Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

Chapter Twenty Eight.

“It is a White Man’s Skull.”

It was, as Renshaw had put it, “rough on the horses.” But the colonial horse, in contrast to his English brother, is pre-eminently an animal for use, and not for show and the primary object of supporting a crowd of stable hands. So puffing and panting, stumbling a little here and there, the poor beasts gallantly breasted the grassy steep in the wake of their masters, who had elected to spare their steeds by leading instead of riding them.

“The mountain certainly is built on a larger scale than one would think from below,” pronounced Renshaw, as he surveyed the summit which they were now very near. “We shall have to make a cast round to the left and look for a gully. The horses will never be able to climb over these rocks.”

The said rocks lay strewn thickly around; remnants of a cliff at one time guarding this side of the summit, but which in past ages must have fallen away into fragments. From below they had seemed mere pebbles.

“Right you are,” acquiesced Sellon, “Lead on.”

A détour of a couple of hundred yards and they rounded the spur, which had ended abruptly in a precipice. They were now on the western angle of the mountain. Immediately above rose a lofty wall of rock, the nearer end of the cock’s-comb ridge. It continued in unbroken fall some hundreds of feet from where they stood. They had reached the extremity of the slope, and halting for a moment paused in admiration of the stately grandeur of the great cliff sweeping down into giddy depths.

“Let’s take a look over,” said Maurice, advancing cautiously to the angle formed by the projection whereon they stood, and lying flat to peer over the brink.

“Yes; only be careful,” warned his companion.

As he peered over there was a “flap – flap – flap” echoing from the face of the cliff, like so many pistol-shots, as a cloud of great aasvogels, startled from their roosting places beneath, soared away over the abyss. So near were the gigantic birds that the spectator could see the glitter of their eyes.

“By Jove, but I’d like to go down and have a look at the beggars’ nests,” said Sellon, trying to peer still further over the brink, but in vain, for the aasvogel is among the most suspicious of birds, and, wherever possible, selects his home beneath a jutting projection, and thus out of eyeshot from above.

“They don’t make any, only lay one egg apiece on the bare rock,” said Renshaw, impatiently. “But come on. Man alive, we’ve no time for bird’s-nesting. In half an hour it’ll be dark.”

The sun had gone off the lower world, though here, on high, he still touched with a golden splendour the red burnished face of the giant cliff. And now from their lofty elevation they were able to gaze forth upon a scene of unsurpassable wildness and grandeur. Mountains upon mountains, the embattled walls of a cliff-girdled summit standing in contrast beside a smooth, hog-backed hump; here and there a lofty peak sheering up defiant above its fellows, but everywhere a billowy sea of giant heads towering over the darkling grey of desolate valleys and gloomy rifts now merging into night. But all is utter lifelessness in the complete silence of its desolation – not a sound breaks upon the now fresh and cooling air – not a sight to tell of life and animation – save the ghostly wings of the great vultures floating away into space. Then the sun sinks down behind the further ridge in ruddy sea, leaving the impression that, the whole world is on fire, until the lustrous afterglow fades into the grey shades of gloaming.

“No time for the beauties of Nature,” went on Renshaw, as his companion, rising from his prostrate posture, rejoined him. “Look. There is our way up, if we are to get up at all. And a precious cranky staircase it is, too.”

It was. A steep, stony gully, looking as if, in past ages, it had served for a water-shoot round the extremity of the razor-backed ridge. It ran right down to the brink of the projection whereon they were standing, and, in fact, to reach it, at any rate with the horses, was a very risky feat indeed. Sellon suggested leaving them below – but this his companion would not hear of.

“Stick to the horses, wherever possible,” he said. “Once lose them, we are like a man in mid-ocean with oars but no sail. Besides, we may find another way down – a much better one than this.”

A dozen yards of steep slope, right on the brink of the abyss, covered with loose shingle, had to be crossed prior to gaining the secure foothold of the gully itself. A false step, a jerk back of the bridle on the part of the led horse, might send steed, or rider, or both, into space.

“Up, old horse!” said Renshaw, encouragingly, as he took the lead. His steady old roadster, however, fully took in the situation. He gave one snort, a scramble or two, and he was safe within the gully.

