Part 23 (1/2)

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

HAVEN BETWEEN STORM.

”Do you know, this place reminds me a little of our resting ground that day down among the rocks at Camp's Bay,” Nidia said, gazing up at the gigantic boulder, which, piled obliquely against two more, formed a natural penthouse on a very large scale. A blackened patch against the rock in the entrance of the cave, showed a fireplace surrounded by stones, and the very scanty baggage of the fugitives was disposed around.

John Ames, who was engaged in his normal occupation, viz. mounting guard, turned.

”Yes,” he said; ”it's the same sort of day, and grander scenery, because wilder. Peaceful, too. Yet here we are, you and I, obliged to hide among rocks and holes in peril of our lives.”

”Strange, isn't it, how adaptable one can become?” went on Nidia. ”That day, do you remember, when you were so sceptical as to our ever meeting again, who could have thought how we would meet and what experiences should have been ours between then and now?

”Do you know,” she went on gravely, after a thoughtful pause, ”at times I think I must be frightfully hard-hearted and unfeeling--I mean, to have looked upon what I did--” and she shuddered.

”I liked the Hollingworths so much, too. And yet somehow it all seems to have happened so long ago. Why is it that I do not feel it more, think of it more? Tell me your opinion.”

”One word explains it,” he answered. ”That is, 'Action'.”

”Action?”

”Yes. You have been kept continually on the move ever since. First of all, you had your own safety to secure; consequently you had no time to think of anything but that--of anybody but yourself.”

”That sounds horribly selfish, somehow, but true.”

”Well, selfishness in its etymological sense is only another word for self-preservation, or, at any rate, an extension of that principle.

Were you to sit down and weep over the loss of your friends until some obliging barbarian should come up and put an end to you? I think the pluck you showed throughout was wonderful, and not less so the soundness of judgment. When you found poor Hollingworth's youngster so badly hurt, didn't you sit there and look after him at momentary risk of your life until he died, poor little chap? Selfish? I call it by another name, and so will other people when we get safely out of this.”

Nidia smiled, rather sadly, and shook her head.

”Leave _you_ alone for trying to flatter me,” she said softly. ”You have been doing nothing else ever since we have been together. But--you don't really think me unfeeling and hard-hearted, Mr Ames?”

He turned quickly, for he had been looking out over the surrounding waste.

”That isn't what you called me the first time in s.h.i.+minya's kraal,” he said.

”What? Unfeeling and hard-hearted. No. Why should I?” she rejoined demurely, but br.i.m.m.i.n.g with mischief. Then, as he looked hurt, ”Don't be angry. I'm only teasing, as usual. Really, though, I ought to apologise for that slip. But the name came out without my knowing it.

You see, Susie and I used always to call you by it between ourselves.

We saw it in the book at Cogill's the day we arrived, written in a hand that seemed somehow to stand out differently from among all the others.

At first, when we were trying to locate the people there, we used to wonder which was 'John Ames,' and so we got into the habit of calling you that way by ourselves. And in my mingled scare and surprise the other day, out it came.”

”We have been through a good deal together during the last four days,”

he said, ”including one of the narrowest shaves for our lives we can ever possibly again experience. Heaven knows how long we are destined to roam the wilds together, but why not keep the conventional until our return to conventionality?”

”Very well,” she answered.

It was even as he had said. This was the afternoon of the fourth day after leaving s.h.i.+minya's den, and now they were well in among the Matopo range. Here, if anywhere, amid this vast sea of jumbled boulders and granite cones and wide rocky hollows, they would be comparatively safe, if only they kept a constant and careful look out, John Ames declared.

The open country would be swarming with rebels, and it was not improbable that Bulawayo itself was in a state of siege. Here, where almost every stone represented a hiding-place, they could lie _perdu_ for any time; and such was far the safer course, at any rate until able to gain some inkling of what had really transpired, as to which they were so far in complete ignorance. If the Matabele had risen upon Bulawayo with the same secrecy and suddenness wherewith they had surprised outlying stations, why, the capital would be absolutely at their mercy, in which case the only whites left alive in the land would be stray fugitives like themselves. Indeed, to John Ames it seemed too much to hope that any other state of things could be the prevalent one, wherefore for the present these rugged and seldom trodden fastnesses afforded the securest of all refuges. This plan he had put to Nidia, and she had agreed at once.

”Do not even go to the trouble of consulting me,” she had said. ”Always act exactly as you think best. What do I know about things here, and where would I have been now but for you?”