John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising

“Well, yes. I can see that you’re trying to tease me, Mr Moseley, but I don’t care. I don’t know when I’ve seen a man I liked better.”

“‘Present company – ’ of course?”

“No; not even present company. No; but really, I would like to let Mr Ames know I am here. But I don’t like to ask Mr Hollingworth. It’s a long way to send, and he may not be able to spare a boy.”

Thought Tarrant, “She’s a puzzler! She’s playing on the innocent stop for all the instrument will carry, or – she’s genuine. Can’t make her out.”

But Moseley lifted up his voice and hailed —

“Hollingworth!”

“What is it?” sung out that worthy. “Sun over the yard-arm yet? All right. You know where to find it. No soda, though; you’ll have to do with selzogene. If you want ‘squareface’ you must get the missis to dig it out of the store. There’s none out. Maitland and Harvey between them got outside what there was yesterday.”

“No, no; that’s not what we want, though it’ll come in directly,” laughed Moseley. “Look here, Hollingworth” – the latter had drawn near by this time – “Miss Commerell has found an old friend up here – Ames at Sikumbutana – and she doesn’t like to ask you to send a boy over to let him know she’s here.”

“But, Mr Moseley, I didn’t tell you to ask Mr Hollingworth,” laughed Nidia.

“Pooh! Why didn’t you like to ask me, Miss Commerell? Of course I can send over. Though – if it will be all the same to you, I’d rather send to-morrow,” Hollingworth added dubiously.

“Certainly it will. Thanks awfully. Are you sure it won’t inconvenience you?” said Nidia, in her most winning way.

“Not to-morrow. To-day, you see, I have two boys away. But I’ll start one off the first thing in the morning.”

She reiterated her thanks; and Tarrant, keenly observant, said to himself: “No; clearly I’ve no show. Damn Ames!”

Chapter Twelve.

The Spreading of the Flame

“Well, good-bye, Moseley. Pity you’re in such a hurry; you might just as well have stayed the night. However, since you’re determined, you’d better not ride too slow. It’ll take you three mortal hours to fetch Jekyll’s place.”

Thus Hollingworth, soon after the midday dinner. The horses stood ready saddled, the pack-donkeys having been sent on in the forenoon.

“I’ll see you in Bulawayo week after next, I suppose. I’ve got to go in about that disputed ‘pegging’ case. Beastly nuisance! Besides, I’ve got to take Miss Commerell back.”

Tarrant pricked up his ears at this. He had not done much to improve the shining hour with Nidia during that long, cool, lazy morning. He had confined himself to observing her, now and then putting in a word or two, but not often. But he had plans.

And now the farewells became general, all talking at once, as people will on such occasions; for the whole household had turned out to see them off. Suddenly Hollingworth said: —

“You’ve forgotten your rifle, Tarrant. Never mind; don’t get down” – for the other was already mounted. “I’ll get it for you. Which corner did you leave it in?”

“Didn’t leave it. Mafuta’s gone on ahead with it.”

“Oh! No chance of him clearing with it, eh?” said Hollingworth.

“No; he’s a reliable boy. Had him a long time. He’s quite safe.”

Thus in that lurid March of ’96 did the settlers in Matabeleland rejoice in their security.

“You put that on rather well, old man,” said Tarrant, as the two rode along.

“What did I put on?”

“Oh, the surprise part of the business. Now I see why you were so desperately bent on fetching up at Hollingworth’s.”

“Smart boy, Dibs. See through a brick wall, and all that sort of thing,” replied Moseley, good-humouredly. “This time you’ve seen through too far, though. I had no more notion Miss Commerell was there than you had, or even that she was in the country at all. Nice girl, isn’t she?”

“Ye-es. I was studying her rather closely. She’s either the most consummate actress or the most out of the ordinary sample of her sex I’ve encountered for a long, long time, if ever.”

“Well, she’s the last, then. If there’s one thing about Nidia Commerell that appeals to me it is that she’s so perfectly natural, and therefore, of course, unconventional.”

“Oh, she does ‘appeal’ to you, then? I rather thought she did,” said Tarrant, serenely. “But you’ve no show, old man. It’s the other Johnny – what’s his name – ”

” – Ames.”

” – Yes. He seems to have got the floor just now.”

