John Ames, Native Commissioner Part 34

"You got to try now, then, by G.o.d! Our only chance. Look!"

John Ames did look, and so did the other man. At the upper end of the fence a ma.s.s of savages were in possession, pouring a volley after the retreating troop. Below on their right the three men saw the other outflanking "horn" now closing in upon them, and a line of warriors coming through the gra.s.s and thorns in front at a trot. It was a strong impi, and a large one.

In that brief flash of time, John Ames was curiously alive to detail.

He could see the ostrich-feather mutyas worn by the warriors, the parti-coloured shields and the gleam of spears, and decided this was a crack regiment. He could see, too, the township of Bulawayo lying in its basin below, and the retreating hors.e.m.e.n now already far away. He noted the look of fear on the face of the trooper, and that of desperate resolve in the keen eyes of the American.

"Now for it!" he cried. "Put your horses at it here. I'll give you a lead."

A wire fence is a trying thing to jump, with an uncertain steed. To his surprise, John Ames lighted in safety on the other side. Not so Shackleton. His horse's hoofs caught the top wire, and turning a complete somersault, threw its rider heavily, but on the right side of the fence, while that of the trooper refused point-blank and trotted off, snorting idiotically, right down the fence into the very teeth of the advancing enemy.

John Ames turned, then rode back.

"Get up, Major, for Heaven's sake!"

Shackleton had already been on his feet, but subsided again with a groan.

"Can't. Ankle gone. Guess my time's here--right here," he panted.

"You go on."

"We don't do things that way, d.a.m.n it!" John Ames answered, in his strong excitement. "Here, get up on my horse."

He had dismounted. Shackleton's fool of an animal had already recovered itself and made itself scarce. The advancing impi was barely three hundred yards distant, pouring onward, shivering the air with its deep vibrating "Jji-jji!"

"You go on!" repeated the American. "I won't be taken alive."

John Ames _said_ no more. He _did_. Shackleton, fortunately, was rather a small man, and light. The other seized him under the shoulders, and by dint of half lifting, half pushing, got him bodily into the saddle.

"Now go!" he shouted. "I'll hold on the stirrup."

All this had taken something under a minute.

They went. The impi was now pouring through the fence, whose momentary obstruction almost made a difference of life or death to the fugitives.

How they escaped John Ames never knew. Sky, earth, the distant township beneath, all whirled round and round before him. Twice he nearly lost hold of the stirrup-leather and would have fallen; then at last became aware of slackening pace. Turning, dizzy and exhausted, he saw that the enemy had abandoned pursuit.

And what of the unfortunate trooper? Not much, and that soon over, luckily. Abandoning his mount, he made a rush for the fence, but too late. A very hail of a.s.segais was showered upon him, and he fell, half in, half out, across the wire. With a roar of exultation the savages were around him. a.s.segais gleamed in the air, first bright, then red, and in a second nothing was left but a shapeless and mangled ma.s.s.

Such tragedies, however, come but under the simple word "losses," and these, all things considered, had not been great. On the other hand, the enemy had suffered severely, and if, by sheer force of overwhelming numbers, he had succeeded in driving them back, those forming the reconnaissance were not disposed to feel it acutely. They were quite ready to go in at him another day, and thus make things even.

But Shackleton, otherwise "The Major," was not going to let the thing down so easily. His sprained ankle kept him tied by the leg for some days, but on the subject of the fight and the retreat he became somewhat of a bore. On the subject of John Ames he became even more of one. He was never tired of extolling that worthy's readiness and nerve, and his self-devotion in risking his life to save a comrade.

"You British have got a little iron notion," he would say, "a thing you call a Victoria Cross, I reckon. Well, when you going to get it for John Ames? He boosted me on to his broncho like a sack right away, and run afoot himself. But for him where'd I be now? Cut into bully beef by those treacherous savages. Yes, sir."

But as these incisive utterances were invariably accompanied by an invitation to liquor, there were some who were not above drawing. The Major upon his favourite topic. To most, however, he became a bore, but to none so much as the subject thereof. Said the latter one day--

"Do you know, Major, I begin to wish I had left you where you were.

It's a fact that you're making a perfect fool of me, and I wish you'd drop it."

"Shucks! Now you quit that fool-talk, John Ames, and reach down that whisky over there--if you can call such drug-store mixture as your Scotch stuff by the same name as real old Kentucky. I'm going on at it until they give you that little nickel thing you British think such a heap of."

"But I don't want it, can't you understand?" he retorted angrily; "nor anything else either. I believe I'll get out of this country mighty soon. I'm sick of the whole show."

Shackleton looked at his friend, and shook his head gravely. John Ames petulant, meant something very wrong indeed with John Ames. Then an idea struck "The Major"--a bright idea, he reckoned--and in the result he seized an early opportunity of making a call, and during that call he retold his favourite tale to just two persons--to one of whom it was pleasant and to one of whom it was not. You see, he was a shrewd observer, was Shackleton, otherwise "The Major."

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

THE KING AND THE AGE.

"Do try and be serious a little while if you can, Nidia, if only that I have something very serious to say to you."

"Drive ahead, then, Govvie. I promise not even to laugh."

Susie Bateman looked at the girl as she sat there, with hands clasped together and downcast eyes, striving to look the very picture of be-lectured demureness, and tried to feel angry with her. Yet, somehow, she could not--no, not even when she thought to detect a suspicious heave of the shoulders which denoted a powerful fund of compressed laughter. With the absent object of her intended "straight talk" she felt venomously savage. With this one--no, she could not.

"Well, what I want to say is this," she went on. "Nidia, is it fair to encourage that man as you do?"

"Which man? There are so many men. Do I encourage them?"

"Oh, child, don't be so wildly exasperating. You know perfectly well who I mean."

Then Nidia lifted her eyes with a gleam of delightful mischief in them.

"I have a notion you are ungrammatical, Govvie. I am almost sure you ought to have said '_whom_ I mean.' Well, we won't be particular about that. But, as my American adorer, 'Major' Shackleton, would say, 'Oh, do drive on,' By the way, is he the man I am encouraging?"

What was to be done with such a girl as this? But Susie Bateman was not to be put off.

"You know perfectly well that I mean John Ames."

"Oh! Now you're talking, as my 'Major' aforesaid would rejoin. And so I encourage John Ames, do I? Poor fellow! he seems to need it."

There was an unconscious softness wherewith these words were uttered.

It drove the other frantic, "Need it indeed! On the contrary, what he needs is discouragement, and plenty of it. Well, he gets it from me, at any rate."

"Oh yes, he does," came the softly spoken interpolation.

"Well, but, Nidia, how much further is this thing to go? Why, the man comes here and talks to you as if you belonged to him; has a sort of taken-possession-of-you way about him that it's high time to put an end to."

"And if he had not 'taken possession' of me in that ghastly place on the Umgwane, and kept it ever since, where would I be now?" came the placid rejoinder.

"Yes, I know. That is where the mischief came in. It was partly my fault for ever encouraging the man's acquaintance. I might have known he would be dangerous. There is that about him so different to the general run of them that would make him that way to one like yourself, Nidia. Yes; I blame myself."

"Yes; he is different to the general ruck, isn't he?" rejoined Nidia, with a softness in her wide-opened eyes that rather intensified than diminished the bitterness of her friend and mentor.

"Well, at any rate he is n.o.body in particular," flashed out the latter, "and probably hasn't got a shilling to his name; and now I hear he has resigned his appointment"--again that provoking smile, "Once for all, Nidia; do you intend to marry him?"

"Marry who? John Ames?"