But Sellon’s steed was disposed to show less gumption. At first he refused to try the place at all; then nearly hurled his master over the brink by rucking at the bridle when half-way across; and the hideously suggestive sound of a shower of loosened rubble sliding into the abyss fairly made his said master’s blood curdle. However, with much snorting and scrambling, he ultimately suffered himself to be led into safety.

The ascent was now comparatively easy, though with horses it was a tedious and tiresome business. The gully itself formed a huge natural staircase, seemingly about a couple of hundred feet in height. Up they went, stumbling, scrambling – the ring of the horses’ hoofs upon the stones waking the echoes in the dead silence of the spot. The grey shades of briefest twilight had already enshrouded the passage in gathering gloom.

“Well, Fanning, what’s the betting on my shot being the right one?” cried Sellon, whose mercurial spirits had gone up sky-high under the influence of a new excitement. “We must be more than halfway up this beastly water-pipe. A few minutes more will decide it. What’s the betting?”

“I still say, don’t make too sure, Sellon. I’m sorry to say it occurs to me that the expression ‘up there,’ on which this new idea of yours turns, may mean nothing more than when a man talks of ‘up country’. It may not mean on top of a mountain, don’t you know.”

“The devil it mayn’t! What an old wet blanket you are, Fanning. Well, we shall soon see now. Hallo! What have you got there?”

For the other was gazing attentively at something. Then without a word he dropped the end of his bridle, and clambering over a couple of boulders, was stooping over the object which had caught his eye.

It was something round and white. Maurice could see that much before following his companion, which, however, he hastened to do. Then both men stood staring down at the object.

The latter was embedded in a hole in the ground, firmly wedged between two rocks, half of it projecting. At first sight it might have been mistaken for an ostrich egg.

Renshaw bent down and picked up the object. Something of a tug was necessary to loosen it from the imprisoning rock. He held in his hand a human skull.

“What’s the matter, old chap?” said Sellon, wonderingly, noticing his companion’s face go deadly white, while the hand that held the skull trembled violently. “You seem rather knocked out of time, eh? A thing like that is a queerish sort of find in this God-forsaken corner; but surely your nerves are proof against such a trifle.”

“Trifle, do you call it?” replied Renshaw, speaking quickly and eagerly. “Look at the thing, man – look at it.”

“Well, I see it. What then?” said Maurice, wondering if his friend had gone clean off his head, and uncomfortably speculating on the extreme awkwardness of such an occurrence away here in the wilds.

“What then? Why, it is a white man’s skull.”

“How do you know that?” said Sellon, more curiously, bending down to examine the poor relic which seemed to grin piteously at them in the falling gloom. One side of the lower part was battered in – giving to the bony face and eyeless sockets a most grisly and leering expression.

“By the formation, of course. But, man alive, don’t you see what this find means – don’t you see what it means?”

“I suppose it means that some other fellow has been fool enough to scramble up here before us, and has come to mortal grief for his pains. Wait, though – hold on – by Jove, yes – I do see! Greenway’s mate; what does he call him? Jim. That’s it, of course. It means that we are on the right track, Fanning, old man. Hooroosh!”

“That’s just what it does mean. Observe. This skull is alone – no bones or remnants of bones – no relics of clothing. Now, the absence of anything of the kind points to the fact that the poor chap wasn’t killed here. He must have been killed up top, and the skull eventually have been brought here by some wild animal – or possibly lugged to the edge and rolled down of its own accord. Greenway’s story points that way too. He says they were attacked while looking down into the valley, for if you remember they had just watched the ‘Eye’ fade away. Yes, ‘Jim,’ poor chap, was killed on top of the mountain, and there lies the ‘Valley of the Eye.’ How does that pan out, eh?”

“Five ounces to the ton at least,” replied Sellon. “Well, we’ve, as you say, panned out the whole thing to a nicety. There’s one ingredient left, though. How about ‘the schelm Bushmen’?”

“Oh, we must take our chances of them. The great thing is to have found the place at all. And now, excelsior! It’ll be pitch dark directly.”

