A Veldt Official: A Novel of Circumstance

“You keep your weather eye skinned, Musgrave, and a particularly bright look-out for small gangs,” was Darrell’s last injunction having ridden a few miles out from camp with him. “Sandili is trying to slip through into the Amatola at one rush, but sending that, he’s sending his chaps through in driblets. Shouldn’t wonder if you fell in with a patrol or two. But if you’re spotted by the niggers, no matter how few, leg it; do you hear? leg it; for you never know how many more are close by.”

“Pho! They ain’t mounted, and if they were, wouldn’t know now to ride. I’ve raced a whole day in front of a wild, mad, yelling war-party of Sioux devils; and if your John Kaffir can make things warmer than that, Darrell, he’s welcome to try.”

“Eh? The deuce you have!” said Darrell in amazement. “Here, I’ll come a mile or two farther, and let’s have the yarn.”

“No, no. I don’t feel like yarning – anyway just now. Well, so long. No fear about me. I’m not going to turn up missing.”

The ride, though lonely, was a delightful one. The day was of unclouded loveliness and the air fresh and exhilarating as a cordial. Away on either hand stretched the grand open country, rolling in wide grassy plains, heaving up into rugged and stony ranges, here and there deepening into a bush-grown river-valley. The life of the wild veldt was never still – the cheery whistle of spreews, glinting from spray to spray in sheeny flashes of light, and the metallic, half-grating note of the yellow thrush; the soft shout of the hoopoe, echoing from the distance, mingling with the softer voices of doves, which were dashing alarmed from the grotesque heads of the plumed euphorbia, disturbed by the horse’s tread. Great webs lay spread from bush to bush, each containing several huge spiders, black and horny; and of these the horseman would now and again receive a shower right in his face – not being always able to guide his horse so as to clear them. But the insects, though hideous, were quite innocuous, and, relishing the encounter as little as the human party to the same, dropped off immediately upon contact. Buck, too – the wary bushbuck and dainty little duiker – would rustle up with a mighty disturbance, to bound away in the scrub or long grass, flashing a white flag of defiance.

“Game lies close – that’s a good sign,” meditated the horseman. “But it goes like the devil once it is up – that’s a bad one. Well, it may be a good one too, meaning only that this section has been well patrolled.”

It was tantalising, very, as he watched the animals bound away in gracefully flying leaps, affording the sweetest of shots from the saddle. But he who now rode there dared not pull a trigger, for it might easily cost him his life, and that was a possession he did not want to lose just then.

It was an exciting ride withal – keenly so; for every turn of the way might bring him face to face with an enemy. If he topped a rise of the ground, might he not run right into the teeth of a hostile band on the other side? As he rode along the slope of a bush-clad hill, for he avoided the bottom of defile or ravine, he more than half expected the “whizz” of missiles from the ambushed savage lurking concealed above. Yes, it was an exciting ride, a perilous ride, yet he travelled at an easy pace, knowing better than to fall into the blunder of pressing his steed in order that it might the more quickly be got over.

At first he enjoyed the exciting possibilities of the journey – the strong dash of peril – as, keenly on the alert, he urged his steed forward. It reminded him of old times. But each and every excitement has its limits, and as the hours went by the tension relaxed, the strain upon his nerves subsided. He began to think upon other matters than potential danger. That last farewell under the stars – the recollection of it coursed sweet and warm through his being; his pulses bounded with the very gladsomeness of living. Soon they would meet again, and – what a meeting!

For this voluntary absence of his had borne its fruit. But a few days; yet it had seemed to need only this to consolidate and weld this strange, bewildering love of his latter-day life. In the rough duties he had voluntarily undertaken during that brief period – the patrolling, the tireless bivouac under the stars; the shots exchanged with the lurking enemy; the jovial, but not very boisterous revelry of camp life – that image was ever-present, sweet, smiling, radiant-eyed; and try as he might, he could not banish it.

Now the shadow of a cloud swept across his path, together with a gleam of blue lightning. Creeping stealthily up, their jagged outlines gradually obliterating the blue arch, leaden cloud-piles were spreading, and puffs of hot wind set the grasses singing. In sharp, staccato boom, the electric voice spoke overhead, but no rain fell. It was a dry thunderstorm, often the most perilous.

