From Veldt Camp Fires

The other camp fire seemed to contain the only possible explanation of this strange event. We walked across to it. I had previously spoken to these wayfarers, who consisted of a mining engineer and three prospectors. The engineer received us civilly. He inquired in a bantering way after our friend, who, he averred, had come across, stared like a stuck pig for a moment, and then suddenly turned on his heel and vanished. Two of his prospectors, one a Cornishman, the other a Yankee, sat by the fire, smoking. They were decent, quiet, civil-spoken men. The third, an Italian, had, they informed me, turned into his waggon and gone to sleep. We had a quarter of an hour’s chat, and then, finding that we could make nothing of the mystery over here, we went back to our own fire again. We had not thought it necessary to enlighten the mining party as to Strangeways’ sudden departure; nor, indeed, did they manifest any further interest in him. They had caught but a fleeting glimpse of his face, and then, as they said, he had turned and bolted.

Halton, Strangeways’ comrade, and I returned to our camp fire, waited up till eleven o’clock – a late hour for the veldt – and then, seeing that nothing further was to be done that night, we turned in, tired enough, and slept soundly.

I was awake at six next morning. My native boy brought me, as usual, my coffee.

“Baas,” he said, “did Baas know that a man from the other waggon came over here in the night with a lantern and looked in Baas’s waggon and into the other waggon too.” No, I knew nothing of this, and I told the boy so. I looked into Strangeways’ waggon. Halton was just getting up. He, too, had slept heavily, and had neither seen nor heard of any one’s approach during the night.

We swallowed our coffee and ate some breakfast, debating with serious faces what step we were to take next. While we sat by the embers of the overnight fire thus employed, the engineer from the other camp came across. He had fresh food for bewilderment. His Italian prospector was missing. His native driver averred that Rinaldi had risen before dawn, taken some food and a water bottle, saddled a horse, and just as daylight came left the camp. He came, the man said, in our direction, and then disappeared behind the waggons and into the veldt.

The mystery was clearly thickening. Halton and I now took the engineer into our confidence, and told him of the strange occurrence of the evening before. We finished breakfast, and then decided to proceed at once with the adventure. First we called up a first-rate Bakalahari hunter, who had been for some time attached to my camp, and was an extraordinarily skilful spoorer. After a cup of coffee and a pinch or two of snuff, both inestimable luxuries to a poor, despised desert man, he quickly got to work. His narrative lay there in the sand before him, as clear to his bleared, half-shut eyes as God’s daylight itself.

First he traced the progress of Strangeways. After some little trouble about the camp, where the trail was much mingled with others, he presently got the spoor away into the bush, to the west of the outspan. Shortly, with a cluck of the tongue, the native drew our attention to other marks. Here, he said, Strangeways’ trail had been joined by that of another, a man walking with his horse. The man, said the Bakalahari, was following the spoor of Strangeways, and had got off his horse for the purpose. As the ground became clearer and the country more open, this man had mounted and followed more quickly upon the trail. At times, the tale was plain enough even to the eyes of us Europeans.

Well, to make a long story short, we followed the two spoors all through that long hot day. We had water and food with us, and we meant to see the thing out. At first, in the darkness, Strangeways had evidently wandered a good deal from the straight line, but as light had come, he had travelled due west, and then after mid-day struck in a southerly direction. I guessed his purpose, to seek the road and water south of Boatlanama. Towards sundown, when we had ridden between thirty and forty miles, we saw by the trail that Strangeways’ horse was failing. The wonder was that after two days of such work it had stood up so long. Night fell before we could arrive at any solution of the mystery. We made a good fire, drank some water, ate some supper, and then lay down upon the dry earth and slept. At earliest daylight we were moving again. We followed the two spoors for something more than an hour, and then, rather suddenly, in some thickish bush, came upon a sight that smote us all with horror. A cloud of vultures fluttered heavily from the dead body of Strangeways’ horse, which lay stretched upon the sand, now nearly devoid of what flesh it had once carried upon its bones. Under a pile of thorns, close by, was the body of Strangeways himself.

