Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland Part 2

I don't know you from Adam, and you've hardly spoken a word since you came; and yet I seem as if I'd known you all my life." Peter moved a little nearer him. "I was awfully afraid of you when you first came; even when I first saw you;--you aren't dressed as most of us dress, you know. But the minute the fire shone on your face I said, 'It's all right.' Curious, isn't it?" said Peter. "I don't know you from Adam, but if you were to take up my gun and point it at me, I wouldn't move! I'd lie down here and go to sleep with my head at your feet; curious, isn't it, when I don't know you from Adam? My name's Peter Halket. What's yours?"

But the stranger was arranging the logs on the fire. The flames shot up bright and high, and almost hid him from Peter Halket's view.

"By gad! how they burn when you arrange them!" said Peter.

They sat quiet in the blaze for a while.

Then Peter said, "Did you see any n.i.g.g.e.rs about yesterday? I haven't come across any in this part."

"There is," said the stranger, raising himself, "an old woman in a cave over yonder, and there is one man in the bush, ten miles from this spot.

He has lived there six weeks, since you destroyed the kraal, living on roots or herbs. He was wounded in the thigh, and left for dead. He is waiting till you have all left this part of the country that he may set out to follow his own people. His leg is not yet so strong that he may walk fast."

"Did you speak to him?" said Peter.

"I took him down to the water where a large pool was. The bank was too high for the man to descend alone."

"It's a lucky thing for you our fellows didn't catch you," said Peter.

"Our captain's a regular little martinet. He'd shoot you as soon as look at you, if he saw you fooling round with a wounded n.i.g.g.e.r. It's lucky you kept out of his way."

"The young ravens have meat given to them," said the stranger, lifting himself up; "and the lions go down to the streams to drink."

"Ah--yes--" said Peter; "but that's because we can't help it!"

They were silent again for a little while. Then Peter, seeing that the stranger showed no inclination to speak, said, "Did you hear of the spree they had up Bulawayo way, hanging those three n.i.g.g.e.rs for spies? I wasn't there myself, but a fellow who was told me they made the n.i.g.g.e.rs jump down from the tree and hang themselves; one fellow wouldn't bally jump, till they gave him a charge of buckshot in the back: and then he caught hold of a branch with his hands and they had to shoot 'em loose.

He didn't like hanging. I don't know if it's true, of course; I wasn't there myself, but a fellow who was told me. Another fellow who was at Bulawayo, but who wasn't there when they were hung, said they fired at them just after they jumped, to kill 'em. I--"

"I was there," said the stranger.

"Oh, you were?" said Peter. "I saw a photograph of the n.i.g.g.e.rs hanging, and our fellows standing round smoking; but I didn't see you in it. I suppose you'd just gone away?"

"I was beside the men when they were hung," said the stranger.

"Oh, you were, were you?" said Peter. "I don't much care about seeing that sort of thing myself. Some fellows think it's the best fun out to see the n.i.g.g.e.rs kick; but I can't stand it: it turns my stomach. It's not liver-heartedness," said Peter, quickly, anxious to remove any adverse impression as to his courage which the stranger might form; "if it's shooting or fighting, I'm there. I've potted as many n.i.g.g.e.rs as any man in our troop, I bet. It's floggings and hangings I'm off. It's the way one's brought up, you know. My mother never even would kill our ducks; she let them die of old age, and we had the feathers and the eggs: and she was always drumming into me;--don't hit a fellow smaller than yourself; don't hit a fellow weaker than yourself; don't hit a fellow unless he can hit you back as good again. When you've always had that sort of thing drummed into you, you can't get rid of it, somehow.

Now there was that other n.i.g.g.e.r they shot. They say he sat as still as if he was cut out of stone, with his arms round his legs; and some of the fellows gave him blows about the head and face before they took him off to shoot him. Now, that's the sort of thing I can't do. It makes me sick here, somehow." Peter put his hand rather low down over the pit of his stomach. "I'll shoot as many as you like if they'll run, but they mustn't be tied up."

"I was there when that man was shot," said the stranger.

"Why, you seem to have been everywhere," said Peter. "Have you seen Cecil Rhodes?"

"Yes, I have seen him," said the stranger.

