Renshaw Fanning's Quest Part 18

Splash! splash! The horses plunged on, deeper and deeper into the wide drift. Soon the water was up to the saddle-girths.

Renshaw, leading the way--and a pack-horse--tucked up his feet over the saddle behind, an example his companion was not slow to follow. An expanse of yellow, turgid water, at least a hundred and fifty yards wide, lay before them. Below, a labyrinth of green eyots picturesquely studded the surface of the stream. Above, the river flowed round an abrupt bend of red rock wall, sweeping silently and majestically down to the drift which our two adventurers were fording. In front, a high craggy ridge, sheering up in a steep slope, dotted with aloes and a spa.r.s.e growth of mimosa bush. Behind, a similar ridge, down whose rugged face the two had spent the best part of the afternoon finding a practicable path.

And now it was evening. The setting sun dipped nearer and nearer to the same rocky heights in the west, shedding a scarlet glow upon the smooth surface of the great river, tingeing with fiery effulgence many a bold krantz whose smooth walls rose sheer to the heavens. An indescribably wild and desolate spot, redeemed from absolute savagery by the soft cooing of innumerable doves flitting among the fringe of trees which skirted the bank of the stream.

The drift, though wide, was shallow, and the water came no higher than the saddle-girths. A few minutes more of splashing, and they emerged upon a hard, firm sand-bank.

"The river's low now, and has been some time," said Renshaw, looking around. "The time before last I crossed this way, I lost a good horse in a quicksand a little lower down. I dare say it's a firm bank now, like this one."

"By Jove! did you really?" said Sellon. "Were you alone, then?" His respect for the other had already gone up fifty per cent. They were in a seldom-trodden wilderness now, a forbidding, horrible-looking solitude, at that, shut in as it was by great, grim mountain walls, and the eternal silence of a desert world. Yet this man, whom he, Sellon, in all the superiority of his old-world knowledge, had held in light account, was perfectly at home here. There was no doubt as to which was the better man, here, at any rate.

"Yes; I was alone," answered Renshaw. "I've always come on this undertaking alone. And I came mighty near losing my life, as well as the horse."

"By Jove, what a fellow you are, Fanning! I believe if I were to knock around here in this infernal desert by myself for a week it would about drive me mad."

The other smiled slightly.

"Would it? Well, I suppose I'm used to it. But, wait a bit. You call this an infernal desert. It's nothing to what we shall find ourselves in further on. And now, I think we'll camp here. You don't want to go out shooting, I suppose? We have enough to last us for a day or two; in fact, as much as will keep."

Three guinea-fowl and a brace of red koorhaan, also three brace of partridges, were slung across the pack-horse. Sellon replied with an emphatic negative. The heat of the day's journey had knocked the bottom out of even his sportsmanlike tendencies, he said.

They offsaddled the horses, and having led them down to the river to drink, knee-haltered them more closely than usual, and turned them loose to graze. Then, taking a hatchet, Renshaw proceeded to cut a number of mimosa boughs--large, spreading, and th.o.r.n.y. These, in an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, he had beaten up into a most effective kraal.

"What's all that about, old man?" said Sellon, who, characteristically, was taking it easy, and lay on the ground at full length, blowing out clouds of tobacco. "There are no lions here, surely!"

"There used to be one or two. I've heard them on former occasions. But they're mighty scarce--almost extinct. Still, it's as well to be on the safe side."

As the last faint kiss of after-glow faded from the iron-bound peaks, merging into the pearly grey of night, the horses were driven in and securely picketed within the impromptu enclosure. Then blazed forth the ruddy flames of a cheery camp-fire, over which some of the birds were promptly hissing and sputtering. The small keg of Cango brandy which they had brought with them was broached, and under the influence of a good supper, washed down with good liquor, Sellon's mercurial spirits revived.

"By Jove, but this is what I call real jolly!" he cried, throwing himself back on a rug, and proceeding to fill and light his pipe.

"Hallo! What the deuce was that?"

"Not a lion this time," said the other, tranquilly, as a long-drawn howl arose upon the night. It echoed weirdly among the great cliffs, dying away in a wild wail. "Only a wolf [Hyaena]. Plenty of them around here."

"They make a most infernal row, at all events. How the deuce is a fellow going to sleep?" said Sellon, as the sound was taken up in a sudden chorus of dismal howls, whose gruesome echoes, floating among the krantzes, seemed to deepen the surrounding darkness, to enhance the utter wildness of this desolate valley.

