of ammunition and food, so that if he chose to continue the
attack it would be the worse for him and his tribe.

On hearing this the herald shouted back that we should every one of us be dead
before noon if he had his way. Still, he would report my words faithfully to
Quabie and bring his answer.

Then he turned and began to walk off. Just as he did so a shot was fired from
the house, and the man pitched forward to the ground, then rose again and
staggered back towards his people, with his right shoulder shattered and his
arm swinging.

“Who did that?” I asked through the smoke, which prevented me from
seeing.

“I, parbleu!” shouted Leblanc. “Sapristi! that
black devil wanted to torture me, Leblanc, the friend of the great Napoleon.
Well, at least I have tortured him whom I meant to kill.”

“Yes, you fool,” I answered; “and we, too, shall be tortured
because of your wickedness. You have shot a messenger carrying a flag of truce,
and that the Quabies will never forgive. Oh! I tell you that you have hit us as
well as him, who had it not been for you might have been spared.”

These words I said quite quietly and in Dutch, so that our Kaffirs might
understand them, though really I was boiling with wrath.

But Leblanc did not answer quietly.

“Who are you,” he shouted, “you wretched little Englishman,
who dare to lecture me, Leblanc, the friend of the great Napoleon?”

Now I drew my pistol and walked up to the man.

“Be quiet, you drunken sot,” I said, for I guessed that he had
drunk more of the brandy in the darkness. “If you are not quiet and do
not obey me, who am in command here, either I will blow your brains out, or I
will give you to these men,” and I pointed to Hans and the Kaffirs, who
had gathered round him, muttering ominously. “Do you know what they will
do with you? They will throw you out of the house, and leave you to settle your
quarrel with Quabie alone.”

Leblanc looked first at the pistol, and next at the faces of the natives, and
saw something in one or other of them, or in both, that caused him to change
his note.

“Pardon, monsieur,” he said; “I was excited. I knew not what
I said. If you are young you are brave and clever, and I will obey you,”
and he went to his station and began to re-load his gun. As he did so a great
shout of fury rose from the cattle kraal. The wounded herald had reached the
Quabies and was telling them of the treachery of the white people.

CHAPTER III.

THE RESCUE

The second Quabie advance did not begin till about half-past seven. Even
savages love their lives and appreciate the fact that wounds hurt very much,
and these were no exception to the rule. Their first rush had taught them a
bitter lesson, of which the fruit was evident in the crippled or dying men who
rolled to and fro baked in the hot sun within a few yards of the stoep, not to
speak of those who would never stir again. Now, the space around the house
being quite open and bare of cover, it was obvious that it could not be stormed
without further heavy losses. In order to avoid such losses a civilised people
would have advanced by means of trenches, but of these the Quabies knew
nothing; moreover, digging tools were lacking to them.

So it came about that they hit upon another, and in the circumstances a not
inefficient expedient. The cattle kraal was built of rough, unmortared stones.
Those stones they took, each man carrying two or three, which, rushing forward,
they piled up into scattered rough defences of about eighteen inches or two
feet high. These defences were instantly occupied by as many warriors as could
take shelter behind them, lying one on top of the other. Of course, those
savages who carried the first stones were exposed to our fire, with the result
that many of them fell, but there were always plenty more behind. As they were
being built at a dozen different points, and we had but seven guns, before we
could reload, a particular schanz, of which perhaps the first builders
had fallen, would be raised so high that our slugs could no longer hurt those
who lay behind it. Also, our supply of ammunition was limited, and the constant
expenditure wasted it so much that at length only about six charges per man
remained. At last, indeed, I was obliged to order the firing to cease, so that
we might reserve ourselves for the great rush which could not now be much
delayed.

Finding that they were no longer harassed by our bullets, the Quabies advanced
more rapidly, directing their attack upon the south end of the house, where
there was but one window, and thus avoiding the fire that might be poured upon
them from the various openings under the veranda. At first I wondered why they
selected this end, till Marie reminded me that this part of the dwelling was
thatched with reeds, whereas the rest of the building, which had been erected
more recently, was slated.

Their object was to fire the roof. So soon as their last wall was near enough
(that is, about half-past ten of the clock) they began to throw into the thatch
assegais to which were attached bunches of burning grass. Many of these went
out, but at length, as we gathered from their shouts, one caught. Within ten
minutes this part of the house was burning.

Now our state became desperate. We retreated across the central passage,
fearing lest the blazing rafters should fall upon our natives, who were losing
heart and would no longer stay beneath them. But the Quabies, more bold,
clambered in through the south window, and attacked us in the doorway of the
larger sitting-room.

Here the final fight began. As they rushed at us we shot, till they went down
in heaps. Almost at our last charge they gave back, and just then the roof fell
upon them.

Oh, what a terrible scene was that! The dense clouds of smoke, the screams of
the trapped and burning men, the turmoil, the agony!

The front door was burst in by a flank onslaught.

Leblanc and a slave who was near him were seized by black, claw-like hands and
dragged out. What became of the Frenchman I do not know, for the natives hauled
him away, but I fear his end must have been dreadful, as he was taken alive.
The servant I saw them assegai, so at least he died at once. I fired my last
shot, killing a fellow who was flourishing a battle-axe, then dashed the butt
of the gun into the face of the man behind him, felling him, and, seizing Marie
by the hand, dragged her back into the northernmost room—that in which I
was accustomed to sleep—and shut and barred the door.

“Allan,” she gasped, “Allan dear, it is finished. I cannot
fall into the hands of those men. Kill me, Allan.”

“All right,” I answered, “I will. I have my pistol. One
barrel for you and one for me.”

“No, no! Perhaps you might escape after all; but, you see, I am a woman,
and dare not risk it. Come now, I am ready,” and she knelt down, opening
her arms to receive the embrace of death, and looked up at me with her lovely,
pitiful eyes.

“It doesn’t do to kill one’s love and live on oneself,”
I answered hoarsely. “We have got to go together,” and I cocked
both barrels of the pistol.

The Hottentot, Hans, who was in the place with us, saw and understood.

“It is right, it is best!” he said; and turning, he hid his eyes
with his hand.

“Wait a little, Allan,” she exclaimed; “it will be time when
the door is down, and perhaps God may still help us.”

“He may,” I answered doubtfully; “but I would not count on
it. Nothing can save us now unless the others come to rescue us, and
that’s too much to hope for.”

Then a thought struck me, and I added with a dreadful laugh: “I wonder
where we shall be in five minutes.”

“Oh! together, dear; together for always in some new and beautiful world,
for you do love me, don’t you, as I love you? Maybe that’s better
than living on here where we should be sure to have troubles and perhaps be
separated at last.”

I nodded my head, for though I loved life, I loved Marie more, and I felt that
we were making a good end after a brave fight. They were battering at the door
now, but, thank Heaven, Marais had made strong doors, and it held a while.

The wood began to give at last, an assegai appeared through a shattered plank,
but Hans stabbed along the line of it with the spear he held, that which I had
snatched from the flank of the horse, and it was dropped with a scream. Black
hands were thrust through the hole, and the Hottentot hacked and cut at them
with the spear. But others came, more than he could pierce, and the whole
door-frame began to be dragged outwards.

“Now, Marie, be ready,” I gasped, lifting the pistol.

“Oh, Christ receive me!” she answered faintly. “It
won’t hurt much, will it, Allan?”

“You will never feel anything,” I whispered; as with the cold sweat
pouring from me I placed the muzzle within an inch of her forehead and began to
press the trigger. My God! yes, I actually began to press the trigger softly
and steadily, for I wished to make no mistake.

It was at this very moment, above the dreadful turmoil of the roaring flames,
the yells of the savages and the shrieks and groans of wounded and dying men,
that I heard the sweetest sound which ever fell upon my ears—the sound of
shots being fired, many shots, and quite close by.

“Great Heaven!” I screamed; “the Boers are here to save us.
Marie, I will hold the door while I can. If I fall, scramble through the
window—you can do it from the chest beneath—drop to the ground, and
run towards the firing. There’s a chance for you yet, a good
chance.”

“And you, you,” she moaned. “I would rather die with
you.”

“Do what I bid you,” I answered savagely, and bounded forward
towards the rocking door.

It was falling outward, it fell, and on the top of it appeared two great
savages waving broad spears. I lifted the pistol, and the bullet that had been
meant for Marie’s brain scattered that of the first of them, and the
bullet which had been meant for my heart pierced that of the second. They both
went down dead, there in the doorway.

I snatched up one of their spears and glanced behind me. Marie was climbing on
to the chest; I could just see her through the thickening smoke. Another Quabie
rushed on. Hans and I received him on the points of our assegais, but so fierce
was his charge that they went through him as though he were nothing, and being
but light, both of us were thrown backwards to the ground. I scrambled to my
feet again, defenceless now, for the spear was broken in the Kaffir, and
awaited the end. Looking back once more I saw that Marie had either failed to
get through the window or abandoned the attempt. At any rate she was standing
near the chest supporting herself by her right hand. In my despair I seized the
blade end of the broken assegai and dragged it from the body of the Kaffir,
thinking that it would serve to kill her, then turned to do the deed.

But even as I turned I heard a voice that I knew well shout: “Do you
live, Marie?” and in the doorway appeared no savage, but Henri Marais.

Slowly I backed before him, for I could not speak, and the last dreadful effort
of my will seemed to thrust me towards Marie. I reached her and threw my hand
that still held the gory blade round her neck. Then as darkness came over me I
heard her cry:

“Don’t shoot, father. It is Allan, Allan who has saved my
life!”

After that I remember no more. Nor did she for a while, for we both fell to the
ground senseless.

When my senses returned to me I found myself lying on the floor of the
wagon-house in the back yard. Glancing from my half-opened eyes, for I was
still speechless, I saw Marie, white as a sheet, her hair all falling about her
dishevelled dress. She was seated on one of those boxes that we put on the
front of wagons to drive from, voorkissies they are called, and as her
eyes were watching me I knew that she lived. By her stood a tall and dark young
man whom I had never seen before. He was holding her hand and looking at her
anxiously, and even then I felt angry with him. Also I saw other things; for
instance, my old father leaning down and looking at me anxiously, and
outside in the yard, for there were no doors to the wagon-house, a number of
men with guns in their hands, some of whom I knew and others who were
strangers. In the shadow, too, against the wall, stood my blood mare with her
head hanging down and trembling all over. Not far from her the roan lay upon
the ground, its flank quite red.

I tried to rise and could not, then feeling pain in my left thigh, looked and
saw that it was red also. As a matter of fact an assegai had gone half through
it and hit upon the bone. Although I never felt it at the time, this wound was
dealt to me by that great Quabie whom Hans and I had received upon our spears,
doubtless as he fell. Hans, by the way, was there also, an awful and yet a
ludicrous spectacle, for the Quabie had fallen right on the top of him and lain
so with results that may be imagined. There he sat upon the ground, looking
upwards, gasping with his fish-like mouth. Each gasp, I remember, fashioned
itself into the word Allemachte! that is “Almighty,” a
favourite Dutch expression.

Marie was the first to perceive that I had come to life again. Shaking herself
free from the clasp of the young man, she staggered towards me and fell upon
her knees at my side, muttering words that I could not catch, for they choked
in her throat. Then Hans took in the situation, and wriggling his unpleasant
self to my other side, lifted my hand and kissed it. Next my father spoke,
saying:

“Praise be to God, he lives! Allan, my son, I am proud of you; you have
done your duty as an Englishman should.”

“Had to save my own skin if I could, thank you, father,” I
muttered.

“Why as an Englishman more than any other sort of man, Mynheer
prédicant?” asked the tall stranger, speaking in Dutch, although he
evidently understood our language.

“The point is one that I will not argue now, sir,” answered my
father, drawing himself up. “But if what I hear is true, there was a
Frenchman in that house who did not do his duty; and if you belong to the same
nation, I apologise to you.”

“Thank you, sir; as it happens, I do, half. The rest of me is Portuguese,
not English, thank God.”

“God is thanked for many things that must surprise Him,” replied my
father in a suave voice.

At that moment this rather disagreeable conversation, which even then both
angered and amused me faintly, came to an end, for the Heer Marais entered the
place.

As might have been expected in so excitable a man, he was in a terrible state
of agitation. Thankfulness at the escape of his only, beloved child, rage with
the Kaffirs who had tried to kill her, and extreme distress at the loss of most
of his property—all these conflicting emotions boiled together in his
breast like antagonistic elements in a crucible.

The resulting fumes were parti-coloured and overpowering. He rushed up to me,
blessed and thanked me (for he had learnt something of the story of the
defence), called me a young hero and so forth, hoping that God would reward me.
Here I may remark that he never did, poor man. Then he began to rave at
Leblanc, who had brought all this dreadful disaster upon his house, saying that
it was a judgment on himself for having sheltered an atheist and a drunkard for
so many years, just because he was French and a man of intellect. Someone, my
father as a matter of fact, who with all his prejudices possessed a great sense
of justice, reminded him that the poor Frenchman had expiated, or perchance was
now expiating any crimes that he might have committed.

This turned the stream of his invective on to the Quabie Kaffirs, who had
burned part of his house and stolen nearly all his stock, making him from a
rich man into a poor one in a single hour. He shouted for vengeance on the
“black devils,” and called on all there to help him to recover his
beasts and kill the thieves. Most of those present—they were about thirty
in all, not counting the Kaffir and Hottentot after-riders—answered that
they were willing to attack the Quabies. Being residents in the district, they
felt, and, indeed, said, that his case to-day might and probably would be their
case to-morrow. Therefore they were prepared to ride at once.

Then it was that my father intervened.

“Heeren,” he said, “it seems to me that before you seek
vengeance, which, as the Book tells us, is the Lord’s, it would be well,
especially for the Heer Marais, to return thanks for what has been saved to
him. I mean his daughter, who might now very easily have been dead or
worse.”

He added that goods came or went according to the chances of fortune, but a
beloved human life, once lost, could not be restored. This precious life had
been preserved to him, he would not say by man—here he glanced at
me—but by the Ruler of the world acting through man. Perhaps those
present did not quite understand what he (my father) had learned from Hans the
Hottentot, that I, his son, had been about to blow out the brains of Marie
Marais and my own when the sound of the shots of those who had been gathered
through the warning which I left before I rode from the Mission Station, had
stayed my hand. He called upon the said Hans and Marie herself to tell them the
story, since I was too weak to do so.

Thus adjured, the little Hottentot, smothered as he was in blood, stood up. In
the simple, dramatic style characteristic of his race, he narrated all that had
happened since he met the woman on the veld but little over twelve hours
before, till the arrival of the rescue party. Never have I seen a tale followed
with deeper interest, and when at last Hans pointed to me lying on the ground
and said, “There is he who did these things which it might be thought no
man could do—he, but a boy,” even from those phlegmatic Dutchmen
there came a general cheer. But, lifting myself upon my hands, I called out:

“Whatever I did, this poor Hottentot did also, and had it not been for
him I could not have done anything—for him and the two good
horses.”

Then they cheered again, and Marie, rising, said:

“Yes, father; to these two I owe my life.”

After this, my father offered his prayer of thanksgiving in very bad
Dutch—for, having begun to learn it late in life, he never could really
master that language—and the stalwart Boers, kneeling round him, said
“Amen.” As the reader may imagine, the scene, with all its details,
which I will not repeat, was both remarkable and impressive.

What followed this prayer I do not very well remember, for I became faint from
exhaustion and the loss of blood. I believe, however, that the fire having been
extinguished, they removed the dead and wounded from the unburnt portion of the
house and carried me into the little room where Marie and I had gone through
that dreadful scene when I went within an ace of killing her. After this the
Boers and Marais’s Kaffirs, or rather slaves, whom he had collected from
where they lived away from the house, to the number of thirty or forty, started
to follow the defeated Quabie, leaving about ten of their number as a guard.
Here I may mention that of the seven or eight men who slept in the outbuildings
and had fought with us, two were killed in the fight and two wounded. The
remainder, one way or another, managed to escape unhurt, so that in all this
fearful struggle, in which we inflicted so terrible a punishment upon the
Kaffirs, we lost only three slain, including the Frenchman, Leblanc.

As to the events of the next three days I know only what I have been told, for
practically during all that time I was off my head from loss of blood,
complicated with fever brought on by the fearful excitement and exertion I had
undergone. All I can recall is a vision of Marie bending over me and making me
take food of some sort—milk or soup, I suppose—for it seems I would
touch it from no other hand. Also I had visions of the tall shape of my
white-haired father, who, like most missionaries, understood something of
surgery and medicine, attending to the bandages on my thigh. Afterwards he told
me that the spear had actually cut the walls of the big artery, but, by good
fortune, without going through them. Another fortieth of an inch and I should
have bled to death in ten minutes!

On this third day my mind was brought back from its wanderings by the sound of
a great noise about the house, above which I heard the voice of Marais storming
and shouting, and that of my father trying to calm him. Presently Marie entered
the room, drawing-to behind her a Kaffir karoos, which served as a curtain, for
the door, it will be remembered, had been torn out. Seeing that I was awake and
reasonable, she flew to my side with a little cry of joy, and, kneeling down,
kissed me on the forehead.

“You have been very ill, Allan, but I know you will recover now. While we
are alone, which,” she added slowly and with meaning, “I dare say
we shall not be much in future, I want to thank you from my heart for all that
you did to save me. Had it not been for you, oh! had it not been for
you”—and she glanced at the blood stains on the earthen floor, put
her hands before her eyes and shuddered.

“Nonsense, Marie,” I answered, taking her hand feebly enough, for I
was very weak. “Anyone else would have done as much, even if they did not
love you as I do. Let us thank God that it was not in vain. But what is all
that noise? Have the Quabies come back?”

She shook her head.

“No; the Boers have come back from hunting them.”

“And did they catch them and recover the cattle?”

“Not so. They only found some wounded men, whom they shot, and the body
of Monsieur Leblanc with his head cut off, taken away with other bits of him
for medicine, they say to make the warriors brave. Quabie has burnt his kraal
and fled with all his people to join the other Kaffirs in the Big Mountains.
Not a cow or a sheep did they find, except a few that had fallen exhausted, and
those had their throats cut. My father wanted to follow them and attack the Red
Kaffirs in the mountains, but the others would not go. They said there are
thousands of them, and that it would be a mad war, from which not one of them
would return alive. He is wild with grief and rage, for, Allan dear, we are
almost ruined, especially as the British Government are freeing the slaves and
only going to give us a very small price, not a third of their value. But,
hark! he is calling me, and you must not talk much or excite yourself, lest you
should be ill again. Now you have to sleep and eat and get strong. Afterwards,
dear, you may talk”; and, bending down once more, she blessed and kissed
me, then rose and glided away.

CHAPTER IV.

HERNANDO PEREIRA

Several more days passed before I was allowed out of that little war-stained
room of which I grew to hate the very sight. I entreated my father to take me
into the air, but he would not, saying that he feared lest any movement should
cause the bleeding to begin again or even the cut artery to burst. Moreover,
the wound was not healing very well, the spear that caused it having been dirty
or perhaps used to skin dead animals, which caused some dread of gangrene, that
in those days generally meant death. As it chanced, although I was treated only
with cold water, for antiseptics were then unknown, my young and healthy blood
triumphed and no gangrene appeared.

What made those days even duller was that during them I saw very little of
Marie, who now only entered the place in the company of her father. Once I
managed to ask her why she did not come oftener and alone. Her face grew
troubled as she whispered back, “Because it is not allowed, Allan,”
and then without another word left the place.

Why, I wondered to myself, was it not allowed, and an answer sprang up in my
mind. Doubtless it was because of that tall young man who had argued with my
father in the wagon-house. Marie had never spoken to me of him, but from the
Hottentot Hans and my father I managed to collect a good deal of information
concerning him and his business.

It appeared that he was the only child of Henri Marais’s sister, who
married a Portuguese from Delagoa Bay of the name of Pereira, who had come to
the Cape Colony to trade many years before and settled there. Both he and his
wife were dead, and their son, Hernando, Marie’s cousin, had inherited
all their very considerable wealth.

Indeed, now I remembered having heard this Hernando, or Hernan, as the Boers
called him for short, spoken of in past years by the Heer Marais as the heir to
great riches, since his father had made a large fortune by trading in wine and
spirits under some Government monopoly which he held. Often he had been invited
to visit Maraisfontein, but his parents, who doted on him and lived in one of
the settled districts not far from Cape Town, would never allow him to travel
so far from them into these wild regions.

Since their death, however, things had changed. It appeared that on the decease
of old Pereira the Governor of the Colony had withdrawn the wine and spirit
monopoly, which he said was a job and a scandal, an act that made Hernando
Pereira very angry, although he needed no more money, and had caused him to
throw himself heart and soul into the schemes of the disaffected Boers. Indeed,
he was now engaged as one of the organisers of the Great Trek which was in
contemplation. In fact, it had already begun, into the partially explored land
beyond the borders of the Colony, where the Dutch farmers proposed to set up
dominions of their own.

That was the story of Hernando Pereira, who was to be—nay, who had
already become—my rival for the hand of the sweet and beautiful Marie
Marais.

One night when my father and I were alone in the little room where he slept
with me, and he had finished reading his evening portion of Scripture aloud, I
plucked up my courage to tell him that I loved Marie and wished to marry her,
and that we had plighted our troth during the attack of the Kaffirs on the
stead.

“Love and war indeed!” he said, looking at me gravely, but showing
no sign of surprise, for it appeared that he was already acquainted with our
secret. This was not wonderful, for he informed me afterwards that during my
delirium I had done nothing except rave of Marie in the most endearing terms.
Also Marie herself, when I was at my worst, had burst into tears before him and
told him straight out that she loved me.

“Love and war indeed!” he repeated, adding kindly, “My poor
boy, I fear that you have fallen into great trouble.”

“Why, father?” I asked. “Is it wrong that we should love each
other?”

“Not wrong, but, in the circumstances, quite natural—I should have
foreseen that it was sure to happen. No, not wrong, but most unfortunate. To
begin with, I do not wish to see you marry a foreigner and become mixed up with
these disloyal Boers. I hoped that one day, a good many years hence, for you
are only a boy, Allan, you would find an English wife, and I still hope
it.”

“Never!” I ejaculated.

“Never is a long word, Allan, and I dare say that what you are so sure is
impossible will happen after all,” words that made me angry enough at the
time, though in after years I often thought of them.

“But,” he went on, “putting my own wishes, perhaps
prejudices, aside, I think your suit hopeless. Although Henri Marais likes you
well enough and is grateful to you just now because you have saved the daughter
whom he loves, you must remember that he hates us English bitterly. I believe
that he would almost as soon see his girl marry a half-caste as an Englishman,
and especially a poor Englishman, as you are, and unless you can make money,
must remain. I have little to leave you, Allan.”

“I might make money, father, out of ivory, for instance. You know I am a
good shot.”

“Allan, I do not think you will ever make much money, it is not in your
blood; or, if you do, you will not keep it. We are an old race, and I know our
record, up to the time of Henry VIII. at any rate. Not one of us was ever
commercially successful. Let us suppose, however, that you should prove
yourself the exception to the rule, it can’t be done at once, can it?
Fortunes don’t grow in a night, like mushrooms.”

“No, I suppose not, father. Still, one might have some luck.”

“Possibly. But meanwhile you have to fight against a man who has the
luck, or rather the money in his pocket.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, sitting up.

“I mean Hernando Pereira, Allan, Marais’s nephew, who they say is
one of the richest men in the Colony. I know that he wishes to marry
Marie.”

“How do you know it, father?”

“Because Marais told me so this afternoon, probably with a purpose. He
was struck with her beauty when he first saw her after your escape, which he
had not done since she was a child, and as he stopped to guard the house while
the rest went after the Quabies—well, you can guess. Such things go
quickly with these Southern men.”

I hid my face in the pillow, biting my lips to keep back the groan that was
ready to burst from them, for I felt the hopelessness of the situation. How
could I compete with this rich and fortunate man, who naturally would be
favoured of my betrothed’s father? Then on the blackness of my despair
rose a star of hope. I could not, but perchance Marie might. She was very
strong-natured and very faithful. She was not to be bought, and I doubted
whether she could be frightened.

“Father,” I said, “I may never marry Marie, but I don’t
think that Hernando Pereira ever will either.”

“Why not, my boy?”

“Because she loves me, father, and she is not one to change. I believe
that she would rather die.”

“Then she must be a very unusual sort of woman. Still, it may be so; the
future will tell to those who live to see it. I can only pray and trust that
whatever happens will be for the best for both of you. She is a sweet girl and
I like her well, although she may be Boer—or French. And now, Allan, we
have talked enough, and you had better go to sleep. You must not excite
yourself, you know, or it may set up new inflammation in the wound.”

“Go to sleep. Must not excite yourself.” I kept muttering those
words for hours, serving them up in my mind with a spice of bitter thought. At
last torpor, or weakness, overcame me, and I fell into a kind of net of bad
dreams which, thank Heaven! I have now forgotten. Yet when certain events
happened subsequently I always thought, and indeed still think, that these or
something like them, had been a part of those evil dreams.

