"You all know me, _amadoda_," went on Septimus Matterson. "Now I will write a letter to the magistrate, and two of your number shall carry it.
By to-night the _amapolise_ will be here."
"_Hau_! The _amapolise_ will be here. But will the boy be here?" said the abominable Sibuko, with his head craftily on one side.
"You can see for yourselves. Let some of you watch the house until the _amapolise_ arrive."
"But how do we know he is here now?" went on this persistent savage.
"He may have been taken away quietly during all this time. Bring him out, and let us see him."
"_Ewa_, _ewa_!" shouted several.
This would have been acceded to, when a sudden instinct of the impolicy of such a course flashed across my mind, and I take a sneaking pride in having supplemented judgment to so experienced and judicious a mind when for once that attribute seemed to fail.
"Don"t you do it," I said hurriedly and in an undertone. "No point in making the boy too _marked_, under the circ.u.mstances. Show him to the chief only."
"You"re right, Kenrick." Then aloud: "The chief will satisfy you. He will come into my house and see the boy."
While this was being done Brian quickly put me up to his own movements.
There was no doubt about it but that two of the Kafir boys were dead.
It was a most lamentable and unfortunate affair for everybody concerned.
How had he fallen in with Usivulele? Ah, that was something of a piece of luck. He had got wind of a dangerous demonstration being organised, had seen the Kafirs swarming along the hillsides from different points, but all converging upon the same--our valley to wit. Only one way to counteract this had suggested itself, and accordingly he had ridden straight and hard for Usivulele"s kraal. He and his were on exceedingly friendly terms with that chief, and he had soon prevailed upon him to intervene.
"Well, Brian, if ever a man did the right thing at the right time, you did it then. A few minutes later would have been so many minutes too late."
"I believe so," he said. "I could see that things were looking as ugly as they could. Well, it"ll be all right now, at least as far as Kuliso"s people are concerned."
Then Usivulele came forth again, and began haranguing the crowd. The whole thing was as had been said, he informed them, and they might now go home. The matter was in his hands now, and he would remain until the boy was handed over to the _amopolise_. This he himself would see done.
Then he chose two men to carry the letter in to Fort Lamport, and the crowd began to break up. A few manifested a disposition to hang around and see the thing out, and this was not objected to, but the remainder scattered off in groups, or by twos and threes, and glad indeed we were to see the last of them.
It may be imagined what a gloom there was over us all during the remainder of that day. Beryl hardly appeared, and George not at all, and even poor little Iris had lost her sunny flow of spirits. We three men had hardly the heart for anything, and got through time chatting with the chief and his councillors, who, incidentally, were lavishly entertained. But it was not until late at night that a squad of Mounted Police arrived, under a sergeant, to take charge of the boy.
We were not sorry to learn either from the same source that a strong patrol would be working along this side of Kuliso"s location, for it was arranged that we should all start for Fort Lamport together at daybreak.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
IN COURT.
Shattuck, C.C. and R.M., was not a genial type of Civil servant, in that he was cold and short of manner, and always intensely official.
Moreover, he was popularly credited with a strong native bias, which alone was sufficient to const.i.tute him a round peg in a square hole, in a frontier magistracy such as Fort Lamport. Personally, he was a middle-aged man with a high bald forehead, and wearing a light full beard--would have been a good-looking one but for a normally acid expression of countenance.
Poor George stood limply in the dock, all the cheek taken out of him, as Brian and I had laughingly told him, as we tried all we knew to hearten him up just before he was placed there. Indeed, there were not wanting those who thought ill of the magistrate"s curt refusal of our attorney"s application to allow him to stand beside his father throughout the preliminary examination, on account of his youth.
"I cannot make such exceptions as that, Mr Pyle," had been the answer.
"Had it been the case of a native no such application would have been made."
This, by the way, was the sort of remark which did not precisely tend to enhance Shattuck"s popularity.
The Courthouse was a dingy, stuffy little enclosure, and it was crowded to overflowing, the back part of the room, usually occupied by natives, being closely packed with dark faces and rolling eyeb.a.l.l.s; but scattered among the townspeople was a large number of stock farmers, many of whom had travelled considerable distances in order to render the Mattersons a kind of moral support.
The first called was the District Surgeon, who made a post-mortem of the two bodies. The deceased, he deposed, were boys of about fifteen or sixteen, as far as he could judge. Then he proceeded to technical detail, such as the number of shot-wounds in each, when and where placed, and so forth. As to the other two who were wounded, he, the District Surgeon, could not say they were out of danger yet. Their injuries were undoubtedly severe.
