The Golden Rock Part 34

"I am very sorry," said Piet.

"Then go," shouted Hume, "and thank this lady that you have not got what you deserved."

"I will remember you," growled Piet, as he moved off, "and maybe the sjambok you promised me will fall on your own shoulders."

Hume, with his rifle in his hand, followed the young Boer, and saw him mount and ride away, leading the other horse. On reaching a ridge Piet turned and shook his fist, then suddenly dropping his reins he took a deliberate aim at Hume. A full half-minute he kept the deadly weapon at his shoulder, then, with a laugh, let it drop to the saddle, and disappeared. Hume, who had stood the ordeal with a bitter smile on his mouth, turned back to the camp and met Webster.

"Your friend has gone," he said.

"Yes," said Webster, whose face was deadly pale; "I saw his gun drop, and thought he had meant to shoot you."

"I was wishing he would fire."

"Frank!" exclaimed Webster.

They looked at each other straight in the eyes, clasped hands, and then walked back together.

Miss Anstrade went to meet them with a smile on her lips and a question in her eyes.

"My poor friends," she murmured softly, "you have suffered a lot. I see it by your faces."

"And you?" they said.

"I was confident you would find me if I could not escape."

"We were just starting off," said Webster, "after Frank had found the waggon and learnt from Klaas that you had been taken off in a cart."

"Yes; they managed that very well. They told me there was a young woman lying ill at a farmhouse near, and asked me if I would not go, and they explained that, antic.i.p.ating my consent, they had brought the waggon to a spot which would be convenient to you and to them. I saw no reason why I should not do a kindness, and after writing a note for you, which they promised to deliver, I was driven off to a cottage some eight or nine miles away. On alighting, I saw for the first time that one of the two men was a Portuguese, and from his mocking air of courtesy my suspicions were aroused. Of course there was no woman in the house, and on being shown into a room I locked the door. They left me there all the morning, but in the afternoon they begged me to come out. The Dutchman then went away, and through a small window I saw him mount a horse and ride away with a number of dogs. The Portuguese then began to threaten, and next to batter at the door. Then he promised me in his generosity much wealth if I would tell him where you were going, and whether it was to find a hidden treasure."

"The little yellow brute!" growled Webster.

"How terrified you must have been!"

"On the contrary, I was quite cool, and when the door showed signs of giving way I opened it and asked him to enter. He did, with a sudden change to humility, and as he stepped in with his hat in his hand, I-- well--I am afraid I knocked him down with a heavy stick."

"Bravo!" said Webster, laughing, while Hume flashed a swift look at her and saw how rigid were the muscles about her mouth.

"I would have escaped then, but on reaching the door I saw there were some black men seated about a fire. Returning to the room, I bound the man up with some ropes that were in the room, and waited. At night the Dutchman returned and knocked at the door. I said it was all right, whereupon--whereupon he laughed. After a time he slept, but the black men sat round the fire till the grey of dawn. Then I stole out, saddled one of the horses, and was silently moving off when one of the dogs barked; the natives shouted, and I was seized with a mortal terror and fled, and my guardian saint led me to you. That is all."

The two friends looked at her for some moments in silence, and they recalled the figure of a girl standing on the bridge in the driving spume, unmoved by the shrieking of sh.e.l.ls overhead.

They then told her how they had pa.s.sed the time, and when they had finished, the waggon was inspanned and the journey resumed. As the oxen had well rested, they made this time a long "skoff," trekking till sundown, when the waggon was drawn up under a wild fig-tree, whose vast branches afforded plenty of shade. Klaas hunted about for some leaves, which he brought to Miss Anstrade to place on her hands. A fire was built, the violin was brought out, and the men sat dreamily as the music floated on the soft air.

The next morning Miss Anstrade stepped from the waggon, holding in her hand a small sporting Martini.

"I wish to learn how to shoot," she said gravely.

"Good!" said Hume. "It will be as well."

He showed her the action, and made her snap it from the shoulder. Then she inserted a cartridge.

"Press the b.u.t.t tightly to the shoulder, bring the left elbow well down, and press with your thumb as you pull the trigger."

She fired, and then practised at a mark.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

A MYSTERIOUS CRY.