The body, for some extraordinary reason, which I was then not able to fathom, had been carefully protected by these thorn branches, and the vultures had not been able to accomplish their foul work upon it. We pulled away the thorns, and examined the poor dead body; it was marked by two bullet wounds, one in the right shoulder, the other, fired at close quarters, through the head. The flannel shirt, in which Strangeways had ridden, had been torn roughly off the upper part of the body, and upon the broad chest had been slashed, with the point of a sharp knife, these letters, MARIA. The blood, now dark and coagulate, had run a little, but there was not the least difficulty in making out the name. There were traces of the Italian and his horse about the spot, and then the murderer’s spoor led away northward.

Even with this sad and infernal discovery before us we were no nearer the elucidation of this strange mystery. Revenge seemed to be at the bottom of it, but the reason of that revenge was absolutely hidden from us. We held a long council on the body, took what few trifles there were upon it, Strangeways’ watch, his hunting belt and knife, spurs, and a silver bangle upon the wrist. Then we buried him in that desolate spot. Our horses were already suffering from lack of water. It was madness to think of following the Italian, who would probably himself perish of thirst. We turned for our waggons, therefore, and with great difficulty reached them late that night. The next thing to do was to report the murder and set the Border Police upon the affair. This was done as speedily as possible. I remained with Halton for the space of a month in the Bechuanaland Protectorate, hoping to hear of the Italian’s capture. Nothing whatever was heard of him, however, and I resumed my journey south, and returned to Europe.

For three years I heard – although I made repeated inquiries, and read each week the few newspapers of Bechuanaland and Rhodesia – not a whisper that would elucidate this incomprehensible tragedy. Then, as I travelled once more through Bechuanaland, the cloud suddenly lifted and the mystery stood revealed.

Upon reaching Vryburg, the capital of British Bechuanaland, I found the little town in a state of intense excitement. The Italian, Rinaldi, had been captured, after three years of a wandering life, far up-country; in a trader’s store, near the Zambesi. He had been arrested and brought down for trial. Halton and other witnesses had been procured from Matabeleland to give evidence against him. But Rinaldi had not attempted to escape the consequences of his crime; on the contrary, he gloried in it, and had given in his broken English, in open court, his version of the whole miserable business and its origin. Briefly condensed, this was his tale.

His name, he said, was Guiseppe Rinaldi, and he was a native of Sardinia. Nine years before, he had met Strangeways, who was then an artist wandering through Sardinia. Rinaldi himself was deeply attached to Maria Poroni, a beautiful girl of his village, whom he hoped to marry. But he had to be away at his work at the lead mines, thirty miles off, and only saw her occasionally. Strangeways came on the scene, became acquainted with Maria, had grown quickly infatuated with her, and had persuaded her to leave the island with him. After living some months with her in various parts of Italy, he left her with a certain sum of money in Rome, and finally abandoned her. The poor girl crept back home with a child, and died, a broken woman, two years later. Rinaldi had known Strangeways and swore to take a terrible revenge if occasion ever offered. But he had no money. Tired of poverty in Sardinia, he went out to Argentina and from there drifted to South Africa. It was by the merest accident in the world that he had obtained employment as a miner with the outfit going up from Cape Town to Mashonaland. And it was still more of an accident that he had seen Strangeways’ face at the camp fire that night at Boatlanama. The rest is briefly told. He had crept across in the darkness and found that Strangeways was not in his waggon. At earliest dawn he had taken a horse, provisions, water, and a rifle, and followed his spoor into the desert. Thanks to his life in the mountains of Sardinia, and his experience of cattle ranching in the Argentine, he was an expert tracker, and had no difficulty in following the trail. He had come up with Strangeways, whose horse had foundered, just at sundown. Strangeways fired a shot, which grazed Rinaldi’s ear. Rinaldi’s first bullet brought his victim down and he had then finished him. He had scored the name MARIA upon the dead man’s chest, covered him with thorns that the mark of his vengeance might not be obliterated by the wild beasts, and left him. He had then escaped north and wandered to the Zambesi.

Rinaldi’s own end was a bloody one. He broke prison the night before his execution was to take place, was followed by mounted police into the Kalahari, and, as he refused to surrender, was shot dead in the scuffle that ensued.