“As to the first – skittles; as to the last – why do you think so?”

“Didn’t I tell you I was studying her rather closely? When you first mentioned – er – Ames, she just, ever so little, overdid it. You may rely upon it that joker made his hay while the sun shone.”

Moseley burst into a great contemptuous laugh. “Oh, bosh, Dibs! You’ve got the keenest nose for a mare’s nest I ever saw. I tell you that’s Miss Commerell’s way. If she likes any one she doesn’t in the least mind saying so. That alone shows there’s nothing deeper in it.”

“Her way, is it? Oh, well, then, so much the worse for – er – Ames.”

The while those they had just left were comparing opinions upon them.

“That friend of Mr Moseley’s seems a very quiet man,” Mrs Hollingworth was saying. “Who is he, George?”

“Never saw him before in my life. In the same line of business, I take it. His ‘quietness,’ though, seemed to me to cover a suspicion of ‘side.’ Sort of ‘know everything’ manner.”

“Yes. Perhaps I am wrong, but there seemed a sort of conscious superiority about him. What did you think, Nidia?”

“Just what you do. But we may be wrong. The other is all rights though, so jolly and good-natured always. We came out on the same ship.”

“Moseley. Yes; he’s a good chap, but he’s got a detestable wife,” said Hollingworth.

“It’s astonishing what a number of ‘good chaps’ have,” laughed Nidia. “But where is she?”

“In England now. Moseley drives his trade here, and she has a good time on the lion’s share of the proceeds there. She won’t stay in this country. Yes? What is it?”

This to his son and heir, aetat ten, who was trying to get in a chance of asking to be allowed to go out and shoot a buck.

“Don’t know. You’re too much of a kiddie, Jim. Your mother fidgeted herself – and me – to death last time you went.”

“I got the buck, though,” was the reply, half defiant, half triumphant.

“So you did, sonny. Well, you can go. Be careful with the gun, and don’t be late. It’s a good thing for them to learn to shoot straight in a country like this,” he added, as the boy skipped away without waiting for the possibility of any recall of this edict: and a moment later they saw him disappearing in the bush, away beyond the mealie-lands.

“Fancy you and Ames being old pals, Miss Commerell,” said Hollingworth. “Where did you know each other?”

“Down at the Cape. We were in the same hotel at Wynberg. I saw a good deal of him, and liked him very much. Is he getting on well up here, Mr Hollingworth?”

“Yes, I think so. He’s thought a good deal of in his own line. Shouldn’t wonder if he gets into something better before long. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Commerell, I’ll go and take my usual forty winks, if those ‘kinders’ will let me.”

This was a figure of speech on Hollingworth’s part. Had his progeny been ten times more riotous and restive than it was he would have slept tranquilly through all the racket they could make. There are persons who can sleep through anything – from a fox-terrier in a backyard to a big gun practice – and Hollingworth was one of them.

Nidia, left alone, did not feel in the least inclined to follow his example. A strange restlessness was upon her, a desire for solitude; and where could she obtain this better than amid the wild bush by which the homestead was surrounded? Going inside, she threw on a straw hat, then taking a light umzimbiti walking-stick, she struck into one of the forest paths.

She felt not the slightest fear or misgiving. The natives at that time were deferential and submissive, and seldom encountered outside their own locations. Wild beasts avoided the near proximity of human habitations, at any rate in the full blaze of the afternoon sun, and if she came upon a snake she could always run away; for she was not one of those who imagine that the average serpent can leap – say, fifty feet – through the air, or spends its time lying in wait for human beings for the fun of biting them. So she wandered on beneath the feathery acacias and gnarled wild fig, now stopping to disengage her skirt from the sharp claws of a projecting spray of “haak-doorn,” now bending down to examine some strange and brilliant-winged beetle. A pair of “go-away” birds, uttering their cat-like call, darted from tree to tree, keeping ever a short distance before her. When she drew near the spray on which they were perched on they would go again, and she could mark their conical crests as again they plunged forward in arrow-like flight, only to perch again as before.

A small stony kopje rose above the level of the brake. To this she ascended, and, finding a shady spot, sat down upon a granite boulder to rest. Away and around the gaze could range over a great expanse of country, here smoothly undulating in a green sea of verdure, there broken-up into stony hillocks. She could not see the homestead – that was hidden by the gradual depression towards the river-bank, but the river-bed was discernible by the winding slit its course left in the expanse of foliage. And away in the golden haze of the blue horizon a line of hills which she instinctively guessed were those of the Sikumbutana.