Then followed, severally, the three or four boys who had been in the company of those shot, and at the time. These gave their version of the affair pretty much as George had given his. He had abused them for being there, they said, and ordered them away. They laughed at him, and he called out that if they did not go at once he would shoot them. He was pointing his gun at them at the time, and the next thing they knew was that it went off and four of them were lying on the ground. The remainder ran away.
The tale of each tallied, but Pyle, the attorney who was watching the case on behalf of George, after a bit of a wrangle with the Court interpreter as to the exact shade of meaning which the order to move on would or would not bear in the native vernacular, fastened upon two points in cross-examination. One was the distance between the slayer and slain, but there was no room for doubt here. He was on the top of the cliff while they were beneath it. But it was not a high one. How high? As high as the Court room?--Higher, perhaps twice as high.
Obviously any one shooting at that short distance would be shooting to kill, not merely to frighten. Even a boy who was accustomed to firearms, like George was, and however careless, could be under no mistake on that head. This to dispose of any idea that he had intended merely to "pepper" the deceased without intent seriously to wound.
The other point upon which our attorney harped was the demeanour of the accused. Was he angry when he ordered them away?--Yes. He said they were spoiling his hunt. Did they seriously think he meant to shoot them when he threatened to?--Well, they didn"t know. But if anybody points a gun at you and you think he means to shoot you, you don"t stand still and laugh at him?--_Whau_! They hadn"t thought of it in that light.
No, they supposed he had not intended to shoot. Then it had been an accident?--Yes, they supposed so.
All this was put by Pyle to the witnesses in due order, and they were unanimous in their answers. Pyle was radiant. During the slight commotion of finding the next witness he leaned back and whispered to us--
"He"ll be discharged. Even Shattuck can"t send him for trial on top of that admission."
All the same, we were not quite so sure.
Then was led a good deal of Kafir evidence, that of parents and other relatives of the dead boys, but this dealt mainly with identification, and was of little or no value for or against our side. It was tediously drawn out too by reason of the interpreting, and was not completed by the time the Court adjourned for lunch.
"Buck up, old chap," said Pyle, going over to poor George, who was not allowed to leave with us. "Buck up. You"ll be having it with your governor next grub time."
"Thanks, Mr Pyle, but I don"t believe I shall," was the doleful reply as he was taken into the chief constable"s room to devour some sandwiches which Beryl had sent him.
As we pa.s.sed out of the dingy hall into the glare of the sunlight, the contrast was a relief. It was good to be out in the open air again, but the contrast was sharper as we thought of the poor boy we had just left.
What if imprisonment, even for a comparatively short time, was before him?
The native end of the Courthouse had emptied out its malodorous crowd, but this was nothing to the number of those who had been unable to gain admission, for to-day the whole township seemed to grow Kafirs, who had come in from near and far by reason of the excitement of the case. Some were squatting around in groups, l.u.s.tily discussing it; others lounging around the general stores; while others again were shaping a course for the nearest canteen. All had sticks, and not a few a pair of them.
"The sooner they pa.s.s a bye-law against carrying kerries in the streets the better," said Brian, as we walked over to the hotel. "There are enough of these chaps here to-day to take the town if they made up their minds. Hullo!"
The last was evoked by the sound of a great voice haranguing one of the groups we were pa.s.sing. Looking round, we recognised Sibuko.
This pestilent savage was squatting on his haunches, holding forth volubly, emphasising his points with a flourish of his kerrie in the air, or bringing it down with a whack on the ground. But to me he was of secondary interest beside a face in the group that caught my eye.
"Brian, twig that chap three doors off from Sibuko," I said hurriedly.
"That"s the one who was going to cut my throat in the cave that morning.
By Jove! I wonder if he remembers the knock-out I gave him. I wouldn"t mind repeating it either."
"Well, you can"t--not here and now. In the first place, there are too many of them; in the next, Shattuck would fine you about twenty pounds; and thirdly, we don"t want to stir up that stew over again."
The hotel was pretty full, and the first person to catch my eye as we entered the dining-room, rather late, was that infernal Trask, who had calmly appropriated the seat next to Beryl, and which I had mentally marked out for myself. Moreover, he was in train of trying to be excessively funny, which was his way of keeping everybody"s spirits up.
"Hallo, Holt," he sang out. "Got your seat, I"m afraid. We"d given you up. Plenty of room down there, old chap. By the way, how are things going?"
"Well, we think," I answered curtly, moving to the vacant part at the far end of the room.
"Ha-ha! Holt seems a bit raggy to-day about something," I distinctly heard Trask say. "What an uncertain tempered Johnny he is."
But I did not hear Beryl"s reply, and--I should have liked to.