Kitabı oku: «The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley», sayfa 2

Chapter Three.
A Friend

“Well, youngsters! And what have you been doing with yourselves since you got ashore?”

Thus a jolly voice behind them, and a hand fell upon the shoulder of each. They were returning from a couple of hours’ row among the bushy islets of the bay, and were strolling down the main street of Durban, stopping here and there to look at a shop window crammed with quaint curios and Kafir truck, or displaying photographic views representing phases of native life and scenes up-country.

“Mr Kingsland!” cried Gerard, turning with a lively sense of satisfaction. “Why, I thought you were going straight through.”

“So I was – so I was. But I ran against some fellows directly I landed, and they wouldn’t hear of my leaving Durban yesterday – or to-day either. And now you’d better come along with me to the Royal and have some lunch.”

This invitation met with cordial acceptation. Both were beginning to feel rather out of it, knowing nobody in the place. The breezy geniality of their shipboard acquaintance did not strike Harry as officious or obtrusive now.

“We shall be delighted,” he said. “The fact is, we are none too comfortable where we are. I, for one, don’t care how soon we get out of it.”

“Eh – what! Why, where are you putting up?”

“At a precious rough-and-tumble sort of shop,” answered Harry resentfully, the recollection of the mosquitoes still fresh and green. “A fellow named Wayne, who keeps a sort of boarding-house for navvies – ”

“Wayne! At Wayne’s, are you? I know Wayne well. Smartish fellow he used to be – made a little money at transport-riding¹, but couldn’t stick to it – couldn’t stick to anything – not enough staying power in him,” went on Mr Kingsland, with that open-hearted garrulity on the subject of his neighbours’ affairs which characterises a certain stamp of colonial. “And you find it roughish, eh?”

“I should rather think we did,” rejoined Harry. And then he proceeded to give a feeling account of his experiences, especially with regard to the mosquitoes.

Mr Kingsland laughed heartily.

“You’ll soon get used to that,” he said. “Here we are. And now for tiffin.”

They entered the hotel just as the gong sounded. Several men lounged about the hall in cane chairs. To most of these their entertainer nodded, speaking a few words to some. Then he piloted them to a table in a cool corner.

“And now what do you propose doing?” said Mr Kingsland, when lunch was well in progress. “Stay on here and look around for a few days, or get away further up-country?”

“The last for choice,” answered Gerard. “We have had about enough of Durban already. You see, we don’t know a soul here,” he hurried to explain, lest the other should think him fastidious or fault-finding; for there is no point on which the colonial mind is so touchy as on that of the merits or demerits of its own particular town or section.

“And feel rather ‘out of it.’ Quite so,” rejoined Mr Kingsland. “But didn’t you say, Ridgeley, you had friends in Maritzburg to whom you were consigned?”

“Not that exactly. I have a distant relative up there – Anstey his name is – perhaps you know him? I believe he manages a store, or something of that kind.”

“N-no, I can’t say I do. There’s Anstey out Greytown way; but he’s a farmer.”

“Oh no, that’s not the man. This one hasn’t got an ounce of farming in him. The fact is, I don’t know him. My mother – my people, that is – thought he might be able to put me into the way of doing something, so I have got a letter to him.”

“And what is the ‘something’ you are thinking of doing, Ridgeley?” said Mr Kingsland, fixing his eyes upon Gerard’s face.

“I’m afraid I must take whatever turns up – think myself lucky to get it. But, for choice, I should like above all things to get on a farm.”

“H’m! Most young fellows who come out here are keen on that at first. They don’t all stick to it, though – not they. They begin by fancying it’s going to be no end of a jolly life, all riding about and shooting. But it isn’t, not by any means. It’s regular downright hard work, and a rough life at that.”

“That I’m quite prepared for,” said Gerard. “I only wish I could get the chance.”

“Rather. It just is rough work,” went on Mr Kingsland, ignoring the last remark. “There’s no such thing as saying to a fellow ‘Do this,’ and he does it. You’ve got to show him the way and begin by doing it yourself. You’ve got to off with your coat and work as hard as the rest. How do you like the idea of that, in a blazing sun about as hot again as it is to-day? Eh, Maitland?”

“Oh, I suppose it’s all right,” said Harry, rather uncomfortably, for this aspect of the case had struck him as not encouraging. “But I don’t know what I shall do yet. I think I’ll look around a bit first. It’s a mistake to be in too great a hurry over matters of this kind, don’t you know. And I’ve got a lot of letters of introduction.”