To me, the strangest part of this tragedy lies in the fact that Strangeways’ death came to him, apparently, by the merest accident in the world. It is absolutely certain that Rinaldi had no knowledge whatever – until he set eyes on him at the camp fire that night – of Strangeways’ presence in Africa. Was it, indeed, pure chance – or was it, in truth, the subtle machinery of a remorseless fate – that induced him to take the desert road south, by Boatlanama? It was a still stranger accident – apparently – by which the mining party took the wrong route north, and trekked by the same westerly road upon which the two men had met. Accident – or inexorable retribution? That is a question I often ask myself.

Chapter Eleven.

Queen’s Service

It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon of a desperately hot October day, 1899, in British Bechuanaland. The rains, although close at hand, had not yet fallen. For the last twenty-four hours the weather had been of that peculiarly oppressive kind, familiar in South Africa towards the end of the dry season. The wind came from the heated north-west, laden with the parched breath of a thousand miles of sun-scorched plains. Yet, strangely enough, around the little English farmstead on the Setlagoli River, the low forests of camelthorn acacia were, although untouched by moisture, already putting forth greenery and fresh leafage – even at this dire time of drought – against the coming of the rains.

May Felton, a pleasant looking, brown-eyed girl of nineteen, came out on the shadier side of the square, low, grass-thatched house, and stood beneath the shelter of the veranda, her face held up a little towards the air. She had come out for the third time within the hour to see if some faint breath of fresher atmosphere might not be detected towards sundown from out of that withering north-west breeze. Alas, there was none! It meant, then, another night of stifling discomfort within doors. The climate of this part of Bechuanaland is normally so clear, so brilliant, and so exhilarating, save for the few weeks before the summer rains, that this period of heat seems doubly trying to the settlers. May Felton sighed, and looked around. She had a kettle on the fire within doors, preparing against afternoon tea – a pleasant thought in this depressing hour – and, meanwhile, looked about her for a few minutes. The place seemed very dull. Her father and two brothers had ridden off three days since, driving before them all their cattle and goats, with the intention of placing the stock as far as possible out of the reach of the Transvaal and Free State Boers, just then raiding and free-booting across the border. Vryburg, some fifty miles south, was practically defenceless, and lay, too, in the midst of a Dutch farming population, already more than disaffected towards the British Government. Mafeking, forty or fifty miles to the north, thanks to Baden-Powell’s energy and military talent, was in a good state of defence, but was already practically invested by a strong Boer Commando.

May’s father, John Felton, was well known and liked by many of the Dutch farmers on either side of the border. But in the time of war and stress, which he saw close upon him, he knew well enough that friendly feelings would speedily give place to racial hatred, plunder, and marauding. He had, therefore, carried off all his stock, with the intention of putting them as far as possible beyond the grasp of raiding Dutchmen, at a remote run on the edge of the Kalahari, nearly a hundred miles away to the westward. This ranch belonged to an English Afrikander friend of his, and he had every hope that there his cattle – a goodly herd – and some hundreds of goats might be safe.

May looked round rather disconsolately upon the hot quiet landscape. The acacia groves which girdled in the little homestead, behind the dry river-bed, showed small signs of life. A grotesque hornbill sat in a tree near, gasping under the heat, as these birds do, occasionally opening its huge bill, crying “toc-toc,” in a curious yelping tone, opening its wings restlessly as if for air, and lowering its head. In a bush, on the left hand, a beautiful crimson-breasted shrike occasionally uttered a clear ringing note. Two hundred yards away, a scattered troop of wild guinea-fowl, returning to the last remaining pool in the now parched and sandy river-bed, after a day of digging for bulbs in the woodlands, were calling to one another, with harsh metallic notes, “Come back! Come back! Come back!”

May looked at the absurd hornbill, with its long yellow beak, and smiled faintly. Just at that moment it seemed almost as much exertion as she felt capable of in the withering heat. She leaned against one of the posts supporting the veranda, her slim, shapely form expressing in its listless attitude the relaxation of that melancholy hour. For two or three minutes she stood thus listlessly, then, remembering the kettle boiling within doors, bestirred herself and turned away. Just at that moment there came a faint cry from among the camelthorn trees on the right of the homestead. It sounded strangely like a man’s voice. She stood listening intently. In ten seconds the cry came again; this time it seemed more faint.