So John Ames was so near and she would see him again; a matter of twenty miles or so was no distance in up-country estimation! Yet, why should this consciousness bring with it a feeling of elation? She was not in the least in love with the man. She could mention his name, or hear it mentioned, without a tremor in her voice or a stirring of the pulse. She had not even gone to the pains of inquiring after him, or as to his whereabouts, since her arrival at Bulawayo; yet now, suddenly an impulse was upon her to see him again which amounted almost to a longing. She had missed him greatly after his departure, even as she had said she would, but only as she would have missed anybody in whose society she had found pleasure and entertainment; yet now she found herself looking forward to meeting him again with such a curious mingling of feelings as she had never known before. She had seen him amid conventional, and, to him strange, surroundings, now she wanted to see him at home as it were, and in his own everyday sphere.

How would they meet? She supposed he would ride over directly he received her note. Would he look surprised and pleased? Would that grave, firm face relax as he greeted her, the straight glance of the grey eyes soften ever so little as it met hers? Thus she pondered. Yet she was not in the least in love with John Ames.

For long she sat, pondering thus. Then, upon the distant stillness, rolled forth a shot, followed by another. It broke the current of her thoughts.

“Jimmie is getting some sport,” she said to herself, standing up to look in the direction of the double report. “But he must be finding it very near home. That shot sounded almost as if it were at the house.”

She glanced at the sun. Its distance above the horizon reminded her that she must be getting back herself. Rising, she descended the granite kopje, and took her way along the bush-path she had come by. This was a matter of no difficulty, even if she were now following it for the first time, for those among whom she had lately moved had taught her something of the mysteries of “spoor.”

How peaceful it looked in the golden light of the afternoon stillness! The homestead, truly, was of the roughest description, with its thatched roof and “dagga” walls, yet it, and the pointed conical huts behind it, were all in keeping. A settler’s dwelling in a new land! A halo of romance overspread it in Nidia’s mind as she emerged from the bush-path into the clearing.

Stay. What was that? Blood! She had just time to switch her skirt aside. Blood? Yes; a great patch of it – then another and another, and a long trail in the dust as though something heavy had been dragged along the ground. Ah, Jimmie had been in luck again and had brought down another buck. That was the meaning of the double shot she had heard. The animal had been too heavy for the little chap to carry. He had been obliged to drag it, hence the trail along the ground. And in her rejoicing over the small boy’s venatorial triumph, Nidia forgot her natural disgust at sight of the blood-gouts which lay thick and hideously red along the trail.

How still it all was! Had their mother taken those earthquakes of children for a walk? she wondered. Even then it was strange to be out of earshot of their voices, if only in the distance. Well, the youthful hunter should be in, anyhow.

“Jimmie!” she called. “Jim-mie!”

No answer.

The front door was closed. She noticed that the trail went round as though to the back of the house, yet in front of the closed door the blood-patches lay thicker than ever. Jimmy would catch it when his mother came back, she thought to herself, for bringing his quarry in at the front door and making that horrid mess. Lifting her skirt to avoid the latter, and making a little grimace of disgust, she turned the handle.

There was a window opposite, but the blind was down. To Nidia, coming in from the full glow of the sunlight, the room was almost dark. Only for a moment though, and then she saw —

She saw that which might have turned many a stronger brain than hers – she saw that which made her cover her eyes with her hands, and stagger back against the doorpost with a low wailing cry of such unutterable horror as can rarely have proceeded from human throat. Oh Heaven! must she look again and go mad? was the thought which flashed through her mind as with hands pressed to her eyes she leaned against the doorpost as rigid as though turned to stone.

On the couch beneath the window aforesaid lay the form of Hollingworth – the form, for little else about the wretched man was distinguishable but his clothing. His skull had been battered in, and his features smashed to a pulp. There he lay, and on the floor beside him a periodical which he had been reading before overtaken by the sleep from which he was destined never to awaken. In one corner lay the corpse of his wife – and, in a row, four children, all with their skulls smashed, and nailed to the ground with assegais – the whole having undergone more or less nameless horrors of mutilation. This is what she saw – this girl – who had never looked upon a scene of violence or of bloodshed in her life. This is what she saw, returning in serene security to the peaceful home that sheltered her. No wonder she stood against the doorpost, her hands pressed tightly to her eyes, her brain on fire. Was it a dream – an awful nightmare? The very magnitude of the horror saved her.

