"A rumour is afloat in camp that the missing officer is alive, but a prisoner; and that a missionary, supposed to be Rev Swaysland, of Mount Ararat Station, is also in the hands of the rebels. This seems probable, as the body of the Dutchman has been found, headless and terribly mutilated, near the brow of a high krantz; but there was no sign of the others. The rumour originated with a native, who has since disappeared. He says that the missing men will be taken to Sandili."
Hardly had Lilian left the shop when a young man, with a pen stuck behind his ear, emerged from an inner office. With three strides he gained the front door, and stood staring after her for a moment down the street. Then he turned back.
"Jones, what did that lady want?" he asked, in a tone of concern.
"S"mornin"s paper, and latest telegram," replied the boy, laconically, and somewhat defiantly, as he went on folding his papers.
"And you gave it her?"
"Yes," still more defiantly. "She asked for it."
"You egregious jacka.s.s?"
"What for?" said the boy, indignantly. "If a party asks for the paper, ain"t I to sell it?" He evidently thought his superior was drunk.
"Look at that, Jones," said the latter, tapping the telegraphic slip impressively with his pen. "What"s that about--eh?"
"I see it. It"s about an officer killed at the front. Why, that"s just the very thing the lady wanted to see," replied the boy, brightening up.
"Yes. Quite so, you infernal young fool. She"s his sweetheart."
"O Lord!" And the boy, dropping the paper he was folding, stood gazing at his superior the very picture of open-mouthed horror.
"Yes, it is "Lord,"" said the latter, with a gloomy shake of the head.
"Well, the mischief"s done now, anyway;" and he retired into his den with a feeling of intense and real pity for the beautiful, sad-looking girl who had so often called at the office for telegrams from the seat of war. The boy was a new hand, and had not known who she was.
How Lilian got home was a mystery. She just remembered staggering in at the doorway, and then nothing more until she awoke to find herself upon her bed with Annie Payne bathing her forehead. No need had there been to ask what the matter was--the printed slip which she held clutched in her hand spoke for itself.
A shudder of returning consciousness, an inquiring look around, and then the dread remembrance burst upon her.
"Oh, Arthur!" she wailed forth, in a despairing, bitter moan, "you are dead, love, and I--why do I still live?" and the tears rushed forth as her frame shook beneath its weight of sobbing woe.
"Hush, dear!" whispered Annie. "It does not say that, you know; it says he is a prisoner, and he may have escaped by now, or been rescued.
While there is life there is hope."
Something in the idea seemed suddenly to strike her. Starting up, she pressed her hand against her brows.
"So there is! Hope, hope! He is not dead. We must rescue him;" and with a new-born determination, Lilian rose and walked towards the door.
Her hostess stared at her with a vague misgiving. Had this shock turned her brain?
"Mr Payne," said Lilian, quite calmly, as she entered the sitting-room, "what can we do?"
Payne, who was busy buckling on a pair of stout riding gaiters, looked up, no less astonished than his wife had been. A cartridge-belt, well stocked, lay on a chair, and just then Sam entered with a gun which he had been wiping out.
"Do? Well, I"m going to start off at once for Brathwaite"s camp and see what can be done. But cheer up, Miss Lilian. We may bring our friend out of his troubles all right enough. While there"s life there"s hope, you know."
Just what his wife had said, and the twofold reiteration struck Lilian vaguely as a good omen.
"Mr Payne," she said, suddenly, "I want to go with you."
Payne stared, as well he might. "Go with me? Where? To Brathwaite"s camp?"
"No; as far as the front. After that to the chief, Sandili."
If she had said "To his Satanic majesty," Payne could not have been more thunderstruck. He began to think, as his wife had thought, that the shock had turned her brain.
"To the chief, Sandili!" he echoed. "Why, you would never get there; and if you did, what on earth would be the use of it?"
"I want to beg him to spare Arthur"s life. I have heard that these Kafirs respect women, even in time of war, and the chief might listen to me. I am not afraid of him. He was very friendly, and spoke quite kindly to us that day we saw him up in Kaffraria, and he will remember me. And I might succeed where nothing or n.o.body else would--if it is not too late," she concluded, choking down a rising sob. She must keep firm now, and crush all mere womanly weakness, for she would need all her strength.
Payne stared at her, speechless with astonishment and admiration. The notion of this delicate, beautiful creature calmly stating her wish to go alone into the midst of these merciless savages; to beard the Gaika chief, at bay in his stronghold, far in the gloomy recesses of the Amatola forest; reached a height of sublimity bordering closely upon the ridiculous. But she wae thoroughly in earnest--he could see that--and meant every word of it.
