Bertram Mitford - In the Whirl of the Rising

Again Ancram wondered. What the deuce did it all mean, he tried to unravel, that a tough, hard-bitten frontiersman, such as he had already estimated Peters to be, should care twopence for the frown or smile of a fellow like Lamont, whom he himself had seen show the white feather on an occasion when there was the least possible excuse of all for it – indeed, he wished he himself had been at hand at the time, instead of arriving on the scene just after the rescue had been effected? Yet, somehow, there was something very solid, very square, about this, as even he realised, involuntary host of his, sitting there the very embodiment of self-possession, devil-may-care-ishness, even masterful dominance. It did not fit in, somehow, with that scene in the falling dusk, by the frozen mere at Courtland, on Christmas Eve.

“But,” he persisted, “do you really and seriously mean, Lamont, that if these chaps were to break out to-night they would cut all our throats?”

“Really and seriously, Ancram. But didn’t I tell you that the great god Chance was a ruling factor up here? You’ll soon tumble to his little ways. Here – try some of this Magaliesburg,” pushing a large two-pound bag towards him.

“Er – thanks. I think I’ll stick to my mixture. The fellows at Pagadi gave me some of that the other night, and I didn’t care for it.”

“Oh, that’ll pass. You’ll soon not look at anything else,” chipped in Peters briskly, filling his own pipe. He had sized up the new-comer as being very raw, very green. But then he had seen plenty such before. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, listening intently.

“D’you hear that, Lamont?” he said eagerly.

“Yes,” was the answer, after a moment of careful listening.

“Why – what – what is it?” broke in Ancram, and there was a note of scare in his voice. In the light of their previous conversation it must be at least the Matabele war-cry, he decided.

“There it is again,” said Peters. “Did you hear?”

“Yes,” answered Lamont. “You may be in luck’s way yet, Ancram, and get a shot at a lion. They are over there, in the Ramabana Forest, though whether they’ll be there still to-morrow is another thing. Let’s get outside and listen.”

Ancram, to be candid with himself, would much rather have remained inside. He had an idea that a lion might pounce upon him the moment he set foot in the darkness outside.

In the soft velvet of the black sky a myriad of stars hung. So near did they seem that the flash of flaming planets was even as the burning of distant worlds. The ghostly stretch of veldt around was wrapped in darkness and mystery, and from afar, just audible on the waft of stillness, came a succession of hollow, coughing roars.

“Don’t send up your hopes too high, Ancram,” said Lamont, emitting quick puffs from his pipe. “You may not get a show at them after all. Lions are very sporadic. Here to-night, fifty miles off to-morrow morning.”

Ancram devoutly hoped these might be five hundred miles off, as he answered —

“Ah yes. That’s the beastly bore of it. I’d like to have had a shot at them, I must say.”

“Oh, we’ll fix you up with that, sooner or later, sonny, never fear,” said Peters cheerfully. “If not to-morrow, later on we’ll worry up a trip, and it’ll be hard if we don’t turn you out a big ’un.”

Then a friendly wrangle ensued between Lamont and Peters as to whether wild animals, and especially lions, would come into houses after anything. Lamont declared they wouldn’t, and Peters cited instances where they had, not at first hand however; and at length by the time the guest was told off to his makeshift couch in the living-room, he was so worked up to the terrors of this strange wild land, to which he had been fool enough to come, that he spent half the night wondering whether the outer door would for a moment resist the furious rush of a famished beast, or whether the window was of sufficient width to admit such.

Whereby it is manifest that Lamont and the other had taken in the stranger in more ways than one.

It was lunch time at Peters’ prospecting camp, and Peters, seated on a pile of old sacks, was busy opening a bully-beef tin. Having extracted its indifferently appetising contents, by dint of shaking out the same on to an enamelled metal plate, he chucked the empty tin away over his shoulder, thus mechanically adding another ‘brick’ to a sort of crescent-shaped miniature wall, some ten feet behind, which had been formed gradually out of exactly similar tins, and by a similar mechanical process. Three native ‘boys,’ squatted at a respectful distance, were puffing at their pipes and conversing in a drowsy hum, the burden of their debate being as to whose turn it might be to consume such remnants of the repast as their master might leave: such being, of course, a thing apart from, and outside of, their regular rations.

In the forefront was a windlass and a vast pile of earth and stones, for Peters was sinking a shaft. Two hastily run-up huts served to house the said boys, between which stood a Scotch cart, covered with tarpaulin. Peters himself slept at Lamont’s, on whose farm these mining operations were being conducted. In the ultimate success of these Peters had immense faith. “We’ll make another Sheba Reef out of this yet, Lamont,” he was wont to declare. “This place has gold on it, and plenty, if we only sink deep enough. You’ll see it has.” To which Lamont would reply that he only hoped it might, but that he didn’t for a moment believe it would.

Who Peters was, or where he had come from, nobody knew. He was a prospector, and had never been known as anything else. Some opined that he had at one time been a sailor, and there were certain grounds for believing this, in that he would, when off his guard, betray an acquaintance both extensive and accurate with the technique of the sea. Those who tried to draw him got no further. He never gave the idea of being particularly anxious to conceal anything: simply he never talked about himself. It was puzzling, but – there it remained.

Then certain inquisitive souls conceived the inspiration of getting him to talk in his cups. But the drawback to the carrying of it out lay in the fact that Peters never was in his cups. He could drink the whole lot of them under the table, if put to it; and indeed did so, on more than one occasion, sitting there smiling all the time, as they reproachfully put it. Oh, he was a hard nail!

He was good-nature itself, as long as no one tried to take advantage of it. When they did, then let them look out. His prime detestation was ‘side,’ as more than one young new arrival from England in the early days discovered to his own amazement and discomfiture. His prime predilection was Lamont, of whom, their mutual acquaintances were wont to pronounce, he made a little tin god on wheels. Yet no two men could, in character, be more utterly dissimilar.

Their friendship dated from the war of occupation, in which they had both served. During the historic retreat on the Shangani, Lamont had saved his life, and that under circumstances demanding an intrepidity bordering on foolhardiness. Wounded and incapacitated, he had dropped behind unnoticed what time the Matabele were pressing the sorely harassed column, and Lamont had dashed back to his rescue when his falling into the hands of the savages was but a question of moments – already indeed had he placed his pistol to his head rather than be thus captured. This was the incident he had been trying to relate to Ancram, when Lamont had twice cut him short with what the guest had deemed brusque and unnecessary rudeness.

Having finished his meal Peters lighted a digestive pipe, and sent his plate skimming away in the direction of the boys, who immediately pounced upon the scraps; for there is never a moment in life when a native is not ready to feed, and nothing eatable that he will refuse to feed on – except fish.