Mr Kingsland looked at him curiously for a moment, as if about to make a remark, and then thought better of it. He turned to Gerard again.

“If I were you, Ridgeley – if I might offer you a bit of advice – I wouldn’t stop on here. Get on to Maritzburg as soon as you can and look up your relative. Anyway, you can’t do any good by hanging on here. Now, there’s a man I know starting from Pinetown with a load of goods. He’d give you a passage up there on his waggon for the cost of your keep, and that’s a mere trifle; and you’d have the advantage of seeing the country and at the same time getting an insight into waggon travelling. But you’ll have to leave here by an afternoon train. He starts from Pinetown to-night.”

“It’s awfully kind of you, Mr Kingsland,” said Gerard. “There’s nothing I should like better. How shall we find him?”

“That’s easily done. Pinetown isn’t such a big place. Dawes, his name is – John Dawes. I’ll give you a line to him. If you won’t take anything more I’ll go and write it now.”

Just before they took leave of each other Mr Kingsland found an opportunity of speaking to Gerard apart.

“Look here, Ridgeley, I don’t say I shall be able to help you in that notion of yours about getting on a farm, but I may be. You see I’ve got a couple of boys of my own, and between them and myself we haven’t room for another hand on the place. I won’t even ask you to come and see us – not just now, because the sooner you get into harness the better. But afterwards, whenever you have a week or two to spare, we shall be delighted to see you, whenever you can come, and as long as you can stay. That’s a very first-rate idea of yours to get your foot in the stirrup before you think of anything else; and when you’ve got your foot in the stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you’ll do well. One word more. This is a deuce of a country for fellows getting into a free-and-easy, let-things-slide sort of way – I say so, though I belong to it myself. Now, don’t you let any such influences get hold of you. You’ve got to make your way – go straight through and make it, and while that’s your motto you have always got one friend in this country at any rate, and his name is Bob Kingsland. Well, Maitland,” as Harry rejoined them, “ready to start on such short marching orders, eh?”

“Rather. Anything to get away from those beastly mosquitoes.”

They took leave of their kind entertainer and returned to their lodgings to pack up their traps.

“Rattling good chap, old Kingsland,” said Gerard, enthusiastically, when they were alone again.

The straight commonsense counsel, the kind and friendly interest in him and his welfare, and that on the part of a comparative stranger, on whose good offices he had not a shadow of a claim, touched him deeply. Moreover, he felt cheered, morally braced up for whatever start in life might lie before him. There and then he resolved more firmly than ever that whatever his right hand should find to do, he would do it with all his might.

Gerard Ridgeley’s story was that of many another youngster who has begun life under similar circumstances. He was the eldest son of a professional man, a struggling surgeon in a provincial town, who had recently died, leaving his widow with a family of five and the scantiest of means whereon to maintain, let alone educate, the same. His father, an easy-going thriftless man, had fixed on no definite profession for him, dimly reckoning on the chance that “something was sure to turn up” when the boy was old enough. But the only unexpected thing that did “turn up” was the doctor’s sudden death in the prime of his years, and the consequent straitened circumstances of his widow and family.

So Gerard was removed from school – indeed it was time he should be in any case, for he had turned eighteen. The good offices of an uncle were invoked on his behalf, and somewhat grudgingly given. He was offered his choice between a stool in a counting-house and a free passage to any British colony, with an outfit and a few pounds to start him fair upon landing, and being a fine, strong, manly lad, he had no hesitation in choosing the latter alternative. Then it became a question of selecting the colony, and here the choice became perplexing. But Mrs Ridgeley remembered that a distant relation of hers had emigrated to Natal some years earlier. It was true she hardly knew this relative; still “blood was thicker than water,” and he might be able to give Gerard a helping hand. So it was decided to ship the boy to Natal accordingly.

It was hard to part with him. He was the eldest, and just of an age to be helpful. Still, there were four more left, and, as it happened, Mrs Ridgeley was not a woman who ever displayed over much feeling. She was a good woman and a sensible one, but not ostentatiously affectionate. So the parting between them, though hard, was not quite so hard as some others. One fact is certain. It was the best thing in the world for Gerard himself.

