There were five intent faces upturned at Barberton as he stopped. The rosy glow of the fire lighted them up, and the man nearest me--the millionaire--whispered to himself, "Good G.o.d! how awful!"

"Well, who was he? Did you--" began the man who wrote for the papers.

Barberton looked steadily at him, and with measured deliberation said:

"We never knew another word about him. From that day to this nothing has ever been heard to throw the least light on him or what he said."

Far away in the stillness of the African night we heard the impatient half-grunt, half-groan of the lion. Near by there was a cricket chirping; and presently a couple of the logs settled down with a small crunch, and a fresh tongue of flame leaped up. Barberton pumped a straw up and down the stem of the faithful briar, and remarked sententiously:

"Yah, it's a rum old world, this of ours! I've seen civilisation take its revenge that way quite a lot of times--just like a woman!"

No one else said a word. Now and then a snore came from under the waggon where the drivers were sleeping.

The dog beside me gave some abortive whimpers, and his feet twitched convulsively--no doubt he was hunting in dreamland. I felt depressed by Barberton's yarn.

But round the camp-fire long silences do not generally follow a yarn, however often they precede one. One reminiscence suggests another, and it takes very, very little to tempt another man to recall something which "that just reminds him of." It was the surveyor who rose to it this time; I could see the spirit move him. He sat up, stroked his clean-shaven face, closed the telescope eye, and looked at Barberton.

"Do you know," he began thoughtfully, "you talk of chaps going away because of something happening--some quarrel or mistake or offence or something. That is all a sort of clap-trap romance, I know--the mystery trick, and so forth; but I confess it always interests me, although I know it's all rot, because of a thing which happened within my own knowledge--an affair of a shipmate of mine, one of the best fellows that ever stepped the earth, in spite of the fact that he was a regular Admirable Crichton.

"He was an ideal sort of chap, until you got to know him really well, and found out that he was cursed with one perfectly miserable trait. He never--absolutely _never_--forgave an injury, affront, or cause of quarrel. He was not huffy or bad-tempered--a sunnier nature never was created; a more patient, even-tempered chap never lived--but it was really appalling with what immutable obstinacy he refused to forgive.

In the instances that came under my own notice, where he had quarrelled with former friends--not through his own fault, I must say--nothing in this world, or any other, for that matter, could influence him to shake hands or renew acquaintance. His generosity and unselfishness were literally boundless, his courage and fidelity superb; but anyone who had seen evidence of his fault must have felt sorrow and regret for the blemished nature, and must have been awestruck and frightened by his relentlessness. Death all round him, the sight of it in friends, the prospect of it for himself, never shook his cursed obstinacy; as we knew, after one piece of business. He got the V.C. for a remarkable--in fact, mad--act of courage in rescuing a brother officer. The man he carried out, fought for, fought over, and nearly died for, was a man to whom he had not spoken for some years. G.o.d knows what the difference was about. This was their first meeting since quitting the same ship, and when he carried his former friend out and laid him safely in the surgeon's corner of the square, the half-dead man caught his sleeve, and called out, 'G.o.d bless you, old boy!' All _he_ did was to loosen the other's grip gently, and, without a word or look at him, walk back into the fight. It seems incredible--it did to us; but he wouldn't know him again. He had literally wiped him out of his life!

"This trait was his curse. He was well off and well connected, and he married one of the most charming women I have ever met. For years none of us knew he was married. His wife was, I am convinced, as good as gold; but she was young, attractive, accomplished, and, in fact, a born conqueror. Perhaps she was foolish to show all the happiness she felt in being liked and admired. You know the long absences of a sailor.

Well, perhaps she would have been wiser had she cut society altogether; but she was a true, good woman, for all that, and she worshipped him like a G.o.d! None of us ever knew what happened; but he left wife and child, settled on them all he had in the world, handed over his estates and almost all his income, and his right to legacies to come, went out into the world, and simply erased them from his mind and life.