He was riding just beneath the apex of a long, sparsely-bushed ridge. Already, as he began to descend, the lightning was darting down upon the height in vivid streams, which the sharp, startling thunder-crack seemed to accompany rather than to follow.

“This is getting a trifle sultry, and the veldt here is crusted with ironstone,” he said to himself. Then turning his horse, he held ever downward. Half-darkened, the scene was now desolate enough – the long slopes of the kloof, and the ridges cut clear against the livid thundercloud. Down in the hollow several “bromvogels,” the great black hornbill of South Africa, were strutting amid the grass, uttering their drumming bass note. These flapped away heavily on the near approach of the horseman, and rising high overhead, were soon winging their aerial course seemingly to the thundercloud itself.

Suddenly the horse stopped short, and, with ears cocked forward, stood snorting, with dilated eyes gazing upon the dark line of bush in front. Roden’s meditations took to themselves wings, and drawing his revolver, as more convenient at close quarters than the rifle, shifted the latter into his bridle hand, and sat for a moment intently listening.

Not a sound.

It was a nerve-trying moment. The savage war-shout, the crash of firearms, the “whiz” of assegais – that was what it would only too likely bring forth. Still silence, save for the bass grumblings of the thunder.

Then there was a winnowing of wings, and a huge bird arose. Roden knew it for a vulture, of the black and non-gregarious kind. A vulture! That meant the presence of death.

So far reassured, for the bird would not have been there had the scrub concealed living men, he cautiously made his way between the bushes to the spot whence he had seen the funereal scavenger arise, and again the horse started and shied, spinning half round where he stood. One glance, and the secret was out. In the long grass lay the body of a man – a Kaffir.

It had been that of a savage of splendid proportions – tall, broad, thick-set, and muscular. It lay upon its back, staring upward with lacerated eyeless sockets, their contents torn out by the black vulture. Otherwise it was untouched.

Stay – not quite. From a great jagged hole in the chest a very lake of blood had welled, staining the long grass. It was a bullet hole; the sort of gap made by a heavy Snider missile. The man had been shot. But how? when?

The body was quite naked, and whatever it might have owned in life, in the shape of weapons or other requisites, had disappeared. From its aspect, not many days could have elapsed since death. It was a ghastly find, this black, rigid corpse, with its eyeless sockets and teeth bared and set; a ghastly find in the subdued gloom of the shadowing thundercloud, with the blue lightning playing down upon the lonely veldt. But there was worse to follow.

For, exploring farther, Roden came with equal suddenness upon several corpses, half a dozen at least. All were contorted as in the agonies of a violent death, and all were riddled more or less with bullet wounds. What was the secret of this conflict here, he wondered? Who had been engaged in it? Whose the victory? Would he next come upon the bodies of those of his own colour? Looking up suddenly his eyes fell upon a most melancholy object. It was the charred remnant of a burned house.

Now the mystery stood explained. Those whose remains he had found had been shot down by the inmates; slain in self-defence. But, those inmates! Clearly the savages had been victorious; and – what of the inmates?

The walls stood, the dirty whitewash showing livid in contrast to the black, charring action of the names. The roof had fallen in, and the empty apertures, where the windows had been, gaped wide like the staring, sightless sockets of the corpse. The house had been of no great dimensions, and was clearly the dwelling of some small farmer. A low, crumbling sod wall shut in a sorry-looking “land,” containing now only a few trampled cornstalks; and hard by were the broken-down fences of a sheep kraal.

Strong-nerved as he was, Roden Musgrave could not repress a quickening of the pulses, a shrinking of the heart, as he drew near to explore the interior of the ruin. What further dread secret was he about to light upon? The mangled corpses of the white inmates, entombed beneath their own roof-tree, a prey to the devouring assegai of the savage? He expected nothing less.

But a very few minutes’ search convinced him that the place contained no human remains. He was puzzled. What had become of the unfortunate settlers? That there had been a fierce and sanguinary battle was evident, but it was impossible that the savages could have been beaten off, else would the house not have been fired. Herein was a mystery.

