Prester John (10 page)

‘We are in God's hands then, and must wait on His will,' I said solemnly.

There was no more sleep for Wardlaw and myself that night. We made the best barricade we could of the windows, loaded all our weapons, and trusted to Colin to give us early news. Before supper I went over to get Japp to join us, but found that that worthy had sought help from his old protector, the bottle, and was already sound asleep with both door and window open.

I had made up my mind that death was certain, and yet my heart belied my conviction, and I could not feel the appropriate mood. If anything, I was more cheerful since I had heard the drums. It was clearly now beyond the power of me or any man to stop the march of events. My thoughts ran on a native rising, and I kept telling myself how little that was probable. Where were the arms, the leader, the discipline? At any rate such arguments put me to sleep before dawn, and I wakened at eight to find that nothing had happened. The clear morning sunlight, as of old, made Blaauwildebeestefontein the place of a dream. Zeeta brought in my cup of coffee as if this day were just like all others, my pipe tasted as sweet, the fresh air from the Berg blew as fragrantly on my brow. I went over to
the store in reasonably good spirits, leaving Wardlaw busy on the Penitential Psalms.

The post-runner had brought the mail as usual, and there was one private letter for me. I opened it with great excitement, for the envelope bore the stamp of the firm. At last Colles had deigned to answer.

Inside was a sheet of the firm's notepaper, with the signature of Colles across the top. Below some one had pencilled these five words:

The Blesbok
*
are changing ground
.

I looked to see that Japp had not suffocated himself, then shut up the store, and went back to my room to think out this new mystification.

The thing had come from Colles, for it was the private note-paper of the Durban office, and there was Colles' signature. But the pencilling was in a different hand. My deduction from this was that some one wished to send me a message, and that Colles had given that some one a sheet of signed paper to serve as a kind of introduction. I might take it, therefore, that the scribble was Colles' reply to my letter.

Now, my argument continued, if the unknown person saw fit to send me a message, it could not be merely one of warning. Colles must have told him that I was awake to some danger, and as I was in Blaauwildebeestefontein, I must be nearer the heart of things than any one else. The message must therefore be in the nature of some password, which I was to remember when I heard it again.

I reasoned the whole thing out very clearly, and I saw no gap in my logic. I cannot describe how that scribble had heartened me. I felt no more the crushing isolation of yesterday. There were others beside me in the secret. Help must be on the way, and the letter was the first tidings.

But how near? – that was the question; and it occurred to me for the first time to look at the postmark. I went back to the
store and got the envelope out of the waste-paper basket. The post mark was certainly not Durban. The stamp was a Cape Colony one, and of the mark I could only read three letters, T.R.S. This was no sort of clue, and I turned the thing over, completely baffled. Then I noticed that there was no mark of the post town of delivery. Our letters to Blaauwildebeestefontein came through Pietersdorp, and bore that mark. I compared the envelope with others. They all had a circle, and ‘Pietersdorp' in broad black letters. But this envelope had nothing except the stamp.

I was still slow at detective work, and it was some minutes before the explanation flashed on me. The letter had never been posted at all. The stamp was a fake, and had been borrowed from an old envelope. There was only one way in which it could have come. It must have been put in the letter bag while the postman was on his way from Pietersdorp. My unknown friend must therefore be somewhere within eighty miles of me. I hurried off to look for the post-runner, but he had started back an hour before. There was nothing for it but to wait on the coming of the unknown.

That afternoon I again took Mr Wardlaw for a walk. It is an ingrained habit of mine that I never tell any one more of a business than is practically necessary. For months I had kept all my knowledge to myself, and breathed not a word to a soul. But I thought it my duty to tell Wardlaw about the letter, to let him see that we were not forgotten. I am afraid it did not encourage his mind. Occult messages seemed to him only the last proof of a deadly danger encompassing us, and I could not shake his opinion.

