The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley Part 13

"He is--he is. But what I was going to say is this. It'll do you no harm to get an insight into waggon travel and _veldt_ life, and the native trade and the natives themselves. But a sensible fellow like you must see that that sort of thing isn't going to last a man _all_ his life; and, indeed, it oughtn't to. It isn't good for any man to become a confirmed wanderer, a sort of rolling stone. So don't let this trip unsettle you, or turn your mind from the idea of going in for hard and regular work. Turn it to the best possible account you can while you're on it, but make up your mind that it isn't going to last, and that when you come back your plan is to settle down to regular work. You are made of far better stuff than to slide into the mere knockabout, harum-scarum adventurer, as some of these up-country going chaps are only too ready to do, especially when they begin young. So keep that before your mind is my advice to you. And now I dare say you're wondering whether you are ever going to get to bed, or whether a certain prosy old fellow intends to keep preaching to you quite all night. So, good night, my lad. I won't say goodbye, for we shall most of us be up before you start. Good night; I need hardly say I wish you every success."

CHAPTER TEN.

A PIECE OF ZULU JOCKEYING.

After leaving Doorn Draai they trekked on through the Umsinga district, and, turning off the main road at Helpmakaar on the Biggarsberg Heights, descended to Rorke's Drift. And it was while making their way down to that now historical point that Gerard began to realise what a waggon could do; what an incredible amount of hard knocking about it could stand; for the track seemed a mere succession of ruts and boulders, and as the huge vehicles went creaking and grinding over this, they seemed literally to twist and writhe, until it looked as though each fresh b.u.mp must shatter the whole fabric into a thousand crashing fragments. Once, but for his prompt.i.tude, the waggon of which Gerard was in charge would infallibly have overturned. However, they reached the drift without accident, and crossed the next day into the Zulu country.

At first Gerard could hardly realise that he was no longer under the British flag. This side of the Buffalo river presented no appreciable difference to the side they had just left. A line of precipitous hills rose a few miles in front, and to the eastward a great lion-shaped crag, the now ill-famed Isandhlwana. But few Zulus had come to the waggons, and they struck him as wearing no different aspect to the natives on the Natal side, nor, by-the-by, did they seem in any way keen upon trading.

We fear it may hardly be denied that the rose-coloured spectacles through which Gerard had first looked upon the trip and its prospects had undergone some slight dimness, and for this May Kingsland's blue eyes were wholly responsible. For be it remembered he was very young, and the consciousness that a long time--a whole year, perhaps--must elapse before he should see her again, cast something of a gloom upon his spirits. Good-natured John Dawes saw through the change in his young companion's lightheartedness, and laughed dryly to himself.

Gerard would soon find the right cure for that sort of complaint, he said, when the real business of the trip should begin.

One morning a party of half a dozen young Zulus, driving an ox, came up to them as they sat outspanned. The one who seemed to be the leader was a tall, straight, well-built fellow, with a pleasing intelligent countenance. He, like the rest, was unringed, but held his head high in the air, as though he were somebody. All carried a.s.segais and shields.

The young leader and two of the others strode up to where Gerard was sitting, and uttering the usual form of greeting, "_Saku bona_,"

squatted down on the gra.s.s before him.

Now, it happened that Dawes was away, having ridden off to some kraals a few miles distant. Gerard, thus thrown upon his own resources, began to feel something of the burden of responsibility as he returned their greeting and waited for them to speak next. But the leader, stretching forth his hand, said--

"Give me that."

Gerard was cleaning a gun at the time, the double-barrelled one, rifle and shot. The Zulu's remark had come so quick, accompanied by a half-move forward, as though he might be going to seize the weapon, that Gerard instinctively tightened his grasp on it.

"Who are you?" he said, looking the other in the eyes.

"Nk.u.mbi-ka-zulu, son of Sirayo, the king's _induna_," replied the youth, with a haughty toss of the head, denoting surprise that anybody should require to be informed of his ident.i.ty. "Give me the gun; I want to look at it," he continued, again stretching forth his hand.

Gerard realised the delicacy of the situation. There was a greedy sparkle in the young Zulu's eye as it lighted upon the weapon, which caused him to feel anything but sure that it would be returned to him again. On the other hand, Dawes, he remembered, had a poor opinion of Sirayo and his clan, and he did not want to offend the chief's son, if he could help it. His command of the language beginning to fail him, he summoned Sintoba to the rescue.