The situation of the place was gloomy and forbidding to the last degree, the black rain standing deep within that lonely kloof, and, lying around, the grim earthly remains of those who had assailed it. Opposite rose a rugged cliff, whose brow was crowned with a grove of fantastically plumed euphorbia; and then as his eye caught a stealthy movement amid the gloom of the straight stems, Roden gave a slight start, and immediately was as ready for action as ever he had been in his life.

Yes, something was stirring up there. The moment was rather a tense one, as standing amid those weird ruins he bent his gaze long and eagerly upon the darkness of the straight euphorbia stems, round, regular as organ pipes. Shadowy figures were flitting in and out. Were others creeping up to assail him in the rear, signalled by these? Was he in a trap, surrounded? Then he laughed – laughed aloud; for there went up from the euphorbia clump a strong, harsh, resounding bark: —

“Baugh-m! Baugh-m!”

“Only baboons after all!” he cried, feeling more relieved than he cared to own. And seeing nothing to be gained by further lingering, by extended investigation, he once more mounted his horse and took his way out of this valley of desolation and of death.

And as he gained the opposite ridge, he found that the storm was clearing away, or rather travelling onward. Before him lay a series of grassy flats, fairly open, but dotted with clompjes of bush here and there. The sun had broken forth again, and, the cloud curtain now removed, was flooding the land with dazzling light. The change was a welcome one, and had the effect of restoring the traveller’s spirits, somewhat depressed by the grim and gruesome scene he had just left. And now, as the sun wanted but an hour to his setting, Roden decided to off-saddle for that space of time. Then his steed, rested and refreshed, would carry him on bravely in the cool night air, and but a very few hours should see him safely over the hostile ground, if not among inhabited dwellings once more. So, choosing a sequestered hollow, Roden off-saddled and knee-haltered his steed, and then betook himself to a little clump of bush which grew around a stony kopje, and which afforded him a secure hiding-place and a most serviceable watch-tower, for it commanded a considerable view of the surrounding veldt.

Chapter Twenty.

Mona’s Dream

Notwithstanding the splendid courage and quickness of resource she had shown upon a certain critical and, but for those qualities on her part, assuredly a fatal occasion, Mona Ridsdale was by no means free from that timidity under given circumstances, which seems second nature with most women. She preferred not to be left alone in the dark if possible to avoid it, and, in fact, had as dread a realisation of what it meant to be “unprotected” as the most commonplace and unheroic of her sex: consequently, when Suffield found it unavoidable to be absent from home a night or two, Mona was apt to conjure up terrors which interfered materially with her peace of mind. Now, just such an absence on the part of her male relative befell some few nights after Roden’s departure for the Main Camp.

“Oh, Grace, I do feel so nervous this evening!” she exclaimed, starting, not for the first time, as one of the ordinary nocturnal wild sounds from veldt or mountain-side came floating in through the open windows. “Feel my hands, now cold they are; and yet it is such a hot night that one wants every square foot of air the windows will admit.”

“That is foolish, Mona,” replied her cousin. “Yes, your hands are indeed cold. Why, to-morrow will ring back not only Charlie, but perhaps somebody else.”

“God grant it may!” was the eager rejoinder. “But do you know, Grace, I have a horrible presentiment on that score too; I believe that is why I feel so shivery to-night. It is like a warning – I feel as if something were going to happen to him – were happening!”

There was a wildness in the glance of the dilated eyes, a quick, spasmodic catch of the voice, which disconcerted the other, who, in ordinary matters, was the less timid of the two.

“Mona, dear, don’t, for Heaven’s sake, give way to such fancies. They grow upon one so. And how you will laugh at them – at yourself – in the morning, when Charlie comes back, and perhaps somebody else.”

“I can’t help it. I wish the night was over. I am sure something is going to happen before the morning.”