"That was a good many years ago--ten, I should think; and--I hate to think it--but I wish I was as sure of to-morrow as I am sure that he never recognised their existence again."

The surveyor shuddered at the thought.

"He was a man who could do anything that other men could do. He was best at everything. He was loved by his mates, worshipped by his men, and liked and admired by everyone who met him--until this trait was revealed. Others must have felt as I did. When I discovered _that_ in him, I don't know whether I was more frightened or grieved. I don't know that I didn't stick to him more than ever--perhaps from pity, and the sense that he was his own enemy and needed help. I have never heard of or from him since he left the service, and yet I believe I was his most intimate friend. Oliver Raymond Rivers was his name. Musical name, isn't it?"

Barberton dropped his pipe.

"Good G.o.d! Sebougwaan!"

CHAPTER TWO.

SOLTKE.

AN INCIDENT OF THE DELAGOA ROAD.

We were transport-riders trekking with loads from Delagoa Bay to Lydenburg, trekking slowly through the hot, bushy, low veld, doing our fifteen to twenty miles a day. The roads were good and the rates were high, and we were happy.

Towards sundown two of us strolled on ahead, taking the guns in hopes of picking up a guinea-fowl, or a stembuck, or some other small game, leaving the waggons to follow as soon as the cattle were inspanned. We shot nothing; in fact, we saw nothing to shoot. It was swelteringly hot, as it always is there until the red sun goes down and all things get a chance to cool. It was also very dusty--two or three inches of powdery dust under our feet, which whipped up in little swirls at the least breath of air. I was keeping an eye on the scrub on my side for the chance of a bush pheasant, and not taking much notice of the road, when my companion pulled up with a half-suppressed exclamation, and stood staring hard at something on ahead.

"Dern my skin!" said he slowly and softly, as I came up to him. He was a slow-spoken Yankee. "Say, look there! Don't it beat h.e.l.l?"

In the direction indicated, partly hidden by the scant foliage of a thorn-tree, a man was sitting on a yellow portmanteau reading a book.

The sight was unusual, and it brought the unemotional Yankee to a standstill and set us both smiling. The man was dressed in a sort of clerk's everyday get-up, even to the bowler hat, and as he sat there he held overhead an old black silk umbrella to protect him from such of the sun's rays as penetrated the thorn-bush. He must have become conscious of the presence of life by the subtle instinct which we all know and can't explain, for almost immediately he raised his glance and looked us straight in the eyes. He rose and came towards us, laying aside the umbrella, but keeping his place in the book.

The scene was too ludicrous not to provoke a smile, and the young fellow--he could not have been above twenty-three--mistaking its import, raised his hat politely and wished us "good-afternoon."

He spoke English, but with a strong German accent, and his dress, his open manner, his ready smiles, and, above all, his politeness, proclaimed him very much a stranger to those parts. Key murmured a line from a compatriot: "Green peas has come to market, and vegetables is riz."

"You have come mit der waggons? You make der transport? Not?" he asked us, following up the usual formula.

We told him it was so, and that we were for the fields, and reckoned to reach Matalha by sun-up. He too, he said, was going to the gold-fields, and would be a prospector; he was just waiting for his "boy," who had gone back for something he had forgotten at the last place. He was going to walk to Moodie's, he said. He "_did_ make mit one transporter a contract to come by waggons; but it was a woman mit two childs what was leave behind, and dere was no more waggons, so he will walk. It was good to walk to make him strong for de prospect. Oh yes!"

We were used to meeting all sorts on the road, and they were pretty well all inclined to talk; but this one was so full it just bubbled out of him, and in his broken English he got off question on question, between times imparting sc.r.a.ps of information about himself and his hopes. He was clearly in earnest about his future, and he was so utterly unpractical, so hopelessly astray in his view of everything, that one could not but feel kindly towards him. We chatted with him until our waggons came up, when he again politely raised his hat as he said good-bye to us, and offered many thanks for the information about the road. As we moved on with the waggons, he turned to look down the road by which we had come, and said, apparently as an afterthought:

"You haf seen my 'boy' perhaps? Not? No! Soh! Good-bye--yes, good-bye!"

