Читать книгу Luck at the Diamond Fields - Dalrymple J. Belgrave - Страница 6

A year had passed since Kate said good-bye to George Darrell. Her life seemed to her to be divided into three volumes—her early life, the journey up to the Diamond Fields, and her present life at Jagger’s Drift. The last volume seemed likely to be dull enough. Day after day passed without any strange face coming or any incident happening. The family consisted of Mr Van Beers, a good-natured old Dutchman, who slept a good deal, and had very little to say for himself when he was awake; his wife, who had never time to attend to anything but the children, of whom there were about a dozen, the eldest a boy of fourteen, the youngest an infant in arms. Taking it altogether, Kate’s life was a fairly happy one, for though it was dull, there was very little to trouble her, and it was free from many of the little vexations which would be her lot at home. One drawback of it was, that she had too much time for thinking, and her thoughts curiously often went back to the incidents of the journey up, and she often in her mind’s eye saw the face of George Darrell as it looked when he blurted out the secret of his life. From that day she had never heard of him; little news ever came to Jagger’s Drift, and none would be likely to come of such an obscure person as George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River. That digging she had heard was up the river some sixty miles off. Many a time she had looked up stream and wondered how he was faring, and whether he still ever thought of her. The Homestead at Jagger’s Drift was a large, one-storied house, with a garden running down to the river. On the other side the house fronted a long flat, stretching far away to a range of low hills in the distance. A dozen or so of wood waggons would pass every day on their way to the Diamond Fields, but there was little other traffic. Across the river was Gordon, a place which some speculative people fondly believe is destined to be an important centre in the future. It had for reasons known to the authorities at Capetown, and to no one else, been chosen as the seat of the magistracy for a large district, and there was a magistrate’s house, a jail, and some police tents; while a court-house was being built. There were also two canteens, in one or the other of which in turn the spare population collected and listened to the proprietor of the establishment as he cursed his rival.

The new Government buildings were to be on a grand scale, quite up to what Gordon was destined to become in the future, according to the estimate of the most sanguine believers in it. “They mock us with their damned buildings,” was the opinion often expressed by Jack Johnstone, the Civil Commissioner’s clerk, as he looked at the new erections with a malevolent eye, for he had applied persistently and in vain for an increase of his salary, and he looked upon all other expenditure of Government money as a personal insult.

“Blessed if they haven’t brought a lot of white convicts over here to muddle away at that cursed place,” he said to McFlucker the canteen-keeper one afternoon, as, with a pipe in his mouth, he stood outside the latter’s store, and looked towards the hated erection, where some Kaffirs and white men were working listlessly as convicts do work. “That’s not a lag’s face, I’d have bet; if I had seen it anywhere else I’d have sworn that fellow was a gentleman and an honest man; he looks it, though he has got a broad arrow stamped on his shirt,” he said, as he noticed one convict, a tall man, who looked very unlike his companions. “But I dare say he is the biggest scoundrel of the lot,” he added.

Just then Kate Gray, who had come across the river with some of the young Van Beers, walked past the building. Johnstone, as he watched her with a good deal of admiration, noticed that she was also looking in the direction of the tall convict who had attracted his attention. To his surprise he felt almost certain that he saw their eyes meet with a glance of recognition. She seemed to start and almost pause for a second. The convict pushed his hat over his eyes, and stooped over his work as if he did not wish to be recognised.

“By Jove, I’d have bet those two know each other, or have seen each other before, but it must be only a fancy though—it isn’t likely,” Johnstone thought to himself, as he took off his hat and shook hands with Miss Gray. After they had talked for some time about the few subjects for conversation that their life at Gordon afforded—the health of McFlucker the storekeeper’s wife, the date of the return of the magistrate at Gordon, who was away on leave, and the fact that the river was rising—Miss Gray turned the conversation to the subject that had interested them both.

“Who are those men working at the court-house,—the white men I mean?” she asked, as Johnstone thought, with considerable interest.

“They are gentlemen who are working for her gracious Majesty without pay, and receiving their board and lodging gratis.”

“You mean they are convicts. What sort of offences do you suppose they have committed, and where do they come from?”

“They have come from Kimberley, and they may have committed any offence, but it’s long odds that they have bought diamonds—that’s their special weakness on the fields.”

“Bought diamonds!—why I should have thought that was just what diamond-diggers wanted people to do.”

