Читать книгу The Fire Trumpet - Mitford Bertram - Страница 19

It is Sunday.

Ride we behind the horseman who is picking his way down a stony path through the ever present bush, making for yon thatched building down there in the hollow. A low, rough shanty, built in the roughest and readiest fashion, and of the rawest of red brick. Three windows, cobwebbed and cloudy with many a patched-up pane of blue or brown paper, admit light and air, and a door made to open in halves. A smaller edifice hard by, with tumble-down mud walls and in a state of more or less rooflessness, does duty as a stable, and in front of the two an open space slopes down a distance of one hundred and fifty yards to the river, whose limpid waters dash and sparkle over their stony bed, between cactus-lined banks—the stubbornly encroaching and well-nigh ineradicable prickly pear. Opposite rises a great cliff, whose base and sides are set in the greenest and most luxuriant of forest trees, but whose brow, like its stern face, is bare of foliage and stands out in hard relief against the sky. There seems no reason why this cliff should be there at all, seeing that the hill would have been far more symmetrical without it, unless in its wild irregularity it were destined for the purpose alone of giving a magnificent—if a trifle forbidding—frontage to the ill-looking and commonplace dwelling-house. On all sides the towering heights rise to the sky, shutting in this beautiful and romantic spot which might be a veritable Sleepy Hollow, so far does it seem from the sights and the sounds of men. But it must be confessed that its beauty and romance are utterly thrown away upon its present occupant, who is wont to describe the place as “a beastly stifling hole out of which I’d be only too glad to clear to-morrow, by Jove; but then one can’t chuck up the lease, you know, and it isn’t half a bad place for stock, too.” It rejoices in the inviting name of Spoek Krantz (Ghost Cliff), and is held in awe and terror as an unholy and demon-peopled locality by the superstitions natives, as well as by the scarcely less superstitious Boer; and gruesome tales are told of unearthly sights and sounds among the rocky caves at its base; shadowy shapes and strange fearful cries, and now and again mysterious fires are seen burning upon its ledges in the dead of night, while the most careful exploration the next morning has utterly failed to discover the smallest trace of footprint or cinder. Native tradition has stamped the spot as one to be avoided, for the spirit of a mighty wizard claims it as his resting-place. Even by day the place, shut in by its frowning heights, is lonely and forbidding of aspect.

But utterly impervious to supernatural terrors is he who now dwells in the haunted locality. The grim traditions of a savage race are to him as mere old wives’ fables, and he laughs to scorn all notion of any awesome associations whatever. He would just like to see a ghost, that was all, any and every night you pleased; if he didn’t make it lively for the spectral visitant with a bullet, call him a nigger. Yes, he would admit seeing strange lights on the cliff at times, and hearing strange sounds; but to ascribe them to supernatural agency struck him as utter bosh. The lights were caused by a moonlight reflection, or will-o’-the-wisps, or something of that sort; and the row, why, it was only some jackal yowling in the krantz, and as for getting in a funk about it, that would do for the niggers or white-livered Dutchmen, but not for him. Tradition said that there was a secret cavern in the cliff, but the entrance was known to very few even among the natives themselves, and only to their most redoubted magicians. Certain it is that no Kafir admitted knowledge of this, and when questioned carefully evaded the subject.

And now, as the horseman we have been following emerges from the bush on to the open space surrounding the low-roofed, thatched shanty, a man is seated in his shirt-sleeves on a stone in front of the door, intently watching something upon the ground. It is a large circular glass cover, such as might be used for placing over cheese or fruit; but to a very different use is it now being put. For imprisoned within it are two scorpions of differing species—a red one and a black one—hideous monsters, measuring five inches from their great lobster-like claws to the tip of their armed tails, and there they crouch, each upon one side of its glass prison-house, both, evidently, in that dubious state aptly known among schoolboys as “one’s funky, and t’other’s afraid.”

“Hold on a bit,” called out the man in the shirt sleeves, but without turning his head, as the trampling of hoofs behind him warned of the approach of a visitor, “or, at any rate, come up quietly.”

“Why, what in the name of all that’s blue have you got there?” demanded Hicks, dismounting; for he it is whom we have accompanied to this out-of-the-way spot. “Well, I’m blest?” he continued, going off into a roar of laughter as he approached near enough to see the other’s occupation.

“Tsh! tsh! Don’t make such an infernal row, man, you’ll spoil all the fun, and make me lose my bet.”

“What’s the bet?”

