"Miss Avory," introduced honest Chris, becoming aware of her presence.
"Mr--er--I really beg your pardon, but I"m afraid I didn"t quite catch your name just now--and Renshaw didn"t happen to mention it in his letter?"
"Sellon," supplied the other.
"By Jove! We hold half our names in common. We are both "Sells," but there we branch off--ho--ho! Sellon and Selwood, both "Sells,""
repeated Chris, who was fond of a joke.
An unimportant, not to say trivial remark. But like many such, it was destined in the fulness of time to be brought back pretty vividly to the memory of its originator and his hearers.
Violet acknowledged the introduction with a queenly sort of bow, and turning preceded them into the sitting-room.
"Where"s Mr Fanning?" she asked, rising almost as soon as she was seated. "I must go and say "How do you do?" to him."
Sellon muttered an oath to himself as she slipped from the room, not loud enough to be heard by his host, however, who proceeded to ply him with questions as to his journey--and brandy-and-water.
Meanwhile Violet, in pursuance of her expressed intent, was greeting the other arrival with a pretty cordiality that was perfection itself, and when she tuned her voice to the requisite minor key as she asked all manner of questions and expressed all manner of sympathy with regard to his late illness, and whether he ought to have undertaken such a long journey so soon, and if he had taken _great_ care of himself during the same, the effect on her victim was such a reaction from his first feeling of dismay at her non-appearance that he could have thrown up his hat and hoorayed aloud. Whereby we fear it is only too obvious that friend Renshaw was as big a fool as the general run of his fellow-men.
"Well, and what do you think of this country, Mr Sellon?" came the inevitable query, as they were gathered together after the first fuss and flurry of greeting.
"I think various things, Mrs Selwood," was the ready reply. "Parts of it are lovely, and parts of it are grand, and one gets a fine opportunity of seeing it all during a fortnight"s journey behind three horses. But other parts, on the other hand, and notably the lat.i.tudes inhabited by friend Fanning here, reminded me forcibly of the Yankee"s reply to the same question."
"And what was that?"
"Why, he was travelling in that awful Karroo during a drought, and somebody asked him what he thought of the country, "What do I think of your country?" says he. "See here, stranger, if I owned a section of your country I guess I"d enclose that section well around, and send out for a paint-pot and paint it green.""
This tickled Selwood amazingly, and he burst into a roar.
"Well, that wouldn"t hold good of our part," he said when he had recovered.
"Oh no, no," a.s.sented the stranger, hurriedly. "Let me clear myself of that charge of heresy without delay. Words are inadequate to describe the beauties of the road as soon as we got into these mountains. I"m serious, mind."
"Well, we must contrive to show you more of them," said his hostess.
"Are you fond of shooting, Mr Sellon?"
"He just is," put in Renshaw. "He kept us in game all along the road, and in chronic hot water with all the Dutchmen whose places we pa.s.sed, by knocking over springboks under their very windows without so much as a "by your leave.""
"Well, it"s better to be the shooter than the shootee, eh, Fanning? But that joke"ll keep," laughed Sellon, significantly.
"We can show you plenty of fun in that line here," said Christopher.
"The mountains are swarming with rhybok, and there are any amount of partridges and quail. Plenty of bushbucks, too, in the kloofs, and guinea-fowl. Hallo, by Jove! it"s time to go and count in," he added, jumping up from his chair.
Then the three men started off to do the regulation evening round of the kraals, while the ladies went their ways, either to give a supervising eye to the preparation of supper, or to while away an idle half-hour prior to that comfortable repast.
"Well, Violet, and what do you think of the stranger?" said Marian, when they were left to themselves.
"Oh, I think him rather a joke. Likely to turn out very good fun, I should say," was the careless reply.
"Sure to, if you take him in hand, you abominable girl. But I"ve a sort of idea the "fun" will be all on one side. I suppose you think you can reduce him to utter and insane subjection in less than a week."
For response Violet only smiled. But the smile seemed to convey more plainly than words the conviction that she rather thought she could.
CHAPTER TEN.
ON THORNS.
When Maurice Sellon awoke the next morning it took him some little while to remember exactly where he was.
