CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
HAVEN BETWEEN STORM.
"Do you know, this place reminds me a little of our resting ground thatday down among the rocks at Camp's Bay," Nidia said, gazing up at thegigantic boulder, which, piled obliquely against two more, formed anatural penthouse on a very large scale. A blackened patch against therock in the entrance of the cave, showed a fireplace surrounded bystones, and the very scanty baggage of the fugitives was disposedaround.
John Ames, who was engaged in his normal occupation, viz. mountingguard, turned.
"Yes," he said; "it's the same sort of day, and grander scenery, becausewilder. Peaceful, too. Yet here we are, you and I, obliged to hideamong rocks and holes in peril of our lives."
"Strange, isn't it, how adaptable one can become?" went on Nidia. "Thatday, do you remember, when you were so sceptical as to our ever meetingagain, who could have thought how we would meet and what experiencesshould have been ours between then and now?
"Do you know," she went on gravely, after a thoughtful pause, "at timesI think I must be frightfully hard-hearted and unfeeling--I mean, tohave looked upon what I did--" and she shuddered.
"I liked the Hollingworths so much, too. And yet somehow it all seemsto 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 ofall, you had your own safety to secure; consequently you had no time tothink 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 forself-preservation, or, at any rate, an extension of that principle.Were you to sit down and weep over the loss of your friends until someobliging barbarian should come up and put an end to you? I think thepluck you showed throughout was wonderful, and not less so the soundnessof judgment. When you found poor Hollingworth's youngster so badlyhurt, didn't you sit there and look after him at momentary risk of yourlife until he died, poor little chap? Selfish? I call it by anothername, 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. "Youhave been doing nothing else ever since we have been together. But--youdon't really think me unfeeling and hard-hearted, Mr Ames?"
He turned quickly, for he had been looking out over the surroundingwaste.
"That isn't what you called me the first time in Shiminya's kraal," hesaid.
"What? Unfeeling and hard-hearted. No. Why should I?" she rejoineddemurely, but brimming with mischief. Then, as he looked hurt, "Don'tbe angry. I'm only teasing, as usual. Really, though, I ought toapologise 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 handthat seemed somehow to stand out differently from among all the others.At first, when we were trying to locate the people there, we used towonder which was `John Ames,' and so we got into the habit of callingyou that way by ourselves. And in my mingled scare and surprise theother 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 canever possibly again experience. Heaven knows how long we are destinedto roam the wilds together, but why not keep the conventional until ourreturn to conventionality?"
"Very well," she answered.
It was even as he had said. This was the afternoon of the fourth dayafter leaving Shiminya's den, and now they were well in among the Matoporange. Here, if anywhere, amid this vast sea of jumbled boulders andgranite 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 notimprobable that Bulawayo itself was in a state of siege. Here, wherealmost every stone represented a hiding-place, they could lie _perdu_for any time; and such was far the safer course, at any rate until ableto gain some inkling of what had really transpired, as to which theywere so far in complete ignorance. If the Matabele had risen uponBulawayo with the same secrecy and suddenness wherewith they hadsurprised outlying stations, why, the capital would be absolutely attheir mercy, in which case the only whites left alive in the land wouldbe stray fugitives like themselves. Indeed, to John Ames it seemed toomuch to hope that any other state of things could be the prevalent one,wherefore for the present these rugged and seldom trodden fastnessesafforded 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. "Alwaysact exactly as you think best. What do I know about things here, andwhere would I have been now but for you?"
"You showed yourself full of resource before I came on the scene,anyway. You might have pulled through just as well."
"No; I should never have been able to keep it up. Heavens! where wouldI have been?"--looking round upon the wilderness and realising itssombre vastness. "But with you I feel almost as safe as I did--well,this day last week."
