CHAPTER I.

NIGHT ON THE WASTE.

_"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile."_—Psalm xxxii. 1, 2.

"No use, it won't do. Rhinoceros hide won't get another yard out of them beasts! We must outspan * for the night!" exclaimed Hans Kuhe, the Dutch Boer, † after Pollux, his Hottentot driver, had been for an hour belabouring, with the huge whip, eight unfortunate oxen that were vainly trying to drag his waggon through a sandy African waste.

* Unyoke. † Dutch farmer at the Cape Colony.

"If we could but have reached water—the poor beasts are dying of thirst," observed David, an English lad who was servant to the Boer. "Eight oxen are not enough to draw that heavy waggon."

And he looked with pity at the panting creatures, whose sides were seamed with weals, and bleeding from the whip which Pollux had plied with such merciless force.

Hans muttered a curse on the four oxen that had died on the road, and a fiercer one upon the Bushmen who had carried off two others during the night. He was a large, bulky man, with coarse features bloated by intemperance, his brandy-bottle and his pipe being his two constant companions.

"Help Pollux to outspan. Don't stand there like a lazy cur, as you are!" exclaimed the Boer to the English lad, who had done nine-tenths of all the work since the expedition had started. "No sulky looks for me,—and why do you go limping like that?" The question was asked in a tone of anger, by no means that of pity.

"That fore ox kicked me on the ankle," said David.

"You're an awkward cub!" growled the Boer. "No time to be lame now—you've a thirty miles' walk afore ye to-morrow, ere we got to the Quagga Fountain. Now make haste, will ye, and take the yoke off that beast."

"Who will take the yoke off 'me?'" thought the poor lad, as, biting his lip to repress either anger or pain, he proceeded to help to outspan the oxen for the night.

But a year before, David Aspinall had been a fine specimen of an English youth, with strength in his well-knit limbs, and careless mirth in his eyes, and a light heart in his bosom, which knew little of sorrow or care. "Now," the sun-burnt cheek had grown hollow, and the eye had lost all its brightness, and the clothes hung loosely on the wasted limbs, and the expression of his face told of hardship and grief, borne silently, but felt none the less.

"It has been my own choice, this path of misery; it has been my own putting on, this intolerable yoke of bondage!" so thought David, as he went on with his occupation. "'The wages of sin'—the wages of sin—ay, I know what they come to! I have none to blame but myself! I might have been—" but as that "might have been" was too bitter a reflection to dwell on, David tried to drive it away.

The evening's work was done. Hans, after a heavy meal of beltong * taken with a large amount of brandy, sat on the waggon shaft, smoking his pipe in lazy enjoyment, and his weary, almost worn-out servant was suffered to take his food. There was nothing that would have refreshed David so much as to have plunged his aching head into cold water, and so have quenched his feverish thirst, but the small supply left in the water-jar was precious, and he scarcely received enough to relieve his most pressing need.

* Dried flesh.

"Now I'm going to turn in," said Hans Kuhe, who, after the fashion of African travellers, made a house of his waggon; "you must keep watch, Davy, to-night, for Pollux is not to be trusted; there he lies snoring already! We may have some of the Bushmen thieves down on us again, or the hyenas may come slinking to see what they can carry off, or a lion may scent the cattle. I fancy I heard a roar in the distance. You keep the double-barrelled gun beside you, and mind, no sleeping on watch, or I'll give you a taste of the rhinoceros hide!"

The bulky form of the Boer soon disappeared under the tilt of the waggon. David Aspinall was left to watch through the long weary hours in the dreary African waste. Night was there, but without its stillness. The painful lowing of the thirsty oxen, the occasional loud barking of the dogs whom a sense of danger seemed to keep wakeful, the howling of jackals, and the wild laugh of the hyenas in the distance, made together a horrible concert, which combined with the pain in his ankle to keep the weary lad from sleeping.

Would you wish to know the thoughts that passed through his mind, as resting on the sands, with his back against one of the huge wheels of the heavy waggon, and the double-barrelled gun close to his hand, David sat with his eyes fixed on the large round moon which seemed to hang so near to earth, and which threw such black shadows of every object on the waste?

"A blessing and a curse were set before me; I left the blessing, and chose the curse! I was taught the right way, I was told my duty, I had parents who tried to lead me heavenwards, both by their words and their example. I had a conscience, but I would not listen to it; a Bible, but I cared not to read it. What would I not give for that Bible now! I have not set eyes on one for months! I wonder if I could remember anything of what I learnt by heart when I was a child at Greenside Farm!" and David began half aloud:

"'The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters.'

"I can't go on with that," murmured the poor lad with a choking sensation at his throat, as his memory recalled soft green meadows, spangled with buttercups and daisies, in which he had sported when a child, and the little gurgling stream sparkling in the sunshine, as it flowed from under the shadow of the one-arched bridge. "That Psalm is not for me, not for a wandering sheep; it is for God's own flock, who hear His voice, and follow Him. I'm afraid I can remember no other: yes, there's the thirty-second Psalm, my mother's favourite, perhaps I could get through that.

"'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile!'"

David stopped short, and pressed his feverish brow. "'That' Psalm may be for me, for it is for the wanderer; it speaks of transgression and sin,—and oh! It speaks of forgiveness and blessing! Can it be that I, wretched, desolate as I am, can be 'blessed?'"

David looked earnestly up at the bright clear moon, as if to read an answer to his question there. She could smile in the desert, even as she had smiled on the meadows, and the trees, and the flowing stream by his English home; nay, she looked larger and lovelier here, as the air was clearer.