On the morning following this conversation I was at length allowed to be
carried to the stoep, where they laid me down, wrapped in a very dirty blanket,
upon a rimpi-strung bench or primitive sofa. When I had satisfied my first
delight at seeing the sun and breathing the fresh air, I began to study my
surroundings. In front of the house, or what remained of it, so arranged that
the last of them at either end we made fast to the extremities of the stoep,
was arranged an arc of wagons, placed as they are in a laager and protected
underneath by earth thrown up in a mound and by boughs of the mimosa thorn.
Evidently these wagons, in which the guard of Boers and armed natives who still
remained on the place slept at night, were set thus as a defence against a
possible attack by the Quabies or other Kaffirs.

During the daytime, however, the centre wagon was drawn a little on one side to
leave a kind of gate. Through this opening I saw that a long wall, also
semicircular, had been built outside of them, enclosing a space large enough to
contain at night all the cattle and horses that were left to the Heer Marais,
together with those of his friends, who evidently did not wish to see their
oxen vanish into the depths of the mountains. In the middle of this
extemporised kraal was a long, low mound, which, as I learned afterwards,
contained the dead who fell in the attack on the house. The two slaves who had
been killed in the defence were buried in the little garden that Marie had
made, and the headless body of Leblanc in a small walled place to the right of
the stead, where lay some of its former owners and one or two relatives of the
Heer Marais, including his wife.

Whilst I was noting these things Marie appeared at the end of the veranda,
having come round the burnt part of the house, followed by Hernan Pereira.
Catching sight of me, she ran to the side of my couch with outstretched arms as
though she intended to embrace me. Then seeming to remember, stopped suddenly
at my side, coloured to her hair, and said in an embarrassed voice:

“Oh, Heer Allan”—she had never called me Heer in her life
before—“I am so glad to find you out! How have you been getting
on?”

“Pretty well, I thank you,” I answered, biting my lips, “as
you would have learnt, Marie, had you come to see me.”

Next moment I was sorry for the words, for I saw her eyes fill with tears and
her breast shake with something like a sob. However, it was Pereira and not
Marie who answered, for at the moment I believe she could not speak.

“My good boy,” he said in a pompous, patronising way and in
English, which he knew perfectly, “I think that my cousin has had plenty
to do caring for all these people during the last few days without running to
look at the cut in your leg. However, I am glad to hear from your worthy father
that it is almost well and that you will soon be able to play games again, like
others of your age.”

Now it was my turn to be unable to speak and to feel my eyes fill with tears,
tears of rage, for remember that I was still very feeble. But Marie spoke for
me.

“Yes, Cousin Hernan,” she said in a cold voice, “thank God
the Heer Allan Quatermain will soon be able to play games again, such bloody
games as the defence of Maraisfontein with eight men against all the Quabie
horde. Then Heaven help those who stand in front of his rifle,” and she
glanced at the mound that covered the dead Kaffirs, many of whom, as a matter
of fact, I had killed.

“Oh! no offence, no offence, Marie,” said Pereira in his smooth,
rich voice. “I did not want to laugh at your young friend, who doubtless
is as brave as they say all Englishmen are, and who fought well when he was
lucky enough to have the chance of protecting you, my dear cousin. But after
all, you know, he is not the only one who can hold a gun straight, as you seem
to think, which I shall be happy to prove to him in a friendly fashion when he
is stronger.”

Here he stepped forward a pace and looked down at me, then added with a laugh,
“Allemachte! I fear that won’t be just at present. Why, the lad
looks as though one might blow him away like a feather.”

Still I said nothing, only glanced up at this tall and splendid man standing
above me in his fine clothes, for he was richly dressed as the fashion of the
time went, with his high colouring, broad shoulders, and face full of health
and vigour. Mentally I compared him with myself, as I was after my fever and
loss of blood, a poor, white-faced rat of a lad, with stubbly brown hair on my
head and only a little down on my chin, with arms like sticks, and a dirty
blanket for raiment. How could I compare with him in any way? What chance had I
against this opulent bully who hated me and all my race, and in whose hands,
even if I were well, I should be nothing but a child?

And yet, and yet as I lay there humiliated and a mock, an answer came into my
mind, and I felt that whatever might be the case with my outward form; in
spirit, in courage, in determination and in ability, in all, in short, that
really makes a man, I was more than Pereira’s equal. Yes, and that by the
help of these qualities, poor as I was and frail as I seemed to be, I would
beat him at the last and keep for myself what I had won, the prize of
Marie’s love.

Such were the thoughts which passed through me, and I think that something of
the tenor of them communicated itself to Marie, who often could read my heart
before my lips spoke. At any rate, her demeanour changed. She drew herself up.
Her fine nostrils expanded and a proud look came into her dark eyes, as she
nodded her head and murmured in a voice so low that I think I alone caught her
words:

“Yes, yes, have no fear.”

Pereira was speaking again (he had turned aside to strike the steel of his
tinder-box, and was now blowing the spark to a glow before lighting his big
pipe).

“By the way, Heer Allan,” he said, “that is a very good mare
of yours. She seems to have done the distance between the Mission Station and
Maraisfontein in wonderful time, as, for the matter of that, the roan did too.
I have taken a fancy to her, after a gallop on her back yesterday just to give
her some exercise, and although I don’t know that she is quite up to my
weight, I’ll buy her.”

“The mare is not for sale, Heer Pereira,” I said, speaking for the
first time, “and I do not remember giving anyone leave to exercise
her.”

“No, your father did, or was it that ugly little beast of a Hottentot? I
forget which. As for her not being for sale—why, in this world everything
is for sale, at a price. I’ll give you—let me see—oh, what
does the money matter when one has plenty? I’ll give you a hundred
English pounds for that mare; and don’t you think me a fool. I tell you I
mean to get it back, and more, at the great races down in the south. Now what
do you say?”

“I say that the mare is not for sale, Heer Pereira.” Then a thought
struck me, or an inspiration, and, as has always been my fashion, I acted on it
at once. “But,” I added slowly, “if you like, when I am a bit
stronger I’ll shoot you a match for her, you staking your hundred pounds
and I staking the mare.”

Pereira burst out laughing.

“Here, friends,” he called to some of the Boers who were strolling
up to the house for their morning coffee. “This little Englishman wants
to shoot a match with me, staking that fine mare of his against a hundred
pounds British; against me, Hernando Pereira, who have won every prize at
shooting that ever I entered for. No, no, friend Allan, I am not a thief, I
will not rob you of your mare.”

Now among those Boers chanced to be the celebrated Heer Pieter Retief, a very
fine man of high character, then in the prime of life, and of Huguenot descent
like Heer Marais. He had been appointed by the Government one of the frontier
commandants, but owing to some quarrel with the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir
Andries Stockenstrom, had recently resigned that office, and at this date was
engaged in organizing the trek from the Colony. I now saw Retief for the first
time, and ah! then little did I think how and where I should see him for the
last. But all that is a matter of history, of which I shall have to tell later.

Now, while Pereira was mocking and bragging of his prowess, Pieter Retief
looked at me, and our eyes met.

“Allemachte!” he exclaimed, “is that the young man who, with
half a dozen miserable Hottentots and slaves, held this stead for five hours
against all the Quabie tribe and kept them out?”

Somebody said that it was, remarking that I had been about to shoot Marie
Marais and myself when help came.

“Then, Heer Allan Quatermain,” said Retief, “give me your
hand,” and he took my poor wasted fingers in his big palm, adding,
“Your father must be proud of you to-day, as I should be if I had such a
son. God in Heaven! where will you stop if you can go so far while you are yet
a boy? Friends, since I came here yesterday I have got the whole story for
myself from the Kaffirs and from this mooi meisje” (pretty young
lady), and he nodded towards Marie. “Also I have gone over the ground and
the house, and have seen where each man fell—it is easy by the blood
marks—most of them shot by yonder Englishman, except one of the last
three, whom he killed with a spear. Well, I tell you that never in all my
experience have I known a better arranged or a more finely carried out defence
against huge odds. Perhaps the best part of it, too, was the way in which this
young lion acted on the information he received and the splendid ride he made
from the Mission Station. Again I say that his father should be proud of
him.”

“Well, if it comes to that, I am, mynheer,” said my father, who
just then joined us after his morning walk, “although I beg you to say no
more lest the lad should grow vain.”

“Bah!” replied Retief, “fellows of his stamp are not vain; it
is your big talkers who are vain,” and he glanced out of the corner of
his shrewd eye at Pereira, “your turkey cocks with all their tails
spread. I think this little chap must be such another as that great sailor of
yours—what do you call him, Nelson?—who beat the French into
frothed eggs and died to live for ever. He was small, too, they say, and weak
in the stomach.”

I must confess I do not think that praise ever sounded sweeter in my ears than
did these words of the Commandant Retief, uttered as they were just when I felt
crushed to the dirt. Moreover, as I saw by Marie’s and, I may add, by my
father’s face, there were other ears to which they were not ungrateful.
The Boers also, brave and honest men enough, evidently appreciated them, for
they said:

“Ja! ja! das ist recht” (That is right).

Only Pereira turned his broad back and busied himself with relighting his pipe,
which had gone out.

Then Retief began again.

“What is it you were calling us to listen to, Mynheer Pereira? That this
Heer Allan Quatermain had offered to shoot you a match? Well, why not? If he
can hit Kaffirs running at him with spears, as he has done, he may be able to
hit other things also. You say that you won’t rob him of his
money—no, it was his beautiful horse—because you have taken so many
prizes shooting at targets. But did you ever hit a Kaffir running at
you with an assegai, mynheer, you who live down there where everything
is safe? If so, I never heard of it.”

Pereira answered that he did not understand me to propose a shooting match at
Kaffirs charging with assegais, but at something else—he knew not what.

“Quite so,” said Retief. “Well, Mynheer Allan, what is it
that you do propose?”

“That we should stand in the great kloof between the two vleis
yonder—the Heer Marais knows the place—when the wild geese flight
over an hour before sunset, and that he who brings down six of them in the
fewest shots shall win the match.”

“If our guns are loaded with loopers that will not be difficult,”
said Pereira.

“With loopers you would seldom kill a bird, mynheer,” I replied,
“for they come over from seventy to a hundred yards up. No, I mean with
rifles.”

“Allemachte!” broke in a Boer; “you will want plenty of
ammunition to hit a goose at that height with a bullet.”

“That is my offer,” I said, “to which I add this, that when
twenty shots have been fired by each man, he who has killed the most birds
wins, even if he has not brought down the full six. Does the Heer Pereira
accept? If so, I will venture to match myself against him, although he has won
so many prizes.”

The Heer Pereira seemed extremely doubtful; so doubtful, indeed, that the Boers
began to laugh at him. In the end he grew rather angry, and said that he was
willing to shoot me at bucks or swallows, or fireflies, or anything else I
liked.

“Then let it be at geese,” I answered, “since it is likely to
be sometime before I am strong enough to ride after buck or other wild
things.”’

So the terms of the match were formally written down by Marie, as my father,
although he took a keen sporting interest in the result, would have nothing to
do with what he called a “wager for money,” and, except myself,
there was no one else present with sufficient scholarship to pen a long
document. Then we both signed them, Hernan Pereira not very willingly, I
thought; and if my recovery was sufficiently rapid, the date was fixed for that
day week. In case of any disagreement, the Heer Retief, who was staying at
Maraisfontein, or in its neighbourhood, for a while, was appointed referee and
stakeholder. It was also arranged that neither of us should visit the appointed
place, or shoot at the geese before the match. Still we were at liberty to
practise as much as we liked at anything else in the interval and to make use
of any kind of rifle that suited us best.

By the time that these arrangements were finished, feeling quite tired with all
the emotions of the morning, I was carried back to my room. Here my midday
meal, cooked by Marie, was brought to me. As I finished eating it, for the
fresh air had given me an appetite, my father came in, accompanied by the Heer
Marais, and began to talk to me. Presently the latter asked me kindly enough if
I thought I should be sufficiently strong to trek back to the station that
afternoon in an ox-cart with springs to it and lying at full length upon a
hide-strung cartel or mattress.

I answered, “Certainly,” as I should have done had I been at the
point of death, for I saw that he wished to be rid of me.

“The fact is, Allan,” he said awkwardly, “I am not
inhospitable as you may think, especially towards one to whom I owe so much.
But you and my nephew, Hernan, do not seem to get on very well together, and,
as you may guess, having just been almost beggared, I desire no unpleasantness
with the only rich member of my family.”

I replied I was sure I did not wish to be the cause of any. It seemed to me,
however, that the Heer Pereira wished to make a mock of me and to bring it home
to me what a poor creature I was compared to himself—I a mere sick boy
who was worth nothing.

“I know,” said Marais uneasily, “my nephew has been too
fortunate in life, and is somewhat overbearing in his manner. He does not
remember that the battle is not always to the strong or the race to the swift,
he who is young and rich and handsome, a spoiled child from the first. I am
sorry, but what I cannot help I must put up with. If I cannot have my mealies
cooked, I must eat them green. Also, Allan, have you never heard that jealousy
sometimes makes people rude and unjust?” and he looked at me meaningly.

I made no answer, for when one does not quite know what to say it is often best
to remain silent, and he went on:

“I am vexed to hear of this foolish shooting match which has been entered
into without my knowledge or consent. If he wins he will only laugh at you the
more, and if you win he will be angry.”

“It was not my fault, mynheer,” I answered. “He wanted to
force me to sell the mare, which he had been riding without my leave, and kept
bragging about his marksmanship. So at last I grew cross and challenged
him.”

“No wonder, Allan; I do not blame you. Still, you are silly, for it will
not matter to him if he loses his money; but that beautiful mare is your
ewe-lamb, and I should be sorry to see you parted from a beast which has done
us so good a turn. Well, there it is; perhaps circumstances may yet put an end
to this trial; I hope so.”

“I hope they won’t,” I answered stubbornly.

“I dare say you do, being sore as a galled horse just now. But listen,
Allan, and you, too, prédicant Quatermain; there are other and more important
reasons than this petty squabble why I should be glad if you could go away for
a while. I must take counsel with my countrymen about certain secret matters
which have to do with our welfare and future, and, of course they would not
like it if all the while there were two Englishmen on the place, whom they
might think were spies.”

“Say no more, Heer Marais,” broke in my father hotly; “still
less should we like to be where we are not wanted or are looked upon with
suspicion for the crime of being English. By God’s blessing, my son has
been able to do some service to you and yours, but now that is all finished and
forgotten. Let the cart you are so kind as to lend us be inspanned. We will go
at once.”

Then Henri Marais, who was a gentleman at bottom, although, even in those early
days, violent and foolish when excited or under the influence of his race
prejudices, began to apologise quite humbly, assuring my father that he forgot
nothing and meant no offence. So they patched the matter up, and an hour later
we started.

All the Boers came to see us off, giving me many kind words and saying how much
they looked forward to meeting me again on the following Thursday. Pereira, who
was among them, was also very genial, begging me to be sure and get well, since
he did not wish to beat one who was still crippled, even at a game of goose
shooting. I answered that I would do my best; as for my part, I did not like
being beaten at any game which I had set my heart on winning, whether it were
little or big. Then I turned my head, for I was lying on my back all this time,
to bid good-bye to Marie, who had slipped out of the house into the yard where
the cart was.

“Good-bye, Allan,” she said, giving me her hand and a look from her
eyes that I trusted was not seen. Then, under pretence of arranging the kaross
which was over me, she bent down and whispered swiftly:

“Win that match if you love me. I shall pray God that you may every
night, for it will be an omen.”

I think the whisper was heard, though not the words, for I saw Pereira bite his
lip and make a movement as though to interrupt her. But Pieter Retief thrust
his big form in front of him rather rudely, and said with one of his hearty
laughs:

“Allemachte! friend, let the missje wish a good journey to the
young fellow who saved her life.”

Next moment Hans, the Hottentot, screamed at the oxen in the usual fashion, and
we rolled away through the gate.

But oh! if I had liked the Heer Retief before, now I loved him.

CHAPTER V.

THE SHOOTING MATCH

My journey back to the Mission Station was a strange contrast to that which I
had made thence a few days before. Then, the darkness, the swift mare beneath
me rushing through it like a bird, the awful terror in my heart lest I should
be too late, as with wild eyes I watched the paling stars and the first
gathering grey of dawn. Now, the creaking of the ox-cart, the familiar veld,
the bright glow of the peaceful sunlight, and in my heart a great thankfulness,
and yet a new terror lest the pure and holy love which I had won should be
stolen away from me by force or fraud.

Well, as the one matter had been in the hand of God, so was the other, and with
that knowledge I must be content. The first trial had ended in death and
victory. How would the second end? I wondered, and those words seemed to jumble
themselves up in my mind and shape a sentence that it did not conceive. It was:
“In the victory that is death,” which, when I came to think of it,
of course, meant nothing. How victory could be death I did not
understand—at any rate, at that time, I who was but a lad of small
experience.

As we trekked along comfortably enough, for the road was good and the cart,
being on springs, gave my leg no pain, I asked my father what he thought that
the Heer Marais had meant when he told us that the Boers had business at
Maraisfontein, during which our presence as Englishmen would not be agreeable
to them.

“Meant, Allan? He meant that these traitorous Dutchmen are plotting
against their sovereign, and are afraid lest we should report their treason.
Either they intend to rebel because of that most righteous act, the freeing of
the slaves, and because we will not kill out all the Kaffirs with whom they
chance to quarrel, or to trek from the Colony. For my part I think it will be
the latter, for, as you have heard, some parties have already gone; and, unless
I am mistaken, many more mean to follow, Marais and Retief and that plotter,
Pereira, among them. Let them go; I say, the sooner the better, for I have no
doubt that the English flag will follow them in due course.”

“I hope that they won’t,” I answered with a nervous laugh;
“at any rate, until I have won back my mare.” (I had left her in
Retief’s care as stakeholder, until the match should be shot off.)

For the rest of that two and a half hours’ trek my father, looking very
dignified and patriotic, declaimed to me loudly about the bad behaviour of the
Boers, who hated and traduced missionaries, loathed and abominated British rule
and permanent officials, loved slavery and killed Kaffirs whenever they got the
chance. I listened to him politely, for it was not wise to cross my parent when
he was in that humour. Also, having mixed a great deal with the Dutch, I knew
that there was another side to the question, namely, that the missionaries
sometimes traduced them (as, in fact, they did), and that British rule, or
rather, party government, played strange tricks with the interests of distant
dependencies. That permanent officials and im-permanent ones too—such as
governors full of a little brief authority—often misrepresented and
oppressed them. That Kaffirs, encouraged by the variegated policy of these
party governments and their servants, frequently stole their stock; and if they
found a chance, murdered them with their women and children, as they had tried
to do at Maraisfontein; though there, it is true, they had some provocation.
That British virtue had liberated the slaves without paying their owners a fair
price for them, and so forth.

But, to tell the truth, it was not of these matters of high policy, which were
far enough away from a humble youth like myself, that I was thinking. What
appealed to me and made my heart sick was the reflection that if Henri Marais
and his friends trekked, Marie Marais must perforce trek with them; and that
whereas I, an Englishman, could not be of that adventurous company, Hernando
Pereira both could and would.

On the day following our arrival home, what between the fresh air, plenty of
good food, for which I found I had an appetite, and liberal doses of
Pontac—a generous Cape wine that is a kind of cross between port and
Burgundy—I found myself so much better that I was able to hop about the
place upon a pair of crutches which Hans improvised for me out of Kaffir
sticks. Next morning, my improvement continuing at a rapid rate, I turned my
attention seriously to the shooting match, for which I had but five days to
prepare.

Now it chanced that some months before a young Englishman of good
family—he was named the Honourable Vavasseur Smyth—who had
accompanied an official relative to the Cape Colony, came our way in search of
sport, of which I was able to show him a good deal of a humble kind. He had
brought with him, amongst other weapons, what in those days was considered a
very beautiful hair-triggered small-bore rifle fitted with a nipple for
percussion caps, then quite a new invention. It was by a maker of the name of
J. Purdey, of London, and had cost quite a large sum because of the perfection
of its workmanship. When the Honourable V. Smyth—of whom I have never
heard since—took his leave of us on his departure for England, being a
generous-hearted young fellow, as a souvenir of himself, he kindly presented me
with this rifle,^[1]
which I still have.

[1]
This single-barrelled percussion-cap rifle described by Allan
Quatermain, which figures so prominently in the history of this epoch of his
life, has been sent to me by Mr. Curtis, and is before me as I write. It was
made in the year 1835 by J. Purdey, of 314½, Oxford Street, London, and is a
beautiful piece of workmanship of its kind. Without the ramrod, which is now
missing, it weighs only 5 lbs. 3¾ oz. The barrel is octagonal, and the rifled
bore, designed to take a spherical bullet, is ½ in. in diameter. The hammer can
be set to safety on the half-cock by means of a catch behind it.

    
Another peculiarity of the weapon, one that I have never seen before, is that
by pressing on the back of the trigger the ordinary light pull of the piece is
so reduced that the merest touch suffices to fire it, thus rendering it hair-
triggered in the fullest sense of the word.

    
It has two flap-sights marked for 150 and 200 yards, in addition to the fixed
sight designed for firing at 100 yards.

    
On the lock are engraved a stag and a doe, the first lying down and the second
standing.

    
Of its sort and period, it is an extraordinarily well-made and handy gun,
finished with horn at the end of what is now called the tongue, and with the
stock cut away so as to leave a raised cushion against which the cheek of the
shooter rests.

    
What charge it took I do not know, but I should imagine from 2½ to 3 drachms of
powder. It is easy to understand that in the hands of Allan Quatermain this
weapon, obsolete as it is to-day, was capable of great things within the limits
of its range, and that the faith he put in it at the trial of skill at the
Groote Kloof, and afterwards in the fearful ordeal of the shooting of the
vultures on the wing, upon the Mount of Slaughter, when the lives of many hung
upon his marksmanship, was well justified. This, indeed, is shown by the
results in both cases.

    
In writing of this rifle, Messrs. Purdey informed me that copper percussion
caps were experimented with by Colonel Forsyth in 1820, and that their firm
sold them in 1824, at a cost of £1 15s. per 1,000, although their use did not
become general until some years later.—THE
EDITOR.

That was about six months earlier than the time of which I write, and during
those months I had often used this rifle for the shooting of game, such as
blesbuck and also of bustards. I found it to be a weapon of the most
extraordinary accuracy up to a range of about two hundred yards, though when I
rode off in that desperate hurry for Maraisfontein I did not take it with me
because it was a single barrel and too small in the bore to load with loopers
at a pinch. Still, in challenging Pereira, it was this gun and no other that I
determined to use; indeed, had I not owned it I do not think that I should have
ventured on the match.

As it happened, Mr. Smyth had left me with the rifle a large supply of
specially cast bullets and of the new percussion caps, to say nothing of some
very fine imported powder. Therefore, having ammunition in plenty, I set to
work to practise. Seating myself upon a chair in a deep kloof near the station,
across which rock pigeons and turtle doves were wont to fly in numbers at a
considerable height, I began to fire at them as they flashed over me.

Now, in my age, I may say without fear of being set down a boaster, that I have
one gift, that of marksmanship, which, I suppose, I owe to some curious
combination of judgment, quickness of eye, and steadiness of hand. I can
declare honestly that in my best days I never knew a man who could beat me in
shooting at a living object; I say nothing of target work, of which I have
little experience. Oddly enough, also, I believe that at this art, although
then I lacked the practice which since has come to me in such plenty, I was as
good as a youth as I have ever been in later days, and, of course, far better
than I am now. This I soon proved upon the present occasion, for seated there
in that kloof, after a few trials, I found that I could bring down quite a
number of even the swift, straight-flying rock pigeons as they sped over me,
and this, be it remembered, not with shot, but with a single bullet, a feat
that many would hold to be incredible.

So the days passed, and I practised, every evening finding me a little better
at this terribly difficult sport. For always I learned more as to the exact
capacities of my rifle and the allowance that must be made according to the
speed of the bird, its distance, and the complications of the wind and of the
light. During those days, also, I recovered so rapidly that at the end of them
I was almost in my normal condition, and could walk well with the aid of a
single stick.

At length the eventful Thursday came, and about midday—for I lay in bed
late that morning and did not shoot—I drove, or, rather, was driven, in a
Cape cart with two horses to the place known as Groote Kloof or Great Gully.
Over this gorge the wild geese flighted from their pans or feeding
grounds on the high lands above, to other pans that lay some miles
below, and thence, I suppose, straight out to the sea coast, whence they
returned at dawn.

On arriving at the mouth of Groote Kloof about four o’clock in the
afternoon, my father and I were astonished to see a great number of Boers
assembled there, and among them a certain sprinkling of their younger
womankind, who had come on horseback or in carts.

“Good gracious!” I said to my father; “if I had known there
was to be such a fuss as this about a shooting match, I don’t think I
could have faced it.”

“Hum,” he answered; “I think there is more in the wind than
your match. Unless I am much mistaken, it has been made the excuse of a public
meeting in a secluded spot, so as to throw the Authorities off the
scent.”