The girl threw off her langour upon the instant. “Seleti!” she cried, in a clear ringing voice, “Seleti, Tlokwaan!” (come here).

In two minutes Seleti, a Bechuana youth, clad in a ragged flannel shirt and a pair of his master’s discarded riding breeches, came shuffling round. She spoke to him in Sechuana.

“Seleti,” she said, “I heard some one calling in the trees there not very far away. Go and look. Straight beyond that biggest tree there!”

The lad went off, walked two hundred yards into the woodland, becoming lost amid the timber, and then his voice sounded back towards the house.

“Missie May! Missie May! Here is Engelsman. Come quick.” Snatching up a broad-brimmed straw hat from within doors, the girl went quickly in Seleti’s direction. In less than three minutes she was by his side, among the trees and tall grass, leaning over the body of a young sunburnt Englishman, which the Bechuana supported in his arms. The man had no coat on, and May Felton saw at once, from the blood-stained flannel shirt, that he was badly wounded, he looked just now so lifeless that he might well be dead; yet the girl remembered that only a few minutes before she had heard him call. She had plenty of courage, and, young as she was, in that rough farming life amid the wilderness she was accustomed, as a matter of course, to many things that a girl at home would shrink from.

As she looked intently at the inert figure before her, she noted that the man still breathed; once he groaned very softly. There was nothing for it but to pick him up and carry him to the house. It was a heavy task, but with May carrying him by the legs and Seleti supporting him under the arms, they managed, with great exertion, to get him to the stoep.

There they laid him down for a moment, while May ran indoors and fetched out her mother.

As they came out to the stoep, bearing brandy and water, it was apparent that the young man’s wound had broken out afresh. Blood was slowly soaking through the already blood-soddened shirt, and silently forming a pool on the stone flooring. There was no time to be lost. They got him to bed and washed and bound up his wound. A bullet had gone right through the shoulder, making clear ingress and egress, but cutting some vein in its passage, and he had lost evidently quite as much blood as he could afford. Then they gave him brandy and water, and presently he came round from his long faint. When he had had some soup and a little bread later on, he was able to tell them something of his tale.

His name was James Harlow. He was a Volunteer under Lieutenant Nesbitt, in an expedition in an armoured train, which had been turned over and shelled at Kraaipan, on the border, some twenty miles away. After keeping the attacking Boers at bay for several hours, things began to look queer for the small British party. Nesbitt and a number of his men were wounded, the Dutch were creeping up.

Nesbitt had a letter which he wanted delivered somehow at Vryburg. It was urgent, and he gave it to Harlow to get away with and carry somehow to its destination. Harlow crept away through the grass, but, just as he thought he was getting out of range, and raised himself for a moment to reconnoitre, a bullet pierced his left shoulder and laid him in the dust. He rose presently and crawled on. Out of sight of the Boer fighting men, he had got to his feet, and, notwithstanding his wound, walked westward. A friendly native had given him a lift for twelve or fourteen miles on a led horse, but, towards sundown, having sighted three or four mounted men, had become alarmed and abandoned him. After a miserable night, he had crept about – sometimes walking feebly, sometimes moving on hands and knees – all that blazing day, trying to find some house or farmstead. No water or food had touched his lips. Towards evening, just as he had given up all hope, and sunk down despairingly, he had set eyes on the Feltons’ homestead through the trees. His last remaining strength was ebbing from him – his consciousness failing; but he raised two feeble shouts and then fell senseless. The rest May and her mother knew.

“And now,” said the poor fellow, with a painful grin at his own weakness, “how am I to get my dispatch down to Vryburg? Somehow Mr Tillard, the resident magistrate there, must have that letter by to-morrow evening. I know it’s important I doubt if I can ride to-morrow. What’s to be done?”

“Certainly you can’t ride to-morrow; you couldn’t sit a horse if you tried; so don’t think about it,” said May, decidedly. “I scarcely know what’s to be done. Our two native boys are poor, trembling creatures, scared at the mention of a Boer. I’ll go myself. It’s barely fifty miles from here, and I know the road well.”

“My dear May,” put in her mother. “You couldn’t think of such a thing. Why you might be stopped by Boers. It’s quite possible they will be holding the old road by this time. I can’t have you go, really!”

