The White Hand and the Black Part 36

The day wore on. Both men--Elvesdon, especially, being the younger-- were wistfully trying to glean from the talk they could overhear, what was going on outside. They tried questioning those around them but without result. They asked too, about their fellow prisoner, the young Police trooper, who had been so arbitrarily separated from them; but beyond the fact that no harm had been done him, they could get no further. The while both were sizing up every chance for effecting an escape, but even had such offered it was out of the question they should have availed themselves of it at the price of abandoning a fellow-countryman--a fellow-countryman, too, who was doubly helpless, in that, being a new comer, he was entirely unversed in the language and ways of those who held him in durance.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

A DEVIL-DEED.

The third day of their captivity had dawned, and waned. It seemed that those around had grown rather more used to them, for they would chat at times, while dexterously evading any attempts to extract news. But it struck them that there was an atmosphere of tension, of expectation, as though events were expected on the outside. Moreover the number of armed men about the kraal seemed to have diminished by eight-tenths.

With the chief, Nteseni, they could get no speech, although they repeatedly asked to see him. Moreover, did either or both of them catch sight of a face they knew, that face was promptly turned away, and the owner of it never risked the chance of their seeing it again. So far this was a good augury they agreed, for had their deaths been already decided upon it would not matter whose faces they recognised or whose they did not. By this time they had almost got used to the strangeness of the feeling that they were captives in their own land; that where they were accustomed to lord it they were now obliged to obey. Many times, too, and oft, they speculated as to what course would have been adopted by those who had not been required to share their captivity.

"Edala has got her head screwed on the right way," Thornhill had said, on one of these early occasions. "Depend upon it she will have warned everybody within hail. What d'you think, Elvesdon? Will Prior have had the sense to wire sharp to Police headquarters and laager up your place?"

"Of course he will. We've often discussed contingencies, though not such an unlooked-for one as this. Oh, he'll have made that all right."

That evening a surprise awaited. There was a sound of voices outside.

The wicker-slab that const.i.tuted the door of their hut was pushed, and an English voice called out.

"It's me. Can I come in?"

"Why Parry, of course you can," cried Elvesdon, promptly undoing the fastenings. "How are you? Glad to have you back again. We've been trying all we knew to make them let you come back to us, but for some reason they wouldn't. Have some skoff. We're half through ours. Well, it'll be an invaluable experience to you afterwards."

"Thanks, Mr Elvesdon. You're awfully good," answered the young fellow.

"I don't know. I thought I was afraid of nothing--but somehow these black devils with their beastly spears, threatening to stick you for a couple of days and nights, rather saps your nerves, especially when you're all alone, and can't talk to them either. I've been in the roughest scrimmages at football and never knew what it was to funk, but somehow now--I don't know--I've expected to be stuck ever since they lugged me away two nights ago."

"Oh, they won't do that or they'd have done it before," answered Elvesdon cheerily, though his cheerfulness was more than half-affected.

"Fact is you've been reading too much William Charles Scully, and Ernest Glanville, and these other Johnnies who write up the n.o.ble savage within an inch of his life. You've taken an overdose of them and of him.

Here--have some of this _tywala_: I've managed to raise some at last: the stingy devils began with us on water. That's right. Now fall to."

The boy did so, nothing loath, and soon his spirits revived: he was not more than twenty-one, and accustomed to a gregarious life, wherefore the solitary confinement had told upon him.

"Light your pipe," said Elvesdon, when they had done. "We needn't stand on etiquette now. We're all fellow-prisoners. By George, I've sent a good many into that condition in course of duty, but never thought to become a prisoner myself. Funny, isn't it?"

The boy laughed. Elvesdon could see that his first estimate was correct, that he was a 'gentleman ranker' and was not long in drawing from him, with his usual tact and ac.u.men, all his simple family history.

He was the son of a country vicar, and had had a great ambition towards the army, but lack of means, as usual, stepped in, and he had turned to a colonial Mounted Police force as many and many another likewise circ.u.mstanced had done.

"Well Parry, I shall make it my business to see that you don't lose anything by your behaviour the other day," said Elvesdon, "if my word is good for anything. You carried out your orders to the letter, and that as sharp as sharp could be."

The boy flushed up with pleasure.

"Thanks awfully, Mr Elvesdon," he said. "I'd like to get on in the force. The dear old dad was always rather against my coming out to join: said it was like enlisting as a private in the Army, and so on-- and that I'd much better try for a clerkship--a lot of good I'd have been at quill driving! No, I didn't want that sort of life, but I was going to do for myself so here I am."

"That's quite right," cut in Thornhill. "You're the sort of chap we want out here, Parry. And even if you don't stick to the force a few years' training in it'll do you all the good in the world."

And then the boy, all ideas of the difference between a Police trooper and the Resident Magistrate forgotten for the time, opened his heart, and got back to his home in the pleasant English country, and his schooldays, only, comparatively speaking, a matter of yesterday. He had not been coddled either, but had had to take the rough with the smooth-- and more rough than smooth--therein. And eagerly and enthusiastically did he let himself go to his older listeners, his fellow-captives, here, in the night-gloom of this savage hut, lighted only by the dimness of the dying fire: forgetting everything, forgetting that he might never see that English home again; might never see the setting of another sun; and causing them almost to forget it too. Poor boy! Poor boy!

