A Secret of the Lebombo

“It would. But I’m perfectly certain you wouldn’t funk it,” laughed Lalanté.

And then, paling their faces and curdling their blood, came a shrill piercing scream of agony and terror. As they turned towards it a small boy came rushing headlong through the sparse mimosas growing along that part of the bank.

“He’s in,” he screamed. “Charlie. He’s in the river – there.”

Following his pointing finger they could see nothing, then, borne swiftly down towards them, a head rose to the surface, showing an agonised little face, in the last degree of terror, and a pair of hands feebly battling with the vast might of the flood. A second more and Lalanté would have been in there too.

But that second was just sufficient for a pair of arms to close round her, effectually holding her back.

“Not you, Lalanté, d’you hear! I’m a strong swimmer. Now – let me go.”

He almost threw her from him, and that purposely, for stumbling against Frank, the terrified boy had promptly and firmly clutched hold of her. She could not go into the water – and, incidentally, to her death – without dragging him with her. In the same quick atom of time Warren, with a straight, clear, springy leap, had felt the turgid waters of the monster flood close over his head.

He had leaped to come down feet foremost, as was the safest. He risked damaging his head the less, and could see for the fraction of a moment longer the exact position of the drowning boy; and even that fraction of a moment may mean the difference between life and death in a situation such as this.

Not a second too soon had he jumped. As he rose to the surface the boy was just sweeping past him. Darting forth an arm, he seized him by the hand, but – still kept him at arm’s length.

“Charlie,” he said, “be plucky now and keep cool. Whatever happens, don’t grab hold of me. I won’t let go of you but – don’t grab me.”

The boy, half-dazed, seemed to understand. The while the current was whirling them down with frightful velocity. Suddenly something seized Warren by the foot, dragging him down; then as the waters roared over his head the awfulness of the moment came upon him that this was doom. Then – he was free.

A last desperate violent kick had done it. What had entangled him was really the fork in a bough of a sunken tree. But it was time, for on rising to the surface his eyes were swelled and his head seemed to go round giddily, and his breath came in laboured pants; but he had never slackened his hold of the boy.

The latter was now unconscious, and consequently a dead weight. Warren, wiry athletic man as he was, felt his strength failing. The flood was as a very monster, and in its grip he himself was but a shaving, as it roared in his ears, its spume blinding him as it tossed him on high with the crest of its great churning waves. With desperate presence of mind he strove to keep his head. As he rose on each great wave he saw the long broad road of foaming water in front, bounded by its two dark lines of half-submerged willows – then he saw something else.

An uprooted tree was bearing down upon him, its boughs thrashing the water as the trunk rolled over and over in the surge. It was coming straight at him, borne along more swiftly than he – and his burden. One thrash of those flail-like boughs and then – his efforts would be at an end.

Desperate, but still cool, he tried swimming laterally instead of with the stream, and found that he could. Down came the swirling boughs, like the sails of a windmill, where he had been but a moment before, and this grisly peril passed on. No sooner had it done so than the striver’s foot touched something – something firm.

Something firm! Yes, it was firm. Among the whirl and lash of the willow boughs, for by his diagonal course of swimming he had reached the side here, where the swirl of the current, though powerful, was comparatively smooth, and he had touched firm ground. Warren dared to hope, with indescribable relief, that he was standing on the brink of one of those deep, lateral dongas which ran up from the river-bed, one similar to that which the Kafir had fallen into with the snake coiled round his leg. He grasped the supple and whip-like boughs, still carefully feeling out with the other foot lest he should flounder into deep water again, and gave himself over to a breathe.

Charlie now began to show signs of returning consciousness, then opened his eyes.

“Where are we? Magtig! Mr Warren, I thought I was drowned.”

“Well, you’re not, nor I either. So wake up, old chap, and hold on to these twigs so as to give me a bit of a rest; for I can tell you that sort of swim is no exercise for a young beginner.”

The splashing, roaring flood whirled on, throwing up clouds of spume where here and there great waves hurled themselves on to some obstruction. Once the ghastly white head of a drowned calf rose up out of the water just by them, a spectral stare in the lustreless eyes. The lowering afternoon was darkening.