“Bought diamonds that the Kaffirs have stolen from their masters’ claims, I mean; those men, however, have probably made a mistake, and been caught by the police. When the police see that the wily illicit diamond-buyer is well on the feed they throw one of their flies, and send him a Kaffir with a diamond to sell. If the fish rises to the fly and buys, they strike, find the diamond, and haul the I.D.B. up before the court, when he gets five years. It’s a pretty sport is trapping I.D.B.’s, and these are most likely some of the many fish who have been caught.”

“What a wretched mean business it seems to be, but I’m sure he could not have been trapped.”

“Hallo, so you talk about him as ‘he,’ do you?” thought Johnstone. “You mean the tall convict; I was looking at him just now, and wondering what his history was. Well, if he has a long sentence, if I were he, I’d make a bolt for it. The convict-guards are always more or less asleep, and I’d chance their shooting straight. I suppose it would not be much good though, one could never get away across the veldt without a horse.”

“If he had a horse do you think he would get off? Where could he get to?”

“Sixty miles north he’d be out of the reach of the police, in Stellaland, where there is a lot of rough work going on, and any one who had plenty of pluck would find men who would welcome him as a comrade, and care very little whether he had a broad arrow stamped on his shirt or not.”

“Ah, well, perhaps he is used to being a convict, and does not care to escape,” Kate said, for she felt that perhaps she was unwise in showing so much interest in the convict’s fate.

“Perhaps he is; don’t know that it matters whether one is a convict or not, if one has to live in this country. Certainly, being in their infernal civil service is next door to it,” Johnstone answered, as he walked to the river-side with them. As he returned after seeing them cross, he wondered where Kate could have seen the convict before. That they had met he somehow felt certain. He was right; Kate had recognised George Darrell, her fellow-traveller in the coach, in the convict. He had had a run of bad luck since they had parted. First of all his old partner, Jim Brawnston, had been obliged to leave him, as one of his brothers had died, and he had been wanted on his father’s farm in Natal. Then for a long time he had found no diamonds.

After a bit, however, his luck seemed to have changed, and diamonds began to turn up on his sorting-table. The queer thing about those diamonds was, that they were unlike river stones, and much more of the appearance of the stones found in the mines. The diamond-buyers to whom he sold seemed, he thought, to look at them and him rather queerly when he brought them out to sell. He did not, however, trouble himself much about this. While he was working at his claim, not over rejoiced at the slight turn of luck he was experiencing, as he had hardly any ambition to make money, one day a conversation took place in the office of the head of the police in Kimberley, which would have opened his eyes if he had heard it. There had been a good deal of what is called illicit buying down the river for some time. Persons who had bought stolen diamonds, and wished to dispose of the diamonds advantageously, had taken to get men who pretended to be river-diggers, to profess to have found them in their claims, and sell them advantageously. Stolen diamonds are rather awkward property to dispose of, as dealers have to keep registers by which diamonds can be traced back to the diggers who first found them; so it was an advantage to give a diamond that had been stolen a fictitious history.

The head of the police had determined to put a stop to this practice, and had sent a man down the river to see what was going on. The information he had received had surprised him a good deal, and at first he hardly believed it. “What, Darrell of Red Shirt Rush in this? Why, I should have thought he was straight,” he was saying to one of the detectives, who had come in to see him with another man.

“It ain’t the first time, sir, you’ve thought that about a party we have found to be pretty deeply in the trade; now this man here sold Darrell as many as half-a-dozen diamonds which we can swear to, and which we can prove he has sold again; is not that so, Seers?” the detective said, turning to the ill-looking, undersized man who had come in with him.

“Yes, sir, he has bought ’em off me; he has been buying for this last twelve months to my knowledge, and working off illicit stuff from his claims,” the man answered, his eyes as he spoke wandering about furtively, looking anywhere except into the face of the person he spoke to.

“Well, I suppose there is no doubt about it. It’s high time some one was made an example of down the river; you and Sergeant Black had better go down and trap Darrell, with this man Seers,” the head of the police said after he had talked for some time. “Look here,” he added, calling the detective on one side, “that fellow is an infernal scoundrel, and are you sure he is not humbugging us?”

“Well, sir, white traps mostly are infernal scoundrels, but what he says is right enough about Darrell. What object should he have in telling us what was wrong?—besides, I don’t think he would try and fool me,” the detective said with a grin, which expressed considerable satisfaction with his own astuteness.

