Part 7

‘No, we shall remain free; it rests with Monsieur to decide how and on what terms. Providence has kindly sent Monsieur to us alone; my friend and I do not wish that anyone should see Monsieur talking with us--it might compromise him as affairs will turn out. Therefore, if Monsieur will give to us his ears, my friend and I will briefly explain to him how things stand, and what we have the honour to desire at the hands of Monsieur.’

He paused for a moment, and turned to Pierre, standing in the shadow behind him; the latter made a sign of acquiescence, and Jacques went on:

‘Mademoiselle Cecile is very happy with us; it is a new game we are playing,’--he turned again and smiled at the child, who waved her hand and laughed back at him,--‘and we are very fond of Mademoiselle. But we have thought it may be best for everyone that we should continue to be free in another land--across the seas. Monsieur le Gouverneur will therefore cause to be prepared for us, in the little bay of Pontet to the east, a good seaworthy cutter of not less than ten tons, with provisions and water for twenty days; also he will in his kindness see that the road is clear for us to embark at midnight to-morrow, and he will give us--will he not?--his word of honour that he will not cause us to be pursued. Monsieur’s word of honour is his bond. If Monsieur will come to the little bay of Pontet at twelve on that night he will find Mademoiselle in the little cave close by the bay. Should Monsieur not see his way to accept these terms, he will do as he pleases, always remembering that Mademoiselle is with us, and that what happens to Jean Jacques or his friend Pierre, happens, unfortunately, to Mademoiselle also.’

So ending, Jean Jacques bared his teeth again in a genial smile.

The Governor groaned--his situation dawned slowly on him in the fulness of its horror--he clenched his teeth and groaned. His duty drew him one way, his feelings (and he was conscious then how overpoweringly) dragged him the other. He bowed his head, and pondered painfully. Jean Jacques waited some time in silent politeness, then he said:

‘Monsieur will understand that to my friend and myself our liberty is as dear as to Monsieur is Monsieur’s daughter: also Monsieur shall, if he pleases, have the night and the day in which to reflect and prepare; and in order that there may be no mistake as to the preparations, it will be best if Monsieur will return himself and give us his answer at two hours before midnight to-morrow.’

The Governor was conscious, with a feeling of rage and shame, that the convict knew only too surely that the game was in his hands; he raised his head with a jerk, and said, sharply and sternly:

‘It shall be so--at ten to-morrow night you shall have my answer.’

Then with one look at his little daughter calling merrily, and blowing kisses to him, and a muttered ‘Good-night, my darling, be a good brave child,’ he stepped firmly away, turning for a moment to say fiercely, ‘Be careful of her, men; if but one hair of her head be harmed, woe betide you.’ Then he marched heroically down the hill, and hastened to his home to hide his deadly agony of doubt and fear.

* * * * *

The buzz was hushed--hushed until the day should come again to lend it zeal and courage. It was one thing to hunt for escaped convicts, in packs, under the smiling sun, it was another to seek desperate men in the blue-black of the Southern night. The buzz was of opinion that its stomach might wait a little. Inland among the hills tired parties of soldiery still pursued their weary search, but to no purpose. That buttress on the Cathedral was a full fifteen feet from the ground--its combination with a giant, a man of genius, and a rope had occurred to no one’s mind; furthermore, the side of the Cathedral roof overlooked by the coastguard station was protected by a parapet, and this fact had also been unobserved.

Underneath the parapet the child lay tossing between her two captors. Even in her restlessness she seemed to have complete faith in them; one hand lay in Pierre’s monstrous paw, with the other she kept throwing off the clothing that Jean Jacques carefully replaced. Neither man slept; they watched their little prisoner anxiously, and every now and then Jacques spoke a word or two of soothing to the restless little mortal. In the middle watches of the night, Cecile waked suddenly from her dreams, and sat up, shaking her dark straight locks back from her hot little head, and looking wildly about her. Then she screamed, a child’s scream of terror, and the look of fright that the two men had been waiting for so painfully and anxiously shone in her black eyes. That, which only Jacques’ wonderful, almost mesmeric, power with children and the giant Pierre’s gentleness had restrained so far, was come at last.

‘_Bon Dieu_, but this is terrible,’ said Jacques; ‘gently, _ma chérie_, it is all play; see, here are thy two good friends, here is thy horse, the big Pierre who gave thee that good ride on his shoulders; gently, _ma chérie_, gently.’

He stroked the soft head, and with the tenderness of a mother kissed the hot little cheek. Pierre turned his head away, with the dumb and blind confidence in his comrade in all moments of danger and difficulty that possessed his faithful soul. But scream after scream broke from the child; it was not all play, she was in the dark, where was her little bed and her nurse? and she wanted her daddy. Jean Jacques was the father of children, a man of genius, and kindly, but he was unequal to this situation, perhaps from that very kindliness which forbade him to use the shawl to smother the child’s cries.