We took the same road to the crown of the Berg, and I was confirmed in my suspicion that the woods were empty and the watchers gone. The place was as deserted as the bush at Umvelos'. When we reached the summit about sunset we waited anxiously for the sound of drums. It came, as we expected, louder and more menacing than before. Wardlaw stood pinching my arm as the great tattoo swept down the escarpment, and died
away in the far mountains beyond the Olifants. Yet it no longer seemed to be a wall of sound, shutting us out from our kindred in the west. A message had pierced the wall. If the blesbok were changing ground, I believed the hunters were calling out their hounds and getting ready for the chase.

*
A species of buck.

It froze in the night, harder than was common on the Berg even in winter, and as I crossed the road next morning it was covered with time. All my fears had gone, and my mind was strung high with expectation. Five pencilled words may seem a small thing to build hope on, but it was enough for me, and I went about my work in the store with a reasonably light heart. One of the first things I did was to take stock of our armoury. There were five sporting Mausers of a cheap make, one Mauser pistol, a Lee-Speed carbine, and a little nickel-plated revolver. There was also Japp's shotgun, an old hammered breech-loader, as well as the gun I had brought out with me. There was a good supply of cartridges, including a stock for a .400 express which could not be found. I pocketed the pistol, and searched till I discovered a good sheath-knife. If fighting was in prospect I might as well look to my arms.

All the morning I sat among flour and sugar possessing my soul in as much patience as I could command. Nothing came down the white road from the west. The sun melted the rime; the flies came out and buzzed in the window; Japp got himself out of bed, and brewed strong coffee, and went back to his slumbers. Presently it was dinner-time, and I went over to a silent meal with Wardlaw. When I returned I must have fallen asleep over a pipe, for the next thing I knew I was blinking drowsily at the patch of sun in the door, and listening for footsteps. In the dead stillness of the afternoon I thought I could discern a shuffling in the dust. I got up and looked out, and there sure enough was some one coming down the road.

But it was only a Kaffir, and a miserable-looking object at that. I had never seen such an anatomy. It was a very old man, bent almost double, and clad in a ragged shirt and a pair of foul khaki trousers. He carried an iron pot, and a few belongings were tied up in a dirty handkerchief. He must have been a
dacha
*
-smoker, for he coughed hideously, twisting his body with the paroxysms. I had seen the type before – the old broken-down native who had no kin to support him, and no tribe to shelter him. They wander about the roads, cooking their wretched meals by their little fires, till one morning they are found still under a bush.

The native gave me good-day in Kaffir, then begged for tobacco or a handful of mealie-meal.

I asked him where he came from.

‘From the west, Inkoos,' he said, ‘and before that from the south. It is a sore road for old bones.'

I went into the store to fetch some meal, and when I came out he had shuffled close to the door. He had kept his eyes on the ground, but now he looked up at me, and I thought he had very bright eyes for such an old wreck.

‘The nights are cold, Inkoos,' he wailed, ‘and my folks are scattered, and I have no kraal. The aasvogels follow me, and I can hear the blesbok.'

‘What about the blesbok?' I asked with a start.

‘The blesbok are changing ground,' he said, and looked me straight in the face.

‘And where are the hunters?' I asked.

‘They are here and behind me,' he said in English, holding out his pot for my meal, while he began to edge into the middle of the road.

I followed, and, speaking English, asked him if he knew of a man named Colles.

‘I come from him, young Baas. Where is your house? Ah, the school. There will be a way in by the back window? See that it is open, for I'll be there shortly.' Then lifting up his voice he
called down in Sesutu all manner of blessings on me for my kindness, and went shuffling down the sunlit road, coughing like a volcano.

In high excitement I locked up the store and went over to Mr Wardlaw. No children had come to school that day, and he was sitting idle, playing patience. ‘Lock the door,' I said, ‘and come into my room. We're on the brink of explanations.'

In about twenty minutes the bush below the back-window parted and the Kaffir slipped out. He grinned at me, and after a glance round, hopped very nimbly over the sill. Then he examined the window and pulled the curtains.

‘Is the outer door shut?' he asked in excellent English. ‘Well, get me some hot water, and any spare clothes you may possess, Mr Crawfurd. I must get comfortable before we begin
indaba
*
. We've the night before us, so there's plenty of time. But get the house clear, and see that nobody disturbs me at my toilet. I am a modest man, and sensitive about my looks.'