Two evenings after this conversation, the man Seers came into Darrell’s tent, pretending that a mate of his was ill, and he wanted to be given some brandy. Darrell knew the man by sight, having seen him lately hanging about the diggings, and had not been much prepossessed by his appearance. He was civil enough to him, however, telling him he had got no brandy, and listening to his description of his mate’s illness.

The man talked away for a few minutes, and then went to the opening of the tent, gave a shout, and then in a second, to Darrell’s astonishment, two men, one of whom he knew by sight as a Kimberley detective, made their appearance. In a twinkling they had handcuffed him, searched him and the tent, and found a diamond in a pannikin near his bed. Darrell’s protestations of his innocence went for very little, and in the course of another twenty-four hours he found himself a prisoner in Kimberley jail, awaiting a trial for buying a diamond illicitly.

On his trial it was proved that Seers had been searched before he went into the tent, and had no money upon him; when he came out he had ten sovereigns in his possession. The detectives were able to swear to the diamond found in Darrell’s possession as the one they had given Seers before he went into the tent. The case seemed to be exactly like the ordinary cases of trapping that come before the courts at Kimberley almost every week. The judge who tried it expressed his opinion that it was one about which he had not the slightest doubt as to the prisoner’s guilt, and sentenced him to hard labour for five years.

The crime of buying stolen diamonds is considered on the Fields one of the most heinous of offences, those who are convicted of it being seldom allowed to escape without a severe punishment.

After Darrell had done some of his sentence in the Kimberley jail, he had been sent with some other convicts to work at Gordon, so that was how it came to pass that Kate recognised her travelling companion in the tall convict.

When she got back to the Homestead she found that a young Van Beers, a son of the old farmer, had arrived from Kimberley. Jappie Van Beers was not a very pleasant type of the young Boer, but by no means an uncommon one. He was a noisy braggart, who might be heard wherever he went, shouting out in his broken English about himself and his belongings, and bragging about his shooting and riding, his horses, dogs, and guns. He sometimes would express violent anti-English sentiments, but for all that he imitated the people he professed to hate, and it was not at all difficult to see that he was half ashamed of being a Dutchman. He owned some very good claims in the Kimberley mines, and had made a good deal of money on the Fields. When he was at the Homestead he gave himself great airs, for he did not think it necessary for him to show much deference to the old people, since he was so much richer than they were, while their homely Dutch ways of life afforded him opportunities for the expression of considerable contempt. What made him more odious to Kate was, that he had taken it into his head to pay her an amount of attention that was very embarrassing to her. The truth was, that Jappie Van Beers had fallen head over ears in love with the pretty governess at his father’s house. He had contrasted her very favourably with the heavy, shapeless-looking Dutch young women whom his cousins and brothers chose for their wives, and had determined that she should be Mrs Jappie. On the occasion of his last visit to the Homestead she had snubbed him most unmercifully, and she hoped that in future he would keep at a distance. There was something in his manner as he shook hands with her that told her he had got over any discomfiture he might have been made to suffer before.

“Ah, Miss Gray, you’re looking very well and pretty, though you seem to be just as proud as ever. Well, I have a little bit of news for you. I have met an old friend of yours on the Fields; a friend of mine who knows you. He came up in the coach with you; he told me all about your goings on when you came up in the coach,” he said to her after they had shaken hands. Kate looked extremely uncomfortable; the last subject she wanted to talk about was that journey and its incidents. Jappie Van Beers appeared to derive a considerable amount of satisfaction from her embarrassment.

“Yes, Miss, my friend Aarons told me about you,” he continued; a malicious grin coming across his stupid heavy face.

“Is that person a friend of yours?” Kate asked; her expression showing that she did not think any the better of Jappie for his choice of friend. The other looked a little put out. The truth was, that when he was in Kimberley he associated with a good many of the worst characters in the place, not because he was one of them, but because it suited their purpose to flatter him, and allow him to be as insolent and boorish as he pleased.

