Part 33 (1/2)

”Yes,” said Gavin, ”I think the first bullet that came in quieted him, and I wasn't sorry. He was worrying me. Lost his nerve, though he never had very much. Well, I suppose you have come to make a bargain with me?”

”Something like that. Our friend yonder hinted that he would probably do a good deal for a few rifles.”

Gavin smiled dryly. ”It isn't worth while now. As you have no doubt noticed, I can hardly talk to you.”

He stopped for a moment with a heavy gasp. ”This was my last kick, you see.”

”Ah,” said Ormsgill, ”is there any other little way in which I could be of service? Any message you would like sent on?”

The man made a painful effort, but Ormsgill had now some little difficulty in hearing him. ”None,” he said. ”They have forgotten me yonder, and, perhaps, it's just as well. Our folks--my mother was Cape Dutch, you know--believe in everything as it used to be, but I'm like my father; there was always a kick in me. One of your Colonial vacillations cost him his farm, for, though he said he was ashamed of his country, he wouldn't recognize the Boers as his rulers. I, however, got on with them until I vexed the authorities by something I did in resentment of the--arrogance of certain mine-grabbing Englishmen. I believe I might have made terms if I'd truckled to them a little, but that was a thing I wouldn't do, and so I came out here.

There are probably more of us with the same nonsensical notions.”

Ormsgill said nothing for a moment or two. He had also lived among the outcasts, and knew what comes of disdaining to regard things from the conventional point of view. Something in him stirred in sympathy with the dying man, and he sat down in the dust and laid a hand on his shoulder. Gavin made no further observation that was intelligible, until at last he feebly raised his head.

”If you wouldn't mind I'd like a drink,” he said.

Ormsgill rose and walked out of the hut calling in the native tongue.

The men who squatted about it in the hot sand still clenching their Sniders apparently failed to understand him, or were unwilling to do what he asked, and some time had slipped by when at last one of them brought a dripping calabash. Ormsgill went into the hut with it, and then took off his shapeless hat as he poured out the water on the hot soil. Gavin lay face downwards now, clutching his deadly rifle, but there was no breath in him. Then Ormsgill went back quietly to where the Headman and his Suzerain were sitting.

”I am afraid you can not have those rifles. The man is dead,” he said.

After that he and Nares were led back to their hut, and when it was made clear to them that they were expected to stay there Ormsgill sat down in the shadow and pulled out his pipe.

”We wondered what was going on, and now the thing's quite plain,” he said. ”It's rebellion.”

”How was it they didn't creep round the hut from behind?” asked Nares, who felt a trifle averse from facing the point that concerned them most.

”Lost their heads, most probably,” said Ormsgill. ”Didn't think of it.

Any way, they'd have had to make a dash for the door eventually.

Still, it would have saved them a man or two, and our friend the Suzerain noticed it.”

”Why didn't he point it out to them?”

”I fancy he wanted to see how they'd stand fire, and break them in.

Felt he could afford to throw a few of them away, as he certainly could, and he only stepped in when the thing was commencing to discourage them.”

”It's quite likely you're right,” and Nares looked at his comrade with a little wry smile. ”Still, after all, I'm not sure it's very material.”

The lines grew a trifle deeper on Ormsgill's worn face. ”No,” he said, ”the real question is what our dusky acquaintance means to do with us, and we have to face it. Personally, I don't think he means us any harm, but it's certain he won't let us go until he and his friends have cleaned out San Roque. You see, in an affair of this kind the first blow must be successful, and he has probably a lurking suspicion that we might warn Dom Erminio. The trouble is that once the rebellion breaks out it will be almost impossible for us to reach the coast.”

He spoke quietly, but there was a strain in his voice, and Nares guessed what he felt.

”I suppose he wouldn't be content with our a.s.surance that we'd say nothing?” he suggested.

”Would you make it?”

Nares sat very still for a few moments, with a curious look in his eyes, and one hand closed, and his comrade once more recognized that there had been a change in him of late. He had the fever on him slightly, and while that is nothing unusual in those forests, he had grown perceptibly harder and grimmer during the last few weeks. Now and then he also gave way to outbreaks of indignation, which, so far as Ormsgill knew, was not a thing he had hitherto been addicted to doing. Still, the latter was aware that the white man's mental balance is apt to become a trifle unsettled in that land.