John Ames, Native Commissioner Part 4

Wrought up to a pitch of frenzy by the recollection of the insults he had then received, the vindictive savage continued to taunt and terrify the wretched creature as she lay. Then he went over to pick up his great k.n.o.bstick.

"Not thus, blunderer; not thus," said Shiminya, arresting his arm. "See now. Take that end of the pole while I take the other. Go thou first."

Lifting the pole with its helpless human burden, these bloodthirsty miscreants pa.s.sed out of the kraal. Down the narrow way they hurried, for Shiminya though small was surprisingly wiry, and the powerful frame of the other felt it not, although their burden was no light one. Down through a steep winding path, and soon the thorns thinned out, giving way to forest trees.

"Well, sister, I predicted that Lupiswana would come for thee to-night,"

said Shiminya, as they set their burden down to rest themselves. "And-- there he is already."

A stealthy shape, which had been following close upon their steps, glided into view for a moment and disappeared. The wretched victim saw it too, and uttered such a wild ringing shriek of despair that Nanzicele fairly shuddered.

"_Au_! I like not this," he growled. "It is a deed of _tagati_."

"Yet thou must do it, brother, or worse will befall thyself," said Shiminya, quietly. Then they resumed their burden.

Through the trees now came a glint of silver light, then a broad shimmer. It was the glint of the moon upon water. The Umgwane River, in the dry season, consists of a series of holes. One of these they had reached.

"And now, sister," began the wizard, as they set down their burden upon its brink, "thou seest what is the result of an unquiet tongue. But for that thou wouldst not now be here, and thy brother Pukele and thy sister Ntatu would have yet longer to live. But you all know too much, the three of you. Look! Yonder is Lupiswana waiting for thee, even as I predicted," said this human devil, who could not refrain from adding acute mental torture to the dying moments of his victim. And as he spoke a low whine rose upon the night air, where a dark sinister shape lay silhouetted against the white stones of the broad river-bed some little distance away.

The victim heard it and wailed, in a manner that resembled the whine of the gruesome beast. Shiminya laughed triumphantly.

"Even the voice she has already," he exclaimed. "She will howl bravely when Lupiswana hunts her."

"Have done," growled Nanzicele. Brutal barbarian as he was, even his savagery stopped short at this; besides, his superst.i.tious nature was riven to the core. "Get it over; get it over!"

They raised the pole once more, and, by a concerted movement, swung it and its human burden over the brink, where the pool was deepest. One wild, appalling shriek, then a splash, and a turmoil of eddies and bubbles rolling and scintillating on the surface, and the cold remorseless face of the brilliant moon looked down, impa.s.sive, upon a human creature thus horribly done to death.

"_Hlala-gahle_!" cried Shiminya, with a fiend-like laugh, watching the uprising of the stream of bubbles. Then, turning to his fellow miscreant, "And now, Nanzicele, whom Makiwa made a chief, and then unmade, the people at Madula's can hardly speak for laughing at thee, remembering thy last appearance there, bragging that thou wert a chief.

Makiwa has done this, but soon there may not be any Makiwa, for so I read the fates. Go now. When I want thee I will send for thee again."

And the two murderers separated--Nanzicele, dejected and feeling as though his freedom had gone from him for ever; Shiminya, chuckling and elate, for the day had been a red letter one, and the human spider was gorged full of human prey.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE MEETING OF THE WAYS.

The mail-steamer from England had been docked early in Cape Town, and the tables at lunch-time, in the dining room of Cogill's Hotel at Wynberg, were quite full. There is something unmistakable about the newly landed pa.s.senger, male or female, especially when taken gregariously; and this comes out mainly in a wholly abnormal vivacity, begotten presumably of a sense of emanc.i.p.ation from the cooped monotony of shipboard, and a conversational tendency to hark back to the incidents of the voyage, and the idiosyncrasies of the populace of the recent floating prison. Add to this a display of brand new ribbons on the hats of certain of the ornamental s.e.x, bearing the name of the floating prison aforesaid, and a sort of huddled up clannishness as of a hanging together for mutual protection in a strange land.

With this phase of humanity were most of the tables filled. One, however, was an exception, containing a square party of four, not of the exuberantly lively order. To be perfectly accurate, though, only three of these const.i.tuted a "party;" the fourth, a silent stranger, wearing more the aspect of a man from up-country than one of the newly landed, was unknown to the residue.

"What an abominable noise those people are making," remarked one of the trio, a tall, thin, high-nosed person of about thirty, with a glance at a table over the way, where several newly landed females were screaming over the witticisms of a brace of downy lipped youths, who were under the impression the whole room was hanging upon their words. "I only hope they don't represent the sort of people we shall have to put up with if we stay here."

"Don't you be alarmed about that, Mrs Bateman," said the man on her right. "That stamp of Britisher doesn't stay here. It melts off into boarding-houses and situations in Cape Town or Johannesburg. Just rolls up here because it's the thing to run out to Cogill's and have tiffin first thing on landing; at least, so it thinks. It'll all have disappeared by to-night."

