By Veldt and Kopje Part 19

Owing to the late local rains the pasturage was good, so all the game from the surrounding arid s.p.a.ces had flocked in. Occasionally the landscape resembled a kaleidoscope, so dense and varied were the manifestations of animal life. Buffaloes would hurtle through the undergrowth, swerving to avoid the tree-trunks with the agility of cats.

A black rhinoceros, its wicked-looking head low near the ground, would dash fiercely away, its horn dividing the tangled brushwood after the manner of the cut.w.a.ter of a boat. Families of wild pigs, their tufted tails held straight up, trotted off with swift quaintness. Herds of gentle giraffes, disturbed at their browsing on the high branches, swayed out of sight, their long necks undulating from side to side.

Quaggas, sleeping in the glades, sprang up at their sentinel's warning stamp, and fled, waking thunders with their hoofs. Fierce-eyed gnus swiftly ambled away. Antelopes, from the hartebeeste, big, awkward and ungainly, to the little russet impala, the very embodiment of sylvan grace, crowded the ever-opening vistas.

All day long they tramped without firing a shot, for ammunition had to be husbanded. Just before camping at sundown the boy shot a tsessabi, the flesh of which is among the very best the wilderness affords. To their astonishment several of the Baiala appeared on the scene. One of these was a little, elderly man who appeared to be a sort of leader, and who seemed to have attached himself to the boy.

They camped on the river bank amid scenery more lovely than any pen could describe. The clear stream, eddying and whirling among great grey rocks, was nearly three hundred yards wide. Groves of splendid trees, dark green and luxuriant, lay in an almost continuous chain along the water's edge, only separated from each other by little s.p.a.ces of green sward. On one of these they camped. Across the river a long, even wall of sheer cliff hung like a rampart over the flood. It was about a hundred feet high. Along its summit giant trees were silhouetted against the sky; ma.s.ses of variegated creeper fell like cataracts over its face.

_Three_.

Day pa.s.sed swiftly after day, each like a cup full to the brim of joy.

The hunters went to sleep soon after dusk, leaving the tending of the fire in the hands of the Baiala. Every morning in the grey dawn the girl would steal away to bathe in one of the secluded reaches of the river. The boy would watch for her going and then set about preparing coffee. This would be ready by the time she returned, with her waved, glossy hair drying on her shoulders and the brightness of the morning s.h.i.+ning from her face. Then he would go to bathe and the girl would prepare breakfast.

Silence, more eloquent than speech, enmeshed these two more and more in mutual comprehension. An idea took root and grew in the mind of the boy that he had found the environment best suited to him; that a life spent in this teeming wilderness, with the girl at his side, would be good.

What part had he in civilisation--in that society of conventional men and women which had lured him on, almost to his ruin, and flung him contemptuously aside when he ceased to amuse?

Before being an agriculturist, man was a hunter. This explains the circ.u.mstance that for many the hunting instinct--the l.u.s.t to kill for the sake of killing--when once indulged in becomes so haunting and dominant that all other pursuits pall. Atavism is a curious and an awful thing; an influence may rise through the dark detritus of inconceivably remote time, take our lives in its shadowy hands, and shape them to strange ends. Under the spell of the wild, the boy reverted to the stage of primeval man.

Here, then, was his paradise. Why not, therefore, take this deep-bosomed Eve to mate, and enter into his inheritance. But at this stage was it love that he felt for her? He was not sure. She attracted him strongly, but there was also an occasional feeling of slight repulsion. He had always been moody and changeable. Little, undefinable contraventions on her part of that code of conventionality which he affected to despise, but which is always ineradicable in those whose childhood has pa.s.sed in a refined home, jarred on his sensibilities.

The present--yes--but what of the future? The girl was innocent and modest. A spice of coquetry in her would have completed his subjugation; but she was absolutely direct and natural. The forces of love held all the approaches to his heart; the outworks had fallen, one by one, but the citadel was still held by a few obstinate doubts.