“Why, I’ve got five goats against that blue schimmel heifer of old Jafta’s on these two beggars, that the black one’ll polish off the red ’un; but they are to go at it of their own accord, and now I’ve been watching them for the last half-hour, but the beggars won’t fight,” replied the other, still without moving, or even so much as looking over his shoulder.

“Stir them up a bit,” suggested Hicks.

“Can’t; it’d scratch the bet.”

“Where’s Jafta?”

“Oh, he wouldn’t wait. Went away laughing in his sleeve. He’ll laugh the other side of his mouth, the old schelm, when he has to fork out.”

“Well, you must have been hard up for some one to run a bet with. A nice little occupation, too, for a Sunday morning,” replied Hicks, with sham irony.

“Sunday be somethinged. There’s no Sunday on the frontier. Hullo!”

This exclamation was the result of a change of attitude on the part of the grisly denizens of the glass. Slack began slowly to move round the circumference of his prison, in process of which he cannoned against red, and Greek met Greek. With claws interlaced, the venomous brutes plied their sting-armed tails like a couple of striving demons, till at length their grip relaxed, and red fell over on his back with his legs doubled up and rigid.

“Hooroosh! I’ve won,” called out our new acquaintance, jumping up gleefully. “Hi! Jafta, Jafta!” he bawled, anxious to notify his triumph over his sceptical retainer.

“Hold on; not so fast,” put in Hicks, “t’other fellow’s a gone coon, too, or not far from it. Look,” he added, pointing to the glass.

And in good sooth the victor began to show signs of approaching dissolution, which increased to such an extent, that in a couple of minutes he lay as rigid and motionless as the vanquished.

“Never mind, it all counts. He did polish off the other. Jafta, we’ll put my mark on that cow to-morrow.”

“Nay, Baas,” demurred that ancient servitor, who had just come up. He was a wiry little old Hottentot, with a yellow skin, and beady monkey eyes, and as ugly as the seven deadly sins. “Nay, Baas, the bet’s an even one; neither thrashed the other. Isn’t it so, Baas Hicks?”

“Well, as you put it to me, I think the bet’s a draw,” began Hicks.

“Oh, no, that won’t do,” objected Jafta’s master, “the black did polish off the red, you know. If he went off himself afterwards, it was owing to his uneasy conscience. That wasn’t provided for in the agreement. But never mind, Jafta, you can keep your old ‘stomp-stert’ this time.” (Note 1.)

The old Hottentot grinned all over his parchment countenance, and the numerous and grimy wrinkles thereof puckered themselves like the skin of a withered apple. He, and his two sons, strapping lads of eighteen and nineteen, constituted the whole staff of farm servants. No Kafir could be induced to stay on the place, owing to its weird associations; a circumstance which, according to its occupant, was not without its compensating advantage, for the marauding savage, in his nocturnal forays, at any rate kept his hands off these flocks and herds. The old fellow, however, was fairly faithful to his employer, though not scrupulously honest in all his dealings with the rest of mankind at large; the place suited him, and as for ghosts, well, he had never seen anything to frighten him.

And now the jolly frontiersman, who has been driven to so eccentric a form of Sabbath amusement, rises, and we see a man of middle height, with a humorous and gleeful countenance; in his eyes there lurks a mirthful twinkle, and every sun-tanned lineament bespeaks “a character.” And he is a character. Always on the look-out for the whimsical side of events, he is light-hearted to childishness, and has a disastrous weakness for the perpetration of practical jokes—a vein of humour far more entertaining to its possessor than to its victims—and game to bet upon any and every contingency. He is about thirty, and his name is Jack Armitage.

“Well, Hicks, old man,” said this worthy. “Taken pity on my lonely estate, eh? That’s right; we’ll make a day of it. Had breakfast?”

“No.”

“More have I; we’ll have it now. Er—Jafta!” he shouted, “Jafta! Wheel up those chops. Sharp’s the word.”

“Ya, Baas. Just now?” called out that menial, and from the kitchen sounds of hissing and sputtering betokened the preparation of a succulent fry.

“Just now! Only listen. Why, he’ll be twenty minutes at least.”

“Not he,” said Hicks; “he’s nearly ready, I can smell that much.”

“Nearly ready! Give you a dollar to five bob he’s twenty minutes from now. Is that on?” he inquired, putting out his watch to take the time. (Rix dollar, 1 shilling 6 pence.)