The camp was pitched in the entrance of a narrow gorge which wound right up into the heart of the great ridge overhanging the river. It lay in a gra.s.sy hollow, snugly sheltered on all sides. In the background some hundred yards distant, and about eighty feet in height, rose a perpendicular wall of rock, being one of the spurs of the main ridge.

"Oh, you'll sleep soundly enough once you're off, never fear," laughed Renshaw. "And now, as we are fairly embarked upon our undertaking, we may as well go over old Greenway's yarn together. Two heads are better than one, they say, and a fresh mind brought to bear upon the story may bring into it a fresh idea or two."

Putting his hand inside his shirt, he produced the buckskin pouch. At last had come the moment Sellon had long dreaded. How he wished he had refrained from meddling with the thing. Certainly he believed that his friend could get along almost, if not quite as well without the paper, as with it. Its contents must be stamped indelibly in his memory. Yet how would he take the discovery of its loss?

"I've never gone into it with you before, Sellon," went on Renshaw, holding the pouch in his hand, little thinking what tantalising suspense his friend was undergoing. "You see, when a man holds a secret of this kind--has been treasuring it up for years--he's apt to keep it mighty close. But now that we are fairly in the swim together things are different."

He undid the outer bag, then leisurely unrolled the waterproof wrapper, Sellon meanwhile staring at the proceeding with a nervous fascination, which, had his friend noticed, he would have put down to intense excitement due to the importance of the disclosure. Still deliberately, Renshaw unrolled the last fold of the wrapper, and produced--a scroll of frayed and yellow paper.

Heavens and earth! It was the identical doc.u.ment! In his wild amazement Sellon could not refrain from a violent start.

"What's the row?" said the other, quietly. "Keep cool. We want steady nerves over this undertaking."

"You're right, old man. I own that mine are a little too high-strung,"

answered Maurice, with something of a stammer. "By Jove, what if we should go back practically millionaires! Only think of it, old chap!

Isn't it enough to turn any man's head? And when you got out that bit of paper, it seemed almost like producing the key of the bullion safe itself."

But this was said in a hurried, random fashion. How in the name of all that was wonderful had the missing paper come to light? Again Sellon dismissed the idea of the Koranna servants having any agency in the matter, and no other theory was compatible with its almost miraculous reappearance. Stay! Had Fanning a duplicate, perhaps, which he had quietly replaced in the receptacle for the lost doc.u.ment? No, by Jove; that was the identical paper itself. He could swear to it a hundred times over, there in the red light of the camp-fire, even to the pear-shaped blot near the right-hand corner. There it was; no mistake about that. Then he wondered when it had been recovered--when Fanning had discovered its loss--and whether he had entertained any suspicion of himself. If so, it was marvellous that all this time he should have let drop no word, no hint, either of the incident or his suspicions regarding it. The enhanced respect which his tranquil, self-contained companion had begun to inspire in Sellon, now turned to something like awe. "You'll never make an adventurer, Sellon," said Renshaw, with his quiet smile, "until you chuck overboard such inconvenient luggage as nerves. And I'm afraid you're too old to learn that trick now."

"You're right there, old chap. I wish I had some of your long-headedness, I know. But now, I'm all impatience. Supposing you read out old stick-in-the-mud, what's-his-name's, queer legacy."

"All right. Now listen attentively, and see how it strikes you."

And by the red light of the camp fire Renshaw began to read the dying adventurer's last statement.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

A VOICE FROM THE DEAD.

"My name is Amos Greenway," it began. "It was some years ago now--no matter how many--since I first saw what I am going to tell you. That time I'd been up with a hunting and trading party into the Kalihari.

I'd split off from the rest--no matter why--perhaps we'd fallen out.

"What I didn't know about the country in those days didn't seem much worth knowing--at least, so I thought. Well, I got down into the Bechuana country, and after a bit of a rest struck off alone in a southerly direction. I counted on hitting off the big river that way, and at the same time I'd often longed to do a little prospecting on the ground I was going to cross. But this time, as it happened, I got out of my reckoning. I'd got into a waterless desert--and foodless too. I had biltong enough to last for any time, but water is a thing you can't carry much of--and if you could it would all turn bad in that awful heat. First my pack-horse gave out--then the nag I was riding--and there I was dying of thirst in the middle of the most awful dried-up country you can imagine. There were mountains far away on the sky-line--must have been at least a hundred miles away, for they were hull down on the horizon. There might or might not be water there; but if so I should never reach it, because I couldn't crawl ten miles in a day, and was about played out even then. Nothing to kill either--no game of any kind--or the blood might have quenched thirst. Nothing except aasvogels, and they were too slim to come within shot. You see, they knew I was booked for them sooner or later, and whenever I looked up there was a crowd of the great white carrion birds wheeling overhead ever so high up, waiting for me.