"Ask him if, he wants to trade, because, if so, the _Baas_ [Master] will be back soon. Here is some snuff for him, meanwhile."

Nk.u.mbi-ka-zulu condescended to accept the snuff, then, through the driver, he explained that his father had sent the black ox as a present to "Jandosi"--for such was John Dawes's name among the natives, being of course a corruption of his own--and he, the speaker, had come to do a little trade on his own account. First of all, he wanted that gun, and as many cartridges as he could have. What was the price?

Gerard replied that the gun was not for sale. It was wanted to shoot buck and birds during their trip further up-country.

"_Au_!" exclaimed Nk.u.mbi-ka-zulu. "You are so near the border, you can easily send back for another gun. I will give five oxen for it. Ten, then," he added, as Gerard shook his head in dissent. Still Gerard refused.

"_Hau_! Does he want all the Zulu country?" muttered the others, forgetting good manners in their impatience and eagerness to possess the weapon, and for this, Sintoba, who was of Zulu descent and a ringed man at that, rebuked them sternly.

"Since when has the son of a chief learnt to talk with the loud tongue and windbag swagger of the _Amabuna_?" [Boers] he said. "Have you come here to trade or to play the fool?"

"_Hau_, listen to the Kafula!" cried the young Zulus, springing to their feet and rattling their a.s.segais threateningly. "Since when is the son of a chief to be reviled by a Kafula, who is doing dog at the heels of a travelling white man?"

Gerard, who by this time could understand a great deal more than he could speak, looked apprehensively at Sintoba, expecting an immediate outbreak. But to his surprise the man merely uttered a disdainful click, and deliberately turned his broad back upon the exasperated Zulus. He almost expected to see it transfixed with their a.s.segais, and stood ready to brain with his clubbed gun, for he had no cartridges handy, the first who should make an aggressive move. But no such move was made.

"I return," said Nk.u.mbi-ka-zulu, darting forth his hand, with a malevolent look directed especially upon Gerard, "I return to my father to carry word that Jandosi rejects his present, and has left a Kafula with his waggons, and a white _umfane_ [boy] to revile the son of a chief." And turning, the whole party walked rapidly away, driving the ox before them.

When they had gone a little distance, they began staging an improvised strophe the burden of whose veiled insolence took in the white race in general, and the last specimen of it the singers had seen in particular, and thus bawling, they eventually receded from sight.

Gerard was terribly put about by this occurrence, and was disposed to blame himself bitterly. Surely he had been over cautions, and had brought about this hostile termination by his own awkwardness and stupidity. But to his inexpressible relief John Dawes, to whom on his return he narrated the whole affair, was not at all of this opinion.

"It couldn't have been helped," the latter declared. "If I had been here the result would likely have been the same, for they're cheeky young dogs those sons of Sirayo, and the old man himself is a thorough-paced old sweep. If you made any mistake at all, it was a mistake on the right side--that of firmness--and I'm not sure you made any."

Which dictum lifted a weight from Gerard's mind.

"I'm only afraid they'll play us some trick," he said. "Hadn't we better get away from here as soon as possible?"

"N-no. They might construe that into an act of running away. We'll just trek on a few miles further, and see what turns up, but I don't mind telling you I hardly like the look of things. The people are very unsettled, thanks to this disputed boundary question, and the badgering of the Natal Government. They are sulky and sullen, and flatly refuse to trade. I think we'll get away north pretty soon."

That evening an incident occurred which, taken in conjunction with the events of the day, looked ominous. The "boy" who was sent to bring in the two horses, which were turned loose to graze, returned with only one; the other he could not find. He had hunted for it high and low, but without result.

By this time the two horses had become so accustomed to the waggons that they would never stray far, and often return of their own accord; consequently, it was not thought worthwhile even to knee-halter them.

Now, however, the one which the "boy" had brought back had been found much further afield than was usual, and of the other there was no trace.

And the missing steed was Gerard's mouse-coloured Basuto pony.

Saddling up the horse that remained and giving orders where the waggons were to outspan, Dawes cantered away into the _veldt_. He returned in two hours. He had lighted upon the spoor, which led in the contrary direction from that which might have been expected, for it led in the direction of the Blood River, and therefore right away from Sirayo's and out of the Zulu country, instead of farther into the same; and then darkness had baffled further investigation. Nevertheless, he would wager longish odds, he declared, that the missing quadruped would spend that night not a mile distant from Sirayo's kraal.