“My dear mother,” returned the girl, with a bright look in her dancing brown eyes. “I must go. This letter has to be delivered. It is probably of the greatest importance, and may even mean the safety of Vryburg. You and father pride yourselves on being loyal subjects of the Queen. You wouldn’t have me hold back from so small a piece of service. Why I can ride the distance easily on ‘Rocket’ in eight hours, allowing for off-saddles.”

May was a girl accustomed to having her own way in the Feltons’ household, and so, with a sigh and a protest, her mother gave in and the thing was settled.

At sunrise next morning, after looking in on the wounded trooper, who had had a feverish night, May, kissing her mother tenderly, mounted her chestnut pony and rode off. The precious dispatch, stained with Harlow’s blood, she had neatly sewn up in the inner part of her stays. She carried with her in her saddle-bag some sandwiches, another letter, requesting the Vryburg doctor to come up and see the wounded trooper, and a water bottle full of limejuice and water hung from her saddle. Pulling her broad-brimmed felt hat over her eyes, the girl cantered off and was soon lost to view amid the woodlands.

She struck, in the first instance, by a rough track across country, for the old post-road, running south from Setlagoli to Vryburg. Her good pony sped along with free elastic strides, and at a steady pace they reeled off mile after mile. It was hot, but not so oppressive as the day before. Presently, cutting the old road, they pushed steadily on beneath that aching void of sky above them – a sky of brass with just a suspicion of palest blue far up in the zenith. Fifteen miles were traversed and they stood at Jackal’s Pan, a lonely little oasis on the road, where they could off-saddle, and the horse could be watered.

Half an hour’s rest, and then on again. The blazing ride now became infinitely monotonous. From Jackal’s Pan to the next stopping place, Monjana Mabeli, the flat veldt road runs alongside the telegraph wires. How sick May became of that gaunt, unending line of posts stretching before her. She counted them – seventeen to the mile they went – oh! how often! and then hated herself for having counted them.

No sign of life cheered her ride, save now and again a desert lark, which rose suddenly from the grass, clapping its wings loudly, for twenty or thirty feet, uttered an odd, sustained, single note, and sank to earth again. May felt grateful even to the dull, speckled brown lark for its presence; anything to break that wearisome monotony. Even her good pony, “Rocket,” seemed to feel the isolation, the endless void of that mighty grass plain. He seemed depressed and dull. Still when his mistress spoke to him and patted his neck, he pricked his ears gaily, shook his bit, and reached out with never tiring stride.

At last! at last! May sighted in the distance the twin, rounded hills of Monjana Mabeli, and in another three quarters of an hour had ridden up to the farmhouse. Three waggons were outspanned there, and, before she could realise her danger, the girl found herself in the centre of a little knot of the Boers of the district, on their way to welcome their brethren of the Transvaal, now raiding across the border. A quarter of a mile away she had some thought of turning from the road to avoid the outspan and its risks, but it was too late. She saw that she was watched, that mounted men were ready for a pursuit, and so she judged it better to go boldly on. The leader of the band interrogated her as to her business. She produced her letter to the Vryburg doctor and stated her mission. Her story was evidently only half believed, and she was requested to step into the farmhouse and submit to be searched by the Commandant’s wife, a grim-looking Boer woman, who seemed quite in earnest over her task. The door of the inner room being shut and locked, May made the best of a hateful business, and, taking off some of her things, let the woman search her. She could have struck with her clenched fist that dull, emotionless face so close to hers, had she dared, but it would not do. Neither would it do to appear backward. Boldness might save her. She slipped off her stays and carelessly offered them for the woman’s inspection. The woman looked at them, turned them over, and handed them back. The girl’s heart, which had stood still for a thrilling second or two, beat easily again. She had triumphed. The missive, so cunningly hidden within her stays, still reposed snugly in its hiding-place. Her wonderfully neat sewing had passed muster. She was safe – safe, that is, if she could get away. The search was at length over, and the Vrouw Erasmus, in a grumbling way, expressed herself satisfied. As she buttoned the last button of her holland riding bodice, May turned, with flashing eyes, upon her tormentor. She spoke Cape Dutch fluently and her words told.