As a lion-hunt the expedition had so far not been a success. Every night the low rumbling, occasionally changing to a snarl, of the great beasts of prey could be heard in various directions. Fourie and the Baiala, who were now in good condition and equal to any amount of work, went out indefatigably on the spoor day by day. Many lions were thus followed to their lairs in dense patches of reeds and gra.s.s, but they always managed to escape unseen. The vegetation was too green to kindle. The full-fed lion is usually a coward; it is when hungry that his courage rises and he becomes terrible.

They were but three days' easy walk from the wagon when it was decided to return. On the morning they started the first lion fell. Just before dawn they heard the unmistakable sound of a kill, so when day broke they stole to the spot where it took place, which was about a mile away. They found four lions eating the carcase of a quagga. Three fled at once; the other, a magnificent brute with a great coal-black mane, would not surrender his meat, so he dropped on his belly and faced the intruders.

The underbrush was scanty; nevertheless the lion, for all his size, could scarcely be seen. Just the top of his head and the ridge of his back were visible. Fourie stepped forward to within forty paces and took careful aim. The great tail began to wave from side to side, striking the ground with the force of a flail. With the shot the hindquarters of the lion heaved mightily into the air, and fell forward towards the hunter. After a few convulsive struggles the limbs loosened; then the great helpless creature rolled over on its side and lay still. The bullet had grazed the top of the head and buried itself in the spine, between the shoulders.

That night they camped just below the enormous gates through which the Olifant breaks to reach the low country. The mighty, sheer, table-formed ma.s.ses, arising from dense forest, bulked huge against the stars. The cataract-speech of the river filled the sounding gorge with softened thunder. To the boy it seemed as though Immensity stretched forth a finger to touch his brain and counteract the spell of sleep. He tried vainly to rest. The rich, slow, beauty-burthened hours went by.

Canopus wheeled high over the Cross. A sense of the imminence of something strange thrilled him; his soul seemed to stand tiptoe upon the summit of expectation and stretch forth its hands.

The fire had dwindled; he built it anew, and the crackling flames shot up high through the windless dark. The boy glanced to where the girl lay, near her father. Her eyes were open. The boy beckoned to her.

She sat up and hesitated for an instant; then she arose and came to his side.

He took her hand and led her away into the gloom. He kissed her on the lips and the kiss was returned. The voices of the gorge swelled to a warning dissonance as a breeze from the west gathered their thunders into a sheaf and hurled it to the plains below, but the lovers heard it not. The roar of a killing lion and the scream of its stricken prey startled the forest creatures for miles around, but the sound of the tragedy pa.s.sed over these two, unheeding. The mystery and the wonder of the desert, the l.u.s.t of the spoiler, the terror and anguish of the victim--each blindly following the awful law of its being--was around them, but Love lent wings of flame that bore them to the stars, and stayed with his wonder-working hand the running of the sands of Time.

Dawn stole, virginal, from the sea and sought their transfigured faces.

The splendour of morning, which had its habitation for a s.p.a.ce on the mountain crags, found its counterpart in their eyes. The cataracts shouted with their joy; the falcons chanted it as they soared into the suns.h.i.+ne.

They had no thought for the future; the present was all-sufficient. The wilderness was theirs, and the fulness thereof. Here was a fair kingdom in which they reigned as victorious king and gracious queen, without the tiresome superfluity of subjects.

That day, for the first time, they planned to be alone together on the march. With feet made languid by excess of joy they lingered whenever a locality of more than usual beauty was reached. At midday Fourie, who had got somewhat far ahead, was wondering at their laggardness.

A distant shot, followed by two others in quick succession, recalled them to practical realities, so they hurried forward on the spoor. When they reached Fourie he was sitting under a tree regarding with satisfaction a large lion he had shot, and which three Baiala were engaged in skinning. Tied to a shrub close by were two young lion-cubs.

"See, Anna, what I have caught," cried he; "have a look at the little brutes before I kill them."

"No, no," said the girl, "they are too young to kill. Let them go.

Where is their mother?"

"That is what I cannot understand; I have never heard of such young cubs being left behind by their mother. But I'm not going to let them go, perhaps to kill some one, as my father was killed."