As a matter of fact, my father was quite right. Before we arrived there that
day the majority of those Boers, after full and long discussion, had arranged
to shake the dust of the Colony off their feet, and find a home in new lands to
the north.

Presently we were among them, and I noticed that, one and all, their faces were
anxious and preoccupied. Pieter Retief caught sight of me being helped out of
the cart by my father and Hans, whom I had brought to load, and for a moment
looked puzzled. Evidently his thoughts were far away. Then he remembered and
exclaimed in his jolly voice:

“Why! here is our little Englishman come to shoot off his match like a
man of his word. Friend Marais, stop talking about your
losses”—this in a warning voice—“and give him good
day.”

So Marais came, and with him Marie, who blushed and smiled, but to my mind
looked more of a grown woman than ever before; one who had left girlhood behind
her and found herself face to face with real life and all its troubles.
Following her close, very close, as I was quick to notice, was Hernan Pereira.
He was even more finely dressed than usual and carried in his hand a beautiful
new, single-barrelled rifle, also fitted to take percussion caps, but, as I
thought, of a very large bore for the purpose of goose shooting.

“So you have got well again,” he said in a genial voice that yet
did not ring true. Indeed, it suggested to me that he wished I had done nothing
of the sort. “Well, Mynheer Allan, here you find me quite ready to shoot
your head off.” (He didn’t mean that, though I dare say he was.)
“I tell you that the mare is as good as mine, for I have been practising,
haven’t I, Marie? as the aasvogels” (that is, vultures)
“round the stead know to their cost.”

“Yes, Cousin Hernan,” said Marie, “you have been practising,
but so, perhaps, has Allan.”

By this time all the company of Boers had collected round us, and began to
evince a great interest in the pending contest, as was natural among people who
rarely had a gun out of their hands, and thought that fine shooting was the
divinest of the arts. However, they were not allowed to stay long, as the
Kaffirs said that the geese would begin their afternoon flight within about
half an hour. So the spectators were all requested to arrange themselves under
the sheer cliff of the kloof, where they could not be seen by the birds coming
over them from behind, and there to keep silence. Then Pereira and I—I
attended by my loader, but he alone, as he said a man at his elbow would bother
him—and with us Retief, the referee, took our stations about a hundred
and fifty yards from this face of cliff. Here we screened ourselves as well as
we could from the keen sight of the birds behind some tall bushes which grew at
this spot.

I seated myself on a camp-stool, which I had brought with me, for my leg was
still too weak to allow me to stand long, and waited. Presently Pereira said
through Retief that he had a favour to ask, namely, that I would allow him to
take the first six shots, as the strain of waiting made him nervous. I
answered, “Certainly,” although I knew well that the object of the
request was that he believed that the outpost
geese—“spy-geese” we called them—which would be the
first to arrive, would probably come over low down and slow, whereas those that
followed, scenting danger, might fly high and fast. This, in fact, proved to be
the case, for there is no bird more clever than the misnamed goose.

When we had waited about a quarter of an hour Hans said:

“Hist! Goose comes.”

As he spoke, though as yet I could not see the bird, I heard its cry of
“Honk, honk” and the swish of its strong wings.

Then it appeared, an old spur-winged gander, probably the king of the flock,
flying so low that it only cleared the cliff edge by about twenty feet, and
passed over not more than thirty yards up, an easy shot. Pereira fired, and
down it came rather slowly, falling a hundred yards or so behind him, while
Retief said:

“One for our side.”

Pereira loaded again, and just as he had capped his rifle three more geese,
also flying low, came over, preceded by a number of ducks, passing straight
above us, as they must do owing to the shape of the gap between the land waves
of the veld above through which they flighted. Pereira shot, and to my
surprise, the second, not the first, bird fell, also a good way behind him.

“Did you shoot at that goose, or the other, nephew?” asked Retief.

“At that one for sure,” he answered with a laugh.

“He lies,” muttered the Hottentot; “he shot at the first and
killed the second.”

“Be silent,” I answered. “Who would lie about such a
thing?”

Again Pereira loaded. By the time that he was ready more geese were
approaching, this time in a triangle of seven birds, their leader being at the
point of the triangle, which was flying higher than those that had gone before.
He fired, and down came not one bird, but two, namely, the captain and the
goose to the right of and a little behind it.

“Ah! uncle,” exclaimed Pereira, “did you see those birds
cross each other as I pulled? That was a lucky one for me, but I won’t
count the second if the Heer Allan objects.”

“No, I did not, nephew,” answered Retief, “but doubtless they
must have done so, or the same bullet could not have pierced both.”

Both Hans and I only looked at each other and laughed. Still we said nothing.

From the spectators under the cliff there came a murmur of congratulation not
unmixed with astonishment. Again Pereira loaded, aimed, and loosed at a rather
high goose—it may have been about seventy yards in the air. He struck it
right enough, for the feathers flew from its breast; but to my astonishment the
bird, after swooping down as though it were going to fall, recovered itself and
flew away straight out of sight.

“Tough birds, these geese!” exclaimed Pereira. “They can
carry as much lead as a sea-cow.”

“Very tough indeed,” answered Retief doubtfully. “Never
before did I see a bird fly away with an ounce ball through its middle.”

“Oh! he will drop dead somewhere,” replied Pereira as he rammed his
powder down.

Within four minutes more Pereira had fired his two remaining shots, selecting,
as he was entitled to do, low and easy young geese that came over him slowly.
He killed them both, although the last of them, after falling, waddled along
the ground into a tuft of high grass.

Now murmurs of stifled applause broke from the audience, to which Pereira bowed
in acknowledgment.

“You will have to shoot very well, Mynheer Allan,” said Retief to
me, “if you want to beat that. Even if I rule out one of the two birds
that fell to a single shot, as I think I shall, Hernan has killed five out of
six, which can scarcely be bettered.”

“Yes,” I answered; “but, mynheer, be so good as to have those
geese collected and put upon one side. I don’t want them mixed up with
mine, if I am lucky enough to bring any down.”

He nodded, and some Kaffirs were sent to bring in the geese. Several of these,
I noted, were still flapping and had to have their necks twisted, but at the
time I did not go to look at them. While this was being done I called to
Retief, and begged him to examine the powder and bullets I was about to use.

“What’s the good?” he asked, looking at me curiously.
“Powder is powder, and a bullet is a bullet.”

“None, I dare say. Still, oblige me by looking at them, my uncle.”

Then at my bidding Hans took six bullets and placed them in his hand, begging
him to return them to us as they were wanted.

“They must be a great deal smaller than Hernan’s,” said
Retief, “who, being stronger, uses a heavier gun.”

“Yes,” I answered briefly, as Hans put the charge of powder into
the rifle, and drove home the wad. Then, taking a bullet from Retief’s
hand, he rammed that down on to the top of it, capped the gun, and handed it to
me.

By now the geese were coming thick, for the flight was at its full. Only,
either because some of those that had already passed had sighted the Kaffirs
collecting the fallen birds and risen—an example which the others noted
from afar and followed—or because in an unknown way warning of their
danger had been conveyed to them, they were flying higher and faster than the
first arrivals.

“You will have the worst of it, Allan,” said Retief. “It
should have been shot and shot about.”

“Perhaps,” I answered, “but that can’t be helped
now.”

Then I rose from my stool, the rifle in my hand. I had not long to wait, for
presently over came a wedge of geese nearly a hundred yards up. I aimed at the
first fellow, holding about eight yards ahead of him to allow for his pace, and
pressed. Next second I heard the clap of the bullet, but alas! it had only
struck the outstretched beak, of which a small portion fell to the ground. The
bird itself, after wavering a second, resumed its place as leader of the squad
and passed away apparently unharmed.

“Baas, baas,” whispered Hans as he seized the rifle and began to
re-load, “you were too far in front. These big water-birds do not travel
as fast as the rock pigeons.”

I nodded, wishing to save my breath. Then, quivering with excitement, for if I
missed the next shot the match appeared to be lost, presently I took the rifle
from his hand.

Scarcely had I done so when a single goose came over quite as high as the
others and travelling “as though the black devil had kicked it,” as
Retief said. This time I allowed the same space to compensate for the
object’s increased speed and pressed.

Down it came like a stone, falling but a little way behind me with its head
knocked off.

“Baas, baas,” whispered Hans, “still too far in front. Why
aim at the eye when you have the whole body?”

Again I nodded, and at the same time heaved a sigh of relief. At least the
match was still alive. Soon a large flight came over, mixed up with mallard and
widgeon. I took the right-hand angle bird, so that it could not be supposed I
had “browned the lot,” as here in England they say of one who fires
at a covey and not at a particular partridge. Down he came, shot straight
through the breast. Then I knew that I had got my nerve, and felt no more fear.

To cut a long story short, although two of them were extremely difficult and
high, one being, I should say, quite a hundred and twenty yards above me, and
the other by no means easy, I killed the next three birds one after the other,
and I verily believe could have killed a dozen more without a miss, for now I
was shooting as I had never shot before.

“Say, nephew Allan,” asked Retief curiously in the pause between
the fifth and sixth shots, “why do your geese fall so differently to
Hernan’s?”

“Ask him! don’t talk to me,” I answered, and next instant
brought down number five, the finest shot of the lot.

A sound of wonder and applause came from all the audience, and I saw Marie wave
a white handkerchief.

“That’s the end,” said the referee.

“One minute before you stir,” I answered. “I want to shoot at
something else that is not in the match, just to see if I can kill two birds
with one bullet like the Heer Pereira.”

He granted my request with a nod, holding up his hand to prevent the audience
from moving, and bidding Pereira, who tried to interrupt, to be silent.

Now, while the match was in progress I had noticed two falcons about the size
of the British peregrine wheeling round and round high over the kloof, in which
doubtless they bred, apparently quite undisturbed by the shooting. Or, perhaps,
they had their eyes upon some of the fallen geese. I took the rifle and waited
for a long while, till at last my opportunity came. I saw that the larger hen
falcon was about to cross directly over the circle of its mate, there being
perhaps a distance of ten yards between them. I aimed; I judged—for a
second my mind was a kind of calculating machine—the different arcs and
speeds of the birds must be allowed for, and the lowest was ninety yards away.
Then, with something like a prayer upon my lips, I pressed while every eye
stared upwards.

Down came the lower falcon; a pause of half a second, and down came the higher
one also, falling dead upon its dead mate!

Now, even from those Boers, who did not love to see an Englishman excel, there
broke a shout of acclamation. Never had they beheld such a shot as this; nor in
truth had I.

“Mynheer Retief,” I said, “I gave you notice that I intended
to try to kill both of them, did I not?”

“You did. Allemachte! you did! But tell me, Allan Quatermain, are your
eye and hand quite human?”

“You must ask my father,” I answered with a shrug as I sat myself
down upon my stool and mopped my brow.

The Boers came up with a rush, Marie flying ahead of them like a swallow, and
their stout womenfolk waddling behind, and formed a circle round us, all
talking at once. I did not listen to their conversation, till I heard Pereira,
who was engaged in some eye-play with Marie, say in a loud voice:

“Yes, it was pretty, very pretty, but all the same, Uncle Retief, I claim
the match, as I shot six geese against five.”

“Hans,” I said, “bring my geese,” and they were
brought, each with a neat hole through it, and laid down near those that
Pereira had shot. “Now,” I said to Retief, “examine the
wounds in these birds, and then that on the second bird which the Heer Pereira
killed when he brought down two at once. I think it will be found that his
bullet must have splintered.”

Retief went and studied all the birds, taking them up one by one. Then he threw
down the last with a curse and cried in a great voice:

“Mynheer Pereira, why do you bring shame on us before these two
Englishmen? I say that you have been using loopers, or else bullets that
were sawn in quarters and glued or tied with thread. Look, look!” and he
pointed to the wounds, of which in one case there were as many as three on a
single bird.

“Why not?” answered Pereira coolly. “The bargain was that we
were to use bullets, but it was never said that they should not be cut.
Doubtless the Heer Allan’s were treated in the same way.”

“No,” I answered, “when I said that I would shoot with a
bullet I meant a whole bullet, not one that had been sawn in pieces and fixed
together again, so that after it left the muzzle it might spread out like shot.
But I do not wish to talk about the matter. It is in the hands of the Heer
Pieter Retief, who will give judgment as it pleases him.”

Now, much excited argument ensued among the Boers, in the midst of which Marie
managed to whisper to me unheard:

“Oh! I am glad, Allan, for whatever they may decide, you won, and the
omen is good.”

“I don’t see what geese have to do with omens, sweetheart,” I
answered—“that is, since the time of the ancient Romans. Anyhow, I
should say that the omens are bad, for there is going to be a row
presently.”

Just then Retief put up his hand, calling out:

“Silence! I have decided. The writing of the match did not say that the
bullets were not to be cut, and therefore Hernan Pereira’s birds must
count. But that writing does say that any bird accidentally killed should not
count, and therefore one goose must be subtracted from Pereira’s total,
which leaves the two shooters equal. So either the match is dead or, since the
geese have ceased to come, it must be shot off another day.”

“Oh! if there is any question,” said Pereira, who felt that public
opinion was much against him, “let the Englishman take the money. I dare
say that he needs it, as the sons of missionaries are not rich.”

“There is no question,” I said, “since, rich or poor, not for
a thousand pounds would I shoot again against one who plays such tricks. Keep
your money, Mynheer Pereira, and I will keep my mare. The umpire has said that
the match is dead, so everything is finished.”

“Not quite,” interrupted Retief, “for I have a word to say.
Friend Allan, you have played fair, and I believe that there is no one who can
shoot like you in Africa.”

“That is so,” said the audience of Boers.

“Mynheer Pereira,” went on Retief, “although you, too, are a
fine shot, as is well known, I believe that had you played fair also you would
have been beaten, but as it is you have saved your hundred pounds. Mynheer
Pereira,” he added in a great voice, “you are a cheat, who have
brought disgrace upon us Boers, and for my part I never want to shake your hand
again.”

Now, at these outspoken words, for when his indignation was aroused Retief was
no measurer of language, Pereira’s high-coloured face went white as a
sheet.

“Mein Gott, mynheer,” he said, “I am minded to make
you answer for such talk,” and his hand went to the knife at his girdle.

“What!” shouted Retief, “do you want another shooting match?
Well, if so I am ready with whole bullets or with split ones. None shall say
that Pieter Retief was afraid of any man, and, least of all, of one who is not
ashamed to try to steal a prize as a hyena steals a bone from a lion. Come on,
Hernan Pereira, come on!”

Now, I am sure I cannot say what would have happened, although I am quite
certain that Pereira had no stomach for a duel with the redoubtable Retief, a
man whose courage was as proverbial throughout the land as was his perfect
uprightness of character. At any rate, seeing that things looked very black,
Henri Marais, who had been listening to this altercation with evident
annoyance, stepped forward and said:

“Mynheer Retief and nephew Hernan, you are both my guests, and I will not
permit quarrelling over this foolishness, especially as I am sure that Hernan
never intended to cheat, but only to do what he thought was allowed. Why should
he, who is one of the finest shots in the Colony, though it may be that young
Allan Quatermain here is even better? Will you not say so, too, friend Retief,
especially just now when it is necessary that we should all be as
brothers?” he added pleadingly.

“No,” thundered Retief, “I will not tell a lie to please you
or anyone.”

Then, seeing that the commandant was utterly uncompromising, Marais went up to
his nephew and whispered to him for a while. What he said I do not know. The
result of it was, however, that after favouring both Retief and myself with an
angry scowl, Pereira turned and walked to where his horse stood, mounted it,
and rode off, followed by two Hottentot after-riders.

That was the last I saw of Hernan Pereira for a long while to come, and
heartily do I wish that it had been the last I ever saw of him. But this was
not to be.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PARTING

The Boers, who ostensibly had come to the kloof to see the shooting match,
although, in fact, for a very different purpose, now began to disperse. Some of
them rode straight away, while some went to wagons which they had outspanned at
a distance, and trekked off to their separate homes. I am glad to say that
before they left quite a number of the best of them came up and congratulated
me both on the defence of Maraisfontein and on my shooting. Also not a few
expressed their views concerning Pereira in very straightforward language.

Now, the arrangement was that my father and I were to sleep that night at
Marais’s stead, returning home on the following morning. But my father,
who had been a silent but not unobservant witness of all this scene, coming to
the conclusion that after what had happened we should scarcely be welcome
there, and that the company of Pereira was to be avoided just now, went up to
Marais and bade him farewell, saying that we would send for my mare.

“Not so, not so,” he answered, “you are my guests to-night.
Also, fear not, Hernan will be away. He has gone a journey upon some
business.”

As my father hesitated, Marais added: “Friend, I pray you to come, for I
have some important words to say to you, which cannot be said here.”

Then my father gave way, to my delight and relief. For if he had not, what
chance would there have been of my getting some still more important words with
Marie? So having collected the geese and the two falcons, which I proposed to
skin for Marie, I was helped into the cart, and we drove off, reaching
Maraisfontein just as night set in.

That evening, after we had eaten, Heer Marais asked my father and myself to
speak with him in the sitting-room. By an afterthought also, or so it seemed to
me, he told his daughter, who had been clearing away the dishes and with whom
as yet I had found no opportunity to talk, to come in with us and close the
door behind her.

When all were seated and we men had lit our pipes, though apprehension of what
was to follow quite took away my taste for smoking, Marais spoke in English,
which he knew to a certain extent. This was for the benefit of my father, who
made it a point of honour not to understand Dutch, although he would answer
Marais in that language when he pretended not to understand English. To
me he spoke in Dutch, and occasionally in French to Marie. It was a most
curious and polyglot conversation.

“Young Allan,” he said, “and you, daughter Marie, I have
heard stories concerning you that, although I never gave you leave to
opsit” (that is, to sit up alone at night with candles, according
to the Boer fashion between those who are courting), “you have been
making love to each other.”

“That is true, mynheer,” I said. “I only waited an
opportunity to tell you that we plighted our troth during the attack of the
Quabies on this house.”

“Allemachte! Allan, a strange time to choose,” answered Marais,
pulling at his beard; “the troth that is plighted in blood is apt to end
in blood.”

“A vain superstition to which I cannot consent,” interrupted my
father.

“Perhaps so,” I answered. “I know not; God alone knows. I
only know that we plighted our troth when we thought ourselves about to die,
and that we shall keep that troth till death ends it.”

“Yes, my father,” added Marie, leaning forward across the scored
yellow-wood table, her chin resting on her hand and her dark, buck-like eyes
looking him in the face. “Yes, my father, that is so, as I have told you
already.”

“And I tell you, Marie, what I have told you already, and you too, Allan,
that this thing may not be,” answered Marais, hitting the table with his
fist. “I have nothing to say against you, Allan; indeed, I honour you,
and you have done me a mighty service, but it may not be.”

“Why not, mynheer?” I asked.

“For three reasons, Allan, each of which is final. You are English, and I
do not wish my daughter to marry an Englishman; that is the first. You are
poor, which is no discredit to you, and since I am now ruined my daughter
cannot marry a poor man; that is the second. You live here, and my daughter and
I are leaving this country, therefore you cannot marry her; that is the
third,” and he paused.

“Is there not a fourth,” I asked, “which is the real reason?
Namely, that you wish your daughter to marry someone else.”

“Yes, Allan; since you force me to it, there is a fourth. I have
affianced my daughter to her cousin, Hernando Pereira, a man of substance and
full age; no lad, but one who knows his own mind and can support a wife.”

“I understand,” I answered calmly, although within my heart a very
hell was raging. “But tell me, mynheer, has Marie affianced
herself—or perhaps she will answer with her own lips?”

“Yes, Allan,” replied Marie in her quiet fashion, “I have
affianced myself—to you and no other man.”

“You hear, mynheer,” I said to Marais.

Then he broke out in his usual excitable manner. He stormed, he argued, he
rated us both. He said that he would never allow it; that first he would see
his daughter in her grave. That I had abused his confidence and violated his
hospitality; that he would shoot me if I came near his girl. That she was a
minor, and according to the law he could dispose of her in marriage. That she
must accompany him whither he was going; that certainly I should not do so, and
much more of the same sort.

When at last he had tired himself out and smashed his favourite pipe upon the
table, Marie spoke, saying:

“My father, you know that I love you dearly, for since my mother’s
death we have been everything to each other, have we not?”

“Surely, Marie, you are my life, and more than my life.”

“Very well, my father. That being so, I acknowledge your authority over
me, whatever the law may say. I acknowledge that you have the right to forbid
me to marry Allan, and if you do forbid me—while I am under age, at any
rate—I shall not marry him because of my duty to you.
But”—here she rose and looked him full in the eyes, and oh! how
stately she seemed at that moment in her simple strength and youthful
grace!—“there is one thing, my father, that I do not
acknowledge—your right to force me to marry any other man. As a woman
with power over herself, I deny that right; and much as it pains me, my father,
to refuse you anything, I say that first I will die. To Allan here I have given
myself for good or for evil, and if I may not marry Allan, I will go to the
grave unwed. If my words hurt you, I pray you to pardon me, but at the same
time to remember that they are my words, which cannot be altered.”

Marais looked at his daughter, and his daughter looked at Marais. At first I
thought that he was about to curse her; but if this were so, something in her
eyes seemed to change his mind, for all he said was:

“Intractable, like the rest of your race! Well, Fate may lead those who
cannot be driven, and this matter I leave in the hands of Fate. While you are
under age—that is, for two years or more—you may not marry without
my consent, and have just promised not to do so. Presently we trek from this
country into far-off lands. Who knows what may happen there?”

“Yes,” said my father in a solemn voice, speaking for the first
time, “who knows except God, Who governs all things, and will settle
these matters according to His will, Henri Marais? Listen,” he went on
after a pause, for Marais made no answer, but sat himself down and stared
gloomily at the table. “You do not wish my son to marry your daughter for
various reasons, of which one is that you think him poor and a richer suitor
has offered himself after a reverse of fortune has made you poor.
Another and a greater, the true reason, is his English blood, which you hate so
much that, although by God’s mercy he saved her life, you do not desire
that he should share her life. Is it not true?”

“Yes, it is true, Mynheer Quatermain. You English are bullies and
cheats,” he answered excitedly.

“And so you would give your daughter to one who has shown himself humble
and upright, to that good hater of the English and plotter against his King,
Hernando Pereira, whom you love because he alone is left of your ancient
race.”

Remembering the incident of the afternoon, this sarcasm reduced Marais to
silence.

“Well,” went on my father, “although I am fond of Marie, and
know her to be a sweet and noble-hearted girl, neither do I wish that she
should marry my son. I would see him wed to some English woman, and not dragged
into the net of the Boers and their plottings. Still, it is plain that these
two love each other with heart and soul, as doubtless it has been decreed that
they should love. This being so, I tell you that to separate them and force
another marriage upon one of them is a crime before God, of which, I am sure,
He will take note and pay it back to you. Strange things may happen in those
lands whither you go, Henri Marais. Will you not, then, be content to leave
your child in safe keeping?”

“Never!” shouted Marais. “She shall accompany me to a new
home, which is not under the shadow of your accursed British flag.”

“Then I have no more to say. On your head be it here and
hereafter,” replied my father solemnly.

Now unable to control myself any longer I broke in:

“But I have, mynheer. To separate Marie and myself is a sin, and one that
will break her heart. As for my poverty, I have something, more perhaps than
you think, and in this rich country wealth can be earned by those who work, as
I would do for her sake. The man to whom you would give her showed his true
nature this day, for he who can play so low a trick to win a wager, will play
worse tricks to win greater things. Moreover, the scheme must fail since Marie
will not marry him.”

“I say she shall,” replied Marais; “and that whether she does
or not, she shall accompany me and not stay here to be the wife of an English
boy.”

“Accompany you I will, father, and share your fortunes to the last. But
marry Hernando Pereira I will not,” said Marie quietly.

“Perhaps, mynheer,” I added, “days may come when once again
you will be glad of the help of an ‘English boy.’”

The words were spoken at random, a kind of ejaculation from the heart, caused
by the sting of Marais’s cruelty and insults, like the cry of a beast
beneath a blow. Little did I know how true they would prove, but at times it is
thus that truth is mysteriously drawn from some well of secret knowledge hidden
in our souls.

“When I want your help I will ask for it,” raved Marais, who,
knowing himself to be in the wrong, strove to cover up that wrong with
violence.

“Asked or unasked, if I live it shall be given in the future as in the
past, Mynheer Marais. God pardon you for the woe you are bringing on Marie and
on me.”

Now Marie began to weep a little, and, unable to bear that sight, I covered my
eyes with my hand. Marais, who, when he was not under the influence of his
prejudices or passion, had a kind heart, was moved also, but tried to hide his
feelings in roughness. He swore at Marie, and told her to go to bed, and she
obeyed, still weeping. Then my father rose and said:

“Henri Marais, we cannot leave here to-night because the horses are
kraaled, and it would be difficult to find them in this darkness, so we must
ask your hospitality till dawn.”

“I do not ask it,” I exclaimed. “I go to sleep in the
cart,” and I limped from the room and the house, leaving the two men
together.