Replacing the skull where he had found it, Renshaw led the way back to the horses, and the upward climb was resumed. But Sellon, following in his wake, was conscious of an unaccountable reaction from his eager burst of spirits, and not all the dazzling prospects of wealth untold to be had for the mere picking up – which awaited him up yonder – could altogether avail to dispel the fit of apprehensive depression which had seized upon him. The discovery of that grisly relic of poor humanity in that savage spot, there amid the gathering shades of night – eloquent of the miserable fate of the unfortunate adventurer done to death on the lonely mountain top, his very bones scattered to the four winds of heaven – inspired in Sellon a brooding apprehension which he could not shake off. What if they themselves were walking straight into an ambush? In the shadowy gloom his imagination, run riot, peopled every rock with lurking stealthy enemies – in every sound he seemed to hear the hiss of the deadly missiles. Then there came upon him a strange consciousness of having been over that spot before. The turret-like craggy gorge, the beetling rocks high overhead in the gloom, all seemed familiar. Ha! His dream! He remembered it now, and shivered. Was it prophetic? It was frightful at the time, and now the horror of it all came back upon him, as, leading his horse, he scrambled on in the track of his companion. He could have sworn that something brushed past him in the darkness. Could it be the spirit of the dead adventurer, destined to haunt this grisly place, this remote cleft on the wild mountainside? A weird wailing cry rang out overhead. Sellon’s hair seemed to rise, and a profuse perspiration, not the result of his climbing exertions, started coldly from every pore. What a fool he was! he decided. It could only be a bird.

“Up at last!” cried the cheery voice of his companion, a score of yards distant, through the darkness. “Up at last. Come along!”

The voice seemed to break the spell which was upon him. It was something, too, to be out of that dismal gully. A final scramble, and Sellon stood beside his companion on the level, grassy summit of the mountain.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Renshaw’s Discovery

The summit seemed quite flat and level as far as they could judge, for the night had now fully set in. But at the side of it on which they stood the great cock’s-comb ridge rose high in the air, the loom of its precipitous sides sheering up against the starry zenith, showing indistinct and shadowy in the darkness. The night wind, cool and refreshing, sang in tuneful puffs through the grasses, and aloft in the gold-spangled sky the Southern Cross and many a flashing constellation glowed forth with that clear incandescence never so vivid as when gazed upon from desert solitudes.

“We can do nothing until the moon rises,” pronounced Renshaw. “There are some lively krantzes around here, I reckon, and it would never do to take a five-hundred foot header, for want of a little patience. We’ll make for the foot of the ridge, and lie by until the moon gets up.”

Proceeding cautiously, he led the way up the slope which culminated in the precipitous cliffs of the ridge. He was close under the latter, when his horse suddenly swerved aside, snuffing the air.

“What is it, old horse?” he murmured soothingly, reining in, and peering eagerly into the gloom. Was there a deep cleft in front – or did the rocks shelter a lurking enemy? Both these speculations flashed through his mind, as he whispered back a caution to his companion.

But the horse didn’t seem inclined to stand still either. He gently sidled away at an angle, and his rider, curious to fathom the mystery, let him have his head. A few steps more and they were right under the cliff. Then something flashed in the starlight. The horse came to a standstill – down went his head, and a long continuous gurgle told of the nature of his find. He drank in the grateful fluid as if he was never going to stop.

“Well done, old horse!” said his master, dismounting to investigate this inexpressibly welcome phenomenon. It was a deep cleft in the rock about six feet long by three wide, full to the brim of delicious water, in which a great festoon of maidenhair fern trailing from above, was daintily dripping. “Sellon, this is a find, and no mistake. We’ll camp down here, and wait for the moon.”

“And won’t we have a jolly good sluice in the morning. We’ll fill that goat-skin of ours, and pour it over each other. I believe it’s a week since I had a good wash – not since we left the river. The fellow who laid down the axiom that you’re never thoroughly comfortable until you’re thoroughly dirty must have been born in a pigsty himself. I know that for the last few days I’ve been wondering whether I’ve been looking a greater brute than I felt – or the other way about. Hooray for a good sluice to-morrow, anyhow.”