Now the Cathedral was high above the town, and the buzz in the nearest houses was tired, and only turned in its heavy sleep to say, ‘Listen to the wild cats in the mountains--to-morrow we will go and hunt them and the other wild beasts with dogs.’ So the paroxysm passed, and the child lay still again in Pierre’s arms, but with a dull fever burning in her cheeks and eyes. The night grew old, and the chill air smote the exhausted babe in spite of all the men’s care, and morning brought the raging fever that, if it be not stayed, means death to the white child. The men looked at each other with dismay in faces haggard with the strain of sleepless nights and dread anxiety.

‘Must we then fail after all?’ said Jacques, more to himself than to his comrade. He turned his eyes, gloomy with a bitter resentment at the rising sun.

‘Twenty hours--only twenty hours--and three lives hanging in the balance. I _will_ not fail; the child _shall_ live, and so shall we.’

‘Water,’ said Pierre, and without another word took off his hat and fitted the rope through the brim to make a bucket.

‘Yes, water before the people are stirring,’ said Jacques.

By the aid of the rope he descended with his extemporised bucket and stole down the hill under shelter of a wall to the nearest cottage--a laundry, as luck would have it--then, filling his bucket, he got back without being seen. Cecile was delirious, and as she raved and tossed, the tears stole down the cheeks of the big convict, and gently he stroked back the dark hair and carefully arranged the blanket so that no ray of the fast rising sun should fall on her. Jacques tore the flag of truce into shreds meet for bandages, and they bound them wet round the fevered head and laid the little frame in Pierre’s arms. They had no food left now except a few bananas, which they kept for the child. The fever seemed to abate somewhat, and presently she slept.

The two men sat hour after hour gazing at each other, and at the sun creeping up in the heavens. Now and then Jacques looked away at the sea gleaming brilliant and free, with a yearning look in his eyes that told more than a thousand words, and from it he looked back again at the flushed cheek of the babe in his comrade’s arms, weighing and weighing all that the sea meant to him against the pangs of that helpless innocent. Pierre sat immovable; cramp had possession of his limbs, but he sat still for his life; if the child slept through the heat of the day they were saved--what was dearer than life was theirs--if she waked, he dared not think.

Noon came and passed, and the two men sat on--sat on with the same yearning look in their eyes, and the same speechless constraint, and the child still slept. A change seemed to be stealing over the heated face. Jacques watched it anxiously.

‘The fever is leaving her,’ he said; ‘what will come after?’

Hope and despair alternated in his face.

Two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock, they counted the chimes with desperate eagerness--never were hours more leaden-footed--and still the child slept. A wan white look had come into her face, and she looked very ethereal and transparent.

‘_Bon dieu!_’ thought Jacques, in agony, ‘will she fade away before our very eyes?’

Involuntarily Pierre stirred; a spasm of cramp had shaken him to the soul, and Cecile awoke. Contrition and consternation stilled the cramp in Pierre’s vast frame, and he rocked her gently to and fro.

‘Give her to me, my friend,’ said Jean Jacques, quietly, but the look he bent on the child and the tone of his voice showed that despair had entered into him.

Truly it was pitiful--the babe was strengthless and voiceless, she only made a little imploring gesture, and looked with eyes big and dark-shadowed in helpless appeal. The two men gazed at each other in silent accord, then Jacques said:

‘She will die, if she meets again the chill night air--it is all over, my friend; with the first shadows we must take her back.’

He gave one burning look at the sea that mocked him in long blue ripples of laughter, then turned to the babe in his arms with a smile in his eyes and soothing words.

Pierre groaned, and turning over lay on his face motionless. Jacques’ watch had begun. How terrible those next three hours were--waiting for the pitiless sun to go down and the ending, ah!--such an ending of the Day of Hope. If they took her back at sunset, the child would live--yes, he knew that, he was sure of it--but at what a cost! Freedom to him was the all of life, the air he breathed; in the cause of freedom, or what he deemed such, had he not already endured two years of torment--must he go back to heaven knew how many more? Stay, could he not harden his heart? After all, who knows, the child might live anyway; it was only to keep her another four hours. A silent and bitter rage filled his heart, his own brilliant idea had cut from them their last chance; so near to freedom and yet how far; not even a run for their money, as the English say. Then his glance fell again on those appealing eyes that seemed to ask so much and yet so little--only to be taken back to her own little bed. A terrible dread and horror welled up in the convict’s heart, and quenched the flames of rage; the shame of his deed was casting its shadow before, and with anxious, desperate eyes, he watched the sun’s departure from the heavens with an agonising hope that the remorse of the murderer of an innocent might be spared him.