"Now he's death on n.i.g.g.e.rs," said Peter Halket, warming his hands by the fire; "they say when he was Prime Minister down in the Colony he tried to pa.s.s a law that would give their masters and mistresses the right to have their servants flogged whenever they did anything they didn't like; but the other Englishmen wouldn't let him pa.s.s it. But here he can do what he likes. That's the reason some fellows don't want him to be sent away. They say, 'If we get the British Government here, they'll be giving the n.i.g.g.e.rs land to live on; and let them have the vote, and get civilised and educated, and all that sort of thing; but Cecil Rhodes, he'll keep their noses to the grindstone.' 'I prefer land to n.i.g.g.e.rs,'

he says. They say he's going to parcel them out, and make them work on our lands whether they like it or not--just as good as having slaves, you know: and you haven't the bother of looking after them when they're old. Now, there I'm with Rhodes; I think it's an awfully good move. We don't come out here to work; it's all very well in England; but we've come here to make money, and how are we to make it, unless you get n.i.g.g.e.rs to work for you, or start a syndicate? He's death on n.i.g.g.e.rs, is Rhodes!" said Peter, meditating; "they say if we had the British Government here and you were thrashing a n.i.g.g.e.r and something happened, there'd be an investigation, and all that sort of thing. But, with Cecil, it's all right, you can do what you like with the n.i.g.g.e.rs, provided you don't get HIM into trouble."

The stranger watched the clear flame as it burnt up high in the still night air; then suddenly he started.

"What is it?" said Peter; "do you hear anything?"

"I hear far off," said the stranger, "the sound of weeping, and the sound of blows. And I hear the voices of men and women calling to me."

Peter listened intently. "I don't hear anything!" he said. "It must be in your head. I sometimes get a noise in mine." He listened intently.

"No, there's nothing. It's all so deadly still."

They sat silent for a while.

"Peter Simon Halket," said the stranger suddenly--Peter started; he had not told him his second name--"if it should come to pa.s.s that you should obtain those lands you have desired, and you should obtain black men to labour on them and make to yourself great wealth; or should you create that company"--Peter started--"and fools should buy from you, so that you became the richest man in the land; and if you should take to yourself wide lands, and raise to yourself great palaces, so that princes and great men of earth crept up to you and laid their hands against yours, so that you might slip gold into them--what would it profit you?"

"Profit!" Peter Halket stared: "Why, it would profit everything.

What makes Beit and Rhodes and Barnato so great? If you've got eight millions--"

"Peter Simon Halket, which of those souls you have seen on earth is to you greatest?" said the stranger, "Which soul is to you fairest?"

"Ah," said Peter, "but we weren't talking of souls at all; we were talking of money. Of course if it comes to souls, my mother's the best person I've ever seen. But what does it help her? She's got to stand washing clothes for those stuck-up nincomp.o.o.ps of fine ladies! Wait till I've got money! It'll be somebody else then, who--"

"Peter Halket," said the stranger, "who is the greatest; he who serves or he who is served?" Peter looked at the stranger: then it flashed on him that he was mad.

"Oh," he said, "if it comes to that, what's anything! You might as well say, sitting there in your old linen shirt, that you were as great as Rhodes or Beit or Barnato, or a king. Of course a man's just the same whatever he's got on or whatever he has; but he isn't the same to other people."

"There have kings been born in stables," said the stranger.

Then Peter saw that he was joking, and laughed. "It must have been a long time ago; they don't get born there now," he said. "Why, if G.o.d Almighty came to this country, and hadn't half-a-million in shares, they wouldn't think much of Him."

Peter built up his fire. Suddenly he felt the stranger's eyes were fixed on him.

"Who gave you your land?" the stranger asked.

"Mine! Why, the Chartered Company," said Peter.

The stranger looked back into the fire. "And who gave it to them?" he asked softly.

"Why, England, of course. She gave them the land to far beyond the Zambezi to do what they liked with, and make as much money out of as they could, and she'd back 'em."

"Who gave the land to the men and women of England?" asked the stranger softly.

"Why, the devil! They said it was theirs, and of course it was," said Peter.

"And the people of the land: did England give you the people also?"

Peter looked a little doubtfully at the stranger. "Yes, of course, she gave us the people; what use would the land have been to us otherwise?"

"And who gave her the people, the living flesh and blood, that she might give them away, into the hands of others?" asked the stranger, raising himself.

Peter looked at him and was half afeared. "Well, what could she do with a lot of miserable n.i.g.g.e.rs, if she didn't give them to us? A lot of good-for-nothing rebels they are, too," said Peter.

"What is a rebel?" asked the stranger.

"My Gawd!" said Peter, "you must have lived out of the world if you don't know what a rebel is! A rebel is a man who fights against his king and his country. These b.l.o.o.d.y n.i.g.g.e.rs here are rebels because they are fighting against us. They don't want the Chartered Company to have them.

But they'll have to. We'll teach them a lesson," said Peter Halket, the pugilistic spirit rising, firmly reseating himself on the South African earth, which two years before he had never heard of, and eighteen months before he had never seen, as if it had been his mother earth, and the land in which he first saw light.