Both were too excited to sleep. Even the consolation of tobacco they denied themselves lest the glimmer of a spark of light should betray their whereabouts to hostile eyes. And they were on short commons, too; the death of the packhorse and the necessity of jettisoning a portion of his load having narrowed down their stock of provisions to that which was the most portable, viz. biltong and ship-biscuit; which comestibles, as Renshaw declared, besides containing a vast amount of compressed nutriment, had the additional advantage of being so hard that a very little of them went a long way. So they lay under the cliffs munching their ration of this very hard tack, and speculating eagerly over the chances the next day might bring forth.

The night wore on. Save for the tuneful sighing of the wind in the grass, no sound broke through the calm of that wild and elevated solitude. Meteors and falling stars flashed ever and anon in the spangled vault. A whole world seemed to slumber.

Soon Renshaw began to notice an incoherency in his companion’s replies. Fatigue versus excitement had carried the day. Sellon, who was of a full-blooded habit, and uninured to such calls as had of late been made upon his energies, had succumbed. He was fast asleep.

Left alone in the midst of a dead world, while the whole wilderness slumbered around, Renshaw strove to attune his faculties to the prevailing calm – to try and gain a few hours of much-needed jest. But his nerves were strung to their utmost tension. The speculation of years, the object of his thoughts sleeping and waking, were about to be attained. Sleep utterly refused to visit him.

He could not even rest. At last he rose. Taking up his trusty double gun – rifle and shot-barrel – he wandered forth from the fireless camp.

By the light of the burning stars he picked his way cautiously along the base of the rocky ridge, keeping a careful eye in front of him, above, around, everywhere. Yes, the object of years of anxious thought, of more than one lonely and perilous expedition into the heart of these arid and forbidding wilds, was within reach at last. It must be. Did not that gruesome find down there in the gully point unmistakably to that?

The cool night wind fanned his brow. All the influences of the dead, solemn wilderness were upon him, and his thoughts reverted to another object, but to one upon which he had schooled himself to think no more.

In vain. There on that lonely mountain-top at midnight, in his utter solitude, the man’s heart melted within him at the thought of his hopeless love – at the recollection of that anguished face, that broken voice pleading for his forgiveness; for his sympathy in her own dire extremity. What was she doing at that moment, he idly speculated? Ah! her regrets, her longings, her prayers were not for him, were all for the other; for the man who shared his present undertaking, who slumbered so peacefully but a few hundred yards away.

Why had he brought this man to Sunningdale, to steal away that which should have been his? Why had he brought him here now, to enrich him in order that nothing might be wanting to complete his own utter self-sacrifice? He owed him nothing, for had he not twice paid the debt in full? Why had he stepped between him and certain death? But for his ready promptitude Maurice Sellon would now be almost as sad a relic of humanity as that upon which they had gazed but a few hours back. But the solemn eyes of the stars looking down upon him, the very grandeur of the mountain solitude, seemed to chide him for such thoughts. What was the puny fate of a few human beings compared with the immensity of ages upon which those stars had looked down – the roll of centuries during which those silent mountains had stood there ever the same?

A perceptible lightening suffused the velvety vault above. The horned moon rose higher over the drear sea of peaks. The crags stood forth silvery in the new-born light – and then, as his glance wandered downwards, Renshaw felt every drop of blood flow back to his heart.

Far below shone a tiny glimmer – the glimmer of a mere spark. But withal so powerful that it pierced the darkness of the far depths as the flash of a ray of fire.

He stood as one turned to stone, holding his very breath. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again. There it was still. Again he averted his gaze, and again he looked. The distant spark was glittering more brilliantly than ever. It seemed to gain in size and power as he looked. It held him spellbound with its green incandescence flashing forth from the darkness down there in the far depths.

He tore out the white lining of his soft hat, and bending down, nailed it to the ground with his pocket knife. Then he walked away a few yards and looked again. The spark had disappeared.

Feverishly he returned to the mark which he had set, now almost fearing to look. He need not have feared. There shone the “Eye” – more dazzling than ever.

Maurice Sellon, sleeping the dreamless slumber of a thoroughly exhausted man, started up with a smothered imprecation, as a hand gently shook him by the shoulder. But his deadened faculties sprang into quick life at the low impressive voice.

“At last! Come and look. The ‘Eye’ is shining like a star.”

Chapter Thirty.

“Like a Star.”

“Like a star!”