What passed afterwards between them I do not quite know. I gathered that my
father, who, when roused, also had a temper and was mentally and intellectually
the stronger man, told Marais his opinion of his wickedness and folly in
language that he was not likely to forget. I believe he even drove him to
confess that his acts seemed cruel, excusing them, however, by announcing that
he had sworn before God that his daughter should never marry an Englishman.
Also he said that he had promised her solemnly to Pereira, his own nephew, whom
he loved, and could not break his word.

“No,” answered my father, “because, being mad with the
madness that runs before destruction, you prefer to break Marie’s heart
and perhaps become guilty of her blood.”

Then he left him.

The darkness was intense. Through it I groped my way to the cart, which stood
where it had been outspanned on the veld at a little distance from the house,
wishing heartily, so miserable was I, that the Kaffirs might choose that black
night for another attack and make an end of me.

When I reached it and lit the lantern which we always carried, I was astonished
to find that, in a rough fashion, it had been made ready to sleep in. The seats
had been cleared out, the hind curtain fastened, and so forth. Also the pole
was propped up with an ox-yoke so as to make the vehicle level to lie in. While
I was wondering vaguely who could have done this, Hans climbed on to the step,
carrying two karosses which he had borrowed or stolen, and asked if I was
comfortable.

“Oh, yes!” I answered; “but why were you going to sleep in
the cart?”

“Baas,” he replied, “I was not; I prepared it for you. How
did I know that you were coming? Oh, very simply. I sat on the stoep and
listened to all the talk in the sitkammer. The window has never been
mended, baas, since the Quabies broke it. God in Heaven! what a talk that was.
I never knew that white people could have so much to say about a simple matter.
You want to marry the Baas Marais’s daughter; the baas wants her to marry
another man who can pay more cattle. Well, among us it would soon have been
settled, for the father would have taken a stick and beaten you out of the hut
with the thick end. Then he would have beaten the girl with the thin end until
she promised to take the other man, and all would have been settled nicely. But
you Whites, you talk and talk, and nothing is settled. You still mean to marry
the daughter, and the daughter still means not to marry the man of many cows.
Moreover, the father has really gained nothing except a sick heart and much bad
luck to come.”

“Why much bad luck to come, Hans?” I asked idly, for his naïve
summing up of the case interested me in a vague way.

“Oh! Baas Allan, for two reasons. First, your reverend father, who made
me true Christian, told him so, and a prédicant so good as he, is one down whom
the curse of God runs from Heaven like lightning runs down a tree. Well, the
Heer Marais was sitting under that tree, and we all know what happens to him
who is under a tree when the lightning strikes it. That my first Christian
reason. My second black-man reason, about which there can be no mistake, for it
has always been true since there was a black man, is that the girl is yours by
blood. You saved her life with your blood,” and he pointed to my leg,
“and therefore bought her for ever, for blood is more than cattle.
Therefore, too, he who would divide her from you brings blood on her and on the
other man who tries to steal her, blood, blood! and on himself I know not
what.” And he waved his yellow arms, staring up at me with his little
black eyes in a way that was most uncanny.

“Nonsense!” I said. “Why do you talk such bad words?”

“Because they are true words, Baas Allan. Oh, you laugh at the poor
Totty; but I had it from my father, and he from his father from generation to
generation, amen, and you will see. You will see, as I have seen before now,
and as the Heer Marais will see, who, if the great God had not made him
mad—for mad he is, baas, as we know, if you Whites
don’t—might have lived in his home till he was old, and have had a
good son-in-law to bury him in his blanket.”

Now I seemed to have had enough of this eerie conversation. Of course it is
easy to laugh at natives and their superstitions, but, after a long life of
experience, I am bound to admit that they are not always devoid of truth. The
native has some kind of sixth sense which the civilised man has lost, or so it
seems to me.

“Talking of blankets,” I said in order to change the subject,
“from whom did you get these karosses?”

“From whom? Why, from the Missie, of course, baas. When I heard that you
were to sleep in the cart I went to her and borrowed them to cover you. Also, I
had forgotten, she gave me a writing for you,” and he felt about, first
in his dirty shirt, then under his arm, and finally in his fuzzy hair, from
which last hiding place he produced a little bit of paper folded into a pellet.
I undid it and read these words, written with a pencil and in French:—

“I shall be in the peach orchard half an hour before sunrise. Be there if
you would bid me farewell.—M.”

“Is there any answer, baas?” asked Hans when I had thrust the note
into my pocket. “If so I can take it without being found out.” Then
an inspiration seemed to strike him, and he added: “Why do you not take
it yourself? The Missie’s window is easy to open, also I am sure she
would be pleased to see you.”

“Be silent,” I said. “I am going to sleep. Wake me an hour
before the cock-crow—and, stay—see that the horses have got out of
the kraal so that you cannot find them too easily in case the Reverend wishes
to start very early. But do not let them wander far, for here we are no welcome
guests.”

“Yes, baas. By the way, baas, the Heer Pereira, who tried to cheat you
over those geese, is sleeping in an empty house not more than two miles away.
He drinks coffee when he wakes up in the morning, and his servant, who makes
it, is my good friend. Now would you like me to put a little something into it?
Not to kill him, for that is against the law in the Book, but just to make him
quite mad, for the Book says nothing about that. If so, I have a very good
medicine, one that you white people do not know, which improves the taste of
the coffee, and it might save much trouble. You see, if he came dancing about
the place without any clothes on, like a common Kaffir, the Heer Marais,
although he is really mad also, might not wish for him as a
son-in-law.”

“Oh! go to the devil if you are not there already,” I replied, and
turned over as though to sleep.

There was no need for me to have instructed that faithful creature, the astute
but immoral Hans, to call me early, as the lady did her mother in the poem, for
I do not think that I closed an eye that night. I spare my reflections, for
they can easily be imagined in the case of an earnest-natured lad who was about
to be bereft of his first love.

Long before the dawn I stood in the peach orchard, that orchard where we had
first met, and waited. At length Marie came stealing between the tree trunks
like a grey ghost, for she was wrapped in some light-coloured garment. Oh! once
more we were alone together. Alone in the utter solitude and silence which
precede the African dawn, when all creatures that love the night have withdrawn
to their lairs and hiding places, and those that love the day still sleep their
soundest.

She saw me and stood still, then opened her arms and clasped me to her breast,
uttering no word. A while later she spoke almost in a whisper, saying:

“Allan, I must not stay long, for I think that if my father found us
together, he would shoot you in his madness.”

Now as always it was of me she thought, not of herself.

“And you, my sweet?” I asked.

“Oh!” she answered, “that matters nothing. Except for the sin
of it I wish he would shoot me, for then I should have done with all this pain.
I told you, Allan, when the Kaffirs were on us yonder, that it might be better
to die; and see, my heart spoke truly.”

“Is there no hope?” I gasped. “Will he really separate us and
take you away into the wilderness?”

“Certainly, nothing can turn him. Yet, Allan, there is this hope. In two
years, if I live, I shall be of full age, and can marry whom I will; and this I
swear, that I will marry none but you, no, not even if you were to die
to-morrow.”

“I bless you for those words,” I said.

“Why?” she asked simply. “What others could I speak? Would
you have me do outrage to my own heart and go through life faithless and
ashamed?”

“And I, I swear also,” I broke in.

“Nay, swear nothing. While I live I know that you will love me, and if I
should be taken, it is my wish that you should marry some other good woman,
since it is not well or right that man should live alone. With us maids it is
different. Listen, Allan, for the cocks are beginning to crow, and soon there
will be light. You must bide here with your father. If possible, I will write
to you from time to time, telling you where we are and how we fare. But if I do
not write, know that it is because I cannot, or because I can find no
messenger, or because the letters have miscarried, for we go into wild
countries, amongst savages.”

“Whither do you go?” I asked.

“I believe up towards the great harbour called Delagoa Bay, where the
Portuguese rule. My cousin Hernan, who accompanies us”—and she
shivered a little in my arms—“is half Portuguese. He tells the
Boers that he has relations there who have written him many fine promises,
saying they will give us good country to dwell in where we cannot be followed
by the English, whom he and my father hate so much.”

“I have heard that is all fever veld, and that the country between is
full of fierce Kaffirs,” I said with a groan.

“Perhaps. I do not know, and I do not care. At least, that is the notion
in my father’s head, though, of course, circumstances may change it. I
will try to let you know, Allan, or if I do not, perhaps you will be able to
find out for yourself. Then, then, if we both live and you still care for me,
who will always care for you, when I am of age, you will join us and, say and
do what they may, I will marry no other man. And if I die, as may well happen,
oh! then my spirit shall watch over you and wait for you till you join me
beneath the wings of God. Look, it grows light. I must go. Farewell, my love,
my first and only love, till in life or death we meet again, as meet we
shall.”

Once more we clung together and kissed, muttering broken words, and then she
tore herself from my embrace and was gone. But oh! as I heard her feet steal
through the dew-laden grass, I felt as though my heart were being rent from my
breast. I have suffered much in life, but I do not think that ever I underwent
a bitterer anguish than in this hour of my parting from Marie. For when all is
said and done, what joy is there like the joy of pure, first love, and what
bitterness like the bitterness of its loss?

Half an hour later the flowering trees of Maraisfontein were behind us, while
in front rolled the fire-swept veld, black as life had become for me.

CHAPTER VII.

ALLAN’S CALL

A fortnight later Marais, Pereira and their companions, a little band in all of
about twenty men, thirty women and children, and say fifty half-breeds and
Hottentot after-riders, trekked from their homes into the wilderness. I rode to
the crest of a table-topped hill and watched the long line of wagons, one of
them containing Marie, crawl away northward across the veld a mile or more
beneath.

Sorely was I tempted to gallop after them and seek a last interview with her
and her father. But my pride forbade me. Henri Marais had given out that if I
came near his daughter he would have me beaten back with sjambocks or
hide whips. Perhaps he had gained some inkling of our last farewell in the
peach orchard. I do not know. But I do know that if anyone had lifted a
sjambock on me I should have answered with a bullet. Then there would
have been blood between us, which is worse to cross than whole rivers of wrath
and jealousy. So I just watched the wagons until they vanished, and galloped
home down the rock-strewn slope, wishing that the horse would stumble and break
my neck.

When I reached the station, however, I was glad that it had not done so, as I
found my father sitting on the stoep reading a letter that had been brought by
a mounted Hottentot.

It was from Henri Marais, and ran thus:—

“‘REVEREND HEER AND FRIEND QUATERMAIN,—I send this to bid you
farewell, for although you are English and we have quarrelled at times, I
honour you in my heart. Friend, now that we are starting, your warning words
lie on me like lead, I know not why. But what is done cannot be undone, and I
trust that all will come right. If not, it is because the Good Lord wills it
otherwise.’”

Here my father looked up and said: “When men suffer from their own
passion and folly, they always lay the blame on the back of Providence.”

Then he went on, spelling out the letter:

“‘I fear your boy Allan, who is a brave lad, as I have reason to
know, and honest, must think that I have treated him harshly and without
gratitude. But I have only done what I must do. True, Marie, who, like her
mother, is very strong and stubborn in mind, swears that she will marry no one
else; but soon Nature will make her forget all that, especially as such a fine
husband waits for her hand. So bid Allan forget all about her also, and when he
is old enough choose some English girl. I have sworn a great oath before my God
that he shall never marry my daughter with my consent.

“‘Friend, I write to ask you something because I trust you more
than these slim agents. Half the price, a very poor one, that I have for my
farm is still unpaid to me by Jacobus van der Merve, who remains behind and
buys up all our lands. It is £100 English, due this day year, and I enclose you
power of attorney to receive and give receipt for the same. Also there is due
to me from your British Government £253 on account of slaves liberated which
were worth quite £1,000. This also the paper gives you authority to receive. As
regards my claims against the said cursed Government because of the loss
brought on me by the Quabie Kaffirs, it will not acknowledge them, saying that
the attack was caused by the Frenchman Leblanc, one of my
household.’”

“And with good reason,” commented my father.

“‘When you have received these monies, if ever, I pray you take
some safe opportunity of sending them to me, wherever I may be, which doubtless
you will hear in due course, although by that time I hope to be rich again and
not to need money. Farewell and God be with you, as I hope He will be with me
and Marie and the rest of us trek-Boers. The bearer will overtake us with your
answer at our first outspan.

“‘HENRI MARAIS.’”

“Well,” said my father with a sigh, “I suppose I must accept
his trust, though why he should choose an ‘accursed Englishman’
with whom he has quarrelled violently to collect his debts instead of one of
his own beloved Boers, I am sure I do not know. I will go and write to him.
Allan, see that the messenger and his horse get something to eat.”

I nodded and went to the man, who was one of those that had defended
Maraisfontein with me, a good fellow unless he got near liquor.

“Heer Allan,” he said, looking round to see that we were not
overheard, “I have a little writing for you also,” and he produced
from his pouch a note that was unaddressed.

I tore it open eagerly. Within was written in French, which no Boer would
understand if the letter fell into his hands:

“Be brave and faithful, and remember, as I shall. Oh! love of my heart,
adieu, adieu!”

This message was unsigned; but what need was there of signature?

I wrote an answer of a sort that may be imagined, though what the exact words
were I cannot remember after the lapse of nearly half a century. Oddly enough,
it is the things I said which I recall at such a distance of time rather than
the things which I wrote, perhaps because, when once written, my mind being
delivered, troubled itself with them no more. So in due course the Hottentot
departed with my father’s letter and my own, and that was the last direct
communication which we had with Henri or Marie Marais for more than a year.

I think that those long months were on the whole the most wretched I have ever
spent. The time of life which I was passing through is always trying; that
period of emergence from youth into full and responsible manhood which in
Africa generally takes place earlier than it does here in England, where young
men often seem to me to remain boys up to five-and-twenty. The circumstances
which I have detailed made it particularly so in my own case, for here was I,
who should have been but a cheerful lad, oppressed with the sorrows and
anxieties, and fettered by the affections of maturity.

I could not get Marie out of my mind; her image was with me by day and by
night, especially by night, which caused me to sleep badly. I became morose,
supersensitive, and excitable. I developed a cough, and thought, as did others,
that I was going into a decline. I remember that Hans even asked me once if I
would not come and peg out the exact place where I should like to be buried, so
that I might be sure that there would be no mistake made when I could no longer
speak for myself. On that occasion I kicked Hans, one of the few upon which I
have ever touched a native. The truth was that I had not the slightest
intention of being buried. I wanted to live and marry Marie, not to die and be
put in a hole by Hans. Only I saw no prospect of marrying Marie, or even of
seeing her again, and that was why I felt low-spirited.

Of course, from time to time news of the trek-Boers reached us, but it was
extremely confused. There were so many parties of them; their adventures were
so difficult to follow, and, I may add, often so terrible; so few of them could
write; trustworthy messengers were so scanty; distances were so great. At any
rate, we heard nothing of Marais’s band except a rumour that they had
trekked to a district in what is now the Transvaal, which is called Rustenberg,
and thence on towards Delagoa Bay into an unknown veld where they had vanished.
From Marie herself no letter came, which showed me clearly enough that she had
not found an opportunity of sending one.

Observing my depressed condition, my father suggested as a remedy that I should
go to the theological college at Cape Town and prepare myself for ordination.
But the Church as a career did not appeal to me, perhaps because I felt that I
could never be sufficiently good; perhaps because I knew that as a clergyman I
should find no opportunity of travelling north when my call came. For I always
believed that this call would come.

My father, who wished that I should hear another kind of call, was vexed with
me over this matter. He desired earnestly that I should follow the profession
which he adorned, and indeed saw no other open for me any more than I did
myself. Of course he was right in a way, seeing that in the end I found none,
unless big game hunting and Kaffir trading can be called a profession. I
don’t know, I am sure. Still, poor business as it may be, I say now when
I am getting towards the end of life that I am glad I did not follow any other.
It has suited me; that was the insignificant hole in the world’s affairs
which I was destined to fit, whose only gifts were a remarkable art of straight
shooting and the more common one of observation mixed with a little untrained
philosophy.

So hot did our arguments become about this subject of the Church, for, as may
be imagined, in the course of them I revealed some unorthodoxy, especially as
regards the matter of our methods of Christianising Kaffirs, that I was
extremely thankful when a diversion occurred which took me away from home. The
story of my defence of Maraisfontein had spread far, and that of my feats of
shooting, especially in the Goose Kloof, still farther. So the end of it was
that those in authority commandeered me to serve in one of the continual Kaffir
frontier wars which was in progress, and instantly gave me a commission as a
kind of lieutenant in a border corps.

Now the events of that particular war have nothing to do with the history that
I am telling, so I do not propose even to touch on them. I served in it for a
year, meeting with many adventures, one or two successes, and several failures.
Once I was wounded slightly, twice I but just escaped with my life. Once I was
reprimanded for taking a foolish risk and losing some men. Twice I was
commended for what were called gallant actions, such as bringing a wounded
comrade out of danger under a warm fire, mostly of assegais, and penetrating by
night, almost alone, into the stronghold of a chieftain, and shooting him.

At length that war was patched up with an inconclusive peace and my corps was
disbanded. I returned home, no longer a lad, but a man with experience of
various kinds and a rather unique knowledge of Kaffirs, their languages,
history, and modes of thought and action. Also I had associated a good deal
with British officers, and from them acquired much that I had found no
opportunity of studying before, especially, I hope, the ideas and standards of
English gentlemen.

I had not been back at the Mission Station more than three weeks, quite long
enough for me to begin to be bored with idleness and inactivity, when that call
for which I had been waiting came at last.

One day a smous, that is a low kind of white man, often a Jew, who
travels about trading with unsophisticated Boers and Kaffirs, and cheating them
if he can, called at the station with his cartful of goods. I was about to send
him away, having no liking for such gentry, when he asked me if I were named
Allan Quatermain. I said “Yes,” whereon he replied that he had a
letter for me, and produced a packet wrapped up in sail-cloth. I asked him
whence he had it, and he answered from a man whom he had met at Port Elizabeth,
an east coast trader, who, hearing that he was coming into the Cradock
district, entrusted him with the letter. The man told him that it was very
important, and that I should reward the bearer well if it were delivered
safely.

While the Jew talked (I think he was a Jew) I was opening the sail-cloth.
Within was a piece of linen which had been oiled to keep out water, addressed
in some red pigment to myself or my father. This, too, I opened, not without
difficulty, for it was carefully sewn up, and found within it a letter-packet,
also addressed to myself or my father, in the handwriting of Marie.

Great Heaven! How my heart jumped at that sight! Calling to Hans to make the
smous comfortable and give him food, I went into my own room, and there
read the letter, which ran thus:

“MY DEAR ALLAN,—I do not know whether the other letters I have
written to you have ever come to your hands, or indeed if this one will. Still,
I send it on chance by a wandering Portuguese half-breed who is going to
Delagoa Bay, about fifty miles, I believe, from the place where I now write,
near the Crocodile River. My father has named it Maraisfontein, after our old
home. If those letters reached you, you will have learned of the terrible
things we went through on our journey; the attacks by the Kaffirs in the
Zoutpansberg region, who destroyed one of our parties altogether, and so forth.
If not, all that story must wait, for it is too long to tell now, and, indeed,
I have but little paper, and not much pencil. It will be enough to say,
therefore, that to the number of thirty-five white people, men, women and
children, we trekked at the beginning of the summer season, when the grass was
commencing to grow, from the Lydenburg district—an awful journey over
mountains and through flooded rivers. After many delays, some of them months
long, we reached this place, about eight weeks ago, for I write to you at the
beginning of June, if we have kept correct account of the time, of which I am
not certain.

“It is a beautiful place to look at, a flat country of rich veld, with
big trees growing on it, and about two miles from the great river that is
called the Crocodile. Here, finding good water, my father and Hernan Pereira,
who now rules him in all things, determined to settle, although some of the
others wished to push on nearer to Delagoa Bay. There was a great quarrel about
it, but in the end my father, or rather Hernan, had his will, as the oxen were
worn out and many had already died from the bites of a poisonous fly which is
called the tsetse. So we lotted out the land, of which there is enough for
hundreds, and began to build rude houses.

“Then trouble came upon us. The Kaffirs stole most of our horses,
although they have not dared to attack us, and except two belonging to Hernan,
the rest died of the sickness, the last of them but yesterday. The oxen, too,
have all died of the tsetse bites or other illnesses. But the worst is that
although this country looks so healthy, it is poisoned with fever, which comes
up, I think, in the mists from the river. Already out of the thirty-five of us,
ten are dead, two men, three women, and five children, while more are sick. As
yet my father and I and my cousin Pereira have, by God’s mercy, kept
quite well; but although we are all very strong, how long this will continue I
cannot tell. Fortunately we have plenty of ammunition and the place is thick
with game, so that those of the men who remain strong can kill all the food we
want, even shooting on foot, and we women have made a great quantity of biltong
by salting flesh and drying it in the sun. So we shall not actually starve for
a long while, even if the game goes away.

“But, dear Allan, unless help comes to us I think that we shall die every
one, for God alone knows the miseries that we suffer and the horrible sights of
sickness and death that are around us. At this moment there lies by me a little
girl who is dying of fever.

“Oh, Allan, if you can help us, do so! Because of our sick it is
impossible for us to get to Delagoa Bay, and if we did we have no money to buy
anything there, for all that we had with us was lost in a wagon in a flooded
river. It was a great sum, for it included Hernan’s rich fortune which he
brought from the Cape with him in gold. Nor can we move anywhere else, for we
have no cattle or horses. We have sent to Delagoa Bay, where we hear these are
to be had, to try to buy them on credit; but my cousin Hernan’s
relations, of whom he used to talk so much, are dead or gone away, and no one
will trust us. With the neighbouring Kaffirs, too, who have plenty of cattle,
we have quarrelled since, unfortunately, my cousin and some of the other Boers
tried to take certain beasts of theirs without payment. So we are quite
helpless, and can only wait for death.

“Allan, my father says that he asked your father to collect some monies
that were owing to him. If it were possible for you or other friends to come to
Delagoa in a ship with that money, I think that it might serve to buy some
oxen, enough for a few wagons. Then perhaps we might trek back and fall in with
a party of Boers who, we believe, have crossed the Quathlamba Mountains into
Natal. Or perhaps we might get to the Bay and find a ship to take us anywhere
from this horrible place. If you could come, the natives would guide you to
where we are.

“But it is too much to hope that you will come, or that if you do come
you will find us still alive.

“Allan, my dearest, I have one more thing to say, though I must say it
shortly, for the paper is nearly finished. I do not know, supposing that you
are alive and well, whether you still care for me, who left you so long
ago—it seems years and years—but my heart is where it was,
and where I promised it should remain, in your keeping. Of course, Hernan has
pressed me to marry him, and my father has wished it. But I have always said
no, and now, in our wretchedness, there is no more talk of marriage at present,
which is the one good thing that has happened to me. And, Allan, before so very
long I shall be of age, if I live. Still I dare say you no longer think of
marriage with me, who, perhaps, are already married to someone else, especially
as now I and all of us are no better than wandering beggars. Yet I have thought
it right to tell you these things, which you may like to know.

“Oh, why did God ever put it into my father’s heart to leave the
Cape Colony just because he hated the British Government and Hernan Pereira and
others persuaded him? I know not, but, poor man, he is sorry enough now. It is
pitiful to see him; at times I think that he is going mad.

“The paper is done, and the messenger is going; also the sick child is
dying and I must attend to her. Will this letter ever come to your hands, I
wonder? I am sending with it the little money I have to pay for its
delivery—about four pounds English. If not, there is an end. If it does,
and you cannot come or send others, at least pray for us. I dream of you by
night and think of you by day, for how much I love you I cannot tell.

“In life or death I am

“Your MARIE.”

Such was this awful letter. I still have it; it lies before me, those ragged
sheets of paper covered with faint pencil-writing that is blotted here and
there with tear marks, some of them the tears of Marie who wrote, some of them
the tears of me who read. I wonder if there exists a more piteous memorial of
the terrible sufferings of the trek-Boers, and especially of such of them as
forced their way into the poisonous veld around Delagoa, as did this Marais
expedition and those under the command of Triechard. Better, like many of their
people, to have perished at once by the spears of Umzilikazi and other savages
than to endure these lingering tortures of fever and starvation.

As I finished reading this letter my father, who had been out visiting some of
his Mission Kaffirs, entered the house, and I went into the sitting-room to
meet him.

“Why, Allan, what is the matter with you?” he asked, noting my
tear-stained face.

I gave him the letter, for I could not speak, and with difficulty he deciphered
it.

“Merciful God, what dreadful news!” he said when he had finished.
“Those poor people! those poor, misguided people! What can be done for
them?”

“I know one thing that can be done, father, or at any rate can be
attempted. I can try to reach them.”

“Are you mad?” he asked. “How is it possible for you, one
man, to get to Delagoa Bay, buy cattle, and rescue these folk, who probably are
now all dead?”