"Why, Lilian, it is not to be thought of," he replied, seriously; "the thing is simply impossible to carry out, even if it were. Why, you would never reach the chief, to begin with; you would--hang it all--you would come to grief long before."
"Nothing is impossible. Are you going to sacrifice his life because you will not use a means of saving it?" she asked.
"Now, do be reasonable," replied Payne. "Listen. We have a better plan than that. Sam is going straight to the front; with a daub of red clay and a blanket he will pa.s.s perfectly for a Gaika. He will find out where Arthur is, and, depend upon it Sam will get him out if any one can; and you may be perfectly sure that I shall leave no stone unturned."
"Ah, yes. He will. That is a good idea."
"Yes," went on Payne, who, meanwhile, was busy getting his things together. "And, another thing, Arthur understands the Kafirs thoroughly and can talk to them fluently. He isn"t the fellow to lose his head in any kind of fix, and he may manage to talk them over, or bribe them to let him go. So just keep your spirits up and don"t begin thinking the worst. Now, good-bye, we"ll do the best we can. Good-bye, Annie!" and with a grasp of the hand to Lilian, and a hurried embrace to his wife, Payne mounted his horse, which was being held for him at the gate, and rode off.
"Missie Lilian!" exclaimed Sam, "I go look for Inkos, now--straight--at once. Amaxosa not hurt him; I find him and bring him back. If Inkos alive, Sam bring him back or die by him. Dat what Sam do."
"Wait. You are not armed. Go, quick, and buy a revolver before you start," and with trembling hands Lilian began searching hurriedly for her purse.
"He won"t be able to get it without a permit from the magistrate," said Annie Payne, "and if he could, it would be of no use to him. No, leave him alone for doing the best thing."
"I not want revolva, Missie Lilian, I not want anyting. Better jes as I am. Now I go quick. I bring back Inkos, or never come back. I bring him back, or I die by him," and, without another word, away started the faithful fellow; and so serious did he consider the position that he forgot his usual formula, "Amaxosa n.i.g.g.a no good."
Throughout that afternoon whatever hopes Lilian had allowed herself to cherish sank slowly and by degrees till they had almost totally disappeared. Suspense, terrible at any time, but doubly so during forced inactivity, weighed down her soul till it seemed that it must crush her to the very dust, and she could do nothing. Payne--even Sam-- had the satisfaction of joining in search of her missing lover, while she, a weak, helpless woman, could only sit at home and wait, and weep, and pray. Ah, why did she not insist upon her plan of going straight to the Gaika chief to beg for her lover"s life? What to her were the terrors of so desperate an undertaking; the gloomy forest; the loneliness; the crowd of grim barbarians, their weapons, it might be, red with recently shed blood? And she was by nature timid, as we have already seen; yet her great overwhelming love had made this frail, delicate creature brave with a fearlessness taking no account of lesser horrors, all of which were swallowed up in this one dread issue. But it was too late now. Payne had gone, and the faithful native with him; and the two women were left alone, to wait, and weep, and pray.
Then as the afternoon wore on, and the messenger whom Annie Payne had stationed at the telegraph office to hasten up to them with every detail of news that might arrive, returned with the intelligence that a great storm was gathering in Kaffraria, and the electricity had interfered with the working of the wires, Lilian could bear no more. AH the direful stories which she had heard of the cruelties practised by the savages towards their helpless prisoners crowded upon her mind. He--her heart"s love! He--a captive in their ruthless hands! And it was by _her_ act that this had come about. _Her_ lips had doomed him. She had sent him to his death.
VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWENTY.
THROUGH THE HEART OF THE EARTH.
When he felt his horse"s feet slipping from beneath him over the brink, Claverton expected nothing less than instant death. Yet in that terrible moment the whole picture was imprinted on his brain--the fierce foes rushing on, a.s.segai uplifted; the terrified, rolling eye of his trembling steed; the sunlit sward; the green, monotonous sweep of bush in the valley far below, into which he was being hurled; even a thin line of blue smoke, which might be from a friendly camp miles and miles away in the bush, did not escape him. And side by side with the picture spread before and around him, in every minutest detail, came the thought of Lilian--what she would say when she came to hear of his end, and whether, from the spirit-world, he would be allowed to look once more on that tenderly-loved face, and, above all, whether he would ever be able to carry out his vengeance upon the man who had brought him to this.
All pa.s.sed like a lightning gleam across his brain, and then he felt himself falling--falling--down into s.p.a.ce. The air roared and shrieked in his ears, his breath failed him, then his hands seized something.
The whole world was hanging in his grasp, rocking and swaying; he could not leave go; it was dragging him downward--downward--downward--it was tearing his arms out by the sockets. He must throw it off; and yet he could not. Then a crash, and--oblivion.