"Well, at last I was for giving in; was looking for a place to sit down comfortably, and put the muzzle of my piece to my ear and finish off; for I couldn't stand the idea of being eaten alive by those filthy devils, as would have happened when I got too weak to beat them off-- when I came plump into a gang of wandering Bushmen. They were resting at the foot of a stony kopje, and as soon as I hove in sight they started up it like monkeys, screeching and jabbering all the time.

They'd never seen a white man nor yet a gun, and when I fired a shot I reckon they thought the devil had got among them. I managed to make friends with them at last, and it was the saving of my life. They'd got some kind of liquid, which must have come out of a plant or root, but it did for drink at a pinch until we found water.

"Well, after some days we reached the mountains I had seen. Awful part it was too; seemed to consist of nothing but great iron-bound krantzes and holes and caves--sort of place where nothing in the world could live but aasvogels and Bushmen and baboons. Some of the caves had skulls and bones in them, and were covered with Bushmen drawings, and I tell you I saw queer things done while I was with those fellows--things you'd never believe. But I feel like getting near the end of my tether, so I must hurry up.

"Well, one day we'd been out collecting gra.s.shoppers and lizards and all that kind of beastliness which those fellows eat, and stayed out too late. We were looking about for a hole or a cave to sleep in--for it was coldish up there of nights--and it was already dusk. I noticed my Bushman friends were getting mighty uneasy, and supposed they were afraid of bogies or something of that kind. There was a half-moon shining brightly overhead, and I saw we were skirting a deep valley-- though it was more like a hole than a valley, for there seemed no way in or out. All of a sudden one of the chaps grabbed me by the arm and pointed downwards. I shan't forget that moment in a hurry. There, ever so far down it seemed, glowering up through the darkness, shone an Eye.

Yes, an Eye; greenish, but brilliant as a star. I rubbed my eyes and looked again and again. There it was, each time brighter than ever.

What could the thing be? I own I was puzzled.

"The Bushmen were getting more and more scared, and began to lug me away. But I took one more look round first. The thing was gone.

"There was no staying to investigate further. They began to threaten me then--I gathered at last that I was committing a sort of sacrilege, that it was a demon-haunted place to them, and that it was a devil's eye that would scorch up whoever looked at it too long--in fact, they called it the Valley of the Eye--that if I bothered about it I should be killed for raising their devil. But I puzzled over the thing to myself day and night, and determined to look into it further.

"At last the opportunity came. I was out on the berg with one of the fellows one day, trying to get a shot at something, and gradually worked round to the place. Directly I got near it, he began to show the same signs of scare, but I paid no heed to him and just began to clamber down. It was an awful place to get at, though. After a good deal of dangerous climbing I got to a kind of sloping terrace, all stones and dry dusty earth. While I was resting I stooped down to pick up a stone, and at the same time lifted a little bit of carbonised-looking stuff.

Heavens, how I jumped! It was a diamond.

"Didn't I look about for more! I only found one, though; and after a lot of fossicking round I began to think of going further down, when a most infernal row overhead altered my mind. There were all my Bushmen friends, the whole lot of them, jabbering in the most threatening manner; and, worse still, they'd all got their bows and were about to take pot shots at me. Sore enough, I had only just time to get under a rock when a perfect shower of their little poison sticks came rattling about my ears.

"Things now looked desperate. I daren't go up among them, and I couldn't move out of my shelter. They seemed afraid to come down and that was my only chance. I must wait until night.

"All at once, as I lay crouching there, under cover from their deadly little arrows, a thought struck across my brain that made every drop of blood in my body tingle. That green, staring Eye which I had seen shining down there in the depths was nothing less than a diamond, and a diamond of enormous size. If only I could get at it.

"But this is just what I couldn't do. To cut the tale short I waited until night and then descended further. There gleamed the Eye, brighter, more dazzling than ever. But between it and me was a big krantz, and I pulled up on the very brink, just in time to escape going over. And the place seemed edged in all round by krantzes.

"My mind was made up. I'd come again. No use staying on now to be starved out and killed by those miserable little yellow devils. So I crept up to the top again, and, as I expected, the coast was clear. It doesn't matter how long I took to work my way down into civilised parts again.