As he had said, they had indeed been a great deal together during thepast four days, really a great deal more so than during the three weeksand upwards that they had known each other down-country. Hiding away insluit and river-bed and thorn thicket, every step of their flight hadbeen attended with peril. Discovery meant death--certain death. Evenwere any trace of them lighted upon so as to arouse suspicion of theirpresence in the minds of their ruthless enemies, detection would notlong follow. They could be tracked and hunted down with dogs, whateverstart they might have gained; and as for hoping to distance theirpursuers, why, a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and Nidia,for all the fine healthy training she was most fortunately in, washardly a match, either in fleetness or staying power, for a pack ofhardy muscular barbarians. No; in superlative caution alone lay theironly chance of safety.
And, throughout all this most trying experience--trying alike in theterrible strain upon the nerves, and the physical strain of forcedmarches in the enervating heat of a sub-tropical climate, over rough andfatiguing ground--how many times had Nidia noted with confidence andadmiration the consummate judgment of her fellow-fugitive; theunflagging vigilance, the readiness of resource, and the tranquilhopefulness which he threw into the situation. Never a moment did herelax observation even in the most trivial matters, and his knowledge ofthe country, too, was wonderful. The part they had to traverse was themost dangerous part, indeed, through which their line of flight couldpossibly take them, bearing, as it did, a considerable population. Morethan once they would have to pass so near a kraal that the barking ofdogs almost made them think they were discovered; but the narrow escapeto which we heard him allude had occurred at about noon of the secondday after leaving Shiminya's.
The line of country they were traversing was rough and difficult--undulating flats covered with long grass, and plentifully studded withtrees, but there was no avoiding it, and, indeed, every step, even here,was fraught with the gravest peril, for they were in the neighbourhoodof quite a cluster of kraals. Poor Nidia felt as though she must giveup in despair and exhaustion. The flags of the coarse grass cut herankles like saws, and she felt as though she could hardly drag one footafter another, and even the words of cheer whispered by her companionseemed to fall on deaf ears. Suddenly the latter halted, listened amoment, then Nidia felt herself seized, and, with a whisper of caution,dragged down as though into the very earth itself. As a matter of factthis was nearly the case. The place she found herself in was a shallowdonga, almost concealed by long grass and brambles, and these hercompanion was quickly but noiselessly dragging over her and himself.Then had come the sound of footsteps, the hum of voices. She could seeout th
rough the grass that was over her, and that without moving amuscle. An _impi_ was approaching, and that in a line which shouldbring it right over their hiding-place; an _impi_ of considerable size,and which might have numbered some hundreds. The warriors were marchingin no particular order, and she could make out every detail of theirequipment--the great tufted shields and gleaming assegais; rifles, too,many of them carried, and knobkerries and battle-axes. Some werecrested with great ostrich skin war-bonnets covering the head andshoulders, others wore the _isiqoba_, or ball of feathers, fixed to theforelock; a long wing feather of the kite or crane stuck through this,and rising horn-like above the head; and catskin _mutyas_ and anklets offlowing cowhair. At any other time she would have admired the spectacleexceedingly; now, however, in the grim dark faces and rolling eyeballsshe could see nothing but the countenances of bloodthirsty and pitilessfiends. Oh, Heaven! would they never pass? The throb of herheart-beats seemed loud enough to attract their attention and cause themto stop. But no sooner had one squad glided by than another appeared;and with the advent of each, to those who lay there, it seemed that thebitterness of death had to be gone through again. Several passed sonear to their hiding-place that the effluvium of their heated bodiesreached the fugitives, musky and strong, but their attention was fixedupon the conversation of their fellows on the other side, and that perilwas over. But not until nearly an hour had passed since the last of thesavages had disappeared, and the lingering drawl of their deep-tonedvoices had died away, would John Ames suffer his companion even so muchas to whisper, let alone move.
Well, that peril had passed over their beads, and now, in the well-nighuninhabited fastnesses of the Matopo, they felt comparatively safe. AndNidia, remembering, and observing her fellow-fugitive and protector,would find herself twenty times a day making comparisons between him andall the other men she had ever known in a sense which was sadlyunflattering to the latter; and an unconscious softness would come intoher voice in conversing with him which was not a little trying to JohnAmes.
