They started directly after breakfast and for five hours fought their way through dense undergrowth and shrubs with never a sign of a path, though here and there were footsteps and broken boughs. By noon some of the party were exhausted and lagged behind, an hour later a long line of exhausted stragglers were following Trent and the native guide. Yet to all their pet.i.tions for a rest Trent was adamant. Every minute"s delay might lessen the chance of saving the boy, even now they might have begun their horrible tortures. The thought inspired him with fresh vigour. He plunged on with long, reckless strides which soon placed a widening gap between him and the rest of the party.
By degrees he began to recollect his whereabouts. The way grew less difficult--occasionally there were signs of a path. Every moment the soft, damp heat grew more intense and clammy. Every time he touched his forehead he found it dripping. But of these things he recked very little, for every step now brought him nearer to the end of his journey.
Faintly, through the midday silence he could hear the clanging of copper instruments and the weird mourning cry of the defeated natives. A few more steps and he was almost within sight of them. He slackened his pace and approached more stealthily until only a little screen of bushes separated him from the village and, peering through them, he saw a sight which made his blood run cold within him.
They had the boy! He was there, in that fantastic circle bound hand and foot, but so far as he could see, at present unhurt. His face was turned to Trent, white and a little scared, but his lips were close-set and he uttered no sound. By his side stood a man with a native knife dancing around and singing--all through the place were sounds of wailing and lamentation, and in front of his hut the King was lying, with an empty bottle by his side, drunk and motionless. Trent"s anger grew fiercer as he watched. Was this a people to stand in his way, to claim the protection and sympathy of foreign governments against their own bond, that they might keep their land for misuse and their bodies for debauchery? He looked backwards and listened. As yet there was no sign of any of his followers and there was no telling how long these antics were to continue. Trent looked to his revolver and set his teeth. There must be no risk of evil happening to the boy. He walked boldly out into the little s.p.a.ce and called to them in a loud voice.
There was a wild chorus of fear. The women fled to the huts--the men ran like rats to shelter. But the executioner of Bekwando, who was a fetish man and holy, stood his ground and pointed his knife at Trent. Two others, seeing him firm, also remained. The moment was critical.
"Cut those bonds!" Trent ordered, pointing to the boy.
The fetish man waved his hands and drew a step nearer to Trent, his knife outstretched. The other two backed him up. Already a spear was couched.
Trent"s revolver flashed out in the sunlight.
"Cut that cord!" he ordered again.
The fetish man poised his knife. Trent hesitated no longer, but shot him deliberately through the heart. He jumped into the air and fell forward upon his face with a death-cry which seemed to find an echo from every hut and from behind every tree of Bekwando. It was like the knell of their last hope, for had he not told them that he was fetish, that his body was proof against those wicked fires and that if the white men came, he himself would slay them! And now he was dead! The last barrier of their superst.i.tious hope was broken down. Even the drunken King sat up and made strange noises.
Trent stooped down and, picking up the knife, cut the bonds which had bound the boy. He staggered up to his feet with a weak, little laugh.
"I knew you"d find me," he said. "Did I look awfully frightened?"
Trent patted him on the shoulder. "If I hadn"t been in time," he said, "I"d have shot every man here and burned their huts over their heads. Pick up the knife, old chap, quick. I think those fellows mean mischief."
The two warriors who had stood by the priest were approaching, but when they came within a few yards of Trent"s revolver they dropped on their knees. It was their token of submission. Trent nodded, and a moment afterwards the reason for their non-resistance was made evident. The remainder of the expedition came filing into the little enclosure.
Trent lit a cigar and sat down on a block of wood to consider what further was best to be done. In the meantime the natives were bringing yams to the white men with timid gestures. After a brief rest Trent called them to follow him. He walked across to the dwelling of the fetish man and tore down the curtain of dried gra.s.s which hung before the opening. Even then it was so dark inside that they had to light a torch before they could see the walls, and the stench was horrible.
