The White Hand and the Black Part 31

"Why yes. I feel tottery though. Oh Edala, what a fool you must think me."

"No. Only, don't do it again," was the reply, accompanied by a curious laugh. Edala was thinking--though not resentfully--of how a day or two ago the other was lecturing her: in a way talking down to her, while disclaiming any intent to do so. Now she was the one upon whom everything depended. The situation was in her hands.

They went inside, and Edala mixed a gla.s.s of brandy and water.

"You drink this," she said. "Then go to sleep for an hour or two and we'll start for Kwabulazi."

"But I hate spirits--Ugh!" with a shudder.

"So do I; and I hate medicine too; but both are necessary sometimes.

Down with it."

Evelyn obeyed, with more than one additional shudder. But the end justified the means, for, sitting back in a low roomy armchair, she soon felt drowsy and dropped off to sleep.

Edala felt no inclination to follow her example, on the contrary she had never felt more wakeful in her life. She wandered from room to room.

There was her father's library, and his favourite chair and reading lamp. There were his cherished books, and all the surrounding was alive with his presence. She could hardly realise that he was no longer there, but instead was a prisoner--a hostage--in the hands of insurrectionary savages; whose wild mad scheme of rebellion could end in no other way than that utterly disastrous to themselves, and then--?

She looked around the room, and a terrible wave of compunction, or remorse came over her. How hard, how selfish, how unloving she had been towards him. Who was she that she should judge him? Yet she had, and that at every moment of the day.

All the affection and care and consideration he had lavished upon her came back now. It would, when it was too late, he had more than once said in his bitterness--Evelyn too had all unconsciously echoed his words. And it had. Should she ever see him again--ever look upon that loving presence--to whom she had been all in all for the whole of her young life, and whom she had met with ingrat.i.tude and repulsion? In the lonely silence of the still midnight the girl who had faced physical danger with a calm front, and rare readiness of resource, broke down.

"Father darling--darling! come back to me," she moaned. "Only come back to me, to your little one again, and all shall be so different, so different."

She had dropped upon her knees, her head buried in the chair--his chair.

Her heart seemed breaking in her sobs--her great sobs--which hardly relieved it. What if she should never see him again, to tell him how his words had been surely fulfilled--never--never? No, she could not realise it. This room, which more than any other in the house seemed sacred to his presence and--now empty of it. A large portrait of him hung on the wall. Rising she went over and pressed her lips to the cold, not too carefully dusted, gla.s.s again and again.

The sound of stirring in the other room now came to her ears. It brought her down to the hard, material side of the situation. She dashed the tears from her eyes, fiercely, determinedly, and went to join her relative. Evelyn was awake again, and was looking around in rather a frightened way.

"Oh, here you are, Edala! Shall we start? I feel ever so much refreshed now. But you, child--have you had some sleep?"

"Yes--no," was the half-absent reply. "Start? Yes, as soon as you're ready. Wait though. I'll go and get some supplies for the way. Later on you'll find it no joke walking thirteen miles across the veldt on nothing but air."

She was all material and practical again now. In a marvellously short s.p.a.ce of time she returned with a well packed wallet stored with provisions.

"You sling this on," handing the other a vulcanite water bottle. "I'll carry the skoff--and the gun. It's a pity you couldn't learn to shoot, Evelyn, or you might have carried another. As it is we'll hide the other two--inside the piano. No Kafir would think of looking for them there."

This was done, then having carefully extinguished the lights and being well wrapped up, for the nights were fresh; and in dark attire, for safety's sake, they went forth.

"I wonder if we shall ever see the old house again," said Edala bitterly. "It'll probably be burned to the ground, and all father's treasured books,"--she added, with the catch of a sob. "These brutes-- who have known you all your life, and then even they fall away from you!

They'll stick at nothing."

There was silence then as they started upon their long tramp. The bodies of the poor dogs lay where they had been slain, plainly outlined under the cold moon, whose light glared down too upon that other mangled human relic, which, fortunately they could not see. High in the air invisible plover wheeled and whistled, and down in the blackness of the kloofs, right across their way, the answering bay of hunting jackals, and the deeper voice of the striped hyena, echoed eerily upon the night.

Evelyn shuddered.

"Oh, that's all right," said Edala. "Nothing to be afraid of there-- quite the contrary. It means that our way is clear, or no animal would be kicking up all that row. That's just what we want. Hallo--here's our friend back again," she broke off, as a trample of hoofs, and a quick shrill bellow, told that the bull had returned. Again Evelyn shuddered.

"Will he attack us?" she said.

"I hope not, because this time I shall have to shoot. A charge of Treble A. at ten yards'll split even his tough skull. But the last thing I want to do is to loose off a shot at all. By the way, that's old Blue Hump. He must have got cut off from the herd when they drove it off--or cleared on his own. He's a vicious old brute, anyway."