Harry Maitland, on the other hand, was the son of a well-to-do London clergyman. From a pecuniary point of view, therefore, his chances and prospects were immeasurably better than those of his companion. He would inherit a little money by-and-by, of which prospective advantage, however, he was wisely kept in ignorance. He, too, had been sent to the colonies at his own wish, and we think we have shown enough of his character and disposition to suggest grave doubts in our readers’ minds as to whether he would do any good when he got there. But whether he does or not will appear duly in the course of our narrative.

Chapter Four.
John Dawes, Transport-Rider

No time was to be lost in preparing for their start, and also in informing their landlord of their change of plans. This Gerard did with some inward trepidation, knowing that they were expected to make a longer stay. But he need have felt none. That philosophic individual manifested neither surprise nor disappointment. Whether they left or whether they stayed was a matter of supreme indifference to him. He wished them good-bye and good luck in the same happy-go-lucky way in which he had first greeted them, and filled up a fresh pipe.

Though only about a dozen miles from Durban, it took them upwards of an hour to reach Pinetown. But they did not mind this. The line ran through lovely bush country, winding round the hills often at a remarkably steep gradient; now intersecting sugar plantations, with deep-verandahed bungalow-like houses, and coolies in bright clothing and large turbans at work among the tall canes; now plunging through a mass of tangled forest. Every now and then, too, a glimpse was afforded of the blue, land-locked bay, and the vessels rolling at their anchorage beyond the lines of surf in the roadstead outside.

“There lies the old Amatikulu,” said Gerard, as his ere caught the black hull and schooner rig of a steamer among these. “We shan’t see the old barkie again, and perhaps the sea either, for many a long day.”

Pinetown, as Mr Kingsland had said, was not much of a place, being a large straggling village, greatly augmented by the huts and tents of a cavalry regiment then quartered there, and they had no difficulty in finding John Dawes. Him they ran to earth in the bar-room of an hotel, where, with three or four cronies, he was drinking success to his trip in a parting and friendly glass. He was a man of medium height, straight and well proportioned. His face was tanned to the hue of copper, and he wore a short sandy beard, cut to a point. He took the letter which Gerard tendered him, glanced through the contents, then nodded.

“All right; I start in two hours’ time. How’s Kingsland?”

Gerard replied that, to the best of his belief, the latter was extremely well.

“Good chap, Kingsland!” pronounced the transport-rider, decisively. “Say, mister, what’ll you drink?”

“Well – thanks – I think I’ll take a lemonade,” answered Gerard; not that he particularly wanted it, but he did not like to seem unfriendly by refusing.

“Right. And what’s yours?”

“Oh – a brandy and soda,” said Harry.

“Mister, you ain’t one of them Good Templar chaps, are you?” said another man to Gerard.

“I don’t know quite what they are, I’m afraid.”

“Why, teetotalers, of course. Chaps who don’t drink.”

“Oh no. I’m not a teetotaler, but I don’t go in much for spirits.”

“Quite right, young fellow, quite right,” said another. “You stick to that, and you’ll do. There’s a sight too many chaps out here who are a deal too fond of ‘lifting the elbow.’ Take my advice, and let grog alone, and you’ll get along.”

“Well, here’s luck!” said the transport-rider, nodding over his glass. “Now, you turn up at my waggon in two hours’ time. It’s away on the flat there at the outspan just outside the town; any one’ll tell you. Got any traps?”

“Yes.”

“Well, better pick up a couple of boys and trundle them across. And if I were you I should get a good dinner here before you start. I believe that’s the gong going now. So long!”

Having taken the transport-rider’s advice, and with the help of the landlord procured a couple of native boys as porters, the two were landed, bag and baggage, at Dawes’s waggon. That worthy merely nodded, with a word of greeting, and having seen their luggage safely stowed among the bales and cases which, piled sky-high, constituted his cargo, gave orders to inspan. Then Gerard, always observant, noted how the oxen, to the number of sixteen, were driven up and ranged into line by one native, and kept there while another and Dawes placed a noosed reim, or thong of raw hide, round the horns of each, and in a trice the yoke was adjusted to each neck, for the animals were veteran roadsters, and each knew his place. The yoking was a simple process. Two flat wooden pegs, called “skeys,” passed through the yoke on each side of the neck, which was kept in its place between them by a twisted strip of raw hide passing underneath just below the throat, and hitched in a nick in the “skey.” The motive power is that of pushing, the yoke resting against the slight hump above the animal’s withers.

