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Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer, a novel by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 11. Out Of The Frying-Pan |
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_ CHAPTER ELEVEN. OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN "What a narrow escape, Joeboy!" I whispered. "Um!" he said. "No good go that way. Sandho break knees." "Break his knees?" I said. "Yes, I should think he would! Can you find the way back to the track?" "Um! No. All thick; all dark. Come back little way. Sit down and wait." It was good counsel, and I sat fast--rather nervously, though--while Joeboy backed the horse. And I had cause for my nervous sensation. In fact, what followed proved that, in the darkness and confusion caused by our ignorance, Joeboy backed the horse along the edge of the precipice instead of right away from it; for there was a sudden slip, and one of Sandho's hind-legs went down, making the poor beast give a frantic plunge which nearly unseated me and drove Joeboy backwards. Then, as the horse leaped up again, he made three or four bounds before standing snorting and trembling; while I heard the rush and rattle of the dislodged stones as they went hurtling down into the gorge. "Um! Mustn't try any more," said Joeboy coolly as he took hold of Sandho's bridle again, and petted and caressed the poor beast till he was calm once more. "He'll stand now," I said, rather huskily, as I mastered a strong desire to get down. "Feel round for this edge, Joeboy, and find out which is the safe way to go." "Um!" grunted the black; and after giving Sandho a final pat on the neck, he went down on all-fours and crawled away through the darkness so silently that at the end of a few minutes I began to feel alarmed, wondering whether he had made some terrible slip and gone over. It was vain to argue with myself, for the shock I had received when the horse slipped had not passed away. No doubt my previous experiences had weakened me, and made me less able to fight against what was a very ordinary trouble for a mountain rider. Another five minutes passed away--minutes which seemed terribly prolonged as I sat there in the darkness knowing I dared not stir, and convinced that we must be upon a projecting bracket of rock whose shape I could mentally picture, with only one narrow pathway off, and that hidden by the mist. At last I could bear it no longer, and, leaning forward to try and penetrate the darkness beyond the horse's head, I called twice: "Joeboy! Joeboy!" "Joeboy here, Boss," came from behind me, and I uttered a sigh of relief as the great fellow seemed to rise up close by and laid his hand upon my arm. "Where have you been?" I said in a querulous, excited way. "Where, Boss Val say? Go all round. Better stop till morning." "Yes," I said, with a sigh of relief. "Let's stop till morning. Here, help me to get down." I was obliged to ask for help, for the cold and damp air had made my injured limbs so stiff and painful that I could hardly move them, and it required a good strong effort to keep down a groan when I lowered myself on to my feet, and then gladly sat down upon the damp rock. I had no fear about Sandho, whose rein had been passed over his head and allowed to hang down, for he had been trained to stand, and having grazed for many hours, had no temptation to stir. Joeboy soon settled himself close to my feet, and then began our long and painful watching, hour after hour, through a night which seemed as if it would never end. I had no desire to question the black, for his action fully proved to me that our position must be perilous unless we left the horse to shift for himself, and all this was sufficient to keep off any desire for sleep; while a whisper from time to time was sufficient to satisfy myself that my companion was as wakeful as I. As the time passed on the mist seemed to thicken around us, with this peculiarity striking me: it seemed to shut us completely in, so that not a sound reached our ears, the silence being to me perfectly awful. At last the morning was heralded by a faint puff or two of chilly air which came and went again, till at last it settled into a soft breeze, whose effects were soon apparent. All at once, as I looked up, a cloud of mist became visible, then floated away; and as if by magic the sky, of a soft dark grey, dotted with a faint star or two, came into sight. Then day began to advance with rapid strides, and I found my notion of our being upon a bracket of rock was not too far-fetched, for we were upon a jutting-out promontory of some fifty feet across, from whose edges the rock went down in places perpendicularly, in others with a tremendously steep slope, while the way by which we came on was not above half-a-dozen yards wide. "You were very wise, Joeboy," I said as I rose to look round. "It would have been madness to try leading Sandho off there in the fog." "Um!" said Joe quietly; and then: "Look!" He pointed away to our right, and, following his direction, I could here and there make out the missing path down the pass, winding along in rough zigzags till lost in the distance. I was soon in my saddle again, and Joeboy led the horse off the perilous place where we had passed the night, and then up the pass again for a couple of hundred yards to where the track had borne off a little to the right, but where we had kept on through the mist perfectly straight, with nearly fatal results. We looked anxiously up now as we turned off into the proper track, fully expecting to see outposts of