Out into the air again. Not another glance dare she venture into that scene of hideous butchery. Out into the air again. The same golden sun was shining, the same fair earth, the same feathery foliage peaceful in the afternoon light. But within? The world began to go round with her. She staggered as though to sink into a swoon, when —

What was that? A cry? A moan? From the back of the house it seemed to come, and it was distinctly that of a human being in pain. Thither Nidia flew. The sound had created a diversion, and had certainly saved her brain from giving way from shock and fright.

A form was lying on the ground covered with blood and dust. Nidia recognised it in a moment for that of Hollingworth’s eldest boy – the youthful hunter whose prowess she had been about to congratulate.

“Jimmie!” she cried, bending over him. “Jimmie, my poor child, what has happened? What have they done to you – to – to everybody?”

Her voice broke down, and she could only sob piteously. She tried to raise the boy’s head, but he screamed.

“Oh, don’t – don’t! Oh, it hurts!”

To her horror, Nidia saw something of the extent of the terrible injuries the poor little fellow had received. Besides a huge bump on the side of the head he was covered with assegai-stabs. Yet he was still alive. Amid his moans, he looked up suddenly.

“Oh, it’s you, Miss Commerell!” he gasped.

“Yes – yes. Oh, my dear little boy, what does it all mean?” she wailed, her voice thrilling with horrified pity.

A gleam came into the boy’s eyes, and for the moment he seemed to forget his agony.

“I – plugged two of the devils,” he said – “two of them. One was Qota, our boy. He got the charge of buckshot, the other the bullet. Then they hit me on the head with a kerrie. Oh-h!”

He sank back groaning under a renewed spasm of pain. This, then, was the double shot Nidia had heard. She saw now the meaning of the bloody trail which she had imagined was that made by the youthful hunter dragging home his quarry. The miscreants had dragged away the bodies of their own dead. Two of them had been sent to their account, red-handed, and that by this mere child, either in defence of those who were all to him, or revengeful in his rage and grief. Bit by bit she got at the truth.

He was returning from an unsuccessful stalk, and had gained the outside of the bush behind the house, when he heard a low prolonged scream proceeding from within. In this he recognised the voice of his mother. Cocking his gun, he ran hurriedly forward, but before he could gain the front door he was met by several savages armed with axes and knobkerries. Two of these he immediately shot – shot them dead, too, he declared – and then, before he could slip in fresh cartridges, they were upon him. The gun was wrenched from his hand, then something seemed to fall upon his head, for after that he knew no more.

All this was told spasmodically between lengthened pauses, and the effort had quite exhausted the poor little fellow. And now some inkling of the situation seemed to rush through Nidia’s reeling brain, though even then the idea that this wholesale murder was but one instance of several at that very moment throughout the land, did not occur to her. She supposed it to be a mere sporadic outbreak of savagery, or lust of plunder. It was clear, too, that this poor child was ignorant of all that had actually happened within, and she felt a sort of miserable consolation in realising that physical agony had so confused his mind that he showed no curiosity on the subject. Nor would he allow her to examine the extent of his hurts. If she so much as touched him he screamed aloud; but she knew, as confidently as though assured by the whole faculty, that his hours were numbered.

“I feel sleepy. How dark it is!” he murmured at length.

Dark! Why, the surroundings were in a very bath of lustre – of golden sunlight glow.

“So sleepy. Don’t leave me. Promise you won’t leave me!”

“Of course I won’t leave you, Jimmie darling,” sobbed Nidia, bending down and kissing his forehead; for well she knew what this deepening coma portended. Soon again he spoke, but in the feeblest of murmurs. “You must go. They’ll come back and find you; then they’ll kill you, the devils. You must go. Hide in the bush, down below the river-bank. They won’t look there. Go – go quick. They’ll come back. Hark! I hear them.”