“The first two things are possible enough, father. Some ship will take me
to the Bay. You have Marais’s money, and I have that five hundred pounds
which my old aunt in England left me last year. Thank Heaven! owing to my
absence on commando, it still lies untouched in the bank at Port Elizabeth.
That is about eight hundred pounds in all, which would buy a great many cattle
and other things. As for the third, it is not in our hands, is it? It may be
that they cannot be rescued, it may be that they are dead. I can only go to
see.”

“But, Allan, Allan, you are my only son, and if you go it is probable
that I shall never see you more.”

“I have been through more dangers lately, father, and am still alive and
well. Moreover, if Marie is dead”—I paused, then went on
passionately—“Do not try to stop me, for I tell you, father, I will
not be stopped. Think of the words in that letter and what a shameless hound I
should be if I sat here quiet while Marie is dying yonder. Would you have done
so if Marie had been my mother?”

“No,” answered the old gentleman, “I should not. Go, and God
be with you, Allan, and me also, for I never expect to see you again.”
And he turned his head aside for a while.

Then we went into matters. The smous was summoned and asked about the
ship which brought the letter from Delagoa. It seemed that she was an
English-owned brig known as the Seven Stars, and that her captain, one
Richardson, proposed to sail back to the Bay on the morrow, that was the third
of July, or in other words, within twenty-four hours.

Twenty-four hours! And Port Elizabeth was one hundred and eighteen miles away,
and the Seven Stars might leave earlier if she had completed her cargo
and wind and weather served. Moreover, if she did leave, it might be weeks or
months before any other ship sailed for Delagoa Bay, for in those days, of
course, there were no mail boats.

I looked at my watch. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and from a
calendar we had, which gave the tides at Port Elizabeth and other South African
harbours, it did not seem probable that the Seven Stars would sail, if
she kept to her date, before about eight on the morrow. One hundred and twenty
miles to be covered in, say, fourteen hours over rough country with some hills!
Well, on the other hand, the roads were fairly good and dry, with no flooded
rivers to cross, although there might be one to swim, and there was a full
moon. It could be done—barely, and now I was glad indeed that Hernan
Pereira had not won my swift mare in that shooting match.

I called to Hans, who was loafing about outside, and said quietly:

“I ride to Port Elizabeth, and must be there by eight o’clock
to-morrow morning.”

“Allemachte!” exclaimed Hans, who had been that road several times.

“You will go with me, and from Port Elizabeth on to Delagoa Bay. Saddle
the mare and the roan horse, and put a headstall on the chestnut to lead with
you as a spare. Give them all a feed, but no water. We start in half an
hour.” Then I added certain directions as to the guns we would take,
saddle-bags, clothes, blankets and other details, and bade him start about the
business.

Hans never hesitated. He had been with me through my recent campaign, and was
accustomed to sudden orders. Moreover, I think that if I had told him I was
riding to the moon, beyond his customary exclamation of
“Allemachte!” he would have made no objection to accompanying me
thither.

The next half-hour was a busy time for me. Henri Marais’s money had to be
got out of the strong box and arranged in a belt of buck’s hide that I
had strapped about me. A letter had to be written by my father to the manager
of the Port Elizabeth bank, identifying me as the owner of the sum lodged there
in my name. A meal must be eaten and some food prepared for us to carry. The
horses’ shoes had to be seen to, and a few clothes packed in the
saddle-bags. Also there were other things which I have forgotten. Yet within
five-and-thirty minutes the long, lean mare stood before the door. Behind her,
with a tall crane’s feather in his hat, was Hans, mounted on the roan
stallion, and leading the chestnut, a four-year-old which I had bought as a
foal on the mare as part of the bargain. Having been corn fed from a colt it
was a very sound and well-grown horse, though not the equal of its mother in
speed.

In the passage my poor old father, who was quite bewildered by the rapidity and
urgent nature of this business, embraced me.

“God bless you, my dear boy,” he said. “I have had little
time to think, but I pray that this may be all for the best, and that we may
meet again in the world. But if not, remember what I have taught you, and if I
survive you, for my part I shall remember that you died trying to do your duty.
Oh, what trouble has the blind madness of Henri Marais brought upon us all!
Well, I warned him that it would be so. Good-bye, my dear boy, good-bye: my
prayers will follow you, and for the rest—Well, I am old, and what does
it matter if my grey hairs come with sorrow to the grave?”

I kissed him back, and with an aching heart sprang to the saddle. In five more
minutes the station was out of sight.

Thirteen and a half hours later I pulled rein upon the quay of Port Elizabeth
just, only just, in time to catch Captain Richardson as he was entering his
boat to row out to the Seven Stars, on which the canvas was already
being hoisted. As well as I could in my exhausted state, I explained matters
and persuaded him to wait till the next tide. Then, thanking God for the
mare’s speed—the roan had been left foundered thirty miles away,
and Hans was following on the chestnut, but not yet up—I dragged the poor
beast to an inn at hand. There she lay down and died. Well, she had done her
work, and there was no other horse in the country that could have caught that
boat.

An hour or so later Hans came in flogging the chestnut, and here I may add that
both it and the roan recovered. Indeed I rode them for many years, until they
were quite old. When I had eaten, or tried to eat something and rested awhile,
I went to the bank, succeeded in explaining the state of the case to the
manager, and after some difficulty, for gold was not very plentiful in Port
Elizabeth, procured three hundred pounds in sovereigns. For the other two he
gave me a bill upon some agent in Delagoa Bay, together with a letter of
recommendation to him and the Portuguese governor, who, it appeared, was in
debt to their establishment. By an afterthought, however, although I kept the
letters, I returned him the bill and spent the £200 in purchasing a great
variety of goods which I will not enumerate, that I knew would be useful for
trading purposes among the east coast Kaffirs. Indeed, I practically cleared
out the Port Elizabeth stores, and barely had time, with the help of Hans and
the storekeepers, to pack and ship the goods before the Seven Stars put
out to sea.

Within twenty-four hours from the time I had left the Mission Station, Hans and
I saw behind us Port Elizabeth fading into the distance, and in front a waste
of stormy waters.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CAMP OF DEATH

Everything went well upon that voyage, except with me personally. Not having
been on the ocean since I was a child, I, who am naturally no good sailor, was
extremely ill as day by day we ploughed through seas that grew ever more rough.
Also, strong as I was, that fearful ride had overdone me. Added to these
physical discomforts was my agonising anxiety of mind, which I leave anyone
with imagination to picture for himself. Really there were times when I wished
that the Seven Stars would plunge headlong to the bottom of the deep and
put an end to me and my miseries.

These, however, so far as the bodily side of them was concerned, were, I think,
surpassed by those of my henchman Hans, who, as a matter of fact, had never
before set foot in any kind of boat. Perhaps this was fortunate, since had he
known the horrors of the ocean, much as he loved me, he would, I am sure, by
one means or another, have left me to voyage in the Seven Stars alone.
There he lay upon the floor of my little cabin, rolling to and fro with the
violent motion of the brig, overcome with terror. He was convinced that we were
going to be drowned, and in the intervals of furious sea-sickness uttered
piteous lamentations in Dutch, English, and various native tongues, mingled
with curses and prayers of the most primitive and realistic order.

After the first twenty-four hours or so he informed me with many moans that the
last bit of his inside had just come out of him, and that he was now quite
hollow “like a gourd.” Also he declared that all these evils had
fallen upon him because he had been fool enough to forsake the religion of his
people (what was that, I wonder), and allow himself to be “washed
white,” that is, be baptised, by my father.

I answered that as he had become white instead of staying yellow, I advised him
to remain so, since it was evident that the Hottentot gods would have nothing
more to do with one who had deserted them. Thereon he made a dreadful face,
which even in the midst of my own woes caused me to laugh at him, uttered a
prolonged groan, and became so silent that I thought he must be dead. However,
the sailor who brought me my food—such food!—assured me that this
was not so, and lashed him tight to the legs of the bunk by his arm and ankle
so as to prevent him from being rolled to bits.

Next morning Hans was dosed with brandy, which, in his empty condition, made
him extremely drunk, and from that time forward began to take a more cheerful
view of things. Especially was this so when the hours for the “brandy
medicine” came round. Hans, like most other Hottentots, loved spirits,
and would put up with much to get them, even with my father’s fiery
indignation.

I think it was on the fourth day that at length we pitched and rolled ourselves
over the shallow bar of Port Natal and found ourselves at peace for a while
under shelter of the Point in the beautiful bay upon the shores of which the
town of Durban now stands. Then it was but a miserable place, consisting of a
few shanties which were afterwards burnt by the Zulus, and a number of Kaffir
huts. For such white men as dwelt there had for the most part native
followings, and, I may add, native wives.

We spent two days at this settlement of Durban, where Captain Richardson had
some cargo to land for the English settlers, one or two of whom had started a
trade with the natives and with parties of the emigrant Boers who were
beginning to enter the territory by the overland route. Those days I passed on
shore, though I would not allow Hans to accompany me lest he should desert,
employing my time in picking up all the information I could about the state of
affairs, especially with reference to the Zulus, a people with whom I was
destined ere long to make an intimate acquaintance. Needless to say, I inquired
both from natives and from white men whether anything was known of the fate of
Marais’s party, but no one seemed even to have heard of them. One thing I
did learn, however, that my old friend, Pieter Retief, with a large following,
had crossed the Quathlamba Mountains, which we now know as the Drakensberg, and
entered the territory of Natal. Here they proposed to settle if they could get
the leave of the Zulu king, Dingaan, a savage potentate of whom and of whose
armies everyone seemed to live in terror.

On the third morning, to my great relief, for I was terrified lest we should be
delayed, the Seven Stars sailed with a favouring wind. Three days later
we entered the harbour of Delagoa, a sheet of water many miles long and broad.
Notwithstanding its shallow entrance, it is the best natural port in
Southeastern Africa, but now, alas! lost to the English.

Six hours later we anchored opposite a sandbank on which stood a dilapidated
fort and a dirty settlement known as Lorenzo Marquez, where the Portuguese kept
a few soldiers, most of them coloured. I pass over my troubles with the
Customs, if such they could be called. Suffice it to say that ultimately I
succeeded in landing my goods, on which the duty chargeable was apparently
enormous. This I did by distributing twenty-five English sovereigns among
various officials, beginning with the acting-governor and ending with a drunken
black sweep who sat in a kind of sentry box on the quay.

Early next morning the Seven Stars sailed again, because of some quarrel
with the officials, who threatened to seize her—I forget why. Her
destination was the East African ports and, I think, Madagascar, where a
profitable trade was to be done in carrying cattle and slaves. Captain
Richardson said he might be back at Lorenzo Marquez in two or three
months’ time, or he might not. As a matter of fact the latter supposition
proved correct, for the Seven Stars was lost on a sandbank somewhere up
the coast, her crew only escaping to Mombasa after enduring great hardships.

Well, she had served my turn, for I heard afterwards that no other ship put
into the Bay for a whole year from the date she left it. So if I had not caught
her at Port Elizabeth I could not have come at all, except, of course,
overland. This at best must have taken many months, and was moreover a journey
that no man could enter on alone.

Now I get back to my story again.

There was no inn at Lorenzo Marquez. Through the kindness of one of his native
or half-breed wives, who could talk a little Dutch, I managed, however, to get
a lodging in a tumble-down house belonging to a dissolute person who called
himself Don José Ximenes, but who was really himself a half-breed. Here good
fortune befriended me. Don José, when sober, was a trader with the natives, and
a year before had acquired from them two good buck wagons. Probably they were
stolen from some wandering Boers or found derelict after their murder or death
by fever. These wagons he was only too glad to sell for a song. I think I gave
him twenty pounds English for the two, and thirty more for twelve oxen that he
had bought at the same time as the wagons. They were fine beasts of the
Afrikander breed, that after a long rest had grown quite fat and strong.

Of course twelve oxen were not enough to draw two wagons, or even one.
Therefore, hearing that there were natives on the mainland who possessed plenty
of cattle, I at once gave out that I was ready to buy, and pay well in
blankets, cloth, beads and so forth. The result was that within two days I had
forty or fifty to choose from, small animals of the Zulu character and, I
should add, unbroken. Still they were sturdy and used to that veld and its
diseases. Here it was that my twelve trained beasts came in. By putting six of
them to each wagon, two as fore- and two as after-oxen, and two in the middle,
Hans and I were able to get the other ten necessary to make up a team of
sixteen under some sort of control.

Heavens! how we worked during the week or so which went by before it was
possible for me to leave Lorenzo Marquez. What with mending up and loading the
wagons, buying and breaking in the wild oxen, purchasing provisions, hiring
native servants—of whom I was lucky enough to secure eight who belonged
to one of the Zulu tribes and desired to get back to their own country, whence
they had wandered with some Boers, I do not think that we slept more than two
or three hours out of the twenty-four.

But, it may be asked, what was my aim, whither went I, what inquiries had I
made? To answer the last question first, I had made every possible inquiry, but
with little or no result. Marie’s letter had said that they were encamped
on the bank of the Crocodile River, about fifty miles from Delagoa Bay. I asked
everyone I met among the Portuguese—who, after all, were not
many—if they had heard of such an encampment of emigrant Boers. But these
Portuguese appeared to have heard nothing, except my host, Don José, who had a
vague recollection of something—he could not remember what.

The fact was at this time the few people who lived at Lorenzo Marquez were too
sodden with liquor and other vices to take any interest in outside news that
did not immediately concern them. Moreover, the natives whom they flogged and
oppressed if they were their servants, or fought with if they were not, told
them little, and almost nothing that was true, for between the two races there
was an hereditary hate stretching back for generations. So from the Portuguese
I gained no information.

Then I turned to the Kaffirs, especially to those from whom I had bought the
cattle. They had heard that some Boers reached the banks of the
Crocodile moons ago—how many they could not tell. But that country, they
said, was under the rule of a chief who was hostile to them, and killed any of
their people who ventured thither. Therefore they knew nothing for certain.
Still, one of them stated that a woman whom he had bought as a slave, and who
had passed through the district in question a few weeks before, told him that
someone had told her that these Boers were all dead of sickness. She added that
she had seen their wagon caps from a distance, so, if they were dead,
“their wagons were still alive.”

I asked to see this woman, but the native refused to produce her. After a great
deal of talk, however, he offered to sell her to me, saying that he was tired
of her. So I bargained with the man and finally agreed for her purchase for
three pounds of copper wire and eight yards of blue cloth. Next morning she was
produced, an extremely ugly person with a large, flat nose, who came from
somewhere in the interior of Africa, having, I gathered, been taken captive by
Arabs and sold from hand to hand. Her name, as near as I can pronounce it, was
Jeel.

I had great difficulty in establishing communication with her, but ultimately
found that one of my newly hired Kaffirs could understand something of her
language. Even then it was hard to make her talk, for she had never seen a
white man, and thought I had bought her for some dreadful purpose or other.
However, when she found that she was kindly treated, she opened her lips and
told me the same story that her late master had repeated, neither more nor
less. Finally I asked her whether she could guide me to the place where she had
seen the “live wagons.”

She answered: “Oh, yes,” as she had travelled many roads and never
forgot any of them.

This, of course, was all I wanted from the woman, who, I may add, ultimately
gave me a good deal of trouble. The poor creature seemed never to have
experienced kindness, and her gratitude for the little I showed her was so
intense that it became a nuisance. She followed me about everywhere, trying to
do me service in her savage way, and even attempted to seize my food and chew
it before I put it into my own mouth—to save me the trouble, I suppose.
Ultimately I married her, somewhat against her will, I fear, to one of the
hired Kaffirs, who made her a very good husband, although when he was dismissed
from my service she wanted to leave him and follow me.

At length, under the guidance of this woman, Jeel, we made a start. There were
but fifty miles to go, a distance that on a fair road any good horse would
cover in eight hours, or less. But we had no horses, and there was no
road—nothing but swamps and bush and rocky hills. With our untrained
cattle it took us three days to travel the first twelve miles, though after
that things went somewhat better.

It may be asked, why did I not send on? But whom could I send when no one knew
the way, except the woman, Jeel, whom I feared to part with lest I should see
her no more? Moreover, what was the use of sending, since the messengers could
take no help? If everyone at the camp was dead, as rumour told us—well,
they were dead. And if they lived, the hope was that they might live a little
longer. Meanwhile, I dared not part with my guide, nor dared I leave the relief
wagons to go on with her alone. If I did so, I knew that I should never see
them again, since only the prestige of their being owned by a white man who was
not a Portuguese prevented the natives from looting them.

It was a truly awful journey. My first idea had been to follow the banks of the
Crocodile River, which is what I should have attempted had I not chanced on the
woman, Jeel. Lucky was it that I did not do so, since I found afterwards that
this river wound about a great deal and was joined by impassable tributaries.
Also it was bordered by forests. Jeel’s track, on the contrary, followed
an old slave road that, bad as it was, avoided the swampy places of the
surrounding country, and those native tribes which the experience of
generations of the traders in this iniquitous traffic showed to be most
dangerous.

Nine days of fearful struggle had gone by. We had camped one night below the
crest of a long slope strewn with great rocks, many of which we were obliged to
roll out of the path by main force in order to make a way for the wagons. The
oxen had to lie in their yokes all night, since we dared not let them loose
fearing lest they should stray; also lions were roaring in the distance,
although, game being plentiful, these did not come near to us. As soon as there
was any light we let out the teams to fill themselves on the tussocky grass
that grew about, and meanwhile cooked and ate some food.

Presently the sun rose, and I saw that beneath us was a great stretch of plain
covered with mist, and to the north, on our right, several denser billows of
mist that marked the course of the Crocodile River.

By degrees this mist lifted, tall tops of trees appearing above it, till at
length it thinned into vapour that vanished away as the sun rose. As I watched
it idly, the woman, Jeel, crept up to me in her furtive fashion, touched me on
the shoulder and pointed to a distant group of trees.

Looking closely at these trees, I saw between them what at first I took for
some white rocks. Further examination, as the mist cleared, suggested to my
mind, however, that they might be wagon tilts. Just then the Zulu who
understood Jeel’s talk came up. I asked him as well as I could, for at
that time my knowledge of his tongue was very imperfect, what she wished to
say. He questioned her, and answered that she desired to tell me that those
were the moving houses of the Amaboona (the Boer people), just where she had
seen them nearly two moons ago.

At this tidings my heart seemed to stand still, so that for more than a minute
I could not speak. There were the wagons at last, but—oh! who and what
should I find in them? I called Hans and bade him inspan as quickly as
possible, explaining to him that yonder was Marais’s camp.

“Why not let the oxen fill themselves first, baas?” he answered.
“There is no hurry, for though the wagons are there, no doubt all the
people are dead long ago.”

“Do what I bid you, you ill-omened beast,” I said, “instead
of croaking of death like a crow. And listen: I am going to walk forward to
that camp; you must follow with the wagons as fast as they can travel.”

“No, baas, it is not safe that you should go alone. Kaffirs or wild
beasts might take you.”

“Safe or not, I am going; but if you think it wise, tell two of those
Zulus to come with me.”

A few minutes later I was on the road, followed by the two Kaffirs armed with
spears. In my youth I was a good runner, being strong of leg and light in body,
but I do not think that I ever covered seven miles, for that was about the
distance to the camp, in quicker time than I did that morning. Indeed, I left
those active Kaffirs so far behind that when I approached the trees they were
not in sight. Here I dropped to a walk, as I said to myself—to get my
breath. Really it was because I felt so terrified at what I might find that I
delayed the discovery just for one minute more. While I approached, hope,
however faint, still remained; when I arrived, hope might be replaced by
everlasting despair.

Now I could see that there were some shanties built behind the wagons,
doubtless those “rude houses” of which Marie had written. But I
could not see anyone moving about them, or any cattle or any smoke, or other
sign of life. Nor could I hear a single sound.

Doubtless, thought I to myself, Hans is right. They are all long dead.

My agony of suspense was replaced by an icy calm. At length I knew the worst.
It was finished—I had striven in vain. I walked through the outlying
trees and between two of the wagons. One of these I noticed, as we do notice
things at such times, was the same in which Marais had trekked with his
daughter, his favourite wagon that once I had helped to fit with a new
dissel-boom.

Before me were the rough houses built of the branches of trees, daubed over
with mud, or rather the backs of them, for they faced west. I stood still for a
moment, and as I stood thought that I heard a faint sound as of someone
reciting slowly. I crept along the end of the outermost house and, rubbing the
cold sweat from my eyes, peeped round the corner, for it occurred to me that
savages might be in possession. Then I saw what caused the sound. A tattered,
blackened, bearded man stood at the head of a long and shallow hole saying a
prayer.

It was Henri Marais, although at the time I did not recognise him, so changed
was he. A number of little mounds to the right and left of him told me,
however, that the hole was a grave. As I watched two more men appeared,
dragging between them the body of a woman, which evidently they had not
strength to carry, as its legs trailed upon the ground. From the shape of the
corpse it seemed to be that of a tall young woman, but the features I could not
see, because it was being dragged face downwards. Also the long hair hanging
from the head hid them. It was dark hair, like Marie’s. They reached the
grave, and tumbled their sad burden into it; but I—I could not stir!

At length my limbs obeyed my will. I went forward to the men and said in a
hollow voice in Dutch:

“Whom do you bury?”

“Johanna Meyer,” answered someone mechanically, for they did not
seem to have taken the trouble to look at me. As I listened to those words my
heart, which had stood still waiting for the answer, beat again with a sudden
bound that I could hear in the silence.

I looked up. There, advancing from the doorway of one of the houses, very
slowly, as though overpowered by weakness, and leading by the hand a mere
skeleton of a child, who was chewing some leaves, I saw—I saw Marie
Marais! She was wasted to nothing, but I could not mistake her eyes, those
great soft eyes that had grown so unnaturally large in the white, thin face.

She too saw me and stared for one moment. Then, loosing the child, she cast up
her hands, through which the sunlight shone as through parchment, and slowly
sank to the ground.

“She has gone, too,” said one of the men in an indifferent voice.
“I thought she would not last another day.”

Now for the first time the man at the head of the grave turned. Lifting his
hand, he pointed to me, whereon the other two men turned also.

“God above us!” he said in a choked voice, “at last I am
quite mad. Look! there stands the spook of young Allan, the son of the
English prédicant who lived near Cradock.”

As soon as I heard the voice I knew the speaker.

“Oh, Mynheer Marais!” I cried, “I am no ghost, I am Allan
himself come to save you.”

Marais made no answer; he seemed bewildered. But one of the men cried out
crazily:

“How can you save us, youngster, unless you are ready to be eaten?
Don’t you see, we starve, we starve!”

“I have wagons and food,” I answered.

“Allemachte! Henri,” exclaimed the man, with a wild laugh,
“do you hear what your English spook says? He says that he has
wagons and food, food, food!”

Then Marais burst into tears and flung himself upon my breast, nearly knocking
me down. I wrenched myself free of him and ran to Marie, who was lying face
upwards on the ground. She seemed to hear my step, for her eyes opened and she
struggled to a sitting posture.

“Is it really you, Allan, or do I dream?” she murmured.

“It is I, it is I,” I answered, lifting her to her feet, for she
seemed to weigh no more than a child. Her head fell upon my shoulder, and she
too began to weep.

Still holding her, I turned to the men and said:

“Why do you starve when there is game all about?” and I pointed to
two fat elands strolling among the trees not more than a hundred and fifty
yards away.

“Can we kill game with stones?” asked one of them, “we whose
powder was all burnt a month ago. Those buck,” he added, with a wild
laugh, “come here to mock us every morning; but they will not walk into
our pitfalls. They know them too well, and we have no strength to dig
others.”

Now when I left my wagons I had brought with me that same Purdey rifle with
which I had shot the geese in the match against Pereira, choosing it because it
was so light to carry. I held up my hand for silence, set Marie gently on the
ground, and began to steal towards the elands. Taking what shelter I could, I
got within a hundred yards of them, when suddenly they took alarm, being
frightened, in fact, by my two Zulu servants, who were now arriving.

Off they galloped, the big bull leading, and vanished behind some trees. I saw
their line, and that they would appear again between two clumps of bush about
two hundred and fifty yards away. Hastily I raised the full sight on the rifle,
which was marked for two hundred yards, lifted it, and waited, praying to God
as I did so that my skill might not fail me.

The bull appeared, its head held forward, its long horns lying flat upon the
back. The shot was very long, and the beast very large to bring down with so
small a bullet. I aimed right forward—clear of it, indeed—high too,
in a line with its backbone, and pressed the trigger.

The rifle exploded, the bullet clapped, and the buck sprang forward faster than
ever. I had failed! But what was this? Suddenly the great bull swung round and
began to gallop towards us. When it was not more than fifty yards away, it fell
in a heap, rolled twice over like a shot rabbit, and lay still. That bullet was
in its heart.

The two Kaffirs appeared breathless and streaming with perspiration.

“Cut meat from the eland’s flank; don’t stop to skin
it,” I said in my broken Zulu, helping the words out with signs.

They understood, and a minute later were at work with their assegais. Then I
looked about me. Near by lay a store of dead branches placed there for fuel.

“Have you fire?” I asked of the skeleton Boers, for they were
nothing more.