"Blessed—blessed," repeated David to himself, as if he had difficulty in taking in the meaning of the words. "But 'how' can transgression be forgiven, and 'how' can sin be covered?"

Then in that wild solitude there came back on the memory of the poor lad lessons learned on the knee of his mother, lessons which had seemed till that moment forgotten; sermons heard in the quiet little church on the hill, whither he had often gone so unwillingly, where he had listened so carelessly to the message of "good tidings" from the lips of his pastor. David was not ignorant of the truths of the Gospel, but it had seemed as if, with him, the good seed had fallen by the wayside, and that pride, selfishness, and folly, like the birds of the air, had carried it all away. But it was not really so; some had rested on his memory, and now in the dreary African land were to spring up and bear good fruit.

Very familiar to the ear of David Aspinall had been the verse,—

"'The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.'"

But he had never cared in his days of selfish mirth to apply its meaning to himself. David then had taken his sins too little to heart to reflect whether his could ever be cleansed away. He had welcomed Christmas year after year, but merely as a time of mirth and feasting; it had seemed little to him that a Saviour had deigned to be born into the world which He had made,—for David had felt no need of a Saviour.

It was different now: all the lad's earthly hopes had been crushed, all his earthly happiness had vanished away. David had offended against the laws of his country; he had found no mercy from man, and he feared the just anger of God. David had nothing left to cling to but the hope of forgiveness, and he knew, he had been taught from his childhood, that forgiveness, though freely offered to "all," could only be procured by "any" through faith in a crucified Saviour, who "died, the Just for the unjust"!

It was long since David had prayed. Perhaps it might more truly be said that he had never prayed in his life, for what are words without thoughts, the service of the lips without the love of the heart? David's first real prayer for forgiveness arose as he sat by the wheel of that great waggon, with the yells of wild beasts sounding in his ears. In his spirit there was at least "no guile." He did not deceive himself as to his state before God; he made no excuses for his errors; he felt from the bottom of his heart that he was a sinner, and deserved all the misery that he endured. He knew that it would be a mockery of God to ask pardon for the "past," without also asking for grace for the "future," to lead a new and better life. David was honest in his repentance, sincere in his sorrow for sin. Alas! There are too many who mistake the mere cry of distress, under sharp affliction, for the penitent grief of a broken and contrite heart!

David had unconsciously clasped his hands in prayer; when he had unclasped them, he accidentally put his left hand down towards the ground, and he started as it touched something clammy, which moved under his touch as if alive. The next moment the full moonlight fell on a large black poisonous snake, rapidly gliding away over the sand! It had been coiled up quite close to the lad, so close as to have been concealed by his own shadow! There had David rested in perfect unconsciousness of the deadly enemy so near, that an incautious movement on his part, by hurting and irritating the reptile, might have cost him his life! David made no attempt to pursue the serpent; his foot had by this time swelled so much that he could hardly have put it to the ground, and to have broken the heavy sleep of Hans for so commonplace an event (in Africa) as the appearance of a poisonous snake, would only have drawn upon himself the savage anger of the Boer.

But the visit of the reptile had not been without its effect on the mind of David, occurring as it had done at an hour of penitence and prayer. He felt that a pitying Providence had been watching over him, and a hope arose that he had been saved for future good, that his painful life had not been lengthened but for some purpose of mercy and love. As David silently returned thanks to God for having saved him from the fangs of the serpent, he almost felt as if this deliverance were a pledge that his prayer had been heard, and that his sins were forgiven. Oh! If he could but be at peace with God, then indeed might he face all his miseries with a firm and undaunted soul!

Then followed other thoughts, suggested by the wild howls of the jackals and hyenas, snuffing the scent of food, yet not daring to attack the travelling party. "Those sounds used to frighten me when I was new to them," thought David, "and even now they sent a thrill through me which was something like fear. I listened to them, and looked to my musket, and kept watchful and ready. But I was utterly careless of the far greater danger close by, the venomous serpent coiling so near! It is like what happens to us in life. We are watchful against outer dangers, we try to guard against poverty, sickness and pain, and we let the venomed serpent of sin lie in our bosom, though we know that its bite is death!"

David remained wakeful at his post, till the approach of the morn made the wild creatures of the desert retire. Then indeed his thoughts became very dim and confused; a sound as of church bells was in his ears, like the invitation to come and worship which he had so often heard in the country of his birth, and so often of late months refused to accept. Then he was no longer in the dry and thirsty waste, the heavy waggon with its great canvas tilt, the broad wheels—the tired oxen resting around,—all had disappeared from his view. David dreamed that he was in the little church on the hill, sitting by the side of his mother in the well-remembered seat close to the pillar. He had often sat there when he was a boy, impatient for the end of the service, with thoughts intent on the thrush's nest that he had seen in the thicket, or the jackdaw's brood that he hoped to bring down from the old ruined tower. David had grudged the time spent in church, and now that church in his dream appeared to him almost like heaven!

There was the well-known hymn—"Rock of Ages, cleft for me!"—swelling in the slumberer's ear, and David could distinguish the tones of his mother's voice, but sweeter than they ever had sounded before! And then he seemed to be listening to the aged white-headed pastor, whose sermons he once had thought so long,—and the silver hair above his brow looked to the dreaming youth like a glory! He was preaching about the Prodigal Son, and the joy in the father's home—and the father's heart—when the lost one again was found! David fancied that he caught the sound of his mother's sob, and that the old clergyman's eyes were fixed on him, and that he knew that he "himself" was the prodigal welcomed back,—never to wander again! The last words that rang in David's ear before his sweet dream was rudely broken, were the words of the Psalm that his mother loved,—the words that had brought to him comfort and hope,—

"'Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is covered.'"