The two men stood gazing in silence not untinged with awe, upon this wonderful, this beautiful phenomenon. For how many ages – for how many generations of the human race had that marvellous Eye shone forth in the gloom of its untrodden solitude. The heart of the earth was unfolding a glimpse of its treasure-house.

Like a star! Yet that Eye, flashing, scintillating in its mysterious bed – was it not in a measure diabolical, luring men to destruction? Of the two who had sought to meddle with it, one had returned only to die; the other – had they not but a few days since handled his bleached and unburied skull?

These thoughts passing through Renshaw’s mind could not but temper the degree of wild exultation which he felt now that he had conquered at last. Sellon, on the other hand, could hardly restrain the wild hurrahs wherewith, but for the consciousness of probable peril, he would fain have given vent to his feelings.

“How far down is it, old chap?” said the latter, eagerly.

“Impossible to say. We can go forward a little now, and explore. It’s not much of a moon, but there’s light enough. But, for Heaven’s sake, Sellon, restrain that excitable temperament of yours, or we shall have you plunging over one of these krantzes before you know where you are.”

“All right, old boss. I’ll keep cool. You can take the lead, if you like.”

The light was misty and uncertain. The ground here took an abrupt fall. Proceeding cautiously for a little distance down, they halted. The Eye had disappeared.

“Come on. We shall see it again directly,” said Sellon, starting forward again.

But the other’s hand dropped on his shoulder like a vice.

“Stop – for your life!”

“Eh? What’s up? – Oh, Lord!”

He stood still enough then. Three or four steps further and he would have plunged into space. In the faint illusive light of the spent moon, the treacherous cliff brow was well-nigh indistinguishable even to Renshaw’s tried vision. But the unerring instincts of the latter were quick to interpret the sudden puff of cold air sweeping upwards, and well for the other that it was so.

“Pheugh!” shuddered Sellon, turning pale as he awoke to the awful peril he had escaped. “What a blundering ass I am, to be sure. But – look! There’s the Eye again – larger – brighter than ever – by Jove!”

“Yes; and I don’t believe it’s a couple of hundred feet below us either. Let’s see what sort of a drop there is here.”

Lying full length on the edge of the cliff, he peered over. Then loosening two or three stones, he let them fall – one after the other. A single clink as each struck the bottom.

“We can’t get down this side, Sellon. It’s sheer – as I thought, even if it doesn’t overhang. The stones never hit the side once. But now, to mark the Eye. It won’t shine in the daylight.”

He proceeded to untie what looked like a bundle of sticks. In reality it contained a short bow and several arrows. Next he produced some lumps of chalk rolled up in rags.

“What an ingenious dodger you are, Fanning!” cried Sellon, admiringly, watching his companion carefully fitting the lumps of chalk on the heads of several of the arrows. “So that’s what you brought along that bundle of sticks for. I thought you had an eye to the possibility of our ammunition giving out.”

Renshaw smiled. Then stringing the bow, he bent it once or twice, tentatively.

“That’ll do, I think. It’s pretty strong is this little weapon of war. Old Dirk made it for me after the most approved method of his people. You know Korannas and Bushmen are archers in contra-distinction to the assegai-throwing Kafir tribes. Now for a shot.”

Drawing out one of the chalk-tipped arrows to its head, he took a careful aim and let fly. The bow twanged, and immediately a faint thud told the expectant listeners that the shaft had struck very near the mark.

“That’ll make a good splash of chalk wherever it has struck,” said the marksman approvingly, fitting another arrow. But on the twang of the bow there followed a metallic clink instead of the softer thud of the first missile.

“That bit of chalk’s come off,” said Renshaw. “However, let’s try again.”

This time the result seemed satisfactory. Again and again was it repeated until half a dozen arrows had been shot away.

“That’ll put half a dozen chalk splashes round the Eye, or as near it as possible, for our guidance at daybreak,” said Renshaw, approvingly. “Now we’ll drop a white flag or two about.”

Fixing small strips of rag, well chalked, to the butt-ends of several more arrows, he shot them away, one after another, in the direction of the first.

“We’ll go back now, and get out our gear. We can’t do anything before daybreak. The place may be easy to get down into on one side, or it may be well-nigh impossible. But, hang it all, Sellon, there ought to be no such word for us as impossible with that in front of us.”