“Trek – Hamba – ke!” cried the native driver, raising his voice in a wild long-drawn yell. “Englaand – Scotland – Mof – Bokvel – Kwaaiman – Tre-ek!”

The long whip cracked like pistol shots, again and again. As the driver ran through the whole gamut of names, each ox instinctively started forward at the sound of its own, and the ponderous, creaking, loaded-up structure rolled heavily forward. Other waggons stood outspanned along the flat, but mostly deserted, for their owners preferred the more genial atmosphere of the hotel bar, and the native servants in charge had all foregathered at one fire.

“Like to ride, eh? or would you rather walk?” said Dawes, lighting his pipe. “Maybe, though, you’ll find it a bit jolty riding, at first. It’s a fine night, though.”

Gerard answered that they would rather walk; and, indeed, such locomotion was infinitely preferable to the slow rumbling roll of the waggon, crawling along at just under three miles per hour. And the night was fine indeed. The air was deliciously cool, the dim outline of the rolling downs was just visible in the light of the myriad shining stars which spangled the heavens in all the lavish brilliance of their tropical beauty. Here and there a grass fire glowed redly in the distance. Now and again the weird cry of some strange bird or beast arose from the surrounding veldt, and this, with the creaking ramble of the waggon, the deep bass of the native voices, chatting in their own tongue, made our two English lads realise that they were indeed in Africa at last. There was a glorious sense of freedom and exhilaration in the very novelty of the surroundings.

“Well, this is awfully jolly!” pronounced Gerard, looking round.

“Eh! Think so, do you?” said John Dawes. “How would you like to be a transport-rider yourself?”

“I believe I’d like nothing better,” came the prompt reply. “It must be the jolliest, healthiest life in the world.”

“So?” said the other, with a dry chuckle. “Especially when it’s been raining for three days, and the road is one big mudhole, when your waggon’s stuck wheel-deep, and no sooner do you dig it out than in goes another wheel. Why, I’ve been stuck that way, coming over the Berg” – the speaker meant the Drakensberg – “and haven’t made a dozen miles in a fortnight. And cold, too! Why, for a week at a time I’ve not known what it was to have a dry stitch on me, and the rain wouldn’t allow you to light a fire. Jolly healthy life that, eh?”

“Cold!” broke from both the listeners, in astonishment. “Is it ever cold here?”

“Isn’t it? You just wait till you get away from this steaming old sponge of a coast belt. Why, you get snow on the Berg, yards deep. I’ve known fellows lose three full spans of oxen at a time, through an unexpected fall of snow. Well, that’s one of the sides of transport-riding. Another is when there hasn’t been rain for months, and the veldt’s as bare as the skull of a bald-headed man. Then you may crawl along, choking with dust, mile after mile, day after day, the road strewn like a paper-chase, with the bones of oxen which have dropped in the yoke or been turned adrift to die, too weak to go any further – and every water-hole you come to nothing but a beastly mess of pea-soup mud, lucky even if there isn’t a dead dog in the middle of it. My word for it, you get sick of the endless blue of the sky and the red-brown of the veldt, of the poor devils of oxen, staggering along with their tongues out – walking skeletons – creeping their six miles a day, and sometimes not that. You get sick of your own very life itself.”

“That’s another side to the picture with a vengeance,” said Harry.

“Rather. Don’t you jump away with the idea that the life of a transport-rider, or any other life in this blessed country, is all plum-jam; because, if so, you’ll tumble into the most lively kind of mistake.”

Thus chatting, they travelled on; and, at length, after the regulation four hours’ trek, by which time it was nearly midnight, Dawes gave orders to outspan.

The waggon was drawn just off the road, and the oxen, released from their yokes, were turned loose for a short graze, preparatory to being tied to the trek-chain for the night. Then, while the “leader” was despatched to fill a bucket from the adjacent water-hole, Dawes produced from a locker some bread and cold meat.

“Dare say you’ll be glad of some supper,” he said. “It’s roughish feed for you, maybe; but it’s rougher still when there’s none. Fall to.”

They did so, with a will. Even Harry Maitland, who had started with an inclination to turn up his nose at such dry provender, was astonished to find how cold salt beef and rather stale bread could taste, when eaten with an appetite born of four hours’ night travel.