The two were sitting together, the supper over, and the nursery department tucked up, snug and quiet for the night. Suffield had ridden away to attend a sale at a distance, and would hardly return before the following afternoon. It was, as we have said, a hot night, and both windows of the room were open; indeed, it would have been well-nigh impossible to breathe had they been shut. At the black spaces thus framed Mona would stare ever and again, with a quick glance of apprehension, as though expecting, she knew not what, to heave into view from the gloom beyond. It was a still night, moreover, and every sound from without was wafted in with tenfold clearness – the weird shout of a night-bird from the mountain-side; the yelp of a jackal far out upon the plain; the loud and sudden, but musical twanging note of the night locust, whose cry can hardly be credited to a mere insect, so powerful, so bird-like is it. Even the splash of a mud-turtle waddling into the dam was audible.

A rushing, booming, buzzing sound swept past the open window. Mona started again, and her face paled. It was only some big flying beetle, blundering past the oblong of light which had half-attracted, half-scared him; yet so overwrought were her nerves that she could hardly repress a startled scream. Now, this sort of thing is catching, and Grace Suffield felt that a little more of it would probably end by unnerving herself.

“My dear Mona,” she said; “this is more than nervousness. You have caught cold somehow. Come now, you must go to bed; and I will make you something hot.”

“I can’t go to bed, Grace, and I couldn’t sleep if I did,” she answered. “Let’s go out on the stoep. The air may make one feel better.”

To this the other agreed, and they went forth. It was a grand and glorious night. A faint moon hung low down in the heavens, and the great planets gushed their rolling fires in the star-gemmed blackness. Such a night had been that other, when only the dark willows had overheard those whispers – deep, pulsating, passionate – welling from the overcharged hearts and strong natures of those who uttered them.

“Look, look! That is almost bright enough for a meteor!” cried Mona as a falling star darted down in a streak of light, seeming to strike the distant loom of the mountain range in its rocket-like course. “There is something weird, to my mind, about these falling stars. What are they, and where do they go to?”

“Everything is weird to your mind to-night, dear. Come in now, and go to bed.”

“Not yet, Grace. I feel better already. I knew the air would do me good. Look there! what is that – and that?”

Her tone now belied her former words – her limbs shook. And now both stood listening intently.

For there floated upon the still night air a sound – an eerie, wailing, long-drawn sound – faint, yet clear; very distant, yet plainly audible; rising and falling; now springing to a high pitch, now sinking to a muffled, rumbling roar – yet so faint, so distant. Far away over the darkened waste where the great castellated pile of the Wildschutsberg rose gloomy beneath the horned moon, there hovered a strange reddening glow. At the sound the dogs lying around the house sprang up, baying furiously.

“Grace, I believe the Tambookie locations out yonder are up in arms. That is the war-cry – they are dancing the war-dance. Listen!”

Here indeed was a potential peril, a tangible one, and removed from the spheres of mere bogeydom. There had been uneasy rumours in the air of late – that the Tembu locations on the confines of the district were plotting and restless, and more than ready to rise and join their disaffected fellow-tribesmen now in open rebellion beneath the slopes of the Stormberg. No wonder if these two unprotected women felt a real apprehension chill their veins, as they stood upon the stoep of their lonely homestead gazing forth with beating hearts, listening to these ominous sounds rising upon the stillness of the night. The distance which separated them from the disaffected savages was not great, hardly more than half a score of miles.

“Even if it is so, I don’t think we have anything to fear,” said Grace at last. “They would go in the other direction if they moved at all; either cross over to join Gungubele’s people, or Umfanta’s, or perhaps move down to league forces with the Gaikas. They would hardly venture so near the town as this.”

“Move down to league forces with the Gaikas?” echoed Mona, horror-stricken at the suggestion. “Why, that would mean that they would cross the very belt of country over which lay Roden’s return route.”

Grace Suffield was quick to grasp her meaning.

“No, no; not that, dear,” she said. “I don’t believe myself there is anything to be alarmed at. I believe they are only making a noise; possibly they have a big beer-drinking on, or something. Kaffirs, in their way, are just as fond of jollification as we are, you know; and I think I remember more than once hearing something of the kind before, only as there was no war on, or even dreamt of, we hardly noticed it at the time, I suppose. Yes, I am perfectly certain that is all it means; so now come in, and we’ll go to bed. You shall sleep in my room if you like.”

Mona suffered herself to be led in, and to be given wine, and generally taken care of: but curiously inconsistent, for all her nervous fears, she preferred to be alone. Then, bidding her relative good-night, she retired to her room, and having fastened the shutters and locked the door, she sat down to think.