The cool delicious air was wafting in at the open window--the murmur of leaves, and the plash of running water--the half-rasping, half-whistling call of the yellow thrush, and the endless chattering of finks--the lowing of cattle, and the deep ba.s.s hum of Kafir voices--all struck upon his ears as strange after the exhausting heat; the treeless, waterless wastes, the burnt-up silent plains so dest.i.tute of bird and animal life, which were the leading features of the scene of his late sojourn. Then with all the strong animal rejoicing of a mercurial temperament combined with a sound const.i.tution, he leaped out of bed, and s.n.a.t.c.hing up a towel, sallied forth in quest of a convenient place for a swim.
It was early yet, but the household was astir--seemed to have been for some time. Sellon spied his host in the cattle kraal, giving a supervising eye to the milking and other operations therein going forward.
"Want to swim, eh?" said the latter. "Well, follow that fence a couple of hundred yards till you come to a big tree-fern on the hedge of the bush; turn in there and you"ll find a grand hole."
Away went Sellon, looking about him as he walked. What a fine place this was, he thought, and what a rattling good time of it he was going to have. The shooting must be splendid. It was a lovely morning, and the man"s spirits rose over the prospect of present enjoyment, and a brightening future. And there was another cause at work tending to send up the mercury, as we shall see anon.
He had no difficulty in finding the water-hole--a fine "reach" of the river about a hundred yards by twenty, thickly shaded with overhanging scrub. In he went with a header and a splash, and after a couple of vigorous swims up and down was just coming out when something caught his eye.
A long rakish narrow object lying along the almost horizontal trunk of a half-fallen tree, not more than a yard from the ground--so motionless that were it not for the scintillation of the eye you could hardly have told the creature was alive. The squab, clinging paws, the hideous crocodile head, the long tapering tail, seemed all exaggerated in the half-gloom of the thick scrub, and in the start which the sight inspired in the beholder.
Sellon stood transfixed, and a cold chill of horror and repugnance ran through him. In his newness to the country it occurred to him that the river might contain a fair population of alligators. Anyway, the beast looked hideous and repulsive enough--even formidable. And it lay almost between himself and the spot where he had left his clothes.
Just then he could have sworn he heard a smothered splutter of laughter.
The reptile must have heard it too, for it raised its head to listen.
Then a crack and a puff of smoke. The creature rolled from the trunk, and lay snapping and writhing, and making every effort to reach the water.
"Stop him, Mr Sellon. Don"t let him get into the water," cried a shrill boy"s voice, and the youthful shooter came crashing through the brake, armed with a saloon rifle, and followed by another youngster about the same age.
"Stop him! How am I to stop him, you young dog?" growled Sellon, who was standing up to his middle in water.
But the boys had wrenched up a stout stick, and deftly avoiding alike snapping jaws and lashing tail, managed to hold the great lizard on the bank where he lay, until his struggles had entirely ceased.
"Gave you rather a _schrek_, didn"t it, Mr Sellon?" said the elder of the two, maliciously, with a wink at his brother, and there was a broad grin on each face that made Sellon long to cuff the pair. For the average colonial urchin has scant respect for his elders as such; scantier still if those elders happen to be "raw Englishmen."
"An ugly brute, anyhow," he answered, wading out to look at the carcase.
"What is he, eh?"
"Only an iguana, Mr Sellon. My! but he"s a big un; five feet at least, I expect. I don"t wonder you took him for a crocodile."
"Took him for--You cheeky young dog, how do you know what I took him for?"
"Come now, that"s good!" retorted the urchin, unabashed, "My! Mr Sellon, but if you could only have seen yourself standing there in the water in a blue funk!" and both cubs thereupon burst into shrill and undisguised laughter.
"I tell you what, youngster, that was an uncommonly good shot of yours,"
said wily Sellon, on the principle of agreeing with his adversary quickly, for he guessed the young scamps would presently go in full of the story, and equally was conscious of having truly been in something of a funk, as they had said. "But how did you manage to get it in?"
"Oh, we spotted him long before you did; Fred cut back for the saloon gun while I waited here. My, though, but he"s about the biggest _lygovaan_ [Iguana] I"ve ever seen."