He was eloquent on the big trout he had taken out of the mill-pool in the rippling moonlight in the sweet early summer, with a white moth; the big two-and-a-half pounder he had tried for so often; on the sparrow-hawk's nest in the straight, slippery stemmed Scotch fir on the border of the most carefully watched covert of the countryside, also in the moonlight, and the hanging on by one hand--for an awful half minute to a greasy, slippery bough, with sixty feet of clear drop beneath him-- on his brothers and sisters, and the first pipe which he and two of the former had smoked, with doubtful satisfaction, in the depths of a clay-sided ditch overhung with brambles, a little way below the vicarage garden--on the splendid old copper-beech beneath which they used to take tea on sultry summer afternoons. Elvesdon, listening sympathetically, encouraged him to talk on--Thornhill was already snoring. At last the boy himself grew drowsy.

"Well, Mr Elvesdon, I'm keeping you awake," he said. "But I can't tell you how kind you have been to me. I hope, if we get out of this, and you are ever in England you will go and see my people, and I hope still more that I shall, by some chance or other, be there too to welcome you.

I'm so thankful we're together again; it was awfully lonely stuck away there all by myself among these brutes."

"Why Parry, that's a first-rate after-dinner speech," laughed Elvesdon, dropping a kindly hand on the lad's shoulder. "I hope all that you say, too. And now--go to sleep."

The other obeyed. Elvesdon however, sitting there, did not feel in the least inclined to follow suit. He felt uncomfortably wakeful, and unwontedly depressed. He groped around for some fresh twigs to throw on the fire, and found a scanty remnant. As the flame flared up, making a shimmer on the shining backs of innumerable c.o.c.kroaches studding the domed roof, he got out his pouch, and as he filled his pipe he thought how there was about enough to stand him in for another day's smoke, and that only. He also thought of Edala.

It was nothing new. He had been flunking of her all the time. Now, however, he thought of her with a vividity of concentration that almost seemed to bring her presence here within this squalid hut. Would she miss him, or would her anxiety be all on account of her father? He did not know what to think--he could only hope.

His companions were slumbering peacefully. Hour followed hour and still he sat. The fire burned low, then went out altogether. The keen breaths of the night air chilled him to the bone. Rolling his blanket around him--they had been allowed the use of a blanket apiece by their captors--he lay down and suddenly sleep came to him.

But not for long. Hardly five minutes seemed to have pa.s.sed before he was awake again--in reality it was as many hours. Daylight was streaming into the hut through the wicker-door, but what had really awakened him, and the other two as well, was a hubbub of voices outside.

"What the devil is that infernal racket?" he growled--a man awakened in the soundness of a much needed sleep is apt to growl.

"Don't know. I'm listening," returned Thornhill. And the purport of the said listening made the listener grow rather grave. Then the door was violently banged against, and excited voices ordered those within to come forth.

"What is it?" exclaimed Parry, springing up eager and alert. "Are we rescued?"

But to his two elder companions an idea suggested itself. Had a white force suddenly appeared and was threatening the kraal? If so the more excuse they could find for delaying to come forth from the hut the better.

"What is it?" called back Thornhill. "Wait now. _Gahle_, _gahle_! we must dress ourselves."

They had lain down in their clothes, of course, but anything for an excuse to gain time. But those without did not see things in the same light. The uproar redoubled.

"Come forth! Come forth! _Au_! Dress yourselves? You shall be dressed--in red."

Thornhill and Elvesdon looked at each other, and the look was that of men who knew that their last hour had come. The third, of course, did not understand what was being said, or rather howled, outside.

"Well, you can wait," called back Elvesdon. "I am an official of the Government--of the most powerful Government the world has ever seen. I am not accustomed to be hurried, and I will not be. When we are ready we will come forth."

It was the boldness of desperation. If an attacking force was advancing it might be here at any moment. They were not going forth to hold out their throats to be cut.

There was silence at this answer, save that a few deep voices were vehemently debating in a wholly indistinct undertone. Elvesdon and Thornhill looked around for a weapon, even a stick. There was nothing of the sort within the hut. They even put up their hands and groped among the thatch in the hope of finding concealed a.s.segais--anything for a weapon! Same result. There was nothing.

"The chief would see you, _Abelungu_," now called out a voice in more conciliatory tones. "The chief--_Au_! he would speak with you."

"Well, I suppose we must chance it," said Thornhill. Elvesdon nodded.

The other, of course, had no say in the matter. The trio pa.s.sed through the low doorway, and stood upright. What was this? They were in the midst of hundreds of armed warriors. The latter looked dusty and travel soiled. Some, even, had wounds bound up, the blood which had filtered through the filthy rags, browned and hardened upon them.

"Where is the chief?" cried Elvesdon. "As a Government official I talk to no common man."

A growl arose, and a.s.segai hafts rattled ominously. But the policy of boldness answered here. No aggressive move was made.

"There he is, _Abelungu_," said one or two.

They pa.s.sed between the armed ranks, to where a tall man was standing.

He was a sullen, heavy-faced savage, black-bearded, and holding his shining head-ring as proudly thrown back as though he were the Zulu king, at least.

"Greeting Nteseni," said Thornhill. "It is not long since we met, and now we meet again. I am glad to look upon your face, and having done so, I think now we will go home."