For if there was one point upon which the latter had made up his mind,it was that while Nidia was alone with him, and entirely under his care,he must never for a moment allow his feelings to get the better of him.To do so under the circumstances was, rightly or wrongly, to take anadvantage of the position, against which his principles rose up inrevolt. Yet there were times when his guard would insensibly slacken,and his tone, too, would take on an unconscious softening.
They were fugitives, those two, hiding for their lives in the heart of asavage and hostile land, wherein well-nigh every one of their own colourhad almost certainly been massacred, yet to one of them, at any rate,the days that followed, that saw them hiding in and wandering throughthis grim rock wilderness, were days of sheer unadulterated delight.Life in the open entailed upon him no privation--he was used to it; torough it on coarse and scanty fare he never felt, and as a price to payfor the happiness that was now his, why, it did not come in at all. Toawaken in the morning to the consciousness that the whole day should bespent in the society and presence of this girl; that she was asabsolutely dependent upon him--upon his care and protection--as she wasupon the very air she breathed; that throughout the livelong day hewould have in his ears the music of her voice, under his gaze the sunnywitchery of that bright face, the blue eyes lighting up in rallyingmockery, or growing soft and dewy and serious according to the thoughtsdiscussed between them--all this was to John Ames rapture unutterable.He looked back on his many communings in his solitary comings andgoings, and how the thought of her alone had possessed his whole being,how he would sit for hours recalling every incident of theiracquaintanceship, even--so vivid was memory--going over all that wassaid and done on each day of the same, and yet, running through all, thehope of meeting again, somehow, somewhere. And now they had met--not ashe had all along pictured, under conventional circumstances andsurrounded by others, but as the survivors of savage massacre, who hadbeen wonderfully thrown together, having passed through an ordeal oftragedy and blood. Her very life was in his hands, and by a sure andcertain instinct he knew that it was in his hands to save once more,even as he had done more than once already.
And that his cup of joy might be full, the way in which his chargeaccepted the position was perfect. Under the circumstances other womenmight well have given way. The very precariousness of their situation,recollection of the horrors and perils so lately passed through,apprehensions as to the future, the necessary roughness of their life,the deprivation of a thousand and one of the many conveniences andcomforts--great and small--of ordinary civilisation, the society of butone companion day after day--all might have conduced to low spirits andconstraint and irritation, but nothing of the kind was manifest in NidiaCommerell. A day of complete rest in their snug hiding-place amid therocks had completely set her up. The outdoor life and plain roughliving, and sense of temporary security, had brought a healthy glow intoher face, and the excitement and novelty of the position a brightnessand sparkle into her eyes, that rendered her in the sight of hercompanion more entrancing to look upon than ever. Nor did she show theleast tendency to become weary of him, any more than in that time, whichnow seemed so long back, when they were so much together amidsurroundings of civilisation and peace. Her spirits were unflagging,her appreciation of his efforts and care for her comfort never wanting.She, too, seemed to have made up her mind to put the past, with itsgrievous and terrible recollections, the future, with its apprehensiveuncertainty, far from her, and to live in the present.
And at night, when the grim mountain solitudes would be awakened bystrange eerie sounds--the weird bay of the jackal, the harsh truculentbark of the baboon, the howling of tiger wolves, and other mysteriousand uncanny noises, exaggerated by echo, rolling and reverberating amongthe grim rocks--she would lie and listen, her eyes upon the patch ofgushing stars framed in the black portal of their rocky retreat, aliveto the ghostly gloom and vastness of the wilderness around; then,rejoicing in the sense of proximity, even the care, of one whose slumberwas light unto wakefulness in the reliability of his guard over her, shewould fall asleep once more in the restful security afforded by thecontrast.