the Boers who had fired as we crossed the head; but none were visible. So we began to descend as rapidly as we could, but only at a walk, for the track was terribly rough. It was only very gradually that the valley began to open out, our way at times being along the stony bed of a mountain torrent; while right and left the sides of what looked like a tremendous rift in the mountain, split open in some terrific convulsion of nature, towered up. We went along cheerily, for every yard carried us farther from risk of capture by the Boers; and once we were well clear of the pass a couple of days would, I felt sure, place us safely in the land of my countrymen with whom the Boers were at war. "How soon shall we stop and have breakfast, Joeboy?" I said as we were passing through a perfect chaos of great stones which now hemmed us in front and back. "No fear of seeing any Boers now." The words had hardly left my lips when Sandho stopped short, and uttered a sharp challenging neigh, which was answered from some distance in front; and directly after, as I turned my horse sharply to get under the cover of a huge block we had just passed, there came the loud clattering of hoofs and a shout, as a party of some five-and-twenty well-mounted horsemen cantered out to bar the way. "Then they are there," I muttered as I swung Sandho round again. Joeboy laid his left hand on the saddle, and away we cantered forward to circumvent, if possible, the party in front whose horse had answered Sandho's challenge. The men behind yelled to us to stop. We paid no heed, but, regardless of the stones, cantered on, Joeboy taking them at a stride in company with Sandho's bounds. The next minute I was looking upon fully twenty mounted riflemen right across our path, and a glance right and left showed me that any attempt to get round them would be an act of madness, for no horse could pass. I turned in my saddle and looked back, to find that the party there were closing in upon us; and for a moment I felt ready to turn Sandho and go at them at full gallop, so as to try and cut my way through. I saw, however, this would be a greater risk than going in the other direction. "It's of no use, Joeboy," I said hoarsely; "we're trapped." "Boss Val going to fight?" he said inquiringly, and as he asked his question he fitted his long, elliptical shield well upon his left arm and arranged his assagais handy for throwing. "Two against all those, Joeboy? No; it would be folly." There was no time for more words, for the party which had remained in hiding till we had passed were closing in fast; and then a couple of young men suddenly darted out from those in front, set spurs to their horses, and seemed to race at us, leaping the stones in their way steeplechase fashion. In almost less time than I take to describe it, one of them, a good-looking, frank young fellow in an officer's uniform, rose in his stirrups and made a snatch at my arm; but, in answer to a touch of the heel, Sandho leaped forward, and my would-be captor passed me, riding on several horse-lengths before he could turn and come at me again; while, by a quick leap aside, Joeboy avoided the man who came at him, and stood with his back to a great stone, with his assagai raised to strike. "Surrender, you Dutch scoundrel!" roared my antagonist, drawing his sword, "or I'll cut you down." "Dutch scoundrel yourself, you ugly idiot of a Boer!" I cried as angrily, and I brought my rifle to bear upon him, holding it like a pistol. "Here, don't shoot," cried my adversary. "You don't talk like a Boer." "Why should I?" said I. "But you're not a Dutchman--are you?" "Hardly," he said, with a laugh. "What are you, then?" "Making a mistake, it seems," he replied. "But your people are Boers?" "They're going to beat them," he replied, "as soon as they get a chance. Have you seen them up the Nek yonder?" "Yes; I was running away from them. They were shooting at us last night." "Hi; Robsy! Steady there!" roared my new acquaintance. "Steady, I say! Friends.--You, Black Jack, put down that spear, or it'll be the worse for you.--It's all right, sir," he continued as a grey-haired, military-looking man now rode up, followed by half-a-dozen more. "This is an Englishman running away from the Boers." "Then he's not an Englishman," said the officer sharply. "Here, arrest this man.--Now then, give an account of yourself, for you look confoundedly like a spy. Here, some one, cut that black fellow down if he resists." "Be quiet, Joeboy," I cried; "these are friends." Joeboy dropped into a peaceable attitude and stood scowling at the horsemen who surrounded us. "Now, sir," said the officer, "why don't you speak?" "Because you called me a spy," I said. "Well, that seems to be what you are, you young scoundrel. How many of your friends are there up yonder?" "I don't know," I said. "Say 'sir' when you speak to a gentleman," cried the officer angrily, "and no nonsense. Speak out--the truth if you don't want to be shot." "Of course I don't want to be shot," I said scornfully; "and I'm not in the habit of telling lies." "How many Boers are there, then, up in the pass?" "I don't know," I said. "We crept by them in the dark." "Why? To come and see what forces we had here?" "No," I said. "Then why did you come?" "To get away from the Boers." "Why did you want to get away from them?" cried the officer, gazing at me searchingly. I was so hot and indignant that I would not speak for some little time. "I thought so. Making up a good story--eh? You've caught the first spy, Lieutenant." "No, sir, I think not," said the young officer. "I think you have.