"That's a comfort, anyway, if we do stay. What do you think of this place, Nidia?"

"I think it'll do. Those views of the mountain we got coming along in the train were perfectly lovely. And then it seems so leafy and cool.

You can get about from here, too, can't you, Mr Moseley?"

"Oh yes, anywhere. Any amount of trains and trams. And I expect you'll wear out the roads with that bike of yours, Miss Commerell."

"By the way, I wonder if they brought our bicycles from the station?"

said the other of the two ladies. "You saw them last, Nidia."

"Yes. They are all right. They were standing outside when we came in."

Now, utterly workaday and commonplace as all this was, not a word of it escaped the silent stranger. This girl, seated at his right, had riveted his attention from the moment she came in, and indeed there was that about Nidia Commerell's face which was likely to exercise such an effect. It had a way of lighting up--a sudden lifting of the eyelashes, the breaking into a half smile, revealing a row of teeth beautifully even and white. She had blue eyes, and her hair, which was neither brown nor golden, but something between, curled in soft natural waves along the brow, dispensing with the necessity of any attempt at a fringe; and her colouring was of that warm richness which gave the idea that Nature had at first intended her for a brunette, then got puzzled, and finally had given her up in hopeless despair, which was perhaps the best thing that could have happened, for the result was about as dainty, refined, alluring a specimen of young womanhood as the jaded glance of the discriminating male could wish to rest upon.

This, at any rate, was the mental verdict of the stranger, and for this reason he hailed with inward satisfaction the recently expressed decision of the two as to taking up their quarters there for a time.

"You ought to remain here a few days, and show us about, Mr Moseley,"

said the elder of the two ladies, after some more desultory conversation.

"Wish I could, Mrs Bateman. No such luck, though. I've got to start for Bulawayo to-night. They are hurrying the soul out of me as it is."

"Isn't the journey a frightful one?" asked Nidia.

"It isn't a delightful one," laughed the man, who was just a fair average specimen of the well-bred Englishman, of good height, well set up, and well groomed. "Railway to Mafeking, then eight days' coaching; and they tell me the coach is always crammed full. Pleasant, isn't it?"

The stranger looked up quickly as though about to say something, but thought better of it. Nidia rejoined--

"What in the world will we do when our time comes?"

"I am afraid you must make up your minds to some discomforts," replied Moseley. "One of the conditions of life in a new country, you know.

But people are very decent in those parts, and I'm sure would do everything they could to a.s.sist you."

A little more conversation, and, lunch being over, the trio withdrew.

John Ames, left alone at the table, was lost in all sorts of wild imaginings. Something seemed to have altered within him, and that owing to the proximity of this girl, a perfect stranger, whom three quarters of an hour ago he had never set eyes on. It was really very absurd, he told himself. But when a man has had fever, he is bound to be liable to fall a victim to any kind of absurdity. Fever! that was it--so he told himself.

Now, as he sat there, dreamily cracking almonds, he began to regret his reticence. The very turn of the conversation favoured him. He might have volunteered considerable information for the benefit of the man who was going up-country, he suspected, for the first time. The conversation would have become general, and might have paved the way to an acquaintanceship. There was no necessity for him to have been so reticent. He had lived too long stowed away, he decided. It was high time he came out of his sh.e.l.l.

He had applied for and obtained his leave, and had come down there to spend it. The sea breezes blowing across the isthmus of the Cape Peninsula, the cool leafiness of the lovely suburbs, were as a very tonic after the hot, steamy, tropical glow of his remote home. But the effects of the fever, combined with a natural reserve, kept him from going much among people, and most of his time was spent alone.

"I wonder who that man is who sat at our table," Nidia Commerell was saying; for the trio were seated outside trying to converse amid the cackle and din of one of the livelier parties before referred to.

"He looked awfully gloomy," said Mrs Bateman.

"Did you think so, Susie? Now, I thought he looked nice. Perhaps he wasn't feeling well."

"He had a look that way, too," said Moseley. "Up-country man perhaps.

Down here to throw off a touch of fever. I've seen them before."

"Poor fellow! That may have accounted for it," said Nidia. "Yes; he's quite nice-looking."

John Ames, meanwhile, was smoking a solitary pipe on the balcony in front of his room, and his thoughts continued to run on this new--and to him, supremely foolish subject. Then he pulled himself together. He would get on his bicycle and roll down to Muizenberg for a whiff of the briny.

The afternoon was cloudless and still, and the spin along a smooth and, for the most part, level road exhilarating. A brisk stroll on the beach, the rollers tumbling lazily in, and he had brought his mind to other things--the affairs of his district, and whether the other man who was temporarily filling his place would be likely to make a mess of them or not, and how he would pull with Inglefield--whether Madula had recovered from the sulky mood into which the action of Nanzicele had thrown him--and half a hundred matters of the sort. And so, having re-mounted his wheel, and being about halfway homeward again, he could own himself clear of the foolish vein in which he had set out, when-- there whirled round the bend in the road two bicycles, the riders whereof were of the ornamental s.e.x; in fact, the very two upon one of whom his thoughts had been chaotically running.