The girls soul revolted from the idea of slaughtering these innocents.

So full of new-found happiness was she that the taking of life or the infliction of pain was abhorrent. But she knew her father's implacable hatred of the whole lion race.

"Let me take them back to the camp," she begged; "I will tame them."

After advancing many objections Fourie gave a grudging consent. The little animals could be fed on soup until the camp was reached, then on meal and water. They were evidently only a week or ten days old, and resembled yellow cats with abnormally large, solemn faces. They showed no vice when handled, and seemed quite contented with their lot. The girl carried one and the boy the other, the three Baiala being unable to do more than carry the skin of the animal just killed.

The halting-place for the night was an open, circular s.p.a.ce surrounded by high trees. The boughs met overhead; it looked like a green-domed temple. The ground was almost clear of brushwood. In the centre the fire was lit. The river was only about two hundred yards distant.

Supper was over, and the cubs, being hungry, were complaining in queer, guttural tones. They had been coupled together by means of a rein, the loop of which was fastened to a protruding root.

The boy took the only cooking utensil and started, a live firebrand in one hand and his rifle in the other, for the river to fetch water for the soup. When he reached the fringe of low bushes which surrounded the camping-place he stopped for an instant and looked back. Fourie had removed the block from his rifle and sat oiling it near the fire. The girl was bending over the cubs, trying to soothe their impatience. She looked after the boy with a smile. His last sight of her face showed it lit by the flickering flame and radiant with an aura of love and happiness.

When the boy, returning, got within about fifty yards of the fire, his desert-tuned ear caught a sinister sound of low growling. He dropped the vessel of water and the firebrand, and rushed forward, bursting through the fringe of bushes. There, full in the firelight, crouched a great, tawny lioness, roughly pawing the cubs. In an instant his rifle was at his shoulder; the lioness sprang into the air and fell back dead, shot through the heart.

The boy and the fire were the only living things in the firelit circle.

Fourie was lying, his neck terribly lacerated, in a pool of blood. The girl lay on her face, absolutely still. The cubs had been mangled to death through the efforts of the mother to set them free.

He could not believe the girl to be dead. Thinking she had fainted from terror, he lifted her in his arms. Her head fell back, horribly limp.

Her neck had been broken by a stroke from the lioness's paw.

When the boy awakened from his swoon a figure was standing near him. It was that of the old man of the Baiala. The boy sat up and tried to think. Then, with a lamentable cry, he sprang up and lifted the corpse of the girl in his arms. The head again fell back, the loosened wealth of burnished hair flowing like a cataract to the ground. The old waif of the desert stole silently away.

Later the old man returned, this time accompanied by two others. He touched the boy, who sat stupidly gazing at his dead, on the shoulder.

The boy looked up with haggard, deathlike face, and the wholesome human sympathy of the old man's regard loosened the frightful tension of his soul. He fell into a paroxysm of tears.

After a while the old man again touched him on the shoulder and pointed westward, in the direction of the camp. Then, with a sweep of the hand to indicate that he would return, he melted into the darkness. The two other Baiala remained behind, close at hand, and tended the fire.

It was noon when the Reefer arrived. The ground was soft, so it did not take his practised arm long to dig a deep grave. In this they reverently laid the bodies of the girl and her father. At their feet were placed the dead cubs, for showing mercy to which such dire requital was dealt by that inscrutable power which so often chastises men for their virtuous deeds, and rewards them lavishly for their sins. Heavy stones were carried from the river terrace close by and placed in such a way that the resting-place could not be disturbed.

A few days afterwards the oxen returned, so the wagon, with its sad pa.s.sengers, went back to the dead man's farm. The boy accompanied it and, after relating what had happened (which was regarded by all in the neighbourhood as the direct and unmistakable judgment of Heaven upon irreligion), he wandered forth once more, this time to be for ever a stranger among the sons and daughters of men.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

BY THE WATERS OF MARAH.

"And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter."--Exodus XV. 23.

_One_.