“I believe we could make for terra-firma– that means solid ground – if we went to work carefully,” said Warren. “What do you think, Charlie? Shall we try? The swirl up here is fairly light, and you must think you are only swimming in the kloof dam.”

The boy looked out upon the roaring rush of waters and shuddered. Not among this would their venture lead them, but among much smoother water, to safety. Still, he was unnerved after his experience of that awful force, his choking, suffocating, helpless, all but drowning condition. But he was plucky to the core.

“All right. Let’s try,” he said. “But keep hold of my hand, won’t you.”

“Of course,” said Warren. And then once more they struck off, entrusting themselves to the stream, or rather to its eddies.

Chapter Twenty.

In the Roar of the Flood

Lalanté and her small brother, watching from the bank the earlier struggle with the awful forces, were at first frantic with grief and horror; then the sense of having someone dependent on her was as a nerve-bracing tonic to the girl, and she recovered a modicum of coolness.

“Come, Frank,” she said. “We must run along the bank, and see if we can be of any help at all.”

The weeping youngster brightened up a little, as seizing him by the hand she dragged him along with her, both running for all they knew. But the ground was rough and uneven; if it had not been they could never have kept pace with the swiftness of the flood. Then it dipped abruptly, yet still they managed to stumble along. Up the next rise, panting, their hearts beating as though they would burst, and then – they saw Warren and his burden suddenly sink from sight. At the same time Lalanté’s foot caught in some twisted grass, and down she came, full length, dragging the boy with her.

She tried to get up, but could not do more than struggle to her knees, then fall again. She was too utterly breathless and exhausted to be capable of making further effort. The last she had seen of them, too, was as a numbing physical blow. She could only lie there panting in great sob-like gasps. The little fellow threw his arms round her neck and sobbed too.

“Oh, Lala, will they get out? Do say. Will they get out?”

Even then Warren’s words were hammering in her brain ”…against which the strongest swimmer would have that much chance”; words uttered calmly and authoritatively, scarce a minute before he himself had taken that fatal leap. What chance then had he – had they? And they had already gone under.

“Darling, I’m afraid there’s – there’s – no hope,” she said, unsteadily. “But come. We will walk along the bank – I am quite powerless to run any more – in case we should sight them again. Tell me. How did it happen?”

“We were standing on the bank, shying sticks into the river and watching them float down. Then a great piece of the bank gave way, and Charlie was in.”

Lalanté could hardly restrain a storm of tears. One of her little brothers – her darling little brothers – of whom she was so fond, and who looked up to her for everything, to be carried away like this by the great cruel river, and drowned before her very eyes – oh, it was too awful! What a tale, too, to carry back to their father! And the prompt, cool, brave man – he who at that very moment had been expressing the hope that he might never be called upon to stand such a test, because if so he was sure he would be found wanting – he too had gone, had given his life for that of another. Lalanté was not a Catholic, but human instinct is ever the same, and if ever prayers went up that a soul should have its eternal reward, one went up – none more fervent – from her during those awful moments on behalf of Warren.

The rain had begun again, and was now a steady downpour, while lower and lower the murk descended, blotting out the opposite rand. Great shiny songo-lolos, or “thousand legs,” squirmed among the mimosa sprays in repulsive festoons, and in the splashy softness of the thoroughly soaked ground – ordinarily so hard and arid – the foot sank or slipped. The river, too, in whose ordinarily nearly dry bed the small boys had so often disported themselves, or catapulted birds along the banks – now a great bellowing monster – had taken its toll of one of them. All was in keeping, as the darkness brooded down; the splash of the rain, the hopelessness, the death, the despair; a scene, a setting of indescribable gloom and horror, as these two dragged themselves wearily step by step, staring at the long rush of foam-flecked flood in a very whirlwind of grief. Then, upon the blackness of this misery, came a sound.

“Lala – did you hear that?” panted the boy, eagerly.

“Yes. Wait!” gasped Lalanté, holding up a hand.

The sound was repeated. It came from some distance lower down, and took shape as a hail. The girl even thought to descry in it her own name, and to both it came as a very voice from Heaven.

“Man – Lalanté,” panted Frank, in uncontrollable excitement, “but that’s Mr Warren.”

“Yes, it is. Why, then in that case, Charlie’s there too, for I know he’d never leave him,” answered the girl tremulously and half-laughing, in the nervous reaction of her gratitude. Then she lifted her own voice in a loud, clear call that might have been heard for miles in the stillness. They listened a moment, and an answering hail was returned.