I brought him what he wanted, and looked on at an amazing transformation. Taking a phial from his bundle, he rubbed some liquid on his face and neck and hands, and got rid of the black colouring. His body and legs he left untouched, save that he covered them with shirt and trousers from my wardrobe. Then he pulled off a scaly wig, and showed beneath it a head of close-cropped grizzled hair. In ten minutes the old Kaffir had been transformed into an active soldierly-looking man of maybe fifty years. Mr Wardlaw stared as if he had seen a resurrection.

‘I had better introduce myself,' he said, when he had taken the edge off his thirst and hunger. ‘My name is Arcoll, Captain James Arcoll. I am speaking to Mr Crawfurd, the storekeeper, and Mr Wardlaw, the schoolmaster, of Blaauwildebeestefontein. Where, by the way, is Mr Peter Japp? Drunk? Ah, yes, it was always his failing. The quorum, however, is complete without him.'

By this time it was about sunset, and I remember I cocked my ear to hear the drums beat. Captain Arcoll noticed the movement as he noticed all else.

‘You're listening for the drums, but you won't hear them. That business is over here. Tonight they beat in Swaziland and down into the Tonga border. Three days more, unless you and I, Mr Crawfurd, are extra smart, and they'll be hearing them in Durban.'

It was not till the lamp was lit, the fire burning well, and the house locked and shuttered, that Captain Arcoll began his tale.

‘First,' he said, ‘let me hear what you know. Colles told me that you were a keen fellow, and had wind of some mystery here. You wrote him about the way you were spied on, but I told him to take no notice. Your affair, Mr Crawfurd, had to wait on more urgent matters. Now, what do you think is happening?'

I spoke very shortly, weighing my words, for I felt I was on trial before these bright eyes. ‘I think that some kind of native rising is about to commence.'

‘Ay,' he said drily, ‘you would, and your evidence would be the spying and drumming. Anything more?'

‘I have come on the tracks of a lot of I.D.B. work in the neighbourhood. The natives have some supply of diamonds, which they sell bit by bit, and I don't doubt but they have been getting guns with the proceeds.'

He nodded. ‘Have you any notion who has been engaged in the job?'

I had it on my tongue to mention Japp, but forbore, remembering my promise. ‘I can name one,' I said ‘a little yellow Portugoose, who calls himself Henriques or Hendricks. He passed by here the day before yesterday.'

Captain Arcoll suddenly was consumed with quiet laughter. ‘Did you notice the Kaffir who rode with him and carried his saddlebags? Well, he's one of my men. Henriques would have a fit if he knew what was in those saddlebags. They contain my change of clothes, and other odds and ends. Henriques' own stuff is in a hole in the spruit. A handy way of getting
one's luggage sent on, eh? The bags are waiting for me at a place I appointed.' And again Captain Arcoll indulged his sense of humour. Then he became grave, and returned to his examination.

‘A rising with diamonds as the sinews of war, and Henriques as the chief agent. Well and good! But who is to lead, and what are the natives going to rise about?'

‘I know nothing further, but I have made some guesses.'

‘Let's hear your guesses,' he said, blowing smoke rings from his pipe.

‘I think the main mover is a great black minister who calls himself John Laputa.'

Captain Arcoll nearly sprang out of his chair. ‘Now, how on earth did you find that out? Quick, Mr Crawfurd, tell me all you know, for this is desperately important.'

I began at the beginning, and told him the story of what happened on the Kirkcaple shore. Then I spoke of my sight of him on board ship, his talk with Henriques about Blaauwildebeestefontein, and his hurried departure from Durban.

Captain Arcoll listened intently, and at the mention of Durban he laughed. ‘You and I seem to have been running on lines which nearly touched. I thought I had grabbed my friend Laputa that night in Durban, but I was too cocksure and he slipped off. Do you know, Mr Crawfurd, you have been on the right trail long before me? When did you say you saw him at his devil-worship? Seven years ago? Then you were the first man alive to know the Reverend John in his true colours. You knew seven years ago what I only found out last year.'