“Well, I know him to speak to, and he told me about you, and he gave me a message for you. ‘Tell her,’ he said, ‘that she is likely to see her old sweetheart again, if she looks amongst the men working on the roads at Gordon.’ Then he told me how you went on when you travelled with this Darrell, the thief whom they trapped at Red Shirt Rush. Aarons gave me a paper and said that perhaps you would like to read about the trial, and see what he had done.” Jappie was surprised to see how little attention she paid to his chaff; but she took the paper from him very eagerly and turned over the pages until she came to the report of the trial. The report was short. Kate felt sure that Darrell was the innocent victim of a conspiracy, and the idea came at once into her mind that somehow that conspiracy had been carried out by the man who took care that she should learn how successful it had been.

“Yes, this seems to be the same man I came up with in the coach, but I don’t know why your friend should take so much trouble to let me know about it,” she said, making an effort to speak as if she had read the report with little interest.

Jappie, feeling that his chaff had fallen rather flat, became silent, and contented himself with staring stupidly at her.

She read and re-read the report. Five years of that degrading slavery—five years working with Kaffirs and white men who were more degraded than Kaffirs!—it seemed to her that he never would be able to survive his term of punishment.

“Well, Miss Gray, you’re angry with me because I just chaffed you,” said Jappie, flicking his whip against his boots and looking half ashamed of himself; “I will tell you something that will make you forgive me. I have brought my little white horse, which you may ride. I know you like riding; and you can ride down to the river in the mornings with me and see the lines pulled up as you used to. I brought the little white horse because I knew you liked to ride him, and I will take out Kedult; he is the best horse in the Colony. I won a race with him the other day at Cradock, and beat all the imported horses.”

A morning ride with Jappie did not hold out a very pleasant prospect, but as he spoke there flashed vividly upon Kate’s memory a sight that she had noticed day after day the year before, when she used to go out in the morning with the children to see the lines pulled up. It was the sight of a party of convicts and convict-guards on the other side of the river; the former working, filling water-barrels, the latter listlessly watching them. This recollection made her determined to go out for those rides, however unpleasant they might be, and instead of refusing Jappie’s offer, she accepted it with an enthusiasm that flattered and delighted him. The next afternoon Darrell was at his task at the court-house, with two or three ill-looking white men and a gang of Kaffirs, who appeared not to take their punishment much to heart. Watching them were two white convict-guards armed with carbines, who lounged about listlessly, finding their duty very tedious, and some Zulu police armed with rifles and a collection of assagais, who looked as if they would deal out death and destruction, if not to the fugitive, certainly to some of the bystanders, should there be any attempt at an escape.

Every now and then Darrell looked across the flat towards the river, where he had seen Kate go the day before. She had recognised him, he knew. What did she think of his disgraceful position?—but what should she think? She had only known him for a few days, and in that time she had learned more to his disadvantage than otherwise, he thought to himself. For once the long weary afternoon’s work had some interest;—should he see her again, he kept wondering? At last he saw her coming from the river-bank. He watched her, though he tried to look down so that their eyes should not meet. As she passed she took a hurried glance at the convict-guard, who were paying little attention to the prisoners. The white men were thinking of the hard luck that gave to them such a dreary dead-and-alive lot in life. The Zulus as they clutched their weapons were back again in their imagination at some scene of savage bloodshed, and were happy. Then she for a second managed to catch his eye, and as she did so she threw a crumpled-up piece of paper to him. He snatched it up, and half hiding behind part of the building he unfolded it, and read the few words written on it.

“You have a friend; look out for a signal to escape when you are at the river to-morrow. I know you are innocent.” As he read this he felt a new man. He had even in his miserable position felt depressed to think that he had not a friend in the world. But here was some one who believed in him. Then he remembered that she would be likely to get into some trouble if she were mixed up in any plot to secure his freedom. But he had no means of warning her; he could only wait and wonder what the letter meant.

