Part 26 (1/2)

It was returned, though, the next moment.

”Jack bring wagon all alone,” he said.

”Yes, I know; but you must go back again. Take plenty of mealies, and go to Morgenstern's and give him that.”

”Jack bring wagon all alone,” the black said again; and try how d.y.k.e would, he did not seem as if he could make the Kaffir understand.

In despair he turned to Tanta Sal, and in other words bade her tell her husband go back at once; that he might take a horse if he thought he could ride one; if not, he must walk back to Morgenstern's, and carry the letter, and tell him that the baas was bad.

”Baas Joe go die,” said the woman, nodding her head.

”No, no; he will live if we help,” cried d.y.k.e wildly. ”Now, tell Jack he must go back at once, as soon as he has had some mealies.”

”Baas Joe go die,” reiterated the woman.

”Hold your tongue!” roared d.y.k.e angrily. ”You understand what I mean.

Jack is to go back.--Do you hear, Jack? Go back, and take that to Morgenstern's.”

The Kaffir and his wife stared at him heavily, with their lower jaws dropped, and after several more efforts, d.y.k.e turned back to the house to continue his ministrations.

”They understand me, both of them,” he cried bitterly; ”but he does not want to go, and Tant wants him to stay. What shall I do? What shall I do?”

He changed the handkerchiefs, and rushed out again, but the Kaffirs were invisible; and going round to the back, he found Jack squatted on his heels, eating the hot cake his wife was baking. But though d.y.k.e tried command and entreaty, the pair only listened to him in a dazed kind of way, and it was quite evident that unless he tried violence he would not be able to make the Kaffir stir; while even if he did use force, he felt that Jack would only go a short distance and there remain.

”And I can't leave here! I can't leave here!” groaned d.y.k.e; ”it would be like saying good-bye to poor Joe for ever.”

Clinging to the faint hope that after he had been well-fed and rested, the Kaffir might be made to fulfil the duty required of him, d.y.k.e went on tending his brother, with the satisfactory result of seeing him drop at last into a troubled sleep, from which, two hours after, he started up to call out for d.y.k.e.

”I'm here, Joe, old chap. Can't you see me?” said the boy piteously.

”No use: tell him no use. Madness to come. All are dying. Poor d.y.k.e!

So hard--so hard.”

d.y.k.e felt his breast swell with emotion, and then came a fresh horror: the evening was drawing on, and he would be alone there with the sick man, watching through the darkness, and ignorant of how to act--what to do. And now the thought of his position, alone there in the great desert, seemed more than he could bear; the loneliness so terrible, that once more, in the midst of the stifling heat, he shuddered and turned cold.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

STERLING COIN.

d.y.k.e Emson sat in the darkness there along. He had seen no more of Jack and Tanta Sal since the evening. The latter had looked in, stared stupidly, said ”Baas Joe go die,” once more, and roused the boy into such a pitch of fury that he came nigh to throwing something at her.

Then she left the room with her husband, and d.y.k.e was alone.

He felt ready to give up, and throw himself upon his face in his great despair, for hour by hour the feeling strengthened that his brother was indeed dying fast; and as he sat there in the midst of that terrible solitude, shut in, as it were, by the black darkness, his busy imagination flooded his brain with thoughts of what he would have to do.

The fancy maddened him, for it seemed cruel and horrible to think of such a thing when his brother lay there muttering in the delirium; but the thought would come persistently, and there was the picture vividly standing out before him. For his mind was in such an unnatural state of exaltation that he could not keep it hidden from his mental gaze.

There it all was, over and over again: that place he had selected where it was nearly always shaded--in that rift in the kopje where the soft herbage grew, and climbed and laced overhead, while the low murmur of the water gurgling from the rocks in the next rift fell gently upon his ear. He had selected that spot because it was so calm and peaceful, and drawn poor Joe there upon the little sled. He saw it all--the shallow, dark bed he had dug in the soft earth, where his brother was to rest in peace, with all the suffering at an end. There were big, mossy pieces of granite there, which would cover and protect the poor fellow's resting-place, and a smooth, perpendicular face of rock above, on which he saw himself, chipping out with hammer and cold chisel the one word ”Joe.”