And in this thoroughly characteristic and British growl none joined more heartily than Tom Carhayes.
There was one, however, who in no wise joined in it at all, and that one was Eustace Milne. He had had enough of campaigning to last him for the present, and for every reason mightily welcomed the news that they were ordered home. Of late an intense longing had corrie upon him to return, but now that that ardently desired consummation had been attained he realised that it was dashed with the sickening and desolating consciousness of hopes shattered. The campaign, so far as he was concerned, had been barren of result.
But for him--but for his intervention--Tom Carhayes would have been a dead man, and Eanswyth would be free. The Kafir could not have missed at that distance. But for his interference the bullet of the savage would have sped true, and happiness for him--for her--would have become the blissful, golden, reality of a lifetime. Even now he would be hurrying back to claim her--that is, allowing for a reasonable period exacted by decorum. But no, the cup was shattered in his grasp, and his own was the hand that had shattered it. "A man who interferes in what doesn"t concern him deserves all he gets," was the grimly disgusted reflection which lashed his mind again and again.
Why had he intervened to save his cousin"s life? When Fortune was playing directly into his hands he, yielding to an idiotic scruple, had deliberately flung back into her face the chance she had held out. She would not proffer it again. His opportunity had occurred and he had let it go by.
Yet he could not have acted otherwise. Could he not? he thought savagely, as at that moment his cousin"s voice struck upon his ear. Not that its utterances contained anything objectionable, but to the listener"s then frame of mind, there was something insufferably self-a.s.sertive in their very tone. Could he not? Let him only get the chance again. But this he never would. It was thought by many that the war was practically at an end.
If his cousin had been a different stamp of man and one built of finer clay, it is more than probable that Eustace would have acted differently--would have conquered that overmastering and unlawful love which he had so long and so successfully concealed, or at any rate would have fled from temptation. But it was far otherwise. The fellow was such a rough, a.s.sertive, thick-headed, inconsiderate boor, utterly unable to appreciate his own splendid good fortune. He deserved no mercy. Yet this was the being to whom Eanswyth was bound--whom, moreover, she had managed to tolerate with every semblance of, at any rate, contentment, until he himself had laid siege to the castle of her outwardly calm, but glowingly pa.s.sionate nature, and had carried it by storm, by a single _coup de main_.
And now? How could she ever resume that old contented toleration, how relegate himself to an outside place. Every look--every word of hers-- during that last walk, when he had come upon her so unexpectedly--every sweet and clinging caress during that last parting, was burnt into his memory as with red-hot irons. And now it seemed that the curtain must be rung down on everything. Tom Carhayes was returning in rude health; louder, more boastful, a more aggressive personality than ever. Let the very heavens fall!
A change had come over Eustace. He became moody and taciturn, at times strangely irritable for one of his equable temperament. This was noticed by many; wondered at by some.
"Why, what"s the row with you, old chap!" said Carhayes one day in his bluff, off-hand manner. "Sick and sorry that we can"t scare up another fight, eh?"
"Milne"s conscience is. .h.i.tting him hard over the number of his `blanket friends" he has shot already. Ha, ha!" cut in another man, with an asinine guffaw.
The Kaffrarian Rangers were ordered home. The order reached them in their camp on the Bashi, and forthwith they acted upon it. No preparations delayed the setting out of such a light-marching-order corps. Accordingly the breakfasts were cooked and eaten, the camp was struck, and the whole troop started upon its homeward way.
"I say, Hoste!" said Carhayes, while they were breakfasting on boiled mealies and ration beef. "What do you say to a shoot before we leave this? We are bound to get a bushbuck ram or two in some of these kloofs."
"Haven"t you shot away enough cartridges yet, Tom?" laughed Hoste.
"Still I think we might try for a buck if only for a change after the n.i.g.g.e.rs; besides, we can eat the buck, which is part of the change. I"m on. What do you say, Payne? Will you cut in?"
"What do I say? I say it"s the most d.a.m.n idiotic idea I ever heard mooted," answered Payne sententiously. "Still--I"ll cut in."
"All right. We"ll have some sport then!" said Carhayes. "You"ll come, too, Eustace? That"s right," as Eustace nodded a.s.sent. "That"ll make four of us--we don"t want any more," he went on. "We can just hunt down the river bank for two or three hours, and catch up the troop in camp to-night. We are bound to get some sport."
"Likely so are the n.i.g.g.e.rs," murmured the more prudent Payne.
The commander of the troop, when applied to, made no decided objection to the above scheme. There was, as we have said, no discipline in the ordinary sense of the word, the offices of command being elective.
Besides, they were under orders to return straight home, which was practically disbandment. So, while not forbidding the undertaking, he pointed out to those concerned that it might involve serious risk to themselves; in a word, was rather a crack-brained idea.
"Just what I said," remarked Payne laconically, lighting his pipe.
"Then why do you go, old chap?" asked one of the bystanders with a laugh.
"That"s just what I don"t know myself," was the reply, delivered so tranquilly and deliberately as to evoke a general roar.
The camp had been pitched upon high ground overlooking the valley of the Bashi, which ran beneath between rugged bush-clad banks. So the troop set forth on its homeward way, while our four friends, turning their horses" heads in the opposite direction, struck downward into the thick bush along the river bank.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
"WE ARE FOUR FOOLS."