“But I won’t go, Jimmie; I won’t leave you, whether they kill me or not,” she sobbed, moved to the heart by the unselfishness of this child-hero, who had first slain with his own hand two of the murderers of his parents, and now was urging her to leave him to the solitude he dreaded, lest she should meet with the same fate. But this heroic injunction was his last utterance. A few minutes, and the head fell back, the eyes opening wide in a glassy stare. Little Jimmie had joined his murdered kindred.

The sun sank beneath the rim of the world, and the purple shades of the brief twilight deepened over this once peaceful homestead, now a mausoleum for its butchered inmates lying in their blood. And still Nidia sat there holding the head of the dead boy in her lap.

Chapter Thirteen.

What happened at Jekyll’s Store

Jekyll’s Store, near Malengwa, was an institution of considerable importance in its way, for there not only did prospectors and travellers and settlers replenish their supplies, but it served as a place of general “roll up,” when the monotony of life in camp or on lonely farms began to weigh upon those destined to lead the same.

Its situation was an open slope, fronting a rolling country, more or less thickly grown with wild fig and mahobo-hobo, mimosa and feathery acacia. Behind, some three or four hundred yards, rose a low ridge of rocks, whose dull greyness was relieved by the vivid green of sugar-bush. Strategically its position was bad, but this was a side to which those who planted it there had not given a thought. The Maxims of the Company’s forces had done for the natives for ever and a day. There was not a kick left in them.

The building was a fair-sized oblong one, constructed of the usual wattle and “dagga” as to the walls, and with a high-pitched roof of thatch. Internally it was divided into three compartments – a sleeping-room, a living-room, and the store itself, the latter as large as the two first put together. From end to end of this was a long counter, about a third of which was partitioned off as a public bar. Rows of shelves lined the walls, and every conceivable article seemed represented – blankets and rugs; tinned food and candles; soap and cheese; frying-pans and camp-kettles; cooking-pots and high boots; straps and halters; Boer tobacco and Manila cheroots; all jostling each other, down even to accordions and concertinas, seemed only to begin the list of general “notions” which, either stacked on shelves or hanging from the beam which ran along the building parallel with the spring of the roof, filled every available space. Bags of mealies, too, and flour stood against the further wall; and the shelves backing the bar department were lined with a plentiful and varied assortment of bottles.

Not much less varied was the type of customer who was prone to sample their contents. Miners working for a wage, independent prospectors, transport riders, now and then a company promoter or a mining engineer or surveyor, settlers on farms, an occasional brace of troopers of the Matabeleland Mounted Police – would all roll up at Jekyll’s in turn; but by reason of the wide distances over which the sparse population was scattered, there were seldom more than a dozen gathered together there at once – usually less. But even there the characteristics of the gathering were much akin to those pervading similar groups as seen in older civilisation – the bore simple and the bore reiterative, the local Ananias, usually triplicated; the assumptive bore; the literary critic – the last especially in full bloom after a few rounds of “squareface” or John Dewar – and other varieties. Such characteristics, however, were well known to the sound residue of the assemblage, who would delight to “draw” the individual owners thereof – after the few rounds aforesaid.

Within the store and canteen part of the building about a dozen men were gathered when Moseley and Tarrant rode up. All were attired in the usual light marching order of the country – shirt and trousers, high boots and wide-brimmed hat. Some were lounging against the counter, others squatting on sacks or packing-cases, and all were smoking. Jekyll, himself, a tall man with a grizzled beard, and who had been a good many years in the country before the entry of the first Pioneer force, was dispensing drinks, with the help of his assistant, a young Englishman who had been ploughed for his degree at Oxford. To several of these the new arrivals were known, and forthwith there was a fresh call on the resources of the bar department.

“News?” said Jekyll, in reply to a question from Moseley. “Thought maybe you’d have brought some. There’s talk of a rising among the niggers down beyond Sikumbutana. Heard anything of it?”

“Not a word.”

“Gah on. There won’t be no bloomin’ rahsin’,” cut in a prospector, a Cockney ex-ship-steward. “Nothink but a lot o’ gas. The wy to treat niggers is my wy.”

“And what might that be?” said another prospector, a tall, bronzed, fine-looking man, who had taken his degree at Oxford.

“Why, one o’ my boys cheeked me yesterday, so I ups with a bloomin’ pick-’andle and jes lets ’im ’ave it over the bloomin’ boko. That’s my wy with ’em.”