At seven o’clock next morning, Darrell was marched as usual to the river-bank to carry water up to the magistrate’s house and the public works. Drearily and hopelessly he laboured at the wretched work of filling the water-carts. What did that note mean, he kept asking himself? How could that English girl in a strange country help him? Perhaps she was acting for others, he thought, and the only part she took was to give him notice. If so she might not run any great risk of getting into trouble. But this theory had to be put on one side. Who was there in the country, or for the matter of that in the world who would take the trouble to help him? He looked at the distant range of hills far away across the river; if he could only get there he would be free and safe, for not only was it native territory, but it was in a disturbed state, and there were bands of men collected together there, one or two of whom he happened to know who would welcome him as a comrade very heartily. The men worked at their tasks slowly enough; the convict-guards thought that they might just as well hang about the river-bank looking after convicts, as be anywhere else engaged in the same dreary work, so they did not hurry them. After he had worked for some minutes, Darrell saw two figures on horseback across the river; he recognised one of them as Kate, the other was a young Dutchman he had seen ride towards the farm a day or two before. He looked at their horses, and he coveted the one the Dutchman was on. It was a good horse anywhere, and looked as if it were just suited for the country. If he were on it and had a fair start, he would save the Colony the cost of his board and lodging, and show his enemies a clean pair of heels. Of course he remembered the letter, but he felt sure the young Boer would never be induced to help him. After they had ridden along the river to a place about a hundred yards down stream from where he stood, he saw the man dismount and leave his horse to be held by his companion. Darrell began to feel a thrill of excitement as he watched him go down to a boat, get into it, and drop some way down stream. He watched how the stream of the river ran, and he guessed how it would carry any one who jumped in from where he was, across to the point where Kate was with the horses. The Dutchman had almost crossed the river, and was pulling up a fish on a line he had rowed up to. Darrell took in the situation, and his heart beat, and he felt a longing for liberty as he first looked at the good horse on which he could secure it, and then at the convict-guard near him who was yawning sleepily, as he sat with his carbine in his hand. Just then he saw Kate hold her handkerchief above her head and wave it. It was the signal, and he knew how good a chance he would have if he obeyed it. There was no time for delay, and in a second he had taken a header from the bank and was swimming for life and liberty. For a minute or so there was some wild shooting, as the guard aroused by the splash took a hurried shot at him, and the Zulus let off their guns recklessly.

The sound of the shots startled Jappie, who had been intent on pulling up his fish. For a second he stared stolidly, and then as the convict came to the other side, hitting just upon the spot where the horses were, he saw what his object was.

“Allah Macter, but he is going to take my horse. Hi! Miss Gray, gallop the horse away; keep away from him, he’s going to take the horse.” The guards on the other side had ceased firing, as they were afraid of hitting Kate and the horses. Kate did not make any attempt to get away from the convict; in fact Jappie felt certain that she was doing her best to help the fugitive. Jappie yelled and gesticulated, but it was no use. To his disgust he saw the convict come up the river-bank, jump into the saddle, and give a shout of triumph, and then go off across the veldt. Above all things, Jappie valued and swaggered about his horse. He had won one or two races with him already, and hoped to win more, and he was never tired of boasting and bragging about what he hoped to do with him.

“O the skellum!—O the scoundrel!—there is not a horse in the province that can catch him, and there is no one ready to follow him,” he shouted out to no one in particular as he splashed clumsily across the river against the stream. For once he thought of Kedult’s pace and staying powers without much satisfaction. When he had got to the other side he stood shouting and yelling to the convict-guards, and watching Darrell growing smaller in the distance. It was something of a relief to him when he saw two troopers of the border police cross the drift. They had saddled up when they heard the alarm of the escape, and were starting in pursuit. Jappie ran after them, and shouted out some directions to which they paid very little heed.

“Ah, they will never catch him on Kedult; he will ride the horse to death first,” he despondently said as he watched the troopers ride across the flat. Kate began to realise that she had probably got herself into a good deal of trouble, for the part she had taken in the escape was pretty evident. She did not know what offences she might not have committed, still she felt that she would gladly do it again, and chance whatever punishment she might have to suffer, rather than have to see Darrell suffering his degrading punishment. Certainly he would be a fugitive and an outlaw, but that would not be so bad for him, and he would have a better chance of proving his innocence than if he were a prisoner; so she hoped.

“Well, Miss Gray, so you have played me a nice little trick, letting that skellum steal my horse. That was your doing. You think yourself very slim to be able to fool me into leaving you with my horse, so that you could let your sweetheart have it to get away on; but you have made a mistake—I am going to go to the magistrate, and he shall know what you have done. You will find yourself in prison very soon for stealing my horse and helping a prisoner to escape,” said the young Boer to Kate, when he met her at the door of the farm-house as she rode back. He was half crying about the loss of his horse, and desperately angry; and yet, as he looked into the pretty English girl’s face, a very different idea to that of revenge suggested itself to him. There was something he cared for even more than his horse.