It does not take long for daylight to glide through dusk into darkness in the bush veld in South Africa, and even these few minutes spent in conversation had seen the light begin to fade from the sky as the sun disappeared. The road was good and clear of rocks and stumps, so we hopped onto the most comfortable waggon, and talked while the oxen plodded slowly along.

We had quite a large party that trip, for, besides Gowan and myself, who owned the waggons, we had three traders from Swazie country--old friends of ours who had come down to Delagoa to buy goods. We had all arranged to stand in together in a big venture of running loads through Swazieland to the gold-fields later on in the season; in fact, the trip we were then making was more or less a trial one to see how the land lay, and how much we could venture in the big coup.

Gowan, the other transport-rider, and I always travelled together. We were not partners exactly, but in a country like that it was good to have a friend, and we understood each other. There were no two ways about him; he was a white man through and through. The two Mackays were brothers; they had left Scotland some years before to join a farming scheme "suitable for gentlemen's sons with a little capital," as the circular and advertis.e.m.e.nts said. They had given it best, however, and gone trading long before I met them. The other member of our party was the one with whom I had been walking. He was an American, and had been everything and everywhere, most lately a trader in Swazie country. We generally called him the Judge.

As the waggons rumbled along Key was giving a more or less accurate account of our conversation with the stranger.

It was very amusing, even more amusing than the original, for I am bound to say that with him a story did not suffer in the telling. It was only Gowan who didn't seem to see anything to laugh at in the affair. He sat there dangling his legs over the buck-rails, chewing a long gra.s.s stalk, and humming all out of tune. He had a habit of doing that, growling with it. Presently, as conversation flagged, the tune got worse and his growling took the shape of a reference to "giving a poor devil a lift."

I frankly confessed that I simply had not thought of it, and that was all. As, however, Gowan continued growling about "beastly shame" and "poor devil of a greenhorn," etc, Key answered dryly.

"Waal, I _did_ think of it; but, first place, they ain't my waggons--"

Gowan grunted out, "Dam rot!"

"And second place," continued Key placidly, "considerin' the kind o'

cargo you've got aboard, and where it's going to, I didn't reckon you _wanted_ any pa.s.sengers!"

"I don't want pa.s.sengers," said Gowan gloomily; "but any d.a.m.ned fool knows that that fellow'll never see food or blankets or 'boy' again on the face of G.o.d's earth. Kaffir carriers don't forget things at outspans. No, not any that I've seen, and I've seen a good few."

Old Gowan took up the gra.s.s stem again, and chewed and tugged at it, and made occasional kicks at pa.s.sing bushes, by way of showing a general and emphatic disapproval. No one said anything; it was Gowan's way to growl at everything, and n.o.body ever took much notice. He was the most good-natured, kindly old growler that ever lived. He growled as some st.u.r.dy old dogs do when you pat them--they like it.

In this particular case, of course, he had reason. It is not that we were inhospitable or unfeeling, but years of roughing it had, I suppose, dulled our impressions of the first night alone in the veld, and we had not seen it as Gowan did. Life of the sort we led, no doubt, develops the sterling good qualities of one's nature, but quick sympathy and its kindred delicate traits are rather growths of refinement and quiet, and it betrayed no real want of feeling that we had not taken Gowan's view.

There could be no doubt, of course, that the Kaffir boy had bolted with the blankets and food, for we had noticed that the young German had nothing left when we saw him but that yellow portmanteau, and our knowledge of the Delagoa Bay "boy" forbade acceptance of the theory that he had gone empty-handed.

We rumbled heavily along for a bit, and after a while Gowan resumed, in a tone of deeper grumbling and more surly dissatisfaction than before:

"Like as not the silly young fool 'll lose himself looking for water, and die in the Bush, like that one Joe Roberts brought up last season.

Why, I remember when--"