“Nein, nein,” they answered; “our fire is dead.”

I produced the tinder-box which I carried with me, and struck the flint. Ten
minutes later we had a cheerful blaze, and within three-quarters of an hour
good soup, for iron pots were not wanting—only food to put into them. I
think that for the rest of that day those poor creatures did little else but
eat, sleeping between their meals. Oh! the joy I had in feeding them,
especially after the wagons arrived, bringing with them salt—how they
longed for that salt!—sugar and coffee.

CHAPTER IX.

THE PROMISE

Of the original thirty-five souls, not reckoning natives, who had accompanied
Henri Marais upon his ill-fated expedition, there now remained but nine alive
at the new Maraisfontein. These were himself, his daughter, four
Prinsloos—a family of extraordinary constitution—and three Meyers,
being the husband of the poor woman I had seen committed to the grave and two
of her six children. The rest, Hernan Pereira excepted, had died of fever and
actual starvation, for when the fever lessened with the change of the seasons,
the starvation set in. It appeared that, with the exception of a very little,
they had stored their powder in a kind of outbuilding which they constructed,
placing it at a distance for safety’s sake. When most of the surviving
men were away, however, a grass fire set light to this outbuilding and all the
powder blew up.

After this, for a while they supplied the camp with food by the help of such
ammunition as remained to them. When that failed they dug pits in which to
catch game. In time the buck came to know of these pits, so that they snared no
more.

Then, as the “biltong” or sun-dried meat they had made was all
consumed, they were driven to every desperate expedient that is known to the
starving, such as the digging up of bulbs, the boiling of grass, twigs and
leaves, the catching of lizards, and so forth. I believe that they actually ate
caterpillars and earthworms. But after their last fire went out through the
neglect of the wretched Kaffir who was left to watch it, and having no tinder,
they failed to relight it by friction, of course even this food failed them.
When I arrived they had practically been three days without anything to eat
except green leaves and grass, such as I saw the child chewing. In another
seventy hours doubtless every one of them would have been dead.

Well, they recovered rapidly enough, for those who had survived its ravages
were evidently now impervious to fever. Who can tell the joy that I experienced
as I watched Marie returning from the very brink of the grave to a state of
full and lovely womanhood? After all, we were not so far away from the
primitive conditions of humanity, when the first duty of man was to feed his
women and his children, and I think that something of that instinct remains
with us. At least, I know I never experienced a greater pleasure than I did,
when the woman I loved, the poor, starving woman, ate and ate of the food which
I was able to give her—she who for weeks had existed upon locusts
and herbs.

For the first few days we did not talk much except of the immediate necessities
of the hour, which occupied all our thoughts. Afterwards, when Marais and his
daughter were strong enough to bear it, we had some conversation. He began by
asking how I came to find them.

I replied, through Marie’s letter, which, it appeared, he knew nothing
of, for he had forbidden her to write to me.

“It seems fortunate that you were disobeyed, mynheer,” I said, to
which he answered nothing.

Then I told the tale of the arrival of that letter at the Mission Station in
the Cape Colony by the hand of a wandering smous, and of my desperate
ride upon the swift mare to Port Elizabeth, where I just succeeded in catching
the brig Seven Stars before she sailed. Also I told them of the lucky
chances that enabled me to buy the wagons and find a guide to their camp,
reaching it but a few hours before it was too late.

“It was a great deed,” said Henri Marais, taking the pipe from his
mouth, for I had brought tobacco among my stores. “But tell me, Allan,
why did you do it for the sake of one who has not treated you kindly?”

“I did it,” I answered, “for the sake of one who has always
treated me kindly,” and I nodded towards Marie, who was engaged in
washing up the cooking pots at a distance.

“I suppose so, Allan; but you know she is affianced to another.”

“I know that she is affianced to me, and to no other,” I answered
warmly, adding, “And pray where is this other? If he lives I do not see
him here.”

“No,” replied Marais in a curious voice. “The truth is,
Allan, that Hernan Pereira left us about a fortnight before you came. One horse
remained, which was his, and with two Hottentots, who were also his servants,
he rode back upon the track by which we came, to try to find help. Since then
we have heard nothing of him.”

“Indeed; and how did he propose to get food on the way?”

“He had a rifle, or rather they all three had rifles, and about a hundred
charges between them, which escaped the fire.”

“With a hundred charges of powder carefully used your camp would have
been fed for a month, or perhaps two months,” I remarked. “Yet he
went away with all of them—to find help?”

“That is so, Allan. We begged him to stay, but he would not; and, after
all, the charges were his own property. No doubt he thought he acted for the
best, especially as Marie would have none of him,” Marais added with
emphasis.

“Well,” I replied, “it seems that it is I who have brought
you the help, and not Pereira. Also, by the way, mynheer, I have brought you
the money my father collected on your account, and some £500 of my own, or what
is left of it, in goods and gold. Moreover, Marie does not refuse me. Say,
therefore, to which of us does she belong?”

“It would seem that it should be to you,” he answered slowly,
“since you have shown yourself so faithful, and were it not for you she
would now be lying yonder,” and he pointed to the little heaps that
covered the bones of most of the expedition. “Yes, yes, it would seem
that it should be to you, who twice have saved her life and once have saved
mine also.”

Now I suppose that he saw on my face the joy which I could not conceal, for he
added hastily: “Yet, Allan, years ago I swore on the Book before God that
never with my will should my daughter marry an Englishman, even if he were a
good Englishman. Also, just before we left the Colony, I swore again, in her
presence and that of Hernan Pereira, that I would not give her to you, so I
cannot break my oath, can I? If I did, the good God would be avenged upon
me.”

“Some might think that when I came here the good God was in the way of
being avenged upon you for the keeping of that evil oath,” I answered
bitterly, glancing, in my turn, at the graves.

“Yes, they might, Allan,” he replied without anger, for all his
troubles had induced a reasonable frame of mind in him—for a while.
“Yet, His ways are past finding out, are they not?”

Now my anger broke out, and, rising, I said:

“Do you mean, Mynheer Marais, that notwithstanding the love between us,
which you know is true and deep, and notwithstanding that I alone have been
able to drag both of you and the others out of the claws of death, I am never
to marry Marie? Do you mean that she is to be given to a braggart who deserted
her in her need?”

“And what if I do mean that, Allan?”

“This: although I am still young, as you know well I am a man who can
think and act for himself. Also, I am your master here—I have cattle and
guns and servants. Well, I will take Marie, and if any should try to stop me, I
know how to protect myself and her.”

This bold speech did not seem to surprise him in the least or to make him think
the worse of me. He looked at me for a while, pulling his long beard in a
meditative fashion, then answered:

“I dare say that at your age I should have played the same game, and it
is true that you have things in your fist. But, much as she may love you, Marie
would not go away with you and leave her father to starve.”

“Then you can come with us as my father-in-law, Mynheer Marais. At any
rate, it is certain that I will not go away and leave her here to
starve.”

Now I think that something which he saw in my eye showed him that I was in
earnest. At least, he changed his tone and began to argue, almost to plead.

“Be reasonable, Allan,” he said. “How can you marry Marie
when there is no prédicant to marry you? Surely, if you love her so much, you
would not pour mud upon her name, even in this wilderness?”

“She might not think it mud,” I replied. “Men and women have
been married without the help of priests before now, by open declaration and
public report, for instance, and their children held to be born in wedlock. I
know that, for I have read of the law of marriage.”

“It may be, Allan, though I hold no marriage good unless the holy words
are said. But why do you not let me come to the end of my story?”

“Because I thought it was ended, Mynheer Marais.”

“Not so, Allan. I told you that I had sworn that she should never marry
you with my will. But when she is of age, which will be in some six
months’ time, my will counts no longer, seeing that then she is a free
woman who can dispose of herself. Also I shall be clear of my oath, for no harm
will come to my soul if that happens which I cannot help. Now are you
satisfied?”

“I don’t know,” I answered doubtfully, for somehow all
Marais’s casuistry, which I thought contemptible, did not convince me
that he was sincere. “I don’t know,” I repeated. “Much
may chance in six months.”

“Of course, Allan. For instance, Marie might change her mind and marry
someone else.”

“Or I might not be there to marry, mynheer. Accidents sometimes happen to
men who are not wanted, especially in wild countries or, for the matter of
that, to those who are.”

“Allemachte! Allan, you do not mean that I—”

“No, mynheer,” I interrupted; “but there are other people in
the world besides yourself—Hernan Pereira, for example, if he lives.
Still, I am not the only one concerned in this matter. There is Marie yonder.
Shall I call her?”

He nodded, preferring probably that I should speak to her in his presence
rather than alone.

So I called Marie, who was watching our talk somewhat anxiously while she went
about her tasks. She came at once, a very different Marie to the starving girl
of a while before, for although she was still thin and drawn, her youth and
beauty were returning to her fast under the influences of good food and
happiness.

“What is it, Allan?” she asked gently. I told her all, repeating
our conversation and the arguments which had been used on either side word for
word, as nearly as I could remember them.

“Is that right?” I asked of Marais when I had finished.

“It is right; you have a good memory,” he answered.

“Very well. And now what have you to say, Marie?”

“I, dear Allan? Why, this: My life belongs to you, who have twice saved
this body of mine from death, as my love and spirit belong to you. Therefore, I
should have thought it no shame if I had been given to you here and now before
the people, and afterwards married by a clergyman when we found one. But my
father has sworn an oath which weighs upon his mind, and he has shown you that
within six months—a short six months—that oath dies of itself,
since, by the law, he can no longer control me. So, Allan, as I would not
grieve him, or perhaps lead him to say and do what is foolish, I think it would
be well that we should wait for those six months, if, on his part, he promises
that he will then do nothing to prevent our marriage.”

“Ja, ja, I promise that then I will do nothing to prevent your
marriage,” answered Marais eagerly, like one who has suddenly seen some
loophole of escape from an impossible position, adding, as though to himself,
“But God may do something to prevent it, for all that.”

“We are every one of us in the hand of God,” she replied in her
sweet voice. “Allan, you hear, my father has promised?”

“Yes, Marie, he has promised—after a fashion,” I replied
gloomily, for somehow his words struck a chill through me.

“I have promised, Allan, and I will keep my promise to you, as I have
kept my oath to God, attempting to work you no harm, and leaving all in His
hands. But you, on your part, must promise also that, till she is of age, you
will not take Marie as a wife—no, not if you were left alone together in
the veld. You must be as people who are affianced to each other, no
more.”

So, having no choice, I promised, though with a heavy heart. Then, I suppose in
order to make this solemn contract public, Marais called the surviving Boers,
who were loitering near, and repeated to them the terms of the contract that we
had made.

The men laughed and shrugged their shoulders. But Vrouw Prinsloo, I remember,
said outright that she thought the business foolish, since if anyone had a
right to Marie, I had, wherever I chose to take her. She added that, as for
Hernan Pereira, he was a “sneak and a stinkcat,” who had gone off
to save his own life, and left them all to die. If she were Marie,
should they meet again, she would greet him with a pailful of dirty water in
the face, as she herself meant to do if she got the chance.

Vrouw Prinsloo, it will be observed, was a very outspoken woman and, I may add,
an honest one.

So this contract was settled. I have set it out at length because of its
importance in our story. But now I wish—ah! how I wish that I had
insisted upon being married to Marie then and there. If I had done so, I think
I should have carried my point, for I was the “master of many
legions” in the shape of cattle, food and ammunition, and rather than
risk a quarrel with me, the other Boers would have forced Marais to give way.
But we were young and inexperienced; also it was fated otherwise. Who can
question the decrees of Fate written immutably, perhaps long before we were
born, in the everlasting book of human destinies?

Yet, when I had shaken off my first fears and doubts, my lot and Marie’s
were very happy, a perfect paradise, indeed, compared with what we had gone
through during that bitter time of silence and separation. At any rate, we were
acknowledged to be affianced by the little society in which we lived, including
her father, and allowed to be as much alone together as we liked. This meant
that we met at dawn only to separate at nightfall, for, having little or no
artificial light, we went to rest with the sun, or shortly after it. Sweet,
indeed, was that companionship of perfect trust and love; so sweet, that even
after all these years I do not care to dwell upon the holy memory of those
blessed months.

So soon as the surviving Boers began to recover by the help of my stores and
medicines and the meat which I shot in plenty, of course great discussions
arose as to our future plans. First it was suggested that we should trek to
Lorenzo Marquez, and wait for a ship there to take us down to Natal, for none
of them would hear of returning beggared to the Cape to tell the story of their
failure and dreadful bereavements. I pointed out, however, that no ship might
come for a long while, perhaps for one or two years, and that Lorenzo Marquez
and its neighborhood seemed to be a poisonous place to live in!

The next idea was that we should stop where we were, one which I rather
welcomed, as I should have been glad to abide in peace with Marie until the six
months of probation had gone by.

However, in the end this was rejected for many good reasons. Thus half a score
of white people, of whom four were members of a single family, were certainly
not strong enough to form a settlement, especially as the surrounding natives
might become actively hostile at any moment. Again, the worst fever season was
approaching, in which we should very possibly all be carried off. Further, we
had no breeding cattle or horses, which would not live in this veld, and only
the ammunition and goods that I had brought with me.

So it was clear that but one thing remained to be done, namely, to trek back to
what is now the Transvaal territory, or, better still, to Natal, for this route
would enable us to avoid the worst of the mountains. There we might join some
other party of the emigrant Boers—for choice, that of Retief, of whose
arrival over the Drakensberg I was able to tell them.

That point settled, we made our preparations. To begin with, I had only enough
oxen for two wagons, whereas, even if we abandoned the rest of them, we must
take at least four. Therefore, through my Kaffirs, I opened negotiations with
the surrounding natives, who, when they heard that I was not a Boer and was
prepared to pay for what I bought, soon expressed a willingness to trade.
Indeed, very shortly we had quite a market established, to which cattle were
brought that I bargained for and purchased, giving cloth, knives, hoes, and the
usual Kaffir goods in payment for the same.

Also, they brought mealies and other corn; and oh! the delight with which those
poor people, who for months and months had existed upon nothing but flesh-meat,
ate of this farinaceous food. Never shall I forget seeing Marie and the
surviving children partake of their first meal of porridge, and washing the
sticky stuff down with draughts of fresh, sugared milk, for with the oxen I had
succeeded in obtaining two good cows. It is enough to say that this change of
diet soon completely re-established their health, and made Marie more beautiful
than she had ever been before.

Having got the oxen, the next thing was to break them to the yoke; for,
although docile creatures enough, they had never even seen a wagon. This proved
a long and difficult process, involving many trial trips; moreover, the
selected wagons, one of which had belonged to Pereira, must be mended with very
insufficient tools and without the help of a forge. Indeed, had it not chanced
that Hans, the Hottentot, had worked for a wagon-maker at some indefinite
period of his career, I do not think that we could have managed the job at all.

It was while we were busy with these tasks that some news arrived which was
unpleasing enough to everyone, except perhaps to Henri Marais. I was engaged on
a certain evening in trying to make sixteen of the Kaffir cattle pull together
in the yoke, instead of tying themselves into a double knot and over-setting
the wagon, when Hans, who was helping me, suddenly called out:

“Look! baas, here comes one of my brothers,” or, in other words, a
Hottentot.

Following the line of his hand, I saw a thin and wretched creature, clad only
in some rags and the remains of a big hat with the crown out, staggering
towards us between the trees.

“Why!” exclaimed Marie in a startled voice, for, as usual, she was
at my side, “it is Klaus, one of my cousin Hernan’s
after-riders.”

“So long as it is not your cousin Hernan himself, I do not care,” I
said.

Presently the poor, starved “Totty” arrived, and throwing himself
down, begged for food. A cold shoulder of buck was given to him, which he
devoured, holding it in both hands and tearing off great lumps of flesh with
his teeth like a wild beast.

When at last he was satisfied, Marais, who had come up with the other Boers,
asked him whence he came and what was his news of his master.

“Out of the bush,” he answered, “and my news of the baas is
that he is dead. At least, I left him so ill that I suppose he must be dead by
now.”

“Why did you leave him if he was ill?” asked Marais.

“Because he told me to, baas, that I might find help, for we were
starving, having fired our last bullet.”

“Is he alone, then?”

“Yes, yes, except for the wild beasts and the vultures. A lion ate the
other man, his servant, a long while ago.”

“How far is he off?” asked Marais again.

“Oh, baas, about five hours’ journey on horseback on a good
road.” (This would be some thirty-five miles.)

Then he told this story: Pereira with his two Hottentot servants, he mounted
and they on foot, had traversed about a hundred miles of rough country in
safety, when at night a lion killed and carried off one of the Hottentots, and
frightened away the horse, which was never seen again. Pereira and Klaus
proceeded on foot till they came to a great river, on the banks of which they
met some Kaffirs, who appear to have been Zulus on outpost duty. These men
demanded their guns and ammunition to take to their king, and, on Pereira
refusing to give them up, said that they would kill them both in the morning
after they had made him instruct them in the use of the guns by beating him
with sticks.

In the night a storm came on, under cover of which Pereira and Klaus escaped.
As they dared not go forward for fear lest they should fall into the hands of
the Zulus, they fled back northwards, running all night, only to find in the
morning that they had lost their way in the bush. This had happened nearly a
month before—or, at any rate, Klaus thought so, for no doubt the days
went very slowly—during which time they had wandered about, trying to
shape some sort of course by the sun with the object of returning to the camp.
They met no man, black or white, and supported themselves upon game, which they
shot and ate raw or sun-dried, till at length all their powder was done and
they threw away their heavy roers, which they could no longer carry.

It was at this juncture that from the top of a tall tree Klaus saw a certain
koppie a long way off, which he recognised as being within fifteen miles
or so of Marais’s camp. By now they were starving, only Klaus was the
stronger of the two, for he found and devoured some carrion, a dead hyena I
think it was. Pereira also tried to eat this horrible food, but, not having the
stomach of a Hottentot, the first mouthful of it made him dreadfully ill. They
sought shelter in a cave on the bank of a stream, where grew water-cresses and
other herbs, such as wild asparagus. Here it was that Pereira told Klaus to try
to make his way back to the camp, and, should he find anyone alive there, to
bring him succour.

So Klaus went, taking the remaining leg of the hyena with him, and on the
afternoon of the second day arrived as has been told.

CHAPTER X.

VROUW PRINSLOO SPEAKS HER MIND

Now, when the Hottentot’s story was finished a discussion arose. Marais
said that someone must go to see whether his nephew still lived, to which the
other Boers replied “Ja” in an indifferent voice. Then the
Vrouw Prinsloo took up her parable.

She remarked, as she had done before, that in her judgment Hernan Pereira was
“a stinkcat and a sneak,” who had tried to desert them in their
trouble, and by the judgment of a just God had got into trouble himself.
Personally, she wished that the lion had taken him instead of the worthy
Hottentot, although it gave her a higher opinion of lions to conclude that it
had not done so, because if it did it thought it would have been poisoned.
Well, her view was that it would be just as well to let that traitor lie upon
the bed which he had made. Moreover, doubtless by now he was dead, so what was
the good of bothering about him?

These sentiments appeared to appeal to the Boers, for they remarked:
“Ja, what is the good?”

“Is it right,” asked Marais, “to abandon a comrade in
misfortune, one of our own blood?”

“Mein Gott!” replied Vrouw Prinsloo; “he is no blood
of mine, the evil-odoured Portuguee. But I admit he is of yours, Heer Marais,
being your sister’s son, so it is evident that you should be the one to
go to seek after him.”

“That seems to be so, Vrouw Prinsloo,” said Marais in his
meditative manner; “yet I must remember that I have Marie to look
after.”

“Ach! and so had he, too, until he remembered his own skin, and went off
with the only horse and all the powder, leaving her and the rest of us to
starve. Well, you won’t go, and Prinsloo won’t go, nor my boy
either, for I’ll see to that; so Meyer must go.”

“Nein, nein, good vrouw,” answered Meyer, “I have
those children that are left to me to consider.”

“Then,” exclaimed Vrouw Prinsloo triumphantly, “nobody will
go, so let us forget this stinkcat, as he forgot us.”

“Does it seem right,” asked Marais again, “that a Christian
man should be left to starve in the wilderness?” and he looked at me.

“Tell me, Heer Marais,” I remarked, answering the look, “why
should I of all people go to look for the Heer Pereira, one who has not dealt
too well with me?”

“I do not know, Allan. Yet the Book tells us to turn the other cheek and
to forget injuries. Still, it is for you to judge, remembering that we must
answer for all things at the last day, and not for me. I only know that were I
your age and not burdened with a daughter to watch over, I should
go.”

“Why should you talk to me thus?” I asked with indignation.
“Why do you not go yourself, seeing that I am quite ready to look after
Marie?” (Here the Vrouw Prinsloo and the other Boers tittered.)
“And why do you not address your remarks to these other heeren
instead of to me, seeing that they are the friends and trek-companions of your
nephew?”

At this point the male Prinsloos and Meyer found that they had business
elsewhere.

“It is for you to judge, yet remember, Allan, that it is an awful thing
to appear before our Maker with the blood of a fellow creature upon our hands.
But if you and these other hard-hearted men will not go, I at my age, and weak
as I am with all that I have suffered, will go myself.”

“Good,” said Vrouw Prinsloo; “that is the best way out of it.
You will soon get sick of the journey, Heer Marais, and we shall see no more of
the stinkcat.”

Marais rose in a resigned fashion, for he never deigned to argue with Vrouw
Prinsloo, who was too many for him, and said:

“Farewell, Marie. If I do not return, you will remember my wishes, and my
will may be found between the first leaves of our Holy Book. Get up, Klaus, and
guide me to your master,” and he administered a somewhat vicious kick to
the gorged and prostrate Hottentot.

Now Marie, who all this while had stood silent, touched me on the shoulder and
said:

“Allan, is it well that my father should go alone? Will you not accompany
him?”

“Of course,” I answered cheerfully; “on such a business there
should be two, and some Kaffirs also to carry the man, if he still
lives.”

Now for the end of the story. As the Hottentot Klaus was too exhausted to move
that night, it was arranged that we should start at dawn. Accordingly, I rose
before the light, and was just finishing my breakfast when Marie appeared at
the wagon in which I slept. I got up to greet her, and, there being no one in
sight, we kissed each other several times.

“Have done, my heart,” she said, pushing me away. “I come to
you from my father, who is sick in his stomach and would see you.”

“Which means that I shall have to go after your cousin alone,” I
replied with indignant emphasis.

She shook her head, and led me to the little shanty in which she slept. Here by
the growing light, that entered through the doorway for it had no window, I
perceived Marais seated upon a wooden stool with his hands pressed on his
middle and groaning.

“Good morning, Allan,” he said in a melancholy voice; “I am
ill, very ill, something that I have eaten perhaps, or a chill in the stomach,
such as often precedes fever or dysentery.”

“Perhaps you will get better as you walk, mynheer,” I suggested,
for, to tell the truth, I misdoubted me of this chill, and knew that he had
eaten nothing but what was quite wholesome.

“Walk! God alone knows how I can walk with something gripping my inside
like a wagon-maker’s vice. Yet I will try, for it is impossible to leave
that poor Hernan to die alone; and if I do not go to seek him, it seems that no
one else will.”

“Why should not some of my Kaffirs go with Klaus?” I asked.

“Allan,” he replied solemnly, “if you were dying in a cave
far from help, would you think well of those who sent raw Kaffirs to succour
you when they might have come themselves, Kaffirs who certainly would let you
die and return with some false story?”

“I don’t know what I should think, Heer Marais. But I do know that
if I were in that cave and Pereira were in this camp, neither would he
come himself, nor so much as send a savage to save me.”

“It may be so, Allan. But even if another’s heart is black, should
yours be black also? Oh! I will come, though it be to my death,” and,
rising from the stool with the most dreadful groan, he began to divest himself
of the tattered blanket in which he was wrapped up.

“Oh! Allan, my father must not go; it will kill him,” exclaimed
Marie, who took a more serious view of his case than I did.

“Very well, if you think so,” I answered. “And now, as it is
time for me to be starting, good-bye.”

“You have a good heart, Allan,” said Marais, sinking back upon his
stool and resuming his blanket, while Marie looked despairingly first at one
and then at the other of us.

Half an hour later I was on the road in the very worst of tempers.

“Mind what you are about,” called Vrouw Prinsloo after me.
“It is not lucky to save an enemy, and if I know anything of that
stinkcat, he will bite your finger badly by way of gratitude. Bah! lad, if I
were you I should just camp for a few days in the bush, and then come back and
say that I could find nothing of Pereira except the dead hyenas that had been
poisoned by eating him. Good luck to you all the same, Allan; may I find such a
friend in need. It seems to me that you were born to help others.”

Beside the Hottentot Klaus, my companions on this unwelcome journey were three
of the Zulu Kaffirs, for Hans I was obliged to leave in charge of my cattle and
goods with the other men. Also, I took a pack-ox, an active beast that I had
been training to carry loads and, if necessary a man, although as yet it was
not very well broken.