“No, it isn’t. I’m not going to encourage your disgraceful and sporting proclivities,” was the reply, as they entered the house. Three partitions boasted this domicile—a bedroom, a sitting-room, and the kitchen aforesaid. Of ceiling it was wholly guiltless, the sole canopy overhead being plain, unadulterated thatch; and the mud floor, plastered over with cow-dung, after the manner of the rougher frontier houses, gave forth a musty, uninviting odour, which it required all the ingress of the free air of Heaven to atone for. A large, roomy wooden press, and a row of shelves, with a green baize curtain in front, stood against the whitewashed wall, and in the middle of the room a coarse cloth was laid upon the wooden table, with a couple of plates and knives and forks. Armitage dived into the press and produced a great brown loaf, a tin of milk, and a mighty jar of quince jam.

“Hallo! the ants are in possession again,” said he, surveying the jar, whence issued an irregular crowd of those industrious insects—too industrious sometimes. “Never mind, we can dodge them; besides, they are fattening. Ah, that’s right, Jafta,”—as that worthy entered with a dish of fizzing chops in one hand and a pot of strong black coffee in the other. “Now we can fall to.”

“By the way, I shall have to go back soon,” said Hicks. “I only came to see if any of those sheep we lost had got in amongst Van Rooyen’s, and thought I’d sponge on you for a feed whilst I was down this way.”

“Oh, that can’t be allowed; I thought you had come to help a fellow kill Sunday. Hang it, man, don’t be in a hurry; stop and have some rifle practice, and then we can take out that bees’ nest down by the river. Ah, but I forgot,” he added, with a quizzical wink. “Never mind, my boy; I don’t want to spoil fun, you’ll be better employed at home.”

Hicks was sorely puzzled. He was a good-natured fellow, and could see that the other had reckoned upon his company for the day. Yet he had his reasons for wanting to get back. “Look here, Jack,” he said, at length, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’ll hold on here a little and help you to get out that bees’ nest, then you can go back with me and we’ll get to Seringa Vale just nicely in time for dinner. Will that do?”

“All right,” assented the other, “that’ll do me well enough. I’ve had nothing but my own blessed company for the last fortnight, except for a Dutchman or two now and again, and a little jaw with my fellow creatures will do me a world of good. By the way, is that chap Claverton still with you?”

“Yes. How d’you like him?”

“Oh, he seems good enough sort, but about the most casual bird I ever saw. He was down here one day; did he tell you about it? No! Well, then, a couple of Dutchmen came in—Swaart Pexter and his brother Marthinus—and Swaart, who is one of your bragging devils and ‘down on’ a ‘raw Englishman’ like a ton of bricks, after yarning a little while points to Claverton, who was sitting over there blowing a cloud in his calm way, and says rather cheekily: ‘Who’s that?’ I told him. ‘Can he talk Dutch?’ was the next question. ‘Don’t know,’ says I. ‘How long has he been in this country?’ says he. ‘Tell him a year,’ says Claverton, quietly, without moving a muscle. I told him. ‘A year!’ says Pexter, turning up his nose more cheekily than before. ‘A year and can’t talk Dutch yet! He must be domm,’ (stupid). Thereupon Claverton looks the fellow bang in the eyes, and says in Dutch, ‘Can you talk English?’ ‘No!’ replies Pexter, with a stare of astonishment. ‘And how long have you been here?’ ‘Been here!’ says the other, with a contemptuous laugh at this—to him—new proof of the other fellow’s greenness. ‘Why, I was born here.’ ‘How old are you?’ goes on Claverton in a tone of friendly interest. ‘Forty-seven last May,’ says the Dutchman, wondering what the deuce is coming next. ‘Forty-seven last May!’ repeats our friend, calmly knocking the ash out of his pipe. ‘That is, you have been in this country forty-seven years, and can’t talk English yet. Well, you must be domm!’ I roared and so did Marthinus. ‘Got you there, old chap,’ says I. Swaart Pexter looked rather shirty and tried to laugh it off, but Claverton had him. Had him, sir, fairly—lock, stock, and barrel. Well, after a while we went outside and stuck up a bottle at four hundred yards to have some rifle practice. The Dutchmen are first-rate shots, and I—well, a buck or a nigger would be anything but safe in front of me at that distance—but I give you my word that none of us could touch that bottle. When we had fired a dozen shots apiece and nearly covered the beastly thing with dust, and ploughed up the ground all round it as if a thunderbolt had fallen, out saunters Claverton with a yellow-backed novel in his fist. ‘Doesn’t your friend shoot?’ asks Marthinus. ‘Suppose so,’ says I. ‘Have a shot, Claverton!’ ‘Don’t mind,’ says he, taking over my gun. I could see a malicious grin on Swaart’s ugly mug, and hugely was he preparing to chuckle over the ‘raw Englishman’s’ wide shooting. Claverton lay down, and without much aiming—bang—crash—we could hardly believe our eyes—the bottle had flown. By Jove it had. ‘Well done,’ says I, ‘but do that again, old chap’; yes, it was mean of me, I allow, but I couldn’t help it. ‘Don’t want to do for all your bottles, Armitage,’ says my joker as quietly as you please, as I sent the boy to stick up another, and I had just time to start a bet of five bob with Marthinus in his favour when—bang—and, by Jove, sir, would you believe it? that bottle shared the fate of the first. Well, we were astonished. ‘Aren’t you going to shoot any more?’ says Marthinus, handing over the five bob with a very bad grace. ‘Too hot out here,’ replies he, sloping into the shade of the house; and diving his nose into the yellow-back again, leaves us to our bottle-breaking or rather to our attempts at the same, for I’m dashed if we touched one after that. After the Pexters had gone I says, ‘Look here, old chap, we’ll have a quiet match between ourselves, five bob on every dozen shots—you shall give me odds.’ ‘My dear fellow,’ says he, ‘odds should be the other way about. I shan’t touch that bottle again three times if I blaze away at it the whole morning.’ ‘The Lord, you won’t,’ says I; ‘never mind, let’s try.’ He did, and was as good as his word, and handed over fifteen bob at the close of the entertainment, having hit the mark twice to my seven times. ‘And how the deuce did you pink it before—twice running can’t be a fluke, you know?’ I asked, when we had done. ‘Well, you see, those louts were bent on seeing me shoot wide, so I held straight just to spite them,’ was his cool answer. But didn’t he tell you all about it?”