“Come. They may still need our help,” she said. “Go steady though. We mustn’t exhaust ourselves this time.”

First sending forth another long, clear call, to which Frank added the shrillness of his small but carrying voice, they started off along the river bank. It seemed miles, hours, as they stumbled along, now over a stone, now crashing into a bush – but every now and then sending forth another call, which was answered, thank God, now much nearer. At last, through the gloom, for by this it was almost dark, they made out two figures coming slowly towards them.

“Charlie – my darling, whatever made you do it?” began Lalanté as she hugged the smallest of these; womanlike mingling a touch of scold with the joy of the restoration.

“Oh, Lala, you’re not cross, are you? I couldn’t help it,” was the answer, in a tired voice.

“Cross – cross! Oh, you darling, how should I be cross!” raining kisses all over the wet little face. Then, unclasping one arm, she held out a hand.

“Oh, Mr Warren!” was all that she could say, but it seemed to express everything.

Warren took it, in a firm sympathetic grasp. He himself was looking rather fagged – in fact, decidedly not himself – which was little to be wondered at. What he himself wondered was that he was there at all.

“All’s well that ends well, Miss Lalanté,” he said, cheerily, “which, if not original, about sums up the situation. We’re all about equally wet for that matter, but as long as we keep moving we shan’t take any harm, and the way back to the house, if not long, is rough enough to keep up our circulation.”

“What can I say to you, Mr Warren?” went on Lalanté. “You were just telling me the strongest swimmer would stand no chance in that flood, and then you deliberately went in yourself.”

“Not deliberately, Miss Lalanté,” smiled Warren. “I assure you it was all on the spur of the moment. Charlie, it’s lucky you had the foresight to tumble in above us. If it had been down stream I could never have got near you.”

As a matter of fact the feat had been one of great daring and skill, and having accomplished it Warren felt secretly elated as they took their way home. He realised the warm admiration and gratitude which it had aroused in the girl, and, now that it had ended well, he looked upon the whole affair as a gigantic stroke of luck, and, in fact, as the very best thing that could have happened to him. Bye and bye, when Wyvern’s memory should begin to dim, then this appreciation would turn to something stronger. Curses on Wyvern! Why should he have this priceless possession, and how confoundedly calmly he seemed to accept it, as if it were only his due? He, Warren, would have moved heaven and earth to obtain it, yet why should that other gain it with no effort at all? He himself had all the advantages that Wyvern had. He was a clean-run, strong, healthy man, whom more than one girl of his acquaintance would think herself surpassing lucky to capture. Moreover he had made money, and knew how to go on making it, which was a thing Wyvern never had done and never would. Why the deuce then should Wyvern be where he ought to be? he thought bitterly as he walked dripping beside Lalanté, in the gloom of the now fast-darkening night. Well, at any rate, in all probability Wyvern by that time was nowhere at all, thought this man who had just risked his life when the chances were a hundred to one against him, to save that of a helpless child. Yes. Nowhere at all. There was a wholeheartedness about Bully Rawson and his doings which left no room for doubt. He could be trusted to “take care” of anybody.

And yet, through it all there was a certain modicum of compunction; compunction, but no relenting. Had circumstances compelled Wyvern to give up Lalanté, he would have had no more sincere well-wisher than Warren. As it was he stood in Warren’s way; therefore – out he must go. Then Warren became alive to the fact that Lalanté’s bright eyes were fixed upon him in some concern.

“You didn’t hurt yourself – in the river, did you?” she said anxiously.

“Oh no, no. I’m a dull dog, I’m afraid,” he answered, with a laugh. “Perhaps I am a bit tired.”

“Are you sure you’re not hurt?” she persisted, anxiously.

“Very sure indeed. I got a rap on the shin from that confounded tree that did its best to hold me under water, but that was nothing to what I used to get in a football match when I was a nipper.”

The drizzle had merged into a steady downpour as they reached the house. In the framing of the lighted doorway Le Sage came out to meet them, smoking a pipe.

“Hullo. You’ve prolonged a pretty wet walk,” he said. “Magtig! but you look like four jolly drowned rats.”