Slowly, slowly, the sun went down. With the lengthening of the shadows Jacques made his preparations for the return. He formed a cradle of the blanket by passing a piece of the rope through the four corners, and then made the end of the rope fast to the roof. When the lights began to twinkle from the town through the fast gathering dusk, and the strains of the convict band playing in the Place came to their ears, they journeyed--and it was time indeed.

Pierre went first down the rope, then Jacques lowered the child in her blanket cradle into his arms and followed, flinging the rope back again on to the roof, that no sign of their hiding should be left for the buzz to make mock of. They took a narrow upper path that led above the town to the back of the Governor’s house.

A sneering fate kept that procession as secret as the former one--not a creature came nigh them. The buzz was recruiting its disappointed energies with gossip to the strains of Faust. Jean Jacques, a former distinguished member of that orchestra, even now, as he walked in Pierre’s wake, jaded with hunger and fatigue, and racked with the pangs of despair, cursed his successor under his breath for a wrong note in the solo of the Devil’s serenade, the strains of which were wafted to him on an unfriendly breeze.

‘Hurry, Pierre,’ he said between his teeth.

Rapidly and noiselessly they skirted the outer wall, passed through a wicket gate, and crossed the garden to the long white house. It seemed deserted, save for a light streaming into the outside darkness from a window on the ground floor. Creeping quietly forward, Jacques saw through the open casement the figure of the Governor seated at a table in a long low room that did duty as a library. His head was bowed upon his two outstretched arms, a hat, cloak, and pistol were laid on the table in front of him.

So the preparations had been made!...

Jean Jacques withdrew, and making a sign to Pierre they moved back along the verandah until once again they were below the window of their little prisoner’s room. Noiselessly as she had been taken from it Cecile was restored to the little bed that lay ready for her. With a deep sigh she turned her eyes gratefully on Jacques as he placed her softly amongst the pillows, and then closed them in an exhaustion, deep as the grave. After listening a moment to make certain from her breathing that all was well, he drew the clothes gently over her, closed the mosquito-curtains, and slid to the ground.

‘_Allons!_’ said he to Pierre, and linked his arm in his comrade’s.

So they passed through the open window and stood before the Governor. He raised his grey head slowly from his arms, and sat staring in amaze at the two figures in front of him.

‘Monsieur le Gouverneur,’ said Jean Jacques, simply, ‘we are here, my friend and I, to render ourselves; you may do to us what you please--we have failed.’

He raised his head, and confronted the Governor, with calm and haggard face. The latter sprang to his feet with the cry:

‘My child! My child! Cowards, miscreants, what have you done to my child?’

‘Pardon, Monsieur, we are not cowards--we should not be here else. Go and look for your child in her own bed; we wait for your return.’

The Governor, without a word, turned and fled out of the room and up the stairs.

The two stood immovable and waited; Pierre indeed made a gesture towards the pistol, but Jacques, into whose eyes had crept a look almost of hope, shook his head, and the giant, faithful in his confidence to the last, left it untouched. The Governor returned, grave and stern, but his eye was bright and he walked with a firm step.

‘My child is ill,’ he said.

‘Monsieur,’ said Jacques, with dignity, ‘we were afraid for her, so we brought her home; had we kept her till midnight she would have died; but have no fear--I know the fever; she will be well again in a short time.’

The Governor shivered--the shock and strain of the last two days had unnerved him. He sat down again, and leant back, thinking. A flame shot into his eyes.

‘And you would have killed my child!’ he said, with a menacing gesture at the two figures in front of him.

‘No, Monsieur, we would not, and the proof is in that we have brought her back rather than that she should be harmed.’ Jacques looked fearlessly back into the searching and resentful eyes. The Governor fell back in his chair, and it seemed to them an eternity before he spoke again. When he did it was slowly and measuredly, and his words were those of a judge:

‘Men, I, the Governor of this great island, and a French gentleman, had sacrificed my duty and my honour to my love. What you required has been done--the boat is provisioned and ready, the way will be clear from eleven o’clock till twelve. At your bidding, _yours_, had I done this; _you_ had put me to this shame, but Fate has delivered you into my hands, and saved me what, as God be my witness, was necessity. Why should I spare you? Yet,’ he paused, and the sombre calm of Jacques’ face was pierced again for an instant by that gleam of hope, ‘you have made a sacrifice. I know that to such as you, liberty is sweeter than life,--I cannot doubt the sacrifice,--and I will grant you one chance. If that chance favour you, you will find in that chest what I have prepared for you--disguises and some papers, signed by me, assuring you a passport; hide in this room till eleven o’clock, then go, and may fortune speed you--the boat is at the little bay; but if the chance favour you not--look for no mercy from me, for by heaven, you shall have none. Wait for me here.’

Again he left the room and ascended the stairs.

‘Go, go!’ said Pierre, ‘there is still time.’

‘No,’ said Jacques, and they waited--for nearly an hour they waited, so worn that they no longer felt the strain,--there is a limit to suffering, bodily and mental, beyond which feeling is not.