For upwards of two hours they forced their way through the thick scrub, but success did not crown their efforts--did not even wait upon the same. Once or twice a rustle and a scamper in front announced that something had got up and broken away, but whatever it was, owing to the thickness of the bush and the celerity with which it made itself scarce, not one of the hunters could determine--being unable so much as to catch a glimpse of the quarry. At length, wearied with their failure to obtain sport under abnormal difficulties, they gained the edge of the river, and there, upon a patch of smooth greensward beneath the cool shade of a cliff, they decided to off-saddle and have a snack.
"By Jove!" exclaimed Hoste, looking complacently around. "This is a lovely spot for a picnic. But wouldn"t John Kafir have us in a hole just, if he were to come upon us now?"
"We are four fools," said Payne sententiously.
"We are," growled Carhayes. "You never said a truer word than that.
Four d.a.m.ned fools to think we"d get a shot at anything in a strip of cursed country we"ve been chevying n.i.g.g.e.rs up and down for the last six weeks. And as the idea was mine, I suppose I"m the champion fool of the lot," he added with a savage laugh. "We haven"t fired a shot this blessed morning, and have had all our trouble for nothing."
This was not precisely the reflection that Payne"s words were intended to convey. But he said nothing.
"I"m not sure we have had our trouble for nothing," put in Eustace.
"It"s grand country, anyhow."
It was. Magnificent and romantic scenery surrounded them; huge perpendicular krantzes towering up many hundreds of feet; piles upon piles of broken rocks and boulders, wherein the luxuriant and tangled vegetation had profusely taken root; great rifts and ravines, covered with dense black forest, and the swift murmuring current of the river joining its music with the piping of birds from rock and brake.
But the remark was productive of a growl only from Carhayes. He had not come out to look at scenery. They had had enough and to spare of that during the campaign. He had come out to get a shot at a buck, and hadn"t got it.
Pipes were lighted, and the quartette lounged luxuriously upon the sward. The frowning grandeur of the towering heights, the golden glow of the sunlight upon the tree-tops, the soft, sensuous warmth of the summer air, the hum of insects, and the plashing murmur of the river, unconsciously affected all four--even grumbling, dissatisfied Tom Carhayes.
"Whisht!" said Payne suddenly, holding up his hand to enjoin silence, and starting from his lounging att.i.tude. The others were prompt to follow his example.
"What"s the row, George?" whispered Hoste below his breath. "Hear anything?"
For answer Payne waved his hand again and went on listening intently.
Up the sunlit river came a sound--a sound audible to all now, a sound familiar to all--the tread of hoofs upon the stones, of unshod hoofs.
Mingling with this were other sounds--the low murmur of human voices.
Water, as everybody knows, is a great conductor of sound. Though more than half a mile distant, they recognised the deep tones and inflections of Kafir voices, whose owners were evidently coming down to the river on the same side as themselves.
From their resting place the river ran in a long, straight reach.
Peering cautiously through the bushes, they were able to command this.
Almost immediately several large oxen, with great branching horns, emerged from the forest, and, entering the water, splashed through to the other side. They were followed by their drivers, three naked Kafirs, who plunged into the river in their wake, holding their a.s.segais high over their heads, for the water came fully breast-high. They could even hear the rattle of the a.s.segai hafts as the savages climbed up the opposite bank, laughing like children as they shook the water drops from their sleek, well-greased skins. They counted thirteen head of cattle.
"A baker"s dozen, by Jove! Stolen, of course," whispered Hoste.
"_Allamaghtaag_! if only we had known of that before we might have gone to _voer-ly_ [Waylay] that drift, for it must be a drift. We might have bagged all three n.i.g.g.e.rs and trundled the oxen back to camp. A full span, save three. Suppose they"ve eaten the rest. That"ll be one apiece--the _schelms_!"
"It isn"t altogether too late now," said Carhayes. "I smell some fun ahead. Let them get up over the rise, and then we"ll go down and look if their spoor seems worth following."
"And what if they are only the advance guard of a lot more?" suggested Hoste.
"They are not," was the confident reply. "There are too few beasts and too few n.i.g.g.e.rs. I tell you there"s some fun sticking out for us."
Quickly the horses were saddled. A high, bushy ridge precluded all chance of their presence being discovered by the three marauders as soon as the latter had crossed the river, and it certainly had not been discovered before. Then, having allowed sufficient time to elapse, they forded the river and rode forward on the other side, so as to converge on the spoor leading up from the drift below.
"Here it is--as plain as mud," said Carhayes, bending over in his saddle to examine the ground, which, dry and sandy, showed the hoof-prints and footmarks so plainly that a child might have followed them. "They are well over the rise by now, and the way isn"t so rough as I expected.
Our plan is to make straight for the top of the hill. We can"t get up much quicker than they can, I"m afraid, unless we want to blow our horses, which we don"t. But once we are up there we shall find it all open _veldt_, and all we"ve got to do is to ride them down in the open, shoot the n.i.g.g.e.rs, and head the stock back for the river again. Anyone propose an amendment to that resolution?"