All that day we marched over extremely rough country, till at last darkness
found us in a mountainous kloof, where we slept, surrounded by watch-fires
because of the lions. Next morning at the first light we moved on again, and
about ten o’clock waded through a stream to a little natural cave, where
Klaus said he had left his master. This cave seemed extremely silent, and, as I
hesitated for a moment at its mouth, the thought crossed my mind that if
Pereira were still there, he must be dead. Indeed, do what I would to suppress
it, with that reflection came a certain feeling of relief and even of pleasure.
For well I knew that Pereira alive was more dangerous to me than all the wild
men and beasts in Africa put together. Thrusting back this unworthy sentiment
as best I could, I entered the cave alone, for the natives, who dread the
defilement of the touch of a corpse, lingered outside.

It was but a shallow cavity washed out of the overhanging rock by the action of
water; and as soon as my eyes grew accustomed to its gloom, I saw that at the
end of it lay a man. So still did he lie, that now I was almost certain that
his troubles were over. I went up to him and touched his face, which was cold
and clammy, and then, quite convinced, turned to leave the place, which, I
thought, if a few rocks were piled in the mouth of it, would make an excellent
sepulchre.

Just as I stepped out into the sunlight, and was about to call to the men to
collect the rocks, however, I thought that I heard a very faint groan behind
me, which at the moment I set down to imagination. Still, I returned, though I
did not much like the job, knelt down by the figure, and waited with my hand
over its heart. For five minutes or more I stayed here, and then, quite
convinced, was about to leave again when, for the second time, I heard that
faint groan. Pereira was not dead, but only on the extreme brink of death!

I ran to the entrance of the cave, calling the Kaffirs, and together we carried
him out into the sunlight. He was an awful spectacle, mere bone with yellow
skin stretched over it, and covered with filth and clotted blood from some
hurt. I had brandy with me, of which I poured a little down his throat, whereon
his heart began to beat feebly. Then we made some soup, and poured that down
his throat with more brandy, and the end of it was he came to life again.

For three days did I doctor that man, and really I believe that if at any time
during those days I had relaxed my attentions even for a couple of hours, he
would have slipped through my fingers, for at this business Klaus and the
Kaffirs were no good at all. But I pulled him round, and on the third morning
he came to his senses. For a long while he stared at me, for I had laid him in
the mouth of the cave, where the light was good, although the overhanging rocks
protected him from the sun. Then he said:

“Allemachte! you remind me of someone, young man. I know. It is of that
damned English boy who beat me at the goose shooting, and made me quarrel with
Oom [uncle] Retief, the jackanapes that Marie was so fond of. Well,
whoever you are, you can’t be he, thank God.”

“You are mistaken, Heer Pereira,” I answered. “I am that same
damned young English jackanapes, Allan Quatermain by name, who beat you at
shooting. But if you take my advice, you will thank God for something else,
namely, that your life has been saved.”

“Who saved it?” he asked.

“If you want to know, I did; I have been nursing you these three
days.”

“You, Allan Quatermain! Now, that is strange, for certainly I would not
have saved yours,” and he laughed a little, then turned over and went to
sleep.

From that time forward his recovery was rapid, and two days later we began our
journey back to Marais’s camp, the convalescent Pereira being carried in
a litter by the four natives. It was a task at which they grumbled a good deal,
for the load was heavy over rough ground, and whenever they stumbled or shook
him he cursed at them. So much did he curse, indeed, that at length one of the
Zulus, a man with a rough temper, said that if it were not for the Inkoos,
meaning myself, he would put his assegai through him, and let the vultures
carry him. After this Pereira grew much more polite. When the bearers became
exhausted we set him on the pack-ox, which two of us led, while the other two
supported him on either side. It was in this fashion that at last we arrived at
the camp one evening.

Here the Vrouw Prinsloo was the first to greet us. We found her standing in the
game path which we were following, quite a quarter of a mile from the wagons,
with her hands set upon her broad hips and her feet apart. Her attitude was so
defiant, and had about it such an air of premeditation, that I cannot help
thinking she had got wind of our return, perhaps from having seen the smoke of
our last fires, and was watching for us. Also, her greeting was warm.

“Ah! here you come, Hernan Pereira,” she cried, “riding on an
ox, while better men walk. Well, now, I want a chat with you. How came it that
you went off in the night, taking the only horse and all the powder?”

“I went to get help for you,” he replied sulkily.

“Did you, did you, indeed! Well, it seems that it was you who wanted the
help, after all. What do you mean to pay the Heer Allan Quatermain for saving
your life, for I am sure he has done so? You have got no goods left, although
you were always boasting about your riches; they are now at the bottom of a
river, so it will have to be in love and service.”

He muttered something about my wanting no payment for a Christian act.

“No, he wants no payment, Hernan Pereira, he is one of the true sort, but
you’ll pay him all the same and in bad coin if you get the chance. Oh! I
have come out to tell you what I think of you. You are a stinkcat; do you hear
that? A thing that no dog would bite if he could help it! You are a traitor
also. You brought us to this cursed country, where you said your relatives
would give us wealth and land, and then, after famine and fever attacked us,
you rode away, and left us to die to save your own dirty skin. And now you come
back here for help, saved by him whom you cheated in the Goose Kloof, by him
whose true love you have tried to steal. Oh, mein Gott! why does the
Almighty leave such fellows alive, while so many that are good and honest and
innocent lie beneath the soil because of stinkcats like you?”

So she went on, striding at the side of the pack-ox, and reviling Pereira in a
ceaseless stream of language, until at length he thrust his thumbs into his
ears and glared at her in speechless wrath.

Thus it was that at last we arrived in the camp, where, having seen us coming,
all the Boers were gathered. They are not a particularly humorous people, but
this spectacle of the advance of Pereira seated on the pack-ox, a steed that is
becoming to few riders, with the furious and portly Vrouw Prinsloo striding at
his side and shrieking abuse at him, caused them to burst into laughter. Then
Pereira’s temper gave out, and he became even more abusive than Vrouw
Prinsloo.

“Is this the way you receive me, you veld-hogs, you common Boers, who are
not fit to mix with a man of position and learning like myself?” he
began.

“Then in God’s name why do you mix with us, Hernan Pereira?”
asked the saturnine Meyer, thrusting his face forward till the Newgate fringe
he wore by way of a beard literally seemed to curl with wrath. “When we
were hungry you did not wish it, for you slunk away and left us, taking all the
powder. But now that we are full again, thanks to the little Englishman, and
you are hungry, you come back. Well, if I had my way I would give you a gun and
six days’ rations, and turn you out to shift for yourself.”

“Don’t be afraid, Jan Meyer,” shouted Pereira from the back
of the pack-ox. “As soon as I am strong enough I will leave you in charge
of your English captain here”—and he pointed to me—“and
go to tell our people what sort of folk you are.”

“That is good news,” interrupted Prinsloo, a stolid old Boer, who
stood by puffing at his pipe. “Get well, get well as soon as you can,
Hernan Pereira.”

It was at this juncture that Marais arrived, accompanied by Marie. Where he
came from I do not know, but I think he must have been keeping in the
background on purpose to see what kind of a reception Pereira would meet with.

“Silence, brothers,” he said. “Is this the way you greet my
nephew, who has returned from the gate of death, when you should be on your
knees thanking God for his deliverance?”

“Then go on your knees and thank Him yourself, Henri Marais,”
screamed the irrepressible Vrouw Prinsloo. “I give thanks for the safe
return of Allan here, though it is true they would be warmer if he had left
this stinkcat behind him. Allemachte! Henri Marais, why do you make so much of
this Portuguese fellow? Has he bewitched you? Or is it because he is your
sister’s son, or because you want to force Marie there to marry him? Or
is it, perhaps, that he knows of something bad in your past life, and you have
to bribe him to keep his mouth shut?”

Now, whether this last unpleasant suggestion was a mere random arrow drawn from
Vrouw Prinsloo’s well-stored quiver, or whether the vrouw had got hold of
the tail-end of some long-buried truth, I do not know. Of course, however, the
latter explanation is possible. Many men have done things in their youth which
they do not wish to see dug up in their age; and Pereira may have learned a
family secret of the kind from his mother.

At any rate, the effect of the old lady’s words upon Marais was quite
remarkable. Suddenly he went into one of his violent and constitutional rages.
He cursed Vrouw Prinsloo. He cursed everybody else, assuring them severally and
collectively that Heaven would come even with them. He said there was a plot
against him and his nephew, and that I was at the bottom of it, I who had made
his daughter fond of my ugly little face. So furious were his words, whereof
there were many more which I have forgotten, that at length Marie began to cry
and ran away. Presently, too, the Boers strolled off, shrugging their
shoulders, one of them saying audibly that Marais had gone quite mad at last,
as he always thought he would.

Then Marais followed them, throwing up his arms and still cursing as he went,
and, slipping over the tail of the pack-ox, Pereira followed him. So the Vrouw
Prinsloo and I were left alone, for the coloured men had departed, as they
always do when white people begin to quarrel.

“There, Allan, my boy,” said the vrouw in triumph, “I have
found the sore place on the mule’s back, and didn’t I make him
squeal and kick, although on most days of the week he seems to be such a good
and quiet mule—at any rate, of late.”

“I dare say you did, vrouw,” I said wrathfully, “but I wish
you would leave Mynheer Marais’s sore places alone, seeing that if the
squeals are for you, the kicks are for me.”

“What does that matter, Allan?” she asked. “He always was
your enemy, so that it is just as well you should see his heels when you are
out of reach of them. My poor boy, I think you will have a bad time of it
between the stinkcat and the mule, although you have done so much for both of
them. Well, there is one thing—Marie has a true heart. She will never
marry any man except yourself, Allan—even if you are not here to
marry,” she added by an afterthought.

The old lady paused a little, staring at the ground. Then she looked up and
said:

“Allan, my dear” (for she was really fond of me, and called me thus
at times), “you didn’t take the advice I gave you, namely, to look
for Pereira and not to find him. Well, I will give you some more, which you
will take if you are wise.”

“What is it?” I asked doubtfully; for, although she was upright
enough in her own way, the Vrouw Prinsloo could bring herself to look at things
in strange lights. Like many other women, she judged of moral codes by the
impulses of her heart, and was quite prepared to stretch them to suit
circumstances or to gain an end which she considered good in itself.

“Just this, lad. Do you make a two days’ march with Marie into the
bush. I want a little change, so I will come, too, and marry you there; for I
have got a prayer-book, and can spell out the service if we go through it once
or twice first.”

Now, the vision of Marie and myself being married by the Vrouw Prinsloo in the
vast and untrodden veld, although attractive, was so absurd that I laughed.

“Why do you laugh, Allan? Anyone can marry people if there is no one else
there; indeed, I believe that they can marry themselves.”

“I dare say,” I answered, not wishing to enter into a legal
argument with the vrouw. “But you see, Tante, I solemnly promised her
father that I would not marry her until she was of age, and if I broke my word
I should not be an honest man.”

“An honest man!” she exclaimed with the utmost contempt; “an
honest man! Well, are Marais and Hernan Pereira honest men? Why do you not cut
your stick the same length as theirs, Allan Quatermain? I tell you that your
verdomde honesty will be your ruin. You remember my words later
on,” and she marched off in high dudgeon.

When she had gone I went to my wagons, where Hans was waiting for me with a
detailed and interminable report of everything that had happened in my absence.
Glad was I to find that, except for the death of one sickly ox, nothing had
gone wrong. When at length he had ended his long story, I ate some food which
Marie sent over for me ready cooked, for I was too tired to join any of the
Boers that night. Just as I had finished my meal and was thinking of turning
in, Marie herself appeared within the circle of the camp-fire’s light. I
sprang up and ran to her, saying that I had not expected to see her that
evening, and did not like to come to the house.

“No,” she answered, drawing me back into the shadows, “I
understand. My father seems very much upset, almost mad, indeed. If the Vrouw
Prinsloo’s tongue had been a snake’s fang, it could not have stung
him worse.”

“And where is Pereira?” I asked.

“Oh! my cousin sleeps in the other room. He is weak and worn out. All the
same, Allan, he wanted to kiss me. So I told him at once how matters stood
between you and me, and that we were to be married in six months.”

“What did he say to that?” I asked.

“He turned to my father and said: ‘Is this true, my uncle?’
And my father answered: ‘Yes, that is the best bargain I could make with
the Englishman, seeing that you were not here to make a better.’”

“And what happened then, Marie?”

“Oh, then Hernan thought a while. At last he looked up and said: ‘I
understand. Things have gone badly. I acted for the best, who went away to try
to find help for all of you. I failed. Meanwhile the Englishman came and saved
you. Afterwards he saved me also. Uncle, in all this I see God’s hand;
had it not been for this Allan none of us would be alive. Yes, God used him
that we might be kept alive. Well, he has promised that he will not marry Marie
for six months. And you know, my uncle, that some of these English are great
fools; they keep their promises even to their own loss. Now, in six months much
may happen; who knows what will happen?’”

“Were you present when you heard all this, Marie?” I asked.

“No, Allan; I was the other side of the reed partition. But at those
words I entered and said: ‘My father and Cousin Hernan, please understand
that there is one thing which will never happen.’

“‘What is that?’ asked my cousin.

“‘It will never happen that I shall marry you, Hernan,’ I
replied.

“‘Who knows, Marie, who knows?’ he said.

“‘I do, Hernan,’ I answered. ‘Even if Allan were to die
to-morrow, I would not marry you, either then or twenty years hence. I am glad
that he has saved your life, but henceforth we are cousins, nothing
more.’

“‘You hear what the girl tells us,’ said my father;
‘why do you not give up the business? What is the use of kicking against
the pricks?’

“‘If one wears stout boots and kicks hard enough, the pricks give
way,’ said Hernan. ‘Six months is a long time, my uncle.’

“‘It may be so, cousin,’ I said; ‘but remember that
neither six months nor six years, nor six thousand years, are long enough to
make me marry any man except Allan Quatermain, who has just rescued you from
death. Do you understand?’

“‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I understand that you will not
marry me. Only then I promise that you shall not marry either Allan Quatermain
or any other man.’

“‘God will decide that,’ I answered, and came away, leaving
him and my father together. And now, Allan, tell me all that has happened since
we parted.”

So I told her everything, including the Vrouw Prinsloo’s advice.

“Of course, Allan, you were quite right,” she remarked when I had
finished; “but I am not sure that the Vrouw Prinsloo was not also right
in her own fashion. I am afraid of my cousin Hernan, who holds my father in his
hand—fast, fast. Still, we have promised, and must keep our word.”

CHAPTER XI.

THE SHOT IN THE KLOOF

I think it was about three weeks after these events that we began our southward
trek. On the morning subsequent to our arrival at Marais’s camp, Pereira
came up to me when several people were present, and, taking my hand, thanked me
in a loud voice for having saved his life. Thenceforward, he declared, I should
be dearer to him than a brother, for was there not a blood bond between us?

I answered I did not think any such bond existed; indeed, I was not sure what
it meant. I had done my duty by him, neither less nor more, and there was
nothing further to be said.

It turned out, however, that there was a great deal further to be said, since
Pereira desired to borrow money, or, rather, goods, from me. He explained that
owing to the prejudices of the vulgar Boers who remained alive in that camp,
and especially of the scandalous-tongued Vrouw Prinsloo, both he and his uncle
had come to the conclusion that it would be wise for him to remove himself as
soon as possible. Therefore he proposed to trek away alone.

I answered that I should have thought he had done enough solitary travelling in
this veld, seeing how his last expedition had ended. He replied that he had,
indeed, but everyone here was so bitter against him that no choice was left.
Then he added with an outburst of truth:

“Allemachte! Mynheer Quatermain, do you suppose that it is pleasant for
me to see you making love all day to the maid who was my betrothed, and to see
her paying back the love with her eyes? Yes, and doubtless with her lips, too,
from all I hear.”

“You could leave her whom you called your betrothed, but who never was
betrothed to anyone but me with her own will, to starve in the veld, mynheer.
Why, then, should you be angry because I picked up that which you threw away,
that, too, which was always my own and not yours? Had it not been for me, there
would now be no maid left for us to quarrel over, as, had it not been for me,
there would be no man left for me to quarrel with about the maid.”

“Are you God, then, Englishman, that you dispose of the lives of men and
women at your will? It was He Who saved us, not you.”

“He may have saved you, but it was through me. I carried out the rescue
of these poor people whom you deserted, and I nursed you back to life.”

“I did not desert them; I went to get help for them.”

“Taking all the powder and the only horse with you! Well, that is done
with, and now you want to borrow goods to pay for cattle—from me, whom
you hate. You are not proud, Mynheer Pereira, when you have an end to serve,
whatever that end may be,” and I looked at him. My instinct warned me
against this false and treacherous man, who, I felt, was even then plotting in
his heart to bring some evil upon me.

“No, I am not proud. Why should I be, seeing that I mean to repay you
twice over for anything which you may lend me now?”

I reflected a while. Certainly our journey to Natal would be pleasanter if
Pereira were not of the company. Also, if he went with us, I was sure that
before we came to the end of that trek, one or other of us would leave his
bones on the road. In short, not to put too fine a point on it, I feared lest
in this way or in that he would bring me to my death in order that he might
possess himself of Marie. We were in a wild country, with few witnesses and no
law courts, where such deeds might be done again and again and the doer never
called to account for lack of evidence and judges.

So I made up my mind to fall in with his wishes, and we began to bargain. The
end of it was that I advanced him enough of my remaining goods to buy the
cattle he required from the surrounding natives. It was no great quantity,
after all, seeing that in this uncivilised place an ox could be purchased for a
few strings of beads or a cheap knife. Further, I sold him a few of the beasts
that I had broken, a gun, some ammunition and certain other necessaries, for
all of which things he gave me a note of hand written in my pocket-book.
Indeed, I did more; for as none of the Boers would help him I assisted Pereira
to break in the cattle he bought, and even consented when he asked me to give
him the services of two of the Zulus whom I had hired.

All these preparations took a long while. If I remember right, twelve more days
had gone by before Pereira finally trekked off from Marais’s camp, by
which time he was quite well and strong again.

We all assembled to see the start, and Marais offered up a prayer for his
nephew’s safe journey and our happy meeting again in Natal at the laager
of Retief, which was to be our rendezvous, if that leader were still in Natal.
No one else joined in the prayer. Only Vrouw Prinsloo audibly added another of
her own. It was to the effect that he might not come back a second time, and
that she might never see his face again, either at Retief’s laager or
anywhere else, if it would please the good Lord so to arrange matters.

The Boers tittered; even the Meyer children tittered, for by this time the
hatred of the Vrouw Prinsloo for Hernan Pereira was the joke of the place. But
Pereira himself pretended not to hear, said good-bye to us all affectionately,
adding a special petition for the Vrouw Prinsloo, and off we went.

I say “we went” because with my usual luck, to help him with the
half-broken oxen, I was commandeered to accompany this man to his first
outspan, a place with good water about twelve miles from the camp, where he
proposed to remain for the night.

Now, as we started about ten o’clock in the morning and the veld was
fairly level, I expected that we should reach this outspan by three or four in
the afternoon, which would give me time to walk back before sunset. In fact,
however, so many accidents happened of one sort or another, both to the wagon
itself, of which the woodwork had shrunk with long standing in the sun, and to
the cattle, which, being unused to the yoke, tied themselves in a double knot
upon every opportunity, that we only arrived there at the approach of night.

The last mile of that trek was through a narrow gorge cut out by water in the
native rock. Here trees grew sparsely, also great ferns, but the bottom of the
gorge, along which game were accustomed to travel, was smooth enough for
wagons, save for a few fallen boulders, which it was necessary to avoid.

When at length we reached the outspan I asked the Hottentot, Klaus, who was
assisting me to drive the team, where his master was, for I could not see him
anywhere. He answered that he had gone back down the kloof to look for
something that had fallen from the wagon, a bolt I think he said.

“Very good,” I replied. “Then tell him, if we do not meet,
that I have returned to the camp.”

As I set out the sun was sinking below the horizon, but this did not trouble me
overmuch, as I had a rifle with me, that same light rifle with which I had shot
the geese in the great match. Also I knew that the moon, being full, would be
up presently.

The sun sank, and the kloof was plunged in gloom. The place seemed eerie and
lonesome, and suddenly I grew afraid. I began to wonder where Pereira was, and
what he might be doing. I even thought of turning back and finding some way
round, only having explored all this district pretty thoroughly in my various
shooting expeditions from the camp, I knew there was no practicable path across
those hills. So I went on with my rifle at full cock, whistling to keep up my
courage, which, of course, in the circumstances was a foolish thing to do. It
occurred to me at the time that it was foolish, but, in truth, I would not give
way to the dark suspicions which crossed my mind. Doubtless by now Pereira had
passed me and reached the outspan.

The moon began to shine—that wonderful African moon, which turns night to
day—throwing a network of long, black shadows of trees and rocks across
the game track I was following. Right ahead of me was a particularly dark patch
of this shadow, caused by a projecting wall of cliff, and beyond it an equally
bright patch of moonlight. Somehow I misdoubted me of that stretch of gloom,
for although, of course, I could see nothing there, my quick ear caught the
sound of movements.

I halted for a moment. Then, reflecting that these were doubtless caused by
some night-walking creature, which, even should it chance to be dangerous,
would flee at the approach of man, I plunged into it boldly. As I emerged at
the other end—the shadow was eighteen or twenty paces long—it
occurred to me that if any enemy were lurking there, I should be an easy target
as I entered the line of clear light. So, almost instinctively, for I do not
remember that I reasoned the thing out, after my first two steps forward in the
light I gave a little spring to the left, where there was still shadow,
although it was not deep. Well was it for me that I did so, for at that moment
I felt something touch my cheek and heard the loud report of a gun immediately
behind me.

Now, the wisest course would have been for me to run before whoever had fired
found time to reload. But a kind of fury seized me, and run I would not. On the
contrary, I turned with a shout, and charged back into the shadow. Something
heard me coming, something fled in front of me. In a few seconds we were out
into the moonlight beyond, and, as I expected, I saw that this something was a
man—Pereira!

He halted and wheeled round, lifting the stock of his gun, club fashion.

“Thank God! it is you, Heer Allan,” he said; “I thought you
were a tiger.”

“Then it is your last thought, murderer,” I answered, raising my
rifle.

“Don’t shoot,” he said. “Would you have my blood upon
you? Why do you want to kill me?”

“Why did you try to kill me?” I answered, covering him.

“I try to kill you! Are you mad? Listen, for your own sake. I sat down on
the bank yonder waiting for the moon, and, being tired, fell asleep. Then I
woke up with a start, and, thinking from the sounds that a tiger was after me,
fired to scare it. Allemachte! man, if I had aimed at you, could I have missed
at that distance?”

“You did not quite miss, and had I not stepped to the left, you would
have blown my head off. Say your prayers, you dog!”

“Allan Quatermain,” he exclaimed with desperate energy, “you
think I lie, who speak the truth. Kill me if you will, only then remember that
you will hang for it. We court one woman, that is known, and who will believe
this story of yours that I tried to shoot you? Soon the Kaffirs will come to
look for me, probably they are starting already, and will find my body with
your bullet in my heart. Then they will take it back to Marais’s camp,
and I say—who will believe your story?”

“Some, I think, murderer,” but as I spoke the words a chill of fear
struck me. It was true, I could prove nothing, having no witnesses, and
henceforward I should be a Cain among the Boers, one who had slain a man for
jealousy. His gun was empty; yes, but it might be said that I had fired it
after his death. And as for the graze upon my cheek—why, a twig might
have caused it. What should I do, then? Drive him before me to the camp, and
tell this tale? Even then it would be but my word against his. No, he had me in
a forked stick. I must let him go, and trust that Heaven would avenge his
crime, since I could not. Moreover, by now my first rage was cooling, and to
execute a man thus—

“Hernan Pereira,” I said, “you are a liar and a coward. You
tried to butcher me because Marie loves me and hates you, and you want to force
her to marry you. Yet I cannot shoot you down in cold blood as you deserve. I
leave it to God to punish you, as, soon or late, He will, here or hereafter;
you who thought to slaughter me and trust to the hyenas to hide your crime, as
they would have done before morning. Get you gone before I change my mind, and
be swift.”

Without another word he turned and ran swiftly as a buck, leaping from side to
side as he ran, to disturb my aim in case I should shoot.

When he was a hundred yards away or more I, too, turned and ran, never feeling
safe till I knew there was a mile of ground between us.

It was past ten o’clock that night when I got back to the camp, where I
found Hans the Hottentot about to start to look for me, with two of the Zulus,
and told him that I had been detained by accidents to the wagon. The Vrouw
Prinsloo was still up also, waiting to hear of my arrival.

“What was the accident, Allan?” she asked. “It looks as
though there had been a bullet in it,” and she pointed to the bloody
smear upon my cheek.

I nodded.

“Pereira’s?” she asked again.

I nodded a second time.

“Did you kill him?”

“No; I let him go. It would have been said that I murdered him,”
and I told her what had happened.