A little chorus of murmurs escaped the lips of the Europeans as the interior became revealed to them. Opposite the door was a life-size and hideous effigy of a grinning G.o.d, made of wood and painted in many colours. By its side were other more horrible images and a row of human skulls hung from the roof. The hand of a white man, blackened with age, was stuck to the wall by a spear-head, the stench and filth of the whole place were pestilential. Yet outside a number of women and several of the men were on their knees hoping still against hope for aid from their ancient G.o.ds. There was a cry of horror when Trent unceremoniously kicked over the nearest idol--a yell of panic when the boy, with a gleam of mischief in his eyes, threw out amongst them a worm-eaten, hideous effigy and with a hearty kick stove in its hollow side. It lay there bald and ugly in the streaming sunshine, a block of misshapen wood ill-painted in flaring daubs, the thing which they had worshipped in gloom and secret, they and a generation before them--all the mystery of its shrouded existence, the terrible fetish words of the dead priest, the reverence which an all-powerful and inherited superst.i.tion had kept alive within them, came into their minds as they stood there trembling, and then fled away to be out of the reach of the empty, staring eyes--out of reach of the vengeance which must surely fall from the skies upon these white savages. So they watched, the women beating their bosoms and uttering strange cries, the men stolid but scared. Trent and the boy came out coughing, and half-stupefied with the rank odour, and a little murmur went up from them. It was a device of the G.o.ds--a sort of madness with which they were afflicted. But soon their murmurs turned again into lamentation when they saw what was to come. Men were running backwards and forwards, piling up dried wood and branches against the idol-house, a single spark and the thing was done. A tongue of flame leaped up, a thick column of smoke stole straight up in the breathless air. Amazed, the people stood and saw the home of dreadful mystery, whence came the sentence of life and death, the voice of the King-maker, the omens of war and fortune, enveloped in flames, already a ruined and shapeless ma.s.s. Trent stood and watched it, smoking fiercely and felt himself a civiliser. But the boy seemed to feel some of the pathos of the moment and he looked curiously at the little crowd of wailing natives.
"And the people?" he asked.
"They are going to help me make my road," Trent said firmly. "I am going to teach them to work!"
CHAPTER x.x.x
MY DEAR AUNT ERNIE,--At last I have a chance of sending you a letter--and, this time at any rate, you won"t have to complain about my sending you no news. I"ll promise you that, before I begin, and you needn"t get scared either, because it"s all good. I"ve been awfully lucky, and all because that fellow Cathcart turned out such a funk and a bounder. It"s the oddest thing in the world too, that old Cis should have written me to pick up all the news I could about Scarlett Trent and send it to you. Why, he"s within a few feet of me at this moment, and I"ve been seeing him continually ever since I came here. But there, I"ll try and begin at the beginning.
"You know Cathcart got the post of Consulting Surveyor and Engineer to the Bekwando Syndicate, and he was head man at our London place. Well, they sent me from Capetown to be junior to him, and a jolly good move for me too. I never did see anything in Cathcart! He"s a lazy sort of chap, hates work, and I guess he only got the job because his uncle had got a lot of shares in the business. It seems he never wanted to come, hates any place except London, which accounts for a good deal.
"All the time when we were waiting, he wasn"t a bit keen and kept on rotting about the good times he might have been having in London, and what a fearful country we were stranded in, till he almost gave me the blues, and if there hadn"t been some jolly good shooting and a few nice chaps up at the Fort, I should have been miserable. As it was, I left him to himself a good deal, and he didn"t like that either. I think Attra was a jolly place, and the landing in surf boats was no end of fun. Cathcart got beastly wet, and you should have seen what a stew he was in because he"d put on a beautiful white suit and it got spoilt.
Well, things weren"t very lively at Attra at first, I"m bound to admit.
No one seemed to know much about the Bekwando Land Company, and the country that way was very rough. However, we got sent out at last, and Cathcart, he simply scoffed at the whole thing from the first. There was no proper labour, not half enough machinery, and none of the right sort--and the gradients and country between Bekwando and the sea were awful. Cathcart made a few reports and we did nothing but kick our heels about until HE came. You"ll see I"ve written that in big letters, and I tell you if ever a man deserved to have his name written in capitals Scarlett Trent does, and the oddest part of it is he knows you, and he was awfully decent to me all the time.
"Well, out he went prospecting, before he"d been in the country twenty-four hours, and he came back quite cheerful. Then he spoke to Cathcart about starting work, and Cathcart was a perfect beast. He as good as told him that he"d come out under false pretences, that the whole affair was a swindle and that the road could not be made. Trent didn"t hesitate, I can tell you. There were no arguments or promises with him. He chucked Cathcart on the spot, turned him out of the place, and swore he"d make the road himself. I asked if I might stop, and I think he was glad, anyhow we"ve been ever such pals ever since, and I never expect to have such a time again as long as I live! But do you know, Auntie, we"ve about made that road. When I see what we"ve done, sometimes I can"t believe it. I only wish some of the bigwigs who"ve never been out of an office could see it. I know I"ll hate to come away.