“Not a word,” said Hicks. “He just said he had been down here, and a couple of slouching Dutchmen had looked in and tried to take a rise out of him, but didn’t manage it.”

“Well, he is a rum stick and no mistake. What’s in the wind now?” and as the trampling of hoofs fell upon the speaker’s ear, he got up hastily and made for the door, knocking over a wooden chair in his progress, and treading on the tail of a mongrel puppy which had sneaked in and was lying under the table, and which now fled, yelling disconsolately. “Here come two chaps,” he went on, shading his eyes from the sun’s glare and looking out into the veldt. “Dutchmen—no—one is—David Botha, I think; t’other’s Allen—no mistaking him. Wheu-uw! Now for some fun, Hicks, my boy. We’ll make him help us with the bees’ nest, and if you don’t kill yourself with almighty blue fits, call me a nigger.”

The two drew near. The Boer with his stolid, wooden face, slouch hat (round which was twined a faded blue veil), and bob-tailed and ancient tail-coat, was an ordinary specimen of his class and nation. The Englishman, however, was not. He was rather a queer-looking fellow, tall and loosely-built, with a great mop of yellow hair and an absent expression of countenance. His age might have been five or six-and-twenty. He had not been long in the colony, and was theoretically supposed to be farming. On horseback Allen was quaint of aspect. His seat in the saddle would not have been a good advertisement to his riding-master, putting it mildly, and he invariably rode screws. Moreover, he was great on jack-boots and huge spurs.

“Good day, David,” said Armitage, as the Boer extended a damp and uncleanly paw. “Hallo, Allen! you’re just in the nick of time. We are just going to get out a bees’ nest, and you must come and bear a hand.”

“But—er—I’m not much use at that sort of thing. Botha will help you much better.”

“Won’t do, old chap—won’t do,” said Armitage, decisively. “In the words of the poet, ‘Not to-day, baker!’ So come along.”

Allen’s jaw fell. If there was one thing on this earth he hated, it was depriving the little busy bee of the hard-earned fruits of his labours, not on humanitarian grounds—oh, no—but the despoiled insects had a knack of buzzing viciously around the noses and ears of the depredators and their accomplices in a way that was highly trying to weak nerves, to say nothing of the absolute certainty of two or three stings, if not half-a-dozen. He glanced instinctively towards David Botha as though mutely to ask: “Why the deuce won’t he do?” But that stolid Boer sat puffing away at his pipe, and showed no inclination to come to the rescue.