--Now, sir," he continued, "if you wish to save your skin, speak out. Why did you want to get away from the Boers?" "Because I was commandoed," I said rather sulkily. "Oh, then you were afraid to fight--eh?" "No; but I was not going to fight my own countrymen." "Oh!" said the officer, staring. "Here, tell me, how were you summoned?" I told him, and that the party was led by an Irishman named Moriarty. "Ah! yes, I know him. Tall, handsome, dashing young Irish cavalier-- isn't he?" "No," I said; "a middle-aged, bullying, ruffianly sort of a fellow, with a red nose," I replied. "Humph! Then where do you come from?" "Cameldorn Farm." "Eh? Hullo!" cried the young man who had captured me. "I say, take off your hat." "What for?" I asked. "Because I want to look at you. How's that scratch you got on the arm from the lioness?" "What do you know about the scratch?" I said, leaning forward to look the speaker full in the eyes. "Why, only that I shot her. What's your name? Of course, Val." "Mr Denham!" I cried in astonishment. "That's your humble servant, sir." "But you've got a beard now," I cried, holding out my hand. "Oh, I say, I am glad to see you!" "The same here, Val, my lad. I say, how you've grown! Here, Colonel, it's all right. I'll answer for this fellow. Why, Val, you were commandoed, and cutting away?" "Yes," I cried excitedly. "Here, Joeboy, this is Boss Denham." "Um!" ejaculated the black, showing his teeth. "I was running away from the Boers so as not to serve, Mr Denham," I said eagerly, for I wanted to wipe off the slurs of coward and spy. "Well, quite right, my lad," said the Lieutenant. "But what were you going to do?" "Get into Natal, sir, and join the Light Horse." "Well done!" laughed the Colonel, clapping me on the back; "then you've regularly fallen upon your legs, my lad. That your horse?" "Yes, sir." "Good," he cried, looking me over, "and you ride him well. We're the Light Horse. I'm the Colonel, at your service, and I accept you at once as a recruit." "You can go through the swearing-in business some other time, Val," said the Lieutenant. "Now then, are the Boers in force and coming down the pass?" I told him all I knew, and the Colonel laughed. "You've seen a sentry and heard a few shots fired, my lad," he said. "Why, you're not worth calling a spy." "Am I one of the Light Horse now, sir?" I said eagerly. "Certainly." "Then send me back up to the Nek, and I'll try and prove myself a better one." "I'll send you up, sir," said the Colonel stiffly, "with a vidette, to feel for the enemy and try to draw him out; but we don't call members of the Light Horse spies. If you go on such an adventure it will be a reconnaissance." I felt humbled, and was silent. "This is an old friend of yours, then, Denham?" continued the Colonel. "Oh yes," replied the Lieutenant. "His father, Mr Moray, was a most kindly host to me during a long shooting expedition, and I am very glad to have his son with us. I hope, sir, you will place him in the same troop as I am." "Certainly," said the Colonel, who then turned to me in a frank, bluff way, and held out his hand. "Glad to have you with us, Mr Moray," he said; "and I beg your pardon for being so rough with you. Your appearance was a bit suspicious, though. But what about this black fellow?" "He is my servant, sir," I replied. "Humph! But we can't allow privates in this corps to bring their servants. It is not a picnic nor a shooting expedition." Some one who heard these words cried "Oh!" loudly. "I beg your pardon, gentlemen," said the Colonel, smiling; "it is. I should have said this is not a hunting expedition. We all have to rough it." "I beg pardon, Colonel," said Lieutenant Denham, giving me a quick look. "Private Moray meant to say the black had been the servant at his home. I had forgotten the man. I remember him now. He was a good hunter and manager of the bullock-wagon we took up the country." "Yes, sir," I said eagerly; "and most useful in all ways." "Be able to forage a little for game--eh--if we run short of food?" "Oh, yes, sir!" I cried. "That will do, then; let him stay with us." Joeboy was straining his ears to catch every word, and I saw his face light up as he caught my eye, and he gave his assagai a flourish. "Yes," said the Colonel dryly, for he had had his eye upon the big athletic black; "but tell him that he must obey orders, and not be getting up any fighting upon his own account." "He'll obey me, sir," I said, speaking so that Joeboy could hear; and he looked at me and nodded. "That incident is over, then," said the Colonel sharply. "Now, Mr Denham, take a dozen men and continue the advance. We know now the meaning of last night's firing; but see what you can find out about the strength of the party holding the pass. Be careful of your party. We are good shots; but recollect they are better, and I want information, not to see you bring back half-a-dozen wounded men." "I'll be careful, sir;" and ten minutes later, to my surprise and delight at the way in which my position had altered during the last half-hour, I was riding close behind Lieutenant Denham, while, proud of his position, Joeboy was on in front, his knowledge of the pass we had just descended being most valuable at such a time, the probabilities tending to point out that he might be able to get well up to right or left of the track and gain a pretty good idea of the strength of the Boers without drawing a shot, whereas the sight of the horsemen, we felt, would have been the signal for a shower of bullets. _ |
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