"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 const.i.tuted 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 cl.u.s.ters of bees which swarmed over it, while others were crawling about on his clothes. Now and then he would give vent to an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, 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.
VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER NINE.
IN WHICH THE READER BECOMES A PARTY TO MORE CHAFF.
They rode merrily along, or rather two of them did, for ever and anon Allen"s steed would drop behind, and its sorry pace wax slower and slower, till at length, taking advantage of its rider"s abstraction, it would stop and s.n.a.t.c.h up a tuft of gra.s.s here and there by the way-side.
"What the deuce has become of that fellow again?" exclaimed Armitage for the fifth time since their start, as he rose in his stirrups and turned to look back. "Hi--Allen. Come on, man, we shan"t get there to-night!"
he bawled.
"All right," echoed feebly from afar; and the white top of a pith helmet, which had escaped its owner"s immersion, hove in sight over the scrub like a peripatetic mushroom, as the laggard came trotting up.
"Come on! We thought you had got another bee in your bonnet," was Armitage"s salutation. "Hi--Bles you _schelm_--hold up!" This to his horse, which started violently as something sprang up at its very feet; something lithe and red, with curious pointed ears, which darted away over the ground with lightning speed. "A _rooi-cat_ [lynx], by Moses!"
he went on, "after some of the late lambs. Hicks, _where is_ that old shooting-iron of yours?" and thinking that though powerless to hurt the objectionable feline, at any rate he could frighten it, Armitage opened his mouth and gave vent to a true Kafir war yell, which certainly had the desired effect.
"Didn"t bring it. Sunday, you know; must respect people"s prejudices,"
replies Hicks.
"Oh, Lord! and I would have liked to have peppered that chap"s hide,"
groaned Armitage.
They rode on over hill and dale. Suddenly the rasping cry of the wild guinea-fowl brought Hicks" heart into his mouth, and he certainly did not bless the good old-world prejudice in deference to which he had left his beloved gun at home on the first day of the week, and as a cloud of those splendid game birds rose from a gra.s.sy bottom within a few yards of them and winged away with their chattering note, poor Hicks fairly groaned.
"Look at that. Only look at that!" he exclaimed in tones of wrathful disgust. "Such a chance; did you ever see them rise like that! When a fellow has his gun and is all ready for them, blest if they won"t run hundreds of yards before they"ll get up, whereas--"
"I suppose they know it"s Sunday," put in Allen, with a feeble attempt at chaff.
The other turned from him impatiently, without replying. Good-natured as he was habitually, there were moments when even Hicks felt justifiably cantankerous. This was one of them.
They continued their way without event, and, cresting the last ridge, descended into the long valley, at whose head stood the old farmhouse.
"Hallo! some one"s turned up," said Armitage, indicating the white tent of a Cape cart, which stood outspanned before the stable-door, with the harness lying beside the swingle bars.
"Looks like Naylor"s trap," said Hicks.
"Good. The more the merrier," rejoined Armitage, as they cantered up and dismounted.
An air of perfect rest and peace seemed to enshroud the place, as though nature would supply the absence of all outward signs of the Sabbath.
The gates of the empty kraals stood open, and save for a sickly sheep or two feeding about near the homestead, there was not a sign of animal life. Here and there a long rakish-looking hornet flitted beneath the leaves of a trellised vine, or sought the entrance of his pendulous paper-like nest in the verandah. In the garden a few b.u.t.terflies disported, vying with the flowers in their bright colours; and big b.u.mble-bees boomed in the burning glow of the noonday sun. There was that about the sultry stillness which warned of thunder in the air, a presage not unlikely to be borne out towards evening, judging from the great solid bank of clouds which loomed up blackly from behind the distant mountains.
Hicks was right as to the ident.i.ty of the visitors, whose conveyance they had descried. Edward Naylor, Mr Brathwaite"s son-in-law, a jolly bluff frontiersman, whose weather-tanned face heavily bearded, was the soul of geniality, was seated on the disselboom of a waggon, discoursing on the state of the country with his host. His wife, a pretty, fair-haired woman of about thirty, was sitting with Ethel and Laura in the verandah, and was at that moment arbitrating, amid much laughter, in an argument which the former had started with Claverton, by way of pa.s.sing the time.
"Hallo, Armitage," said that worthy, as the new arrivals drew nigh. "I was expecting to be summoned to your funeral."
"My funeral! What the dev--er--what d"you mean?"
"Well, you see, it"s such a time since I beheld the light of your countenance that I began to think you must be dead."
"Wheuw! That"s what I call a cheerful greeting," replied Armitage, shaking hands with the rest of the party.
The two who had been talking shop now appeared on the scene.
"How do, Armitage? Hallo, Allen, who"s your outrigger?" said Naylor, eyeing the unwonted garb of that luckless youth, which garb bore unmistakable appearance of makeshift from head to foot.
"Er--I stumbled into the river, and--"
"What; boots and all?" There was a joke about Allen"s jack-boots, which he was seldom seen without.
""What is good for a bootless bene?"" quoted Claverton. "Never mind, Allen, don"t you let them chaff you."
Naylor was an inveterate joker. When he and Armitage got together the same room would hardly hold them, and when the two got Allen between them, then, Heaven help Allen. Now this is precisely what happened, for at that moment the dinner-bell rang, and all adjourned to the festive board, when, as luck would have it, the unfortunate youth found himself--partly owing to that curious practice which is, or was, so often found in frontier houses, of all the men hanging together on one side of the table, leaving the other to the fair s.e.x--in the neighbourhood of his tormentors; but he was a good-natured fellow, and took chaff very equably.