Part 5 (1/2)
”Here, Mary, I've brought you a visitor,” said the settler, as they entered. ”You remember Arthur Claverton?”
A tall old lady, whose kindly and still handsome face bore unmistakable signs of former beauty, rose from a sewing-machine at which she had been working, with a start of surprise.
”What! Arthur? Why, so it is. But I should never have known you, you're so altered. Ah, I always said we should see you out here again,”
she continued, shaking his hand cordially.
The stranger smiled, and a very pleasant smile it was.
”Well, yes, so you did, Mrs Brathwaite; but at least I have the faculty of knowing when and where I am well off,” he said, really touched by the genuine warmth of his reception.
”So you've been all over the world since we saw you last--to Australia and back?” she went on. ”And then the last thing we heard of you was that you had gone to America.”
”I attempted to; but Providence, or rather the blunder-headed lookout on board a homeward-bound liner, willed otherwise.”
”How do you mean?”
”Why! that the said idiotically-handled craft collided with ours, two days out, cutting her down to the water's edge and sinking her in thirteen minutes. I and twenty-four others were picked up, but the rest went to Davy Jones's locker. There weren't many more of them, though, for it was a small boat, and I was nearly the only pa.s.senger.”
”Oh! And you didn't try the voyage again?” said Mrs Brathwaite, in subdued tones. She was colonial born, and in her own element as brave a woman as ever stepped. In the earlier frontier wars she had stood by her husband's side within the laager and loaded his guns for him, while the conflict waxed long and desperate, and the night was ablaze with the flash of volleys, and the air was heavy with asphyxiating smoke, and the detonating crash of musketry and the battle-shouts of the savage foe, and had never flinched. But she had a shuddering horror of the sea, and would almost have gone through all her terrible experiences again rather than trust herself for one hour on its smiling, treacherous expanse.
”Well, no; I didn't,” he answered. ”I took it as an omen, and concluded to dismiss the Far West in favour of the 'Sunny South.' So here I am.”
”Ah! well,” put in the old settler. ”Perhaps we'll be able to find you something in the way of excitement here, if that's what you were in search of, and that before very long, too. All isn't so quiet here as they try to make out. I've lived on the frontier, man and boy, all my life, and I can see pretty plainly that there's mischief brewing.”
”Is there? I did hear something of the sort on my way up, now I think of it; but I had an idea that the days of war were over, and that Jack Kafir had got his quietus.”
”Ha! ha! Had you really, now? Why, bless my soul, the Kafirs are far more numerous than ever; they outnumber us by fifty to one. They hate us as much as ever they did, and for some time past have been steadily collecting guns and ammunition. Now, what do they want those guns and that ammunition for? Not for hunting, for there's next to no game in all Kafirland. No, it is to put them on an equal footing with us; and then, with their numbers, they think to have it all their own way.
There's mischief brewing, mark my words.”
”It wouldn't mean a scrimmage among themselves, would it? They might be anxious to exterminate each other,” ventured Claverton.
The other smiled significantly, and was about to reply, when the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of supper and--Hicks.
The latter was one of those young Englishmen often met with on colonial farms, learning their business in the capacity of a.s.sistant, or general factotum; and who may be divided into two categories: those who take kindly to the life and throw themselves thoroughly into it and its interests, and those who don't, and leave it after a trial. Our friend Hicks may be placed in the former of these. He was a strong, energetic, good-tempered fellow, who loved his calling, and was a favourite with everybody. He had served three years in the Frontier Mounted Police, and had been two with Mr Brathwaite, and, by virtue of so much hard, healthy, open-air life, was twice the man he had been when he left his father's Midlands.h.i.+re parsonage five years previously.
”You were asking if the Kafirs might not be preparing for a fight among themselves?” resumed the old settler as they took their places at the supper-table, which looked cheerful and homelike in the extreme. He had got upon a favourite hobby, and was not to be diverted from a congenial ride. ”There isn't the slightest chance of it, because they know very well we shan't let them. We prefer encouraging them to hammer away at us.”
”Pickling a rod for our own backs?” remarked Claverton.
”Just so. By patching up their tribal disputes we check just so much salutary blood-letting, and foster hordes of lazy, thieving rascals right on our border. Even if the sham philanthropy, under which we groan, obliges us to sit still while the savages grow fat on our stolen cattle and laugh at us, the least it could do would be to allow them to cut a few of each other's throats when they have a mind to.”
”The Home Government, I suppose?”
”That's it. A parcel of old women in Downing Street, ruled by Exeter Hall and the Peace Society. What do they know about the Colony, and what do they care? After British subjects have been murdered and plundered all along the border, an official is sent to inquire into it.
Of course the chiefs all pretend ignorance, and throw the blame on somebody else. Then follows great palaver and b.u.t.tering over. The chiefs are told to be good boys and not do it again, and are given waggon-loads of presents--and a treaty is made. A treaty! With savages--savages whose boast is that they are a nation of liars. Can't you imagine the wily rascals sn.i.g.g.e.ring in their blankets, and wondering how much longer they are going to allow themselves to be governed by such a race of milksops!”
His listeners could not forbear a laugh.