“And that’s what two of us jolly near were, father,” said Lalanté, in clear ringing tones. And then she explained what had happened. Le Sage stared at her as if he were listening to something altogether incredible.

“Good God! Lalanté. And you can hear the river from here, a mile and a half away, bellowing as if it was at the very door. Why, it hasn’t been down like this since the big flood of ’74. And you went in it, Warren, and – got out of it! Well, well. They give Victoria Crosses and so on, but – oh damn it! you deserve a couple of dozen of ’em.”

His voice had a tremble in it as he gripped the other’s hand. The whole thing was more eloquent than a mere speech would have been. He was deeply moved – moved to the core, but Le Sage was not a man of words.

“Oh, that’s all right, Le Sage,” said Warren. “Only as I was telling Charlie, it’s lucky he had the discretion to go in above stream instead of down, or the devil himself would hardly have managed to get him out. Come now, let’s have something warming and then I’ll go and change, though I’ll have to borrow some of your togs for that same purpose.”

“Right. Here you are, and mix it stiff,” said Le Sage, diving into a sideboard and extracting a decanter. “Good Lord! And you got into the Kunaga in a flood like this, and got out again! Why, it’s a record.”

This was Le Sage’s recognition of the fact that this man had saved his child’s life at enormous risk to his own. But Warren thoroughly understood and appreciated it; and was more elate than ever, inwardly.

“Go along, you children, and change at once,” pronounced Lalanté with decision. “And be quick about it, and give yourselves a glowing rub down with a rough towel I don’t know that we two who haven’t been in the river are much drier than the other two who have,” she added with a laugh, as she disappeared.

Half an hour afterwards they all foregathered at table, and it seemed, in the snug, warm, lighted room, as though the ghastly peril of the afternoon were but a passing adventure, calculated to give an additional feeling of snugness and security to the wind-up of the day. But the dull roaring of the flood was borne in to them through it all upon the dripping stillness of the rainy night.

And Warren, listening to it, and knowing that others heard it, felt more elate than ever. He began to see the goal of his hopes more than near.

Chapter Twenty One.

“Take Care of him.”

Wyvern found some difficulty in concealing the growing disgust that was upon him as he entered Rawson’s kraal. He had by this time been in several native kraals and felt quite at home there: but this – well, somehow it was out of keeping. That unqualified ruffian, his present entertainer, was repulsive enough in all conscience, but he seemed to become ten times more so, when viewed in the light of his domestic arrangements: under which circumstances the fact that he was a white man seemed to have sunk him immeasurably below the level of the savage.

The two women, who were seated together on the ground, looked up quickly as the new arrivals entered. The better favoured of the two, Nkombazana, the Zulu girl, smiled approvingly as her glance rested on Wyvern, and then said something to her companion in a low tone. He, of the two, was clearly the one that aroused their interest Bully Rawson emitted a loud guffaw, true to his programme of keeping up a certain boisterous geniality.

“There you are, Wyvern. Women are the same all the world over, you see. Now these are agreeing that they don’t see a thundering fine chap like you every day of the week.”

“Which is the one related to the boy you just kicked so unmercifully?” said Wyvern.

“That one, Nompai. She ain’t much to look at, but I’ll swear she ain’t the worst of the two. That other one, Nkombazana, she’s a regular vixen – a spitfire I can tell you. I often wish I could clear her out I’d let her go cheap. Oh, see here Wyvern – ” as a bright idea struck him, and then he stopped short. Bully Rawson, with all his faults, had the saving grace of perceptiveness, wherefore the bright idea remained unpropounded.

“Well what?”

“Oh nothing. I forget now what I was going to say,” with a furtive wink at Fleetwood.

“But why can’t you clear her out?” asked Wyvern. “I thought among savages they did what they liked with their womenkind.”

There was a dry irony about the tone, that the other may have remarked, but for his own purposes preferred not to notice or resent. He guffawed good-humouredly instead.

“Did you? Well then Wyvern, you’ve got a lot to learn about the manners and customs of this country yet. Nkombazana’s father’s a pretty strong chief, and Joe there’ll tell you what a hornet’s nest I should bring about my ears if I bunked her back to her people.” Fleetwood nodded. “Oh well, damn the women,” went on Bully. “I think we’ve yarned enough about them. So we’ll get into the store hut where it’s cool and have a drink.”