"You"d never believe the time we had--leaving out the fighting, which I am coming to by and by. We were beastly short of all sorts of machinery and our labour was awful. We had scarcely any at first, but Trent found "em somehow, Kru boys and native Zulus and broken-down Europeans--any one who could hold a pick. More came every day, and we simply cut our way through the country. I think I was pretty useful, for you see I was the only chap there who knew even a bit about engineering or practical surveying, and I"d sit up all night lots of times working the thing out.
We had a missionary came over the first Sunday, and wanted to preach, but Trent stopped him. "We"ve got to work here," he said, "and Sunday or no Sunday I can"t let my men stop to listen to you in the cool of the day. If you want to preach, come and take a pick now, and preach when they"re resting," and he did and worked well too, and afterwards when we had to knock off, he preached, and Trent took the chair and made "em all listen. Well, when we got a bit inland we had the natives to deal with, and if you ask me I believe that"s one reason Cathcart hated the whole thing so. He"s a beastly coward I think, and he told me once he"d never let off a revolver in his life. Well, they tried to surprise us one night, but Trent was up himself watching, and I tell you we did give "em beans. Great, ugly-looking, black chaps they were. Aunt Ernie, I shall never forget how I felt when I saw them come creeping through the long, rough gra.s.s with their beastly spears all poised ready to throw. And now for my own special adventure. Won"t you shiver when you read this! I was taken prisoner by one of those chaps, carried off to their beastly village and very nearly murdered by a chap who seemed to be a cross between an executioner and a high-priest, and who kept dancing round me, singing a lot of rot and pointing a knife at me. You see, I was right on the outside of the fighting and I got a knock on the head with the b.u.t.t-end of a spear, and was a bit silly for a moment, and a great chap, who"d seen me near Trent and guessed I was somebody, picked me up as though I"d been a baby and carried me off. Of course I kicked up no end of a row as soon as I came to, but what with the firing and the screeching no one heard me, and Trent said it was half an hour before he missed me and an hour before they started in pursuit. Anyhow, there I was, about morning-time when you were thinking of having your cup of tea, trussed up like a fowl in the middle of the village, and all the natives, beastly creatures, promenading round me and making faces and bawling out things--oh, it was beastly I can tell you! Then just as they seemed to have made up their mind to kill me, up strode Scarlett Trent alone, if you please, and he walked up to the whole lot of "em as bold as bra.s.s. He"d got a long way ahead of the rest and thought they meant mischief, so he wouldn"t wait for the others but faced a hundred of them with a revolver in his hand, and I can tell you things were lively then. I"d never be able to describe the next few minutes--one man Trent knocked down with his fist, and you could hear his skull crack, then he shot the chap who had been threatening me, and cut my bonds, and then they tried to resist us, and I thought it was all over. They were horribly afraid of Trent though, and while they were closing round us the others came up and the natives chucked it at once. They used to be a very brave race, but since they were able to get rum for their timber and ivory, they"re a lazy and drunken lot. Well, I must tell you what Trent did then. He went to the priest"s house where the G.o.ds were kept--such a beastly hole--and he burned the place before the eyes of all the natives. I believe they thought every moment that we should be struck dead, and they stood round in a ring, making an awful row, but they never dared interfere. He burnt the place to the ground, and then what do you think he did? From the King downward he made every Jack one of them come and work on his road. You"ll never believe it, but it"s perfectly true. They looked upon him as their conqueror, and they came like lambs when he ordered it. They think they"re slaves you know, and don"t understand their pay, but they get it every week and same as all the other labourers--and oh, Aunt Ernie, you should see the King work with a pickaxe! He is fat and so clumsy and so furiously angry, but he"s too scared of Trent to do anything but obey orders, and there he works hour after hour, groaning, and the perspiration rolls off him as though he were in a Turkish bath. I could go on telling you odd things that happen here for hours, but I must finish soon as the chap is starting with the mail. I am enjoying it. It is something like life I can tell you, and aren"t I lucky? Trent made me take Cathcart"s place. I am getting 800 pounds a year, and only fancy it, he says he"ll see that the directors make me a special grant. Everything looks very different here now, and I do hope the Company will be a success. There"s whole heaps of mining machinery landed and waiting for the road to be finished to go up, and people seem to be streaming into the place. I wonder what Cathcart will say when he knows that the road is as good as done, and that I"ve got his job!
"Chap called for mail. Goodbye.
"Ever your affectionate
"FRED.
"Trent is a brick."