“Now, you’d better turn in,” said the transport-rider, when they had finished. “You’ll get about four hours’ clear snooze. We inspan at daybreak, and trek on till about ten or eleven. Then we lie-by till three or four in the afternoon, or maybe longer, and trek the best part of the night. It depends a good deal on the sort of day it is.”

A small portion of the back of the waggon was covered by a tilt; this constituted the cabin of this ship of the veldt. It contained lockers and bags to hold the larder supplies, and a kartel or framework of raw-hide thongs, stretched from side to side, supported a mattress and blankets. This Dawes had given up to his two passengers, he himself turning in upon the ground.

Hardly had the heads of our two friends touched the pillow than they were sound asleep, and hardly were they asleep – at least, so it seemed to them – than they were rudely awakened. Their first confused impression was that they were aboard the Amatikulu again in a gale of wind. The heaving and swaying motion which seemed half to fling them from their bed, with every now and again a sickening jolt, the close, hot atmosphere, the harsh yells, and the ramble, exactly bore out this idea. Then Gerard sat upright with a start. It was broad daylight.

“Hallo!” quoth Dawes, putting his head into the waggon-tent. “Had a good sleep? We’ve been on trek about half an hour. I didn’t see the use in waking you, but there’s a roughish bit of road just here. I expect the stones shook you awake – eh?”

“Rather. Oh-h!” groaned Harry, whom at that moment a violent jerk banged against the side of the waggon. “Let’s get out of this, though. It’s awful!”

“Hold on a minute. We are just going through a drift.”

They looked out. The road sloped steeply down to the edge of a small river which swept purling between reed-fringed banks. The foremost oxen were already in the water. There was a little extra yelling and whip-cracking, and the great vehicle rolled ponderously through, and began toilsomely to mount the steep ascent on the other side. Gerard’s glance looked longingly at the water.

“Better wait till we outspan,” said Dawes, reading this. “We can’t stop now, and by the time you overtook us you’d be so fagged and hot you’d get no good at all out of your swim.”

The sun was hardly an hour high, and already it was more than warm. The sky was an unbroken and dazzling blue, and on every side lay the roll of the open veldt in a shimmer of heat, with here and there a farmhouse standing amid a cluster of blue gum-trees. The road seemed to be making a gradual ascent. Our two friends felt little inclined for walking now, for the beat of the morning, combined with short allowance of sleep during the past two nights, was beginning to tell.

“Jump up here, now,” said Dawes, flinging a couple of rugs on top of the load of goods. “Sun or no sun, you’ll be better off than in the tent. Canvas, with the sun on it, is almost as baking as corrugated iron. Hold hard. Wait till she stops,” he warned, having given orders to that effect. “Old stagers, like me, can jump on and off while trekking along, but you’d get under the wheels – sure – and then what’d Kingsland say?”

“You see,” he went on, when they were safely and comfortably on their perch, “in getting up and down by the disselboom you have to be fairly smart. You just get inside the fore wheel and walk along with the machine, and jump quietly up. Getting down’s the worst, because, if you hit the disselboom or slip on it, ten to one you get shot off bang in front of the wheel, and then nothing on earth’ll save you, for you can’t stop one of these waggons under fifty yards, sometimes not even then.”

“By Jove! Do many fellows come to grief that way?” asked Gerard.

“Heaps. You can hardly take up a paper anywhere without seeing a paragraph headed ‘The Disselboom again.’ But generally it’s when fellows are rather full up – taken a drop too much – you understand. Not always, of course. And when you think of the weight these waggons carry – this one’s loaded close on eleven thousand pounds, now – No, you’ve no show at all.”

Then at the morning’s outspan Gerard, always observant, and now keenly thirsting for experience, noted every detail – how there was a regular routine even in this apparently happy-go-lucky species of travel; how when the oxen were turned out to graze, the “driver” set to work to build the fire, while the “leader” took the bucket and went away to fetch water from the nearest stream or water-hole; how the natives received their daily ration of Indian corn meal, subsequently to be made into a thick stir-about and eaten piping hot from the three-legged pot in which it was cooked. He noted, too, with considerable satisfaction, how Dawes produced from a locker a goodly supply of raw mutton-chops, which were set to frizzle on the fire against the time they should have returned from their swim, which with the remainder of last night’s loaf and a steaming kettle of strong black coffee, made up the most succulent breakfast he thought he had ever eaten in his life, so thorough an appetiser is open air, and novelty, and travel. And then, after a long lie-by and a nap in the heat of the day, he begged to be allowed to bear a hand in the process of inspanning, and felt as proud as Punch when he found himself holding a couple of reims, at the end of which were as many big black oxen, even though he had but a confused idea as to what he should do with them. Still, he was doing something, and that was what he wanted to realise.