The Governor returned; his eyes softened somewhat when he saw them, and he took the pistol in his hand.

‘Mademoiselle is awake; _this_ is your chance. Follow me upstairs and into her room. If, when her eyes fall upon you, there pass but a shadow over her beloved face, there is no mercy for you.’

So saying, he went out. Jean Jacques turned to Pierre and gripped his hand.

‘_Courage_,’ he said, ‘_jouons bon jeu_,’ and the indomitable spirit shone out of his black eyes into his comrade’s.

The Governor mounted the stairs. Jean Jacques whistled under his breath, Pierre wiped the cold sweat from his brow, and they followed. The Governor passed into the room through the open door; as they paused for one second, they could see Cecile’s eyes turned lovingly on him and her hands stretched out; her old nurse was sitting at the head of the bed on one side, and a doctor was on the other. A lamp, turned low, gave a fitful light; the Governor reached forward and turned it up.

‘_Dieu merci, nous avons de la chance_,’ thought Jacques, ‘at all events she will not take us for ghosts or bogies;’ then, with head up, and a smile on his lips and in his eyes, he marched boldly into the room, Pierre following like a dog.

The Governor, standing back in the shadow, his head bowed, stood watching his little daughter with eyes that burned like coals of fire in the hollows of his wasted cheeks.

No one spoke.

As Jacques moved forward, the child turned her eyes from her father towards him; when they lighted upon him, a look of curiosity, but not of fear, dwelt in them for a moment, then a smile dimpled up in the brave little face, her hand moved, and her lips parted as if to blow a kiss to her guests.

Jacques advanced to the bed and stroked the little head--Pierre stood at the foot and grinned with sympathy.

‘It is enough,’ said the Governor, ‘you are _men_; go, and God save you.’

THE SPIRIT OF THE KARROO.

‘Oh! the trail is hot, and the heart is black, Sleuth, and stealth, and a hard-gripped blade! Over the shimmering sage-green brush, Under the lea of the kopje’s rise, Winding the skein of the narrow track, Sleuth, and stealth, till the debt is paid!’

Greed, Hate, Jealousy, these three, and the greatest of these is Jealousy.

Now this is true according to Euclid, who says that the greater contains the less: it is also true that in 1891--was it? Pietris Vanhiever--

* * * * *

‘My--ahh--my a--a a,’ yawned a--large gaunt silver-backed jackal out of the long grass by the side of a little stone _kopje_. Anon he raised his head and licked his gums in a slow and appreciative manner, as if a pleasant thought had occurred to him. The night was drawing in over the sandy plain, Namaqua partridges were flitting to the half-dried waterhole, the spring-bok were drawing together, and forming serried squadrons against the possible attack of such as Silverback of the stealthy foot and hungry fang; and from the Englishman’s camp hard by came the smothered grunt and squeal of the mules beginning with rapture their evening feed out of the leather trough slung to the waggon pole.

The stones of the _kopje_ moved, and an aged one-eyed hyæna slunk out into the grey-green growth that surrounded his home. He sidled deprecatingly till within speaking distance of the jackal, and said in a whisper, the huskiness of which was born of much midnight prowling and many an unholy meal:

‘Is there meat in the wind, friend, that thou lickest so thy good red gums and white teeth? If perchance it be so, I pray thee remember thy old comrade, the widower and one-eyed.’

‘Meat,’ snarled the jackal, ‘ay, ay, but meat is for those who can see;’ and casting a sneering glance at the bleared face of his visitor, he resumed his careful watch on the camp.

‘Peradventure it is mule, O crafty one?’ said the old reprobate, leering covetously towards the newly-lighted fire that threw the encampment into sharp relief against the fast gathering darkness.

‘Bah!’ said Silverback, ‘mule! mule is good enough for prowling one-eyed vagabonds, but not for me. I would sooner chase a young buck through the long night than eat a plaguey salt beast like mule.’

‘Ow--ah,’ sighed the hyæna, ‘your Swiftness may indeed speak so, having legs of steel and jaws like cast-iron traps; but to one who has fasted these many days, being old and forsaken, mule and meer-cat ’tis all the same, it goes into the stomach--what more can I expect, who am old, and nigh to my end?’ and he rolled his eye imploringly at Silverback.

‘Well, well,’ said the latter somewhat mollified, ‘I say nothing; for two nights have I watched and hunted, and what I have seen, I have seen.’ With this enigmatical remark he sat up, and regarded his aged companion with a critical glance. ‘Truly he _is_ old,’ he said to himself; ‘he cannot count greatly on a division, and having a certain experience of graves, perchance he may be of service, the hoary old sinner. Watch with me if you will,’ he snarled aloud.

So bidden, the one-eye joined the two eyes, and with them glared on steadily and patiently through the dark at the white man’s camp.