"It's a most infernal place, Ridgeley," he said gloomily. "It's overhung by a big _krantz_, which is a pretty good look-out post, and surrounded by holes and caves you could stow anything away in. I don't know how we are going to get Mouse back again short of paying through the nose for him. I must sleep on it and think out some plan. That young brute, Nk.u.mbi! I feel quite murderous--as if I could shoot him on sight."

In view of the late occurrence, Sintoba received instructions to keep watch a part of the night, while Dawes himself took the remainder, not that he thought it at all probable that any attempt at further depredations would be made, still it was best to be on the safe side.

And in fact no further attempt was made, and the night in its calm and starry beauty, went by undisturbed.

The place where the waggons were outspanned was open and gra.s.sy. Around stretched the wide and rolling _veldt_; here a conical hillock rising abruptly from the plain, there the precipitous line of a range of mountains. About half a mile from the site of the outspan ran a _spruit_ or watercourse, the bed of which, deep and yawning, now held but a tiny thread of water, trickling over its sandy bottom. The banks of this _spruit_ were thickly studded with bush, and out of them branched several deep _dongas_ or rifts worn out of the soil by the action of the water.

It was a hot morning. The sun blazed fiercely from the cloudless sky, and from the ground there arose a shimmer of heat. Away on the plain the two spans of oxen were dotted about grazing, in charge of one of the leaders, whose dark form could be seen, a mere speck, squatting among the gra.s.s. In the shade of one of the waggons, Dawes and Gerard sat, finishing their breakfast, while at a fire some fifty yards off, the natives were busy preparing theirs, stirring the contents of the three-legged pot, and keeping up a continual hum of conversation the while.

"No, I don't like the look of things at all," repeated Dawes, beginning to fill his pipe. "It is some days now since we crossed into the Zulu country, and the people hardly come near us. It looks as if all this talk about a war was going to lead to something. I'm afraid they are turning ugly about that boundary question. I meant to have trekked north on the west side of the Blood River, and taken this part of the country on our way back, if we had anything left to trade that is, but with all these reported ructions between the Zulus and Boers in the disputed territory, I reckon we'd be quieter and safer in Zululand proper."

"How ever will they settle the claim?" said Gerard.

"Heaven only knows. Here we have just annexed the Transvaal, and got nothing for our pains but a bankrupt State whose people hate us, and a lot of awkward liabilities, and not the least awkward is this disputed boundary. If we give it over to the Dutch, Cetywayo is sure to make war on them, and therein comes the fun of our new liability. We shall have to protect them, they being now British subjects, and when we have squashed the Zulus, the Boers will turn on us. If, on the other hand, we give it over to the Zulus, we are giving away half the district of Utrecht, and turning out a lot of people who have been living there for years under what they thought good and sound t.i.tle from their own government, which doesn't seem right either. And any middle course will please neither party, and be worse than useless."

"I suppose, if the truth were known, the Transvaal claim is actually a fraud?"

"I believe it is. They claim that Mpande ceded them the land. Now I don't believe for a moment the old king would have been such a fool as to do anything of the kind, and even if he had been inclined to for the sake of peace, Cetywayo, who practically held the reins then, would never have let him. Well, if that Commission don't sit mighty soon, it'll be no good for it to sit at all, for there'll be wigs on the green long before."

"I wonder if we shall ever see poor Mouse again," said Gerard.

A sound of deep-toned voices and the rattle of a.s.segai hafts caused both to turn. Three Zulus were approaching rapidly. Striding up to the waggons they halted, and gazing fixedly at the two white men, they gave the usual greeting, "_Saku bona_"--and dropped into a squatting posture.

They were fine specimens of humanity, tall and straight. One was a _kehla_, but the other two were unringed. For clothing they wore nothing but the inevitable _mutya_. Each was fully armed with large war-shield, k.n.o.bkerrie, and several murderous looking a.s.segais.

The first greeting over, Gerard asked to look at some of these. With a dry smile one of the warriors handed over his weapons, but to a suggestion that he should trade one or two of them he returned a most emphatic refusal.

"What is the news?" asked Dawes, having distributed some snuff.

"News!" replied the ringed man. "_Ou_! there is none."

"Do men travel in such haste to deliver no news?" pursued Dawes, with a meaning glance at the heaving chests and perspiring bodies of the messengers, for such he was sure they were. "But never mind. It is no affair of mine. Yet, do you seek the kraal of the chief, Sirayo? If you do, you might carry my 'word' to him."