Ernestine read the letter slowly, line by line, word by word. To tell the truth it was absorbingly interesting to her. Already there had come rumours of the daring and blunt, resistless force with which this new-made millionaire had confronted a gigantic task. His terse communications had found their way into the Press, and in them and in the boy"s letter she seemed to discover something Caesaric. That night it was more than usually difficult for her to settle down to her own work. She read her nephew"s letter more than once and continually she found her thoughts slipping away--traveling across the ocean to a tropical strip of country, where a heterogeneous crowd of men were toiling and digging under a blazing sun. And, continually too, she seemed to see a man"s face looking steadily over the sea to her, as he stood upright for a moment and rested from his toil. She was very fond of the boy--but the face was not his!
CHAPTER x.x.xI
A special train from Southampton had just steamed into Waterloo with the pa.s.sengers from the Royal Mail steamer Ophir. Little groups of sunburnt men were greeting old friends upon the platform, surrounded by piles of luggage, canvas trunks and steamer chairs. The demand for hansoms was brisk, cab after cab heavily loaded was rolling out of the yard. There were grizzled men and men of fair complexion, men in white helmets and puggarees, and men in silk hats. All sorts were represented there, from the successful diamond digger who was spasmodically embracing a lady in black jet of distinctly Jewish proclivities, to a sporting lord who had been killing lions. For a few minutes the platforms were given over altogether to a sort of pleasurable confusion, a vivid scene, full of colour and human interest. Then the people thinned away, and, very nearly last of all, a wizened-looking, grey-headed man, carrying a black bag and a parcel, left the platform with hesitating footsteps and turned towards the bridge. He was followed almost immediately by Hiram Da Souza, who, curiously enough, seemed to have been on the platform when the train came in and to have been much interested in this shabby, lonely old man, who carried himself like a waif stranded in an unknown land. Da Souza was gorgeous in frock coat and silk hat, a carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole, a diamond in his black satin tie, yet he was not altogether happy. This little man hobbling along in front represented fate to him. On the platform at Waterloo he had heard him timidly ask a bystander the way to the offices of the Bekwando Land and Gold Exploration Company, Limited. If ever he got there, what would be the price of Bekwando shares on the morrow?
On the bridge Da Souza saw him accost a policeman, and brushing close by, heard him ask the same question. The man shook his head, but pointed eastwards.
"I can"t say exactly, sir, but somewhere in the City, for certain," he answered. "I should make for the Bank of England, a penny "bus along that way will take you--and ask again there."
The old man nodded his thanks and stepped along Da Souza felt that his time had come. He accosted him with an urbane smile.
"Excuse me," he said, "but I think I heard you ask for the offices of the Bekwando Land Company."
The old man looked up eagerly. "If you can direct me there, sir," he said, "I shall be greatly obliged."
"I can do so," Da Souza said, falling into step, "and will with pleasure. I am going that way myself. I hope," he continued in a tone of kindly concern, "that you are not a shareholder in the Company."
The old man dropped his bag with a clatter upon the pavement, and his lips moved for a moment without any speech coming from them. Da Souza picked up the bag and devoutly hoped that none of his City friends were in the way.
"I don"t exactly know about being a shareholder," the old man said nervously, "but I"ve certainly something to do with it. I am, or should have been, joint vendor. The Company is wealthy, is it not?"
Da Souza changed the bag into his other hand and thrust his arm through his companion"s.
"You haven"t seen the papers lately, have you?"
"No! I"ve just landed--to-day--from Africa!"
"Then I"m sorry to say there"s some bad news for you," Da Souza said.
"The Bekwando Land and Gold Company has gone into liquidation--smashed up altogether. They say that all the directors and the vendor will be arrested. It seems to have been a gigantic swindle."
Monty had become a dead weight upon his arm. They were in the Strand now, and he pushed open the swing-door of a public-house, and made his way into the private bar. When Monty opened his eyes he was on a cushioned seat, and before him was a tumbler of brandy half empty. He stared round him wildly. His lips were moist and the old craving was hot upon him. What did it mean? After all he had broken his vow, then! Had he not sworn to touch nothing until he had found his little girl and his fortune? yet the fire of spirits was in his veins and the craving was tearing him to pieces. Then he remembered! There was no fortune, no little girl! His dreams were all shattered, the last effort of his life had been in vain. He caught hold of the tumbler with fingers that shook as though an ague were upon him, lifted it to his lips and drank. Then there came the old blankness, and he saw nothing but what seemed to him the face of a satyr--dark and evil--mocking him through the shadows which had surely fallen now for ever. Da Souza lifted him up and conveyed him carefully to a four-wheel cab.