“Ja, Allan,” she remarked when I had finished. “I
think you were wise, for you could have proved nothing. But oh! for what fate,
I wonder, is God Almighty saving up that stinkcat. Well, I will go and tell
Marie that you are back safe, for her father won’t let her out of the hut
so late; but nothing more unless you wish it.”

“No, Tante; I think nothing more, at any rate at present.”

Here I may state, however, that within a few days Marie and everyone else in
the camp knew the story in detail, except perhaps Marais, to whom no one spoke
of his nephew. Evidently Vrouw Prinsloo had found herself unable to keep secret
such an example of the villainy of her aversion, Pereira. So she told her
daughter, who told the others quickly enough, though I gathered that some of
them set down what had happened to accident. Bad as they knew Pereira to be,
they could not believe that he was guilty of so black a crime.

About a week later the rest of us started from Marais’s camp, a place
that, notwithstanding the sadness of many of its associations, I confess I left
with some regret. The trek before us, although not so very long, was of an
extremely perilous nature. We had to pass through about two hundred miles of
country of which all we knew was that its inhabitants were the Amatonga and
other savage tribes. Here I should explain that after much discussion we had
abandoned the idea of retracing the route followed by Marais on his ill-fated
journey towards Delagoa.

Had we taken this it would have involved our crossing the terrible Lobombo
Mountains, over which it was doubtful whether our light cattle could drag the
wagons. Moreover, the country beyond the mountains was said to be very bare of
game and also of Kaffirs, so that food might be lacking. On the other hand, if
we kept to the east of the mountains the veld through which we must pass was
thickly populated, which meant that in all probability we could buy grain.

What finally decided us to adopt this route, however, was that here in these
warm, low-lying lands there would be grass for the oxen. Indeed, now, at the
beginning of spring, in this part of Africa it was already pushing. Even if it
were not, the beasts could live upon what herbage remained over from last
summer and on the leaves of trees, neither of which in this winter veld ever
become quite lifeless, whereas on the sere and fire-swept plains beyond the
mountains they might find nothing at all. So we determined to risk the savages
and the lions which followed the game into these hot districts, especially as
it was not yet the fever season or that of the heavy rains, so that the rivers
would be fordable.

I do not propose to set out our adventures in detail, for these would be too
long. Until the great one of which I shall have to tell presently, they were of
an annoying rather than of a serious nature. Travelling as we did, between the
mountains and the sea, we could not well lose our way, especially as my Zulus
had passed through that country; and when their knowledge failed us, we
generally managed to secure the services of local guides. The roads, however,
or rather the game tracks and Kaffir paths which we followed, were terrible,
for with the single exception of that of Pereira for part of the distance, no
wagon had ever gone over them before. Indeed, a little later in the year they
could not have been travelled at all. Sometimes we stuck in bogs out of which
we had to dig the wheels, and sometimes in the rocky bottoms of streams, while
once we were obliged literally to cut our way through a belt of dense bush from
which it took us eight days to escape.

Our other chief trouble came from the lions, whereof there were great numbers
in this veld. The prevalence of these hungry beasts forced us to watch our
cattle very closely while they grazed, and at night, wherever it was possible,
to protect them and ourselves in bomas, or fences of thorns, within which
we lit fires to scare away wild beasts. Notwithstanding these precautions, we
lost several of the oxen, and ourselves had some narrow escapes.

Thus, one night, just as Marie was about to enter the wagon where the women
slept, a great lion, desperate with hunger, sprang over the fence. She leapt
away from the beast, and in so doing caught her foot and fell down, whereon the
lion came for her. In another few seconds she would have been dead, or carried
off living.

But as it chanced, Vrouw Prinsloo was close at hand. Seizing a flaming bough
from the fire, that intrepid woman ran at the lion and, as it opened its huge
mouth to roar or bite, thrust the burning end of the bough into its throat. The
lion closed its jaws upon it, then finding the mouthful not to its taste,
departed even more quickly than it had come, uttering the most dreadful noises,
and leaving Marie quite unhurt. Needless to say, after this I really worshipped
the Vrouw Prinsloo, though she, good soul, thought nothing of the business,
which in those days was but a common incident of travel.

I think it was on the day after this lion episode that we came upon
Pereira’s wagon, or rather its remains. Evidently he had tried to trek
along a steep, rocky bank which overhung a stream, with the result that the
wagon had fallen into the stream-bed, then almost dry, and been smashed beyond
repair.

The Tonga natives of the neighbourhood, who had burned most of the woodwork in
order to secure the precious iron bolts and fittings, informed us that the
white man and his servants who were with the wagon had gone forward on foot
some ten days before, driving their cattle with them. Whether this story were
true or not we had no means of finding out. It was quite possible that Pereira
and his companions had been murdered, though as we found the Tongas very quiet
folk if well treated and given the usual complimentary presents for wayleaves,
this did not seem probable. Indeed, a week later our doubts upon this point
were cleared up thus.

We had reached a big kraal called Fokoti, on the Umkusi River, which appeared
to be almost deserted. We asked an old woman whom we met where its people had
gone. She answered that they had fled towards the borders of Swaziland, fearing
an attack from the Zulus, whose territories began beyond this Umkusi River. It
seemed that a few days before a Zulu impi or regiment had appeared upon the
banks of the river, and although there was no war at the time between the Zulus
and the Tongas, the latter had thought it wise to put themselves out of reach
of those terrible spears.

On hearing this news we debated whether it would not be well for us to follow
their example and, trekking westwards, try to find a pass in the mountains.
Upon this point there was a division of opinion among us. Marais, who was a
fatalist, wished to go on, saying that the good Lord would protect us, as He
had done in the past.

“Allemachte!” answered the Vrouw Prinsloo. “Did He protect
all those who lie dead at Marais’s camp, whither your folly led us,
mynheer? The good Lord expects us to look after our own skins, and I know that
these Zulus are of the same blood as Umsilikazi’s Kaffirs, who have
killed so many of our people. Let us try the mountains, say I.”

Of course her husband and son agreed with her, for to them the vrouw’s
word was law; but Marais, being, as usual, obstinate, would not give way. All
that afternoon they wrangled, while I held my tongue, declaring that I was
willing to abide by the decision of the majority. In the end, as I foresaw they
would, they appealed to me to act as umpire between them.

“Friends,” I answered, “if you had asked me my opinion
before, I should have voted for trying the mountains, beyond which, perhaps, we
might find some Boers. I do not like this story of the Zulu impi. I think that
someone has told them of our coming, and that it is us they mean to attack and
not the Tongas, with whom they are at peace. My men say that it is not usual
for impis to visit this part of the country.”

“Who could have told them?” asked Marais.

“I don’t know, mynheer. Perhaps the natives have sent on word, or
perhaps—Hernan Pereira.”

“I knew that you would suspect my nephew, Allan,” he exclaimed
angrily.

“I suspect no one; I only weigh what is probable. However, it is too late
for us to move to-night either south or westwards, so I think I will sleep over
the business and see what I can find out from my Zulus.”

That night, or rather the following morning, the question was settled for us,
for when I woke up at dawn, it was to see the faint light glimmering on what I
knew must be spears. We were surrounded by a great company of Zulus, as I
discovered afterwards, over two hundred strong. Thinking that after their
fashion they were preparing to attack us at dawn, I called the news to the
others, whereon Marais rushed forward, just as he had left his bed, cocking his
roer as he came.

“For the love of God, do not shoot!” I said. “How can we
resist so many? Soft words are our only chance.”

Still he attempted to fire, and would have done so had I not thrown myself upon
him and literally torn the gun from his hand. By this time the Vrouw Prinsloo
had come up, a very weird spectacle, I recollect, in what she called her
“sleep-garments,” that included a night-cap made of a worn jackal
skin and a kind of otter-pelt stomacher.

“Accursed fool!” she said to Marais, “would you cause all our
throats to be cut? Go forward, you, Allan, and talk to those
swartzels” (that is, black creatures), “gently, as you would
to a savage dog. You have a tongue steeped in oil, and they may listen to
you.”

“Yes,” I answered; “that seems the best thing to do. If I
should not return, give my love to Marie.”

So I beckoned to the headman of my Zulus whom I had hired at Delagoa, to
accompany me, and marched forward boldly quite unarmed. We were encamped upon a
rise of ground a quarter of a mile from the river, and the impi, or those of
them whom we could see, were at the foot of this rise about a hundred and sixty
yards away. The light was growing now, and when I was within fifty paces of
them they saw me. At some word of command a number of men rushed toward me,
their fighting shields held over their bodies and their spears up.

“We are dead!” exclaimed my Kaffir in a resigned voice. I shared
his opinion, but thought I might as well die standing as running away.

Now I should explain that though as yet I had never mixed with these Zulus, I
could talk several native dialects kindred to that which they used very well
indeed. Moreover, ever since I had hired men of their race at Delagoa, I had
spent all my spare time in conversing with them and acquiring a knowledge of
their language, history and customs. So by this time I knew their tongue
fairly, although occasionally I may have used terms which were unfamiliar to
them.

Thus it came about that I was able to shout to them, asking what was their
business with us. Hearing themselves addressed in words which they understood,
the men halted, and seeing that I was unarmed, three of them approached me.

“We come to take you prisoners, white people, or to kill you if you
resist,” said their captain.

“By whose order?” I asked.

“By the order of Dingaan our king.”

“Is it so? And who told Dingaan that we were here?”

“The Boer who came in front of you.”

“Is it so?” I said again. “And now what do you need of
us?”

“That you should accompany us to the kraal of Dingaan.”

“I understand. We are quite willing, since it lies upon our road. But
then why do you come against us, who are peaceful travellers, with your spears
lifted?”

“For this reason. The Boer told us that there is among you a ‘child
of George’” (an Englishman), “a terrible man who would kill
us unless we killed or bound him first. Show us this child of George that we
may make him fast, or slay him, and we will not hurt the rest of you.”

“I am the child of George,” I answered, “and if you think it
necessary to make me fast, do so.”

Now the Zulus burst out laughing.

“You! Why, you are but a boy who weighs no more than a fat girl,”
exclaimed their captain, a great, bony fellow who was named Kambula.

“That may be so,” I answered; “but sometimes the wisdom of
their fathers dwells in the young. I am the son of George who saved these Boers
from death far away, and I am taking them back to their own people. We desire
to see Dingaan, your king. Be pleased therefore to lead us to him as he has
commanded you to do. If you do not believe what I tell you, ask this man who is
with me, and his companions who are of your own race. They will tell you
everything.”

Then the captain Kambula called my servant apart and talked with him for a long
while.

When the interview was finished he advanced to me and said:

“Now I have heard all about you. I have heard that although young you are
very clever, so clever that you do not sleep, but watch by night as well as by
day. Therefore, that I, Kambula, name you Macumazahn, Watcher-by-night, and by
that name you shall henceforth be known among us. Now, Macumazahn, son of
George, bring out these Boers whom you are guiding that I may lead them in
their moving huts to the Great Place, Umgungundhlovu, where dwells Dingaan the
king. See, we lay down our spears and will come to meet them unarmed, trusting
to you to protect us, O Macumazahn, Son of George,” and he cast his
assegai to the ground.

“Come,” I said, and led them to the wagons.

CHAPTER XII.

DINGAAN’S BET

As I advanced to the wagons accompanied by Kambula and his two companions, I
saw that Marais, in a state of great excitement, was engaged in haranguing the
two Prinsloo men and Meyer, while the Vrouw Prinsloo and Marie appeared to be
attempting to calm him.

“They are unarmed,” I heard him shout. “Let us seize the
black devils and hold them as hostages.”

Thereon, led by Marais, the three Boer men came towards us doubtfully, their
guns in their hands.

“Be careful what you are doing,” I called to them. “These are
envoys,” and they hung back a little while Marais went on with his
haranguing.

The Zulus looked at them and at me, then Kambula said:

“Are you leading us into a trap, Son of George?”

“Not so,” I answered; “but the Boers are afraid of you and
think to take you prisoners.”

“Tell them,” said Kambula quietly, “that if they kill us or
lay a hand on us, as no doubt they can do, very soon every one of them will be
dead and their women with them.”

I repeated this ultimatum energetically enough, but Marais shouted:

“The Englishman is betraying us to the Zulus! Do not trust him; seize
them as I tell you.”

What would have happened I am sure I do not know; but just then the Vrouw
Prinsloo came up and caught her husband by the arm, exclaiming:

“You shall have no part in this fool’s business. If Marais wishes
to seize the Zulus, let him do so himself. Are you mad or drunk that you should
think that Allan would wish to betray Marie to the Kaffirs, to say nothing of
the rest of us?” and she began to wave an extremely dirty vatdoek,
or dishcloth, which she always carried about with her and used for every
purpose, towards Kambula as a sign of peace.

Now the Boers gave way, and Marais, seeing himself in a minority, glowered at
me in silence.

“Ask these white people, O Macumazahn,” said Kambula, “who is
their captain, for to the captain I would speak.”

I translated the question, and Marais answered:

“I am.”

“No,” broke in Vrouw Prinsloo, “I am. Tell them,
Allan, that these men are all fools and have given the rule to me, a
woman.”

So I told them. Evidently this information surprised them a little, for they
discussed together. Then Kambula said:

“So be it. We have heard that the people of George are now ruled by a
woman, and as you, Macumazahn, are one of that people, doubtless it is the same
among your party.”

Here I may add that thenceforward the Zulus always accepted the Vrouw Prinsloo
as the Inkosikaas or chieftainess of our little band, and with the
single exception of myself, whom they looked upon as her “mouth,”
or induna, would only transact business with or give directions to her.
The other Boers they ignored completely.

This point of etiquette settled, Kambula bade me repeat what he had already
told me, that we were prisoners whom he was instructed by Dingaan to convey to
his Great Place, and that if we made no attempt to escape we should not be hurt
upon the journey.

I did so, whereon the vrouw asked as I had done, who had informed Dingaan that
we were coming.

I repeated to her word for word what the Zulus had told me, that it was
Pereira, whose object seems to have been to bring about my death or capture.

Then the vrouw exploded.

“Do you hear that, Henri Marais?” she screamed. “It is your
stinkcat of a nephew again. Oh! I thought I smelt him! Your nephew has betrayed
us to these Zulus that he may bring Allan to his death. Ask them, Allan, what
this Dingaan has done with the stinkcat.”

So I asked, and was informed they believed that the king had let Pereira go on
to his own people in payment of the information that he had given him.

“My God!” said the vrouw, “I hoped that he had knocked him on
the head. Well, what is to be done now?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. Then an idea occurred to me, and
I said to Kambula:

“It seems to be me, the son of George, that your king wants. Take me, and
let these people go on their road.”

The three Zulus began to discuss this point, withdrawing themselves a little
way so that I could not overhear them. But when the Boers understood the offer
that I had made, Marie, who until now had been silent, grew more angry than
ever I had seen her before.

“It shall not be!” she said, stamping her foot. “Father, I
have been obedient to you for long, but if you consent to this I will be
obedient no more. Allan saved my cousin Hernan’s life, as he saved all
our lives. In payment for that good deed Hernan tried to murder him in the
kloof—oh! be quiet, Allan; I know all the story. Now he has betrayed him
to the Zulus, telling them that he is a terrible and dangerous man who must be
killed. Well, if he is to be killed, I will be killed with him, and if the
Zulus take him and let us free, I go with him. Now make up your mind.”

Marais tugged at his beard, staring first at his daughter and then at me. What
he would have answered I do not know, for at that moment Kambula stepped
forward and gave his decision.

It was to the effect that although it was the Son of George whom Dingaan
wanted, his orders were that all with him were to be taken also. Those orders
could not be disobeyed. The king would settle the matter as to whether some of
us were to be killed and some let free, or if all were to be killed or let
free, when we reached his House. Therefore he commanded that “we should
tie the oxen to the moving huts and cross the river at once.”

This was the end of that scene. Having no choice we inspanned and continued our
journey, escorted by the company of two hundred savages. I am bound to say that
during the four or five days that it took us to reach Dingaan’s kraal
they behaved very well to us. With Kambula and his officers, all of them good
fellows in their way, I had many conversations, and from them learned much as
to the state and customs of the Zulus. Also the peoples of the districts
through which we passed flocked round us at every outspan, for most of them had
never seen a white man before, and in return for a few beads brought us all the
food that we required. Indeed, the beads, or their equivalents, were nothing
but a present, since, by the king’s command, they must satisfy our wants.
This they did very thoroughly. For instance, when on the last day’s trek,
some of our oxen gave out, numbers of Zulus were inspanned in place of them,
and by their help the wagons were dragged to the great kraal, Umgungundhlovu.

Here an outspan place was assigned to us near to the house, or rather the huts,
of a certain missionary of the name of Owen, who with great courage had
ventured into this country. We were received with the utmost kindness by him
and his wife and household, and it is impossible for me to say what pleasure I
found, after all my journeyings, in meeting an educated man of my own race.

Near to our camp was a stone-covered koppie, where, on the morning after our
arrival, I saw six or eight men executed in a way that I will not describe.
Their crime, according to Mr. Owen, was that they had bewitched some of the
king’s oxen.

While I was recovering from this dreadful spectacle, which, fortunately, Marie
did not witness, the captain Kambula arrived, saying that Dingaan wished to see
me. So taking with me the Hottentot Hans and two of the Zulus whom I had hired
at Delagoa Bay—for the royal orders were that none of the other white
people were to come, I was led through the fence of the vast town in which
stood two thousand huts—the “multitude of houses” as the
Zulus called it—and across a vast open space in the middle.

On the farther side of this space, where, before long, I was fated to witness a
very tragic scene, I entered a kind of labyrinth. This was called
siklohlo, and had high fences with numerous turns, so that it was
impossible to see where one was going or to find the way in or out. Ultimately,
however, I reached a great hut named intunkulu, a word that means the
“house of houses,” or the abode of the king, in front of which I
saw a fat man seated on a stool, naked except for the moocha about his
middle and necklaces and armlets of blue beads. Two warriors held their broad
shields over his head to protect him from the sun. Otherwise he was alone,
although I felt sure that the numerous passages around him were filled with
guards, for I could hear them moving.

On entering this place Kambula and his companions flung themselves upon their
faces and began to sing praises of which the king took no notice. Presently he
looked up, and appearing to observe me for the first time asked:

“Who is that white boy?”

Then Kambula rose and said:

“O king, this is the Son of George, whom you commanded me to capture. I
have taken him and the Amaboona” (that is, the Boers), “his
companions, and brought them all to you, O king.”

“I remember,” said Dingaan. “The big Boer who was here, and
whom Tambusa”—he was one of Dingaan’s
captains—“let go against my will, said that he was a terrible man
who should be killed before he worked great harm to my people. Why did you not
kill him, Kambula, although it is true he does not look very terrible?”

“Because the king’s word was that I should bring him to the king
living,” answered Kambula. Then he added cheerfully: “Still, if the
king wishes it, I can kill him at once.”

“I don’t know,” said Dingaan doubtfully; “perhaps he
can mend guns.” Next, after reflecting a while, he bade a shield-holder
to fetch someone, I could not hear whom.

“Doubtless,” thought I to myself, “it is the
executioner,” and at that thought a kind of mad rage seized me. Why
should my life be ended thus in youth to satisfy the whim of a savage? And if
it must be so, why should I go alone?

In the inside pocket of my ragged coat I had a small loaded pistol with two
barrels. One of those barrels would kill Dingaan—at five paces I could
not miss that bulk—and the other would blow out my brains, for I was not
minded to have my neck twisted or to be beaten to death with sticks. Well, if
it was to be done, I had better do it at once. Already my hand was creeping
towards the pocket when a new idea, or rather two ideas, struck me.

The first was that if I shot Dingaan the Zulus would probably massacre Marie
and the others—Marie, whose sweet face I should never see again. The
second was that while there is life there is hope. Perhaps, after all, he had
not sent for an executioner, but for someone else. I would wait. A few minutes
more of existence were worth the having.

The shield-bearer returned, emerging from one of the narrow, reed-hedged
passages, and after him came no executioner, but a young white man, who, as I
knew from the look of him, was English. He saluted the king by taking off his
hat, which I remember was stuck round with black ostrich feathers, then stared
at me.

“O Tho-maas” (that is how he pronounced “Thomas”), said
Dingaan, “tell me if this boy is one of your brothers, or is he a
Boer?”

“The king wants to know if you are Dutch or British,” said the
white lad, speaking in English.

“As British as you are,” I answered. “I was born in England,
and come from the Cape.”

“That may be lucky for you,” he said, “because the old
witch-doctor, Zikali, has told him that he must not kill any English. What is
your name? Mine is Thomas Halstead. I am interpreter here.”

“Allan Quatermain. Tell Zikali, whoever he may be, that if he sticks to
his advice I will give him a good present.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Dingaan suspiciously.

“He says he is English, no Boer, O king; that he was born across the
Black Water, and that he comes from the country out of which all the Boers have
trekked.”

At this intelligence Dingaan pricked up his ears.

“Then he can tell me about these Boers,” he said, “and what
they are after, or could if he were able to speak my tongue. I do not trust you
to interpret, you Tho-maas, whom I know to be a liar,” and he glowered at
Halstead.

“I can speak your tongue, though not very well, O king,” I
interrupted, “and I can tell you all about the Boers, for I have lived
among them.”

“Ow!” said Dingaan, intensely interested. “But perhaps
you are also a liar. Or are you a praying man, like that fool yonder, who is
named Oweena?”—he meant the missionary Mr. Owen—“whom I
spare because it is not lucky to kill one who is mad, although he tries to
frighten my soldiers with tales of a fire into which they will go after they
are dead. As though it matters what happens to them after they are dead!”
he added reflectively, taking a pinch of snuff.

“I am no liar,” I answered. “What have I to lie about?”

“You would lie to save your own life, for all white men are cowards; not
like the Zulus, who love to die for their king. But how are you named?”

“Your people call me Macumazahn.”

“Well, Macumazahn, if you are no liar, tell me, is it true that these
Boers rebelled against their king who was named George, and fled from him as
the traitor Umsilikazi did from me?”

“Yes,” I answered, “that is true.”

“Now I am sure that you are a liar,” said Dingaan triumphantly.
“You say that you are English and therefore serve your king, or the
Inkosikaas” (that is the Great Lady), “who they tell me now
sits in his place. How does it come about then that you are travelling with a
party of these very Amaboona who must be your enemies, since they are
the enemies of your king, or of her who follows after him?”

Now I knew that I was in a tight place, for on this matter of loyalty, Zulu,
and indeed all native ideas, are very primitive. If I said that I had sympathy
with the Boers, Dingaan would set me down as a traitor. If I said that I hated
the Boers, then still I should be a traitor because I associated with them, and
a traitor in his eyes would be one to be killed. I do not like to talk
religion, and anyone who has read what I have written in various works will
admit that I have done so rarely, if ever. Yet at that moment I put up a prayer
for guidance, feeling that my young life hung upon the answer, and it came to
me—whence I do not know. The essence of that guidance was that I should
tell the simple truth to this fat savage. So I said to him:

“The answer is this, O king. Among those Boers is a maiden whom I love
and who betrothed herself to me since we were ‘so high.’ Her father
took her north. But she sent a message to me saying that her people died of
fever and she starved. So I went up in a ship to save her, and have saved her,
and those who remained alive of her people with her.”

“Ow!” said Dingaan; “I understand that reason. It is a
good reason. However many wives he may have, there is no folly that a man will
not commit for the sake of some particular girl who is not yet his wife. I have
done as much myself, especially for one who was called Nada the Lily, of whom a
certain Umslopogaas robbed me, one of my own blood of whom I am much
afraid.”^[2]

[2]
See the Author’s book named “Nada the Lily.”

For a while he brooded heavily, then went on:

“Your reason is good, Macumazahn, and I accept it. More, I promise you
this. Perhaps I shall kill these Boers, or perhaps I shall not kill them. But
if I make up my mind to kill them, this girl of yours shall be spared. Point
her out to Kambula here—not to Tho-maas, for he is a liar and would tell
me the wrong one—and she shall be spared.”

“I thank you, O king,” I said; “but what is the use of that
if I am to be killed?”

“I did not say that you were to be killed, Macumazahn, though perhaps I
shall kill you, or perhaps I shall not kill you. It depends upon whether I find
you to be a liar, or not a liar. Now the Boer whom Tambusa let go against my
wish said that you are a mighty magician as well as a very dangerous man, one
who can shoot birds flying on the wing with a bullet, which is impossible. Can
you do so?”

“Sometimes,” I answered.

“Very good, Macumazahn. Now we will see if you are a wizard or a liar. I
will make a bet with you. Yonder by your camp is a hill called ‘Hloma
Amabutu,’ a hill of stones where evildoers are slain. This afternoon some
wicked ones die there, and when they are dead the vultures will come to devour
them. Now this is my bet with you. When those vultures come you shall shoot at
them, and if you kill three out of the first five on the wing—not on the
ground, Macumazahn—then I will spare these Boers. But if you miss them,
then I shall know that you are a liar and no wizard, and I will kill them every
one on the hill Hloma Amabutu. I will spare none of them except the girl, whom
perhaps I will take as a wife. As to you, I will not yet say what I will do
with you.”