And then, again, when they were on the move, he induced Dawes to initiate him into the mysteries of waggon-driving. These, as that worthy explained, did not consist, as many stupid Kafirs and some stupider white men seemed to think, in running alongside of the span and flourishing the whip, and frantically yelling and slashing away indiscriminately. A good driver, with an average well-broken span, need hardly yell inordinately, or use the whip at all. Each ox would instinctively start forward at the sound of its own name, and if it grew slack or negligent a touch with the voerslag (the cutting, tapering end of the lash.) was sufficient. A clever driver could put his voerslag as deftly and surely as a trout-fisher could his fly – at least, as to the latter, so he had heard, added Dawes; for he had never been in England himself – and, of course, had never seen trout fishing. But Gerard, who was a very fair fly-fisher, saw the point at once, and soon came to handle the whip in such fashion as to show promise of eventually becoming as proficient as Dawes himself. True, he managed to clip himself over the ear two or three times; but then every beginner is bound to do this, so he didn’t mind. On Harry, however, such reverses produced a different effect. He gave up the whole thing in disgust, and voted waggon-driving a beastly difficult thing and not at all in his line. Wherein, again, the diversity of their respective characters came out.

Now and again they would pass other waggons on the road, either in motion or outspanned, or would pass through a small township, where John Dawes would drop behind for half an hour for a glass of grog with a few of his fellow-craftsmen and a chat at the hotel bar. These would always extend a frank hand and a hearty greeting to the two young strangers; for, however rough externally it may occasionally be, the bearing of the South African colonist towards the newly arrived “Britisher,” especially if the latter be young and inexperienced, is, as a rule, all that is kindly and good-natured. But it was the time of the evening outspan that these two would enjoy most heartily. Then it was that with the darkness, and the wide and to them still mysterious veldt stretching around, with the stars burning bright and clear in the dusky vault above, and the red glow of the camp-fire shedding a circle of light which intensified the surrounding gloom – then it was that they realised that they were indeed “camping out,” and no make-believe. And John Dawes, with his pipe in full blast, made a first-rate camp-fire companion, for his experiences in his own line had been large and chequered. He knew every inch of the country for hundreds of miles. He had been away to the north, past Swaziland, and had tried his luck on the new gold-fields in the Zoutpansberg. He had made a couple of trading trips in the Zulu country, and knew many of the Zulu chiefs and indunas. Many a tale and strange incident would he narrate in his own dry fashion – of flooded rivers and the perils of the road; of whole spans of oxen laid low in the yoke by one stroke of lightning, or of a comrade struck down at his side in the same way; of lively ructions with surly Boers and their retainers, when the latter strove to interfere with their right of outspan; of critical situations arising out of the craft and greed of native chieftains, while practically in the power of lawless and turbulent bands of savages during trading operations – and to these our two wayfarers listened with the most unfeigned delight.

But from Pinetown to Pietermaritzburg is no great distance even for a bullock-waggon, and on the afternoon of the second day they came in sight of the capital, an area of blue gums and straggling iron roofs, lying in a vast hollow. Both were unfeignedly sorry that the journey was over. They felt like being cast adrift again, and said as much to their new friend as they took a right cordial leave of him.

“Well, I’ve been very glad to have you,” said the latter. “Been sort of company like. What do you think you’re likely to be doing with yourselves now you are here, if I may ask?”

“I want first of all to find out a relative of mine,” said Gerard. “I’ve a letter to him. Anstey, his name is. Do you know him?”

A queer smile came into the transport-rider’s face at the name.

“Anstey, is it?” he said. “So he’s a relation of yours? Well, he’s easily found. He runs a Kafir store out beyond Howick, near the Umgeni Fall. Does he know you’re coming?”

“He knows I’m coming some time, but not to the day.”

Again that queer expression in John Dawes’s weather-beaten countenance. Gerard thought nothing of it then; afterwards he had reason to remember it.

“Umjilo’s the name of his place. You can’t miss it. Well, good-bye, both of you. We may knock up against each other again or we may not; it’s a ram world, and not a very big one either. I wish you good luck. I’ll send your traps down first thing in the morning.”