“Look here, miss, you have lost me the best horse in the country, but I forgive you, because you’re such a pretty girl. No Dutch girl would do what you have done; they would be ashamed to; but I like girls who have plenty of pluck. Be my sweetheart instead of that skellum’s, whom you will never see again, and I will say no more about what I saw. Look, I am rich; I have some of the best claims in the mine, and have ten good farms. I think there is no girl in the Colony who would not marry me, and I offer to make you my wife—a poor little English girl, whom I could send to prison if I thought right. Come, I have lost my horse and won a frow, for you must marry me or go to prison—which will you do?”

To emphasise his declaration he threw one of his clumsy arms round her neck and tried to kiss her. Her answer came in a way that surprised him. She dodged away from his grasp, and as he came forward again she slashed him twice across his face with her whip, and then ran away into the house, leaving him standing in the yard listening to the laugh of a Kaffir servant who had witnessed the scene.

“All the worse for you, missy,” he cried, almost blubbering from the pain and from his anger. “You shall suffer for this, and for stealing my horse.” Then catching sight of the Kaffir’s grinning face he relieved his feelings by cutting that unfortunate son of Ham across the back with his ox-hide whip till he yelled with pain. Somewhat calmed by this he walked down to the boat and went over to Gordon, determined to let the law of the land revenge his wrongs.

It turned out that his threat was not an idle one. Already the inhabitants of Gordon were discussing the part she had taken in the escape of the convict. One of the guards noticed her give the signal, and his evidence was confirmed by Jappie.

Johnstone, who had been acting as magistrate, cursed his fate which obliged him to commit Kate to take her trial at Kimberley. But the affair was a serious one, and became more serious when the next day the border police came back without having found their man.

“It’s a beastly duty to have to discharge, particularly for such a pitiful screw as one gets from this cursed Colonial Government. But I had to do it on the evidence,” he said to her when the inquiry was ended, and she was duly committed to take her trial, and circumstances allowed him to resume his non-official way of looking at things. “You need not be nervous, however; jury won’t bring themselves to convict you,” he added, to reassure her.

The case created immense excitement at Kimberley. From the first public feeling was with the prisoner. Jappie was considered to show great vindictiveness, and the story of his having been an unsuccessful suitor to the prisoner somehow got abroad. He had got his horse back too, it having been sent to him from Stellaland, and this, in the opinion of the public, made the animus he showed all the more vindictive. When the day of the trial came on, and the prisoner was seen in the dock, public opinion expressed itself most unanimously in her favour.

The Crown prosecutor’s arguments were very cogent, and the judge’s summing up dead against the prisoner; but the jury gave their verdict without ever turning round in the box. It was not guilty.

“There ain’t such a crowd of pretty girls in this camp that we can afford to shut ’em up in prison,” was the opinion expressed by the foreman as he partook of champagne at the expense of a sympathiser with beauty in distress.

In the mean time George Darrell found himself secure in Stellaland. After riding all day he had pulled up with his horse dead beat, at a house which had once been used as a store some miles on the other side of the river which marked the border of Griqualand West. The house was inhabited by some white men, who constituted themselves into a body which somewhat resembled the free companies some centuries back—nominally fighting for the Kaffir chief, but really pretty much for their own hand.

“Hullo, who the devil is this?” exclaimed one of these warriors, who was sitting on the bench outside the house as Darrell came up.

“Hullo, he has got ’em on—he has got ’em all on,” said another of the company—a gentleman who in the course of his varied career had been a singer in a London East End music-hall, and now sang the songs of Houndsditch in a strange land—as he saw the fashion of Darrell’s garb.

“Look here, it won’t do; it will bring the peelers on us.”

“He’s a good fellow; I know him—worth a dozen of you,” said a black-haired, handsome, devil-may-care-looking young fellow, known as Black Jamie, who acted as the leader of the company. “It’s Darrell, who used to be working down the river. I heard he was ‘run in’ some time ago,”—and getting up, he came forward and shook the new arrival heartily by the hand.

It was lucky for Jappie that Black Jamie had a high opinion of Darrell; for it was on that account he was induced to give in to the other’s wish that the horse should be sent back by a Kaffir to his owner—a proceeding which was thoroughly repugnant to the feelings of himself and the honourable company he commanded. He let Darrell have his way, however, and then sent him on with some Kaffirs to their huts, where the police, even if they crossed the border, would not care to follow him. A day or two afterwards, when danger of pursuit was over, Darrell was enlisted as one of Black Jamie’s troop in the service of Mankoran, the chief of the Bechuanas.