Her thoughts flew straight off to one who now was the main object of them. Where was he at that moment? Returning to her, travelling at all speed over a peril-haunted region to return to her, alone perhaps, as he had hinted might be the case; and more than one unspoken prayer went up that it might not be so, or for his safety if it were. Then her recollections went farther back. She recalled many to whom she stood in the same light as she now did to that one – from their point of view, that is – yet none had succeeded in stirring her heart, in causing her pulses to beat quicker, or, if so, for no more than a moment, so to say. She recalled many an impassioned pleading, many a haggard face, grief-stricken, disappointed, down to that of Lambert only the other day, and wondered if they had felt as she would feel were any evil to overtake that one now. How cold, how callous, how inconsiderate she had been to others, she recognised now; and as her thoughts turned to him she felt that, but for the certainty of seeing him again, of all the blissfulness of their reunion, and that in a day or two at the furthest, her life would have been lived – lived and done with for all time.

The house was in dead silence, as in the solitude of her room at last she began to prepare for bed. She had just finished brushing out the thick waves of her hair, when a dull rumble, as of many feet, not far from the window, turned her pale and tottering. Her heart beat like a hammer, and the splendid outlines of her breast, now uncovered, rose and fell with the quick regularity of the roll of surf upon a level beach. Then with the stamping tread there arose a low moaning noise, long-drawn and unspeakably dismal in the dead midnight silence.

“What a despicable coward I am!” she exclaimed, now with a faint smile. Then, with a glance at her magnificent limbs, “I am large framed, and strong, yet the least little thing makes me quake and quiver like a scared child.”

She threw open the shutters, and, as she did so, again went up that unearthly, deep-throated moaning, ending in a short shrill bellow. But she knew the sound. The cattle had returned about the homestead, and were collecting at the spot where a sheep or goat was daily slaughtered for the use of the household and the farm hands. In the faint moonlight she could see the beasts bunched together, their noses down to the blood-soaked spot, sniffing and pawing up the ground as they emitted their dismal mutterings; then they would start off, with tail in air and horns lowered, and career a little way across the veldt, and return, as though the fell fascination was greater than the terror which had first appalled them, to resume their weird, hollow groaning as before. The dogs, well accustomed to this performance, forbore to notice it, beyond a low growl or two. Besides, they held the horns of the excited beasts in wholesome respect.

Closing the shutters again, Mona returned into the room. Just as she was about to get into bed, her glance was attracted by something. A great dark object was moving across the floor. Repressing an impulse to shriek aloud, she lowered her candle so as to dispel the shadow in which the thing moved, for it was under the table, and then with a shuddering horror she saw that it was a huge tarantula.

The evil-looking beast was of enormous dimensions. Outspread, it was the size of a man’s hand, and its great hairy legs and dull, black, protruding eyes gave it the aspect of a demoniacal looking animal rather than a mere insect, as it came shoggling across the floor; then stopped suddenly, as its instincts warned it of danger.

All in a quiver of loathing and repulsion, she snatched up a large book of bound-up music, and dropped it upon the hideous insect. She left it where it lay, not caring to investigate farther; knowing, too, that the thing would be crushed and flattened out of all life and shape beneath the heavy volume. Where did it come from? Tarantulas were quite rare in that high, open, bracing veldt, though plentiful enough in the lower and hotter bush country. But even there she had never seen one anything like this for size.

The nervous fears which had beset her throughout the evening had brought something like exhaustion in their train. No sooner was the light out, and her head upon her pillow, than she was fast asleep. Yet sound though her slumbers were, a thread of uneasiness ran through them. Outside, in the faint moonlight, the cattle still clustered about the bloodstained spot, and even in her sleep she could still hear the pawing of their hoofs, and the unceasing refrain of their dismal and hollow groanings, half-soothing, half-terrifying in the mesmeric effect which they produced upon the ever-changing waves of her consciousness, that hovering border-line between wakefulness and the dream world. She murmured the name of her absent lover, and again, in her sleeping visions she was soothing him to rest in the still midnight, as he lay in feverish pain, but a few hours after she had drawn him back from death.