Part 56 (1/2)
”HEAD LAAGER, ”TWEIPANS, ”_January --th_.
”_To the Colonel Commanding the British Forces in Gueldersdorp._
”SIR,--In reply to your communication I am instructed by General Brounckers to inform you that our prisoner, the Englishwoman who came here in the character of a German drummer's refugee-widow to act as your spy, will be exchanged for a free Boer of the Transvaal Republic, by name, Myjnheer W. Slabberts, who is at present confined under the Yellow Flag in Gueldersdorp gaol. The exchange will be effected by parties under the White Flag at a given point North-East between the lines of investment and defence one hour before Kerk-time to-morrow, being the Sabbath.
”I have the honour to be yours truly,
”P. BLINDERS, ”_Acting-Secretary to General_ ”_Brounckers._”
”P.S.--_The young lady of German extraction who accompanied the Englishwoman has entered into an engagement to remain here._
”_P. B._”
”P.SS.--_The engagement is with yours truly, the young lady having conformed to the faith of the Gerevormed Kerk. We are to be married next Sunday. Would you like us to send you some wedding-cake?_
”_P. B._”
Blinders has certainly had the last dig, but his princ.i.p.al victim fails this time to wince or bellow under the point of his humour. With his big face changing from red to white, and from white to crimson half a dozen times in as many seconds, Captain Bingo says, refolding the paper and returning it with a shaky hand:
”Then she--she----”
A lump in his throat slides down and sticks.
”Gerevormed Kerk-time is eleven o'clock.” The Colonel looks at his shabby Waterbury, as the brisk clatter of cantering horse-hoofs breaks up the Sabbath stillness of the Market Square, and an orderly, leading an officer's charger, halts before Nixey's door. ”The B.S.A. escort, with their man, are due to leave the gaol in ten minutes' time. Here's your orderly with your mount, and you've eight minutes to change in.”
”One minute, sir,” Captain Bingo utters with an effort. ”This man--this Slabberts--is a well-known spy--a trump card in Brounckers' hand, or he wouldn't be so anxious to get hold of him. And therefore--by this exchange--and a woman's dashed ambitious folly--you may lose heavily in the end....”
”I don't deny it.” The haggard shadow is again upon the Colonel's face, or is it that Bingo's radiance dulls neighbouring surfaces by comparison?
”But don't let the thought of it spoil your good hour.” The smile in the eyes that have so many lines about them is kind, if the mouth under the red-brown moustache is stern and sorrowful. ”We don't have many of 'em.
Off with you and meet her!”
Captain Bingo tries to say something more, but makes a hash of it; and with eyes that fairly run over, can only grip the kindly hand again and again, a.s.suring its owner, with numerous references to the Living Tinker, that he is the most thundering brick on earth. Then, overthrowing the small table and one of the chairs, he plunges down the narrow iron stairway to get into what he calls his kit. Six minutes later, correct to a buckle and a puttee-fold, he salutes his commanding officer, nodding pleasantly to him from Nixey's roof, and buckets down the street at a tremendous gallop, the happiest man in Gueldersdorp, with this shout following him:
”My regards to Lady Hannah. And tell her that the Staff dine on gee-gee at six o'clock sharp, and I shall be charmed if she'll join us.”
x.x.xVIII
The little Olopo River, a mere branch of the bigger river that makes fertile British Baraland, runs from east to west, along the southern side of Gueldersdorp, swelled by innumerable thready water-courses, dry in the blistering winter heat, that the wet season disperses among the foothills that bristle with Brounckers' artillery. Seen from the alt.i.tude of a balloon or a war-kite, the course of the beer-coloured stream, flowing lazily between its high banks spa.r.s.ely wooded with oak and blue gum, and lavishly clothed with cactus, mimosa, and tree-fern, tall gra.s.ses, and th.o.r.n.y creepers, would have looked like a verdant ribbon meandering over the dun-and-ochre-coloured veld, where patches of bluish-green are beginning to spread. The south bank, where the bush grows thinnest, was frequently patronised by picnic-parties, and at all times a place of resort for strolling sweethearts. The north bank, much more precipitous, was clothed with a tangled luxuriance of vegetation, and threaded only by native paths, so narrow as to prove discouraging to pedestrians desirous of walking side by side. Where the outermost line of defences impinged upon the river-bed, the trees had been cut down and the bush levelled. But east of Maxim Outpost South, and the rifle-pits that flanked Fort Ellerslie, all was as it had been for hundreds of years, in the remembrance of the great granite boulder that stood on the south sh.o.r.e.
The great boulder had known changes since the old Plutonic forces cast it upwards, a mere bubble of melted red granite, solidifying as it went into a stone acorn thirty feet high, which the glacier brought down in a slow journey of countless ages, and set upright like a phallic symbol, amongst other boulders of lesser size. The channel the glacier had chiselled was now full of s.h.i.+ning honey-coloured water, hurrying over the granite stones and blocks of quartz and pretty vari-coloured pebbles, while the boulder sat high and dry, with the tall-plumed gra.s.ses, and the graceful tree-fern, and the yellow-ta.s.selled mimosa crowding about its knees; and remembered old times, long before the little Bushfellow had outlined the koodoo and the buffalo, and the hunter-man with the spear, in black pigments on its smooth flank, ere he ground up the coprolites gathered from the river-bed for red and yellow paint to colour the drawings. On the western side the great boulder was dressed in crimson lake and yellow-umber-hued lichens from base to summit, and in August, when the aloes flowered in magnificent fiery cl.u.s.ters upon its crown and at its base; and in May, when the sweet-scented clematis wreathed it in exquisite trails, and white and rose and purple pelargoniums made a carpet for its feet; and in July, when the yellow everlastings bloomed in every cranny of the rocks, King Solomon in all his glory held less magnificence of state.
Insects and beasts and birds loved the boulder. The sun-beetle and the orange-tip and peac.o.c.k b.u.t.terflies loved to bask on its hottest side, while the old dog-faced baboon squatted on top and chattered wisdom to his numerous family, and the finches and love-birds built in its crannies and bred their young, too often as food for the giant tarantula and the tree-snake; while the francolin and grouse dusted themselves in the hot sand at the base of its throne of rocks, and the springbok and the wart-hogs came down at night to drink; and the woolly cheetah and the red lynx came after the springbok and the wart-hog.