The hut wherein Rawson kept his trade goods was a larger one than the rest, and differed from them in that it had a door through which you need only stoop slightly in entering, instead of crawling on all fours. It also boasted a small glazed window. Unlocking the huge padlock that secured it, their host led the way inside.

“You haven’t got much stuff on hand, Bully,” said Fleetwood, looking round upon the blankets and beads and brass buttons and other “notions” stowed about.

“Oh well no, I do next to no blanket trade these days, and what I do is a darn sight more paying than this truck. Oh, I’ve got an iron or two in the fire, m’yes, but a lot of trade stuff comes in handy as a firescreen, as we know. Eh Joe?” with a knowing wink which made that worthy just a little uneasy. The other had exactly stated their own case: was it accidental, and was he merely referring to the pretty widespread practice of gun-running, or had he, by any means whatever, obtained some inkling as to the real object of the expedition? He nodded carelessly.

“Ja. That’s so,” he replied.

There are three European products which you shall invariably find – even if you find no other – on the confines of civilisation and beyond the same: “square face” gin, a pack of cards, and a bottle of Worcester sauce. The first of these Bully now produced, together with some enamelled metal mugs.

“Here’s luck all round,” he said. “Eh? What’s that? Water? Man – Wyvern, but you’re a bit of a Johnny Raw in these parts. Why we don’t water our stuff here. Eh, Joe?”

“Matter of taste. For my part I don’t care either way,” was the answer – while the host put his head out and bellowed to the women to fetch some.

Now Joe Fleetwood, though one of the shrewdest and most practical of men, had “instincts” – and these were somehow unaccountably aroused. There was a something which warned him that their uproariously effusive host meant mischief, and that at no distant time. Therefore he resolved to keep more than one eye upon him.

Soon they strolled down to the wood-cutting place, and the sombre, surrounding forest was ringing with the sound of axe and saw. The wretched slaves – for practically they were little or nothing else – looked up with dull interest at the new arrivals, but their master, out of deference to Wyvern, omitted to kick or hammer any of them, and laid himself out to be extremely pleasant in his boisterous way, as he explained the arrangements while they strolled around.

“Hold hard, Wyvern. A snake’s bitten me.”

The words – quick, sharp, replete with alarm – were Fleetwood’s. Wyvern, who was just in front of him, stopped dead in his tracks and turned, as with a mighty crash a nearly-cut through tree-trunk came to earth hardly more than a yard in front of him. His next step would have been his last.

“Blazes!” cried Bully Rawson, “but I never thought that log would have come down at all. I was just shoving against it to see how much more cutting through it wanted. What’s that about a snake, Joe?”

“No. It isn’t one,” said that worthy, in a tranquil tone of voice as he looked down. “It’s only a thorn dug into my ankle. I was bitten once, and I suppose it’s made me nervous ever since. Which is lucky, or you’d have been squashed to pulp, Wyvern.”

“By the Lord he would,” cried Rawson. “Man alive, but you’ve had a narrow squeak! Well I’m blasted sorry if I’ve given you a shaking up – and I can’t say more.”

“Oh, that’ll be all right,” said Wyvern, forgetting his own narrow escape in his intense relief. “But look here, Joe. Are you dead sure it wasn’t one?”

“Dead cert. Look. Here’s the thorn,” picking one up.

“Haw-haw-haw!” bellowed Rawson. “Well, Wyvern, I suppose you and I are the only two cusses in the world who can say they’ve ever seen Joe Fleetwood in a funk. You were in one, weren’t you, Joe?”

“Rather,” was the answer, drily given.

“Well, I am a clumsy fellow,” said Rawson, in his breezy way. “Come along now, and I’ll show you my amabele and mealie lands.”

He led the way by a narrow game path in the bush and soon they came to a high hedge made of mimosa thorn boughs tightly interlaced. Beyond this some three acres of green crops were visible.

“That’s to keep out the bucks,” said Rawson over his shoulder, for he was leading. “They’d scoff the lot in a night or two if there wasn’t something of the kind. Fond of hunting, Wyvern?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you come up here on a moonlight night you’ll get plenty of chances. There’s an odd koodoo or so comes sniffing around after that stuff, but the thorn fence humbugs them.”