The animal was trotting parallel with their course and every now and then they could make out the great branching horns above the bush sprays. But he must have grown tired of it, or feared to come to closer quarters, for presently they Saw no more of him.

"There's a pathway here that cuts a considerable corner," said Edala.

"Whew! how cold it is."

It was, and in spite of the exercise and plentiful wrapping up, both girls shivered. There were stealthy rustlings in the darkness of the brake, and once a great ant-bear rushing across the road, looking pale and uncanny in the moonlight, drew a stifled shriek from Evelyn. The other laughed.

"They're the most harmless things on earth. Hyland and I and poor Jim used to hunt them often at night with a.s.segais."

Thus they travelled on, and soon Evelyn became accustomed to the unwonted experience of walking all night across wild country in potential peril at every step: fortunately she was in hard physical training by now. Once Edala's quick vision had detected a puff adder lying in the path, but a few stones hurled from a little distance, soon drove the bloated, hissing reptile to seek safety somewhere else. Now and again a great owl would drop down right in front of their faces, and they could see his head turning from side to side as he sailed along on noiseless pinions, uttering his ghostly hoot: or the 'churn' of the nightjar would echo weirdly from beneath some overhanging rock; or again, a tiger-wolf howled, and big beetles in blundering flight, boomed through the air. So the voices of the night were never still.

They had sat down for a brief rest, and some refreshment, then on again.

Suddenly Edala grew uneasy. A white mist was settling down upon the land. This was serious; for not only might they run plump into those it was all important to avoid, but there was grave danger of getting 'turned round' and finding themselves back at Sipazi again. The mist deepened, and so did Edala's growing anxiety. It was one of those thick white mists which settle down upon the land in the small hours of the morning, fearfully disconcerting from a wayfarer's point of view, but which melt away as by magic before the sun is an hour high. But that was small comfort to these two. They wanted to be at Kwabulazi before the sun was above the horizon at all. Suddenly Edala started.

"Hark!" she whispered, stopping short.

In front--directly in front--was audible a deep, confused murmur of sound, rolling, as it seemed, from one point to another, and drawing nearer and nearer. And with it came another sound. Those who have heard it can never mistake it, and these two had heard it all too significantly of late. It was the quivering rattle of a.s.segai hafts.

From the sounds, spread out as they were right across their front, it was manifest that a large body of natives was moving towards them in open order. The fact that they were all armed told its own tale. This was a rebel impi, and but for the friendly mist these two would have run right into it.

"Quick, Evelyn! This way!" breathed, rather than whispered, Edala.

Holding her companion's hand she drew her after her. The way she was taking now ascended sharply, but it was the only way. The rime rolled along, now in gusty puffs. This seemed to tell that they were gaining some height. Both were panting from their exertion, but there was no such thing as pausing, for now from the sounds beneath it was evident that the savages had suddenly altered their line of march, and were coming on in the same direction as themselves. Had they heard the sound of their steps, the clinking of a stone--what not? Anyway they could not go down, these two. That was out of the question.

On and upward. A puff of damp air, now nearly in their teeth, showed that they had attained the summit of some height. Suddenly Edala seized her companion's hand in a strong grip and held it--and its owner.

"What is it?" whispered the latter.

"We are on the edge of a big krantz, that's all. Three or four more steps and we should have been over."

It was even as she had said. The ground ended just in front of them, and the blast of air coming up denoted a cliff, and one of considerable height.

But now it was lightening, and they could make out the long smooth edge of the height stretching away on their left front. And--good Heavens!

Now the voices sounded from that direction--_advancing_ from that direction as though to meet the owners of those coming up behind. These two were in a trap, caught between two fires. It was evident that the savages suspected their presence--the presence of somebody--and were quartering the ground in order to clear up the mystery. And there was nowhere to hide. The mountain top was flat and gra.s.sy. Suddenly Edala gave a violent start.

"I know our bearings now," she whispered. "We're on the top of Sipazi.

Now Evelyn, there's one chance for us, and one only--if you've the nerve to take it."

"And that?"

"My 'aerial throne.'"

The other gasped. She remembered how her flesh had crept before, when Edala had taken her to see the famous tree, how she had turned away almost faint, as she watched the girl spring out fearlessly on to this dreadful seat--with a careless laugh as though she had just dropped into an armchair. And now she too must sit dangling over the awful height.

At that moment she almost preferred to take her chance of the a.s.segais of the savages. But that chance might possibly mean even a worse one, and the thought decided her, as Edala whispered impatiently:--

"It's got to be done. It's our only chance. But you can't fall. I'll take care of that. Come."

The deep voices sounded alarmingly near now. We have said that the brow of the mountain went down by a gra.s.s steep that was almost precipitous, to the stump of the tree. Edala let herself down this with cat-like security of footing, keeping ever a firm hold upon her companion--her gun she wedged into the root of a stunted bush growing out from the gra.s.s.