For the next fortnight they struggled with the difficulties of the road, and Hume had to call to his aid all his resources in navigating his ship of the desert over boulder-strewn streams, up almost impracticable heights, and down dangerous slopes, wherever the road zig-zagged above yawning precipices. His bared arms grew black under the sun, and by the time the Limpopo was reached he resembled in appearance one of the scattered Boer farmers whom they occasionally surprised in their journey--a man tanned to the colour of his own well-worn corduroys, with a face lined by the drying of the skin, the eyes narrowed through the constant effort to shut out the over-powerful light, and hands bruised, knotted and grimed. In this toilsome trek Webster had to squire Miss Anstrade, and since she dreaded the sight of the oxen straining under the yoke, and would get away from the sharp crack of the long whip, he was thrown much into her company as they walked on ahead for the next outspan. In the loneliness of the slow marches Hume soured rather, and in the evening by the fire it was some time before his silent fit would thaw to the needs of companionship, and the others, having exhausted every topic during the day's _tete-a-tete_, made little effort to dispel the gloom. In the veld there are few topics that can outlast a week, and then there is little to fall back upon but the eternal subject of religion, or the ways of nature. Wherever nature is uninteresting and the population is scattered, the mind of man fastens like a limpet on the rock of some verity of the Scriptures, or to the decaying trunk of superst.i.tion, and holds on to the end. The Boers in the Transvaal have quarrelled among themselves over their belief, and President Kruger has taken up his rifle in defence of a verse in the Psalms. Our friends had played about on the outskirts of religious controversy about the camp fire; but the men had been firmly checked by Miss Anstrade, who possessed a woman's unquestioning faith, and latterly they had become abstracted and dull, while Klaas, the Gaika, crooned to himself the legends that hung about the dark kloofs of his own far-distant Amatolas.

"Thank G.o.d!" said Hume, as he threw down his whip on the far side of the great river, "we have at last got out of the Transvaal."

"It seemed to me," said Miss Anstrade, "that we were going on for ever until the waggon fell to pieces, and we grew too old to see. I have never been so dull in all my life, and am convinced there is a growth of fungus on my brain."

"And I," said Webster, looking at his travel-stained clothes, "feel that I am turning into a second Rip Van Winkle."

"We are like a party of disreputable gipsies," said Miss Anstrade, with a look at Hume, whose boots were torn, and whose outward appearance was scarcely an improvement on the many-patched garments of Klaas. "Let us get into a new outfit, and do you men act the barber to each other."

"Before recovering our respectability," said Hume, "we must overhaul the waggon, grease the axles, repack, mend, and patch up."

They made a stay there, and the next evening, after several hours of hard work, the camp presented a trim appearance, and the three sat down, quite smartened up, and in good spirits once again, to dine off wild ducks and sand grouse. The map of Old Hume the Hunter was brought out and studied now on the very ground over which he had pa.s.sed on his adventurous journey, and they found themselves, in their growing excitement, looking away to the south-east, to where the shadowy outlines of lofty mountains showed dark against the sky. Somewhere within that rugged casket lay the treasure that throughout the centuries had remained for them alone, and the flickering light shining upon their faces showed the flush in their cheeks as the thoughts of what its possession would mean flamed in their brains; revealed also the stern look shot from one man at the other, at the second thought that, bound up with that treasure of gold, was that other treasure of a beautiful woman.

"Beyond that mountain," she said dreamily, in her rich voice, "lies Europe, ambition, power, pleasure, love. I wonder which of these you will follow when the mountains have given up their secret."

"Give me a house by the sea," said Webster, "and a wife I love, and who loves me."

"And the sound of the sea would stir the sailor in you, and one day your wife would be looking at a white speck in the horizon, and you would be walking the bridge again."

"And she would not grudge me that if she loved me," he said quietly.

Hume cast a swift look at Webster, whose face had turned white, and he had reached out his hand, for to both of them there came, at that moment, the thought of Captain Pardoe and his betrothed.

"What is it?" she asked, noting the action.

Hume looked at Webster, and then told the story of the lovers who had waited so long.

"But how," she said, in low tones, "did you know each other's thoughts?"

The two looked at each other.

"We also are waiting," said Hume, with a sad smile; but from that moment the shadow of distrust that was coming between them melted before the sympathy revealed by that one chance word.

They talked then, as they had often done before, of Captain Pardoe and the gallant men who went down on the _Swift_, and planned how they would help the widows and children out of the Golden Rock. And as they talked there came through the darkness a startling cry as of a human soul in agony--so wild, so sudden, that they leant towards each other, and Klaas bolted under the waggon with a cry of "Amapakati!"--"Wizard!"

Again it was repeated, a long quivering cry.