“Hicks, give Allen one of those big tins to put the honey in while I hunt up some brown paper to make a smoke with,” said Armitage, as they went into the house. It had been arranged that Allen should hold the receptacle for the honey, otherwise he would inevitably have sloped off.

They went down to the river bank, Armitage leading the way. A keg fixed in the fork of a small tree constituted the hive, and the busy insects were winging in and out with a murmuring hum. Armitage divested himself of his coat so that the bees shouldn’t get up the sleeves, as he said, and slouched his hat well over his face and neck; then with a chisel he removed the head of the keg, while Hicks ignited the brown paper and made the very deuce of a smoke.

“Not much in it—quite the wrong time of year to take it,” said Armitage, as the waxen combs in the hive were disclosed to view. “Never mind, they’ll make a lot more. Oh-h!” as one of the outraged insects playfully stung him on the ear. “Come a little nearer, Allen;” and he threw a couple of combs into the tin dish, while Hicks stood close at hand plying the smoke with all the energy of a Ritualistic thurifer.

“Oh-h—ah!” echoed Allen, in dismal staccato, as he received a sting on the hand, and another on the back of the neck.

“Hang it, man, don’t drop the concern!” exclaimed Armitage, pitching another comb or two into the large tin; nor was the warning altogether ill-timed, for poor Allen was undergoing a mauvais quart d’heure with a vengeance, ducking his head spasmodically as the angry insects “bizzed” savagely around his ears, and all the time looking intensely wretched under the infliction.

And in truth the fun began to wax warm. Armitage’s hat was invisible beneath the clusters of bees which swarmed over it, while others were crawling about on his clothes. Now and then he would give vent to an ejaculation, as a sting, inflicted more viciously than usual, told through even his hardened skin; but he kept on manfully at his task, cutting out the combs and depositing them in the tin, while the air was filled with buzzing angry bees and suffocating smoke.

“Think we’ve got enough now,” he said at last, drawing his face out of the cask, and quickly heading up the latter. Allen, to whom this dictum was like a reprieve to a condemned criminal, gave a sigh of relief, and began to breathe freely again. But his self-gratulation was somewhat premature, for at that moment a bee insinuated itself into his thick, frizzly-hair just above the neck, and began stinging like mad. Crash! Down went the tin containing the honey-combs, while the victim danced and capered and executed the most grotesque contortions for a moment; then, in a perfect frenzy, away he rushed to the nearest point of the river—a long, deep reach—where he plunged his head into the water, and losing his centre of gravity, ended by incontinently tumbling in, while the spectators were obliged to lie down and indulge their paroxysms of uncontrollable mirth to the very uttermost.

“Oh, oh, oh-h-h!” roared Armitage. “P-pick him out, some one; I’m n-not equal to it.” And he lay back on the sward and howled again.

And in good sooth the warning came none too soon, for at that point the current flowed swift and deep, and poor Allen, what with his exertions and the weight of his jack-boots, was in a state of dire exhaustion, and a few moments more would have put an end to his hopes and fears. Hicks and the Dutchman, who had managed to recover themselves, ran down to the water’s edge, and shouted to him to seize a branch which swept the surface, and at length the involuntary swimmer was fished out and stood dripping and shivering, and looking inexpressibly foolish, on the bank.

“Oh-h, Lord! oh, Lord!” roared Armitage, bursting out afresh as he picked up the fallen tin, and gathered up the fragments that remained. “I never saw anything to beat that, by the holy poker I never did! Come along, old man. We’ll tog you out while I get out some of these stings. The brutes must have been under the impression that I was a jolly pincushion, and have used me accordingly.”

“Dud—dud—don’t think I’ll go up to Seringa Vale to-day,” stuttered Allen, as soon as he recovered breath. He feared the chaff which he knew full well awaited him on the strength of this latest escapade.

“Nonsense, man! We’ll tog you out in no time, and then we’ll all ride over together and have a jolly day of it,” said Armitage.

Allen yielded, and was speedily arrayed in various garments which didn’t fit him. The jack-boots were inevitably left behind, to the great concern of their owner, for there was no possibility of their being dry before sundown at the earliest. Towards noon the horses were brought round and saddled, and having locked up the house the three started, while the Dutchman took his leave and rode off home to regale his vrouw and hinders, and his cousins and his aunts, with the story—highly coloured—of the “raw Englishman’s” discomfiture.

Note 1. “Stump tail.” Taillessness is frequent among colonial cattle—the result of inoculation.