Jess by H. Rider Haggard (big screen ebook reader .txt) 📖

do not think that I would guide you to an unsafe drift?" Then with another bow he rode on to speak to the two Boers, saying, as he went, "Will you tell the Kafir to put the horses in?"

With a shrug of the shoulders John rose and went to Mouti, to help him to drive up the four greys, which were now standing limply together, biting at the flies, that, before a storm, sting more sharply than at any other time. The two horses belonging to the escort were some fifty paces to the left. It was as though they appreciated the position of affairs, and declined to mix with the animals of the discredited Englishman.

The Boers rose as Muller came and walked towards their horses, Muller slowly following them. As they drew near, the horses hobbled away for twenty or thirty yards. Then they lifted up their heads, and, as a consequence, their forelegs, to which the heads were tied, and stood looking defiantly at their captors, just as though they were trying to make up their minds whether or not to shake hands with them.

Frank Muller was alongside the two men now, and they were alongside the horses.

"Listen!" he said sternly.

The men looked up.

"Go on loosening the reims, and listen."

They obeyed, and slowly began to fumble at the knee-halters.

"You understand what our orders are. Repeat them--you!"

The man with the tooth, who was addressed, still handling the reim, began as follows: "To take the two prisoners to the Vaal, to force them into the water where there is no drift, at night, so that they drown: if they do not drown, to shoot them."

"Those are the orders," said the Vilderbeeste, grinning.

"You understand them?"

"We understand, Meinheer; but, forgive us, the matter is a big one. You have the orders--we wish to see the authority."

"Yah, yah," said the other, "show us the authority. These are two harmless people enough. Show us the authority for killing them. People must not be killed so, even if they are English folk, without proper authority, especially when one is a pretty girl who would do for a man's wife."

Frank Muller set his teeth. "Nice fellows you are to have under one!" he said. "I am your officer; what other authority do you want? But I thought of this. See here!" and he drew a paper from his pocket. "Here, you--read it! Careful now--do not let them see from the waggon."

The big flabby-faced man took the paper and, still bending down over the horse's knee, read aloud:

"The two prisoners and their servant (an Englishman, an English girl, and a Zulu Kafir) to be executed in pursuance of our decree, as your commanding officer shall order, as enemies to the Republic. For so doing this shall be your warrant."

"You see the signature," said Muller, "and you do not dispute it?"

"Yah, we see it, and we do not dispute it."

"Good. Give me back the warrant."

The man with the tooth was about to obey when his companion interposed.

"No," he said, "the warrant must remain with us. I do not like the job. If it were only the man and the Kafir now--but the girl, the girl! If we give you back the warrant, what shall we have to show for the deed of blood? The warrant must remain with us."

"Yah, yah, he is right," said the Unicorn; "the warrant must remain with us. Put it in your pocket, Jan."

"Curse you, give it me!" said Muller between his teeth.

"No, Frank Muller, no!" answered the Vilderbeeste, patting his pocket, while the two or three square inches of skin round his nose wrinkled up in a hairy grin that, owing to the cut on his head, was even more curious than usual. "If you wish to have the warrant you shall have it, but then we shall up-saddle and go, and you can do your murdering yourself. There, there! take your choice; we shall be glad enough to get home, for we do not care for the job. If I go out shooting I like to shoot buck or Kafirs, not white people."

Frank Muller reflected a moment, then he laughed a little.

"You are funny folk, you home-bred Boers," he said; "but perhaps you are right. After all, what does it matter who keeps the warrant, provided that the thing is well done? Mind that there is no bungling, that is all."

"Yah, yah," said the fat-faced man, "you can trust us for that. It won't be the first that we have toppled over. If I have my warrant I ask nothing better than to go on shooting Englishmen all night, one down the other come on. I know no prettier sight than an Englishman toppling over."

"Stop that talk and saddle up, the cart is waiting. You fools can never understand the difference between killing when it is necessary to kill and killing for killing's sake. These people must die because they have betrayed the land."

"Yah, yah," said the Vilderbeeste, "betrayed the land; we have heard that before. Those who betray the land must manure it; that is a good rule!" and he laughed and passed on.

Frank Muller watched his retreating form with a smile of peculiar malignity on his handsome face. "Ah, my friend," he said to himself in Dutch, "you and that warrant will part company before you are many hours older. Why, it would be enough to hang me, even in this happy land of patriots. Old ---- would never forgive even me for taking that little liberty with his name. Dear me, what a lot of trouble it is to be rid of a single enemy! Well, it must be done, and Bessie is well worth the pains; but if it had not been for this war I could never have managed it. Yes! I did well to give my voice for war. I am sorry for the girl Jess, but it is necessary; there must be no living witnesses left. Ah! we are going to have a storm. So much the better. Such deeds are best done in a storm."

Muller was right; the storm was coming up fast, throwing a veil of inky cloud across the star-spangled sky. In South Africa there is but little twilight, and the darkness follows hard upon the heels of the day. No sooner had the angry ball of the setting sun disappeared than the night swept with all her stars across the sky. And now after her came the great storm, covering up her beauty with his blackness. The air was stiflingly hot. Above was a starry space, to the east the black bosom of the storm, in which the lightnings were already playing with an incessant flickering movement, and to the west a deep red glow, reflected from the sunken sun, yet lingered on the horizon.

On toiled the horses through the gathering gloom. Fortunately, the road was almost level and free from mud-holes, and Frank Muller rode just ahead to show the way, his strong athletic form standing out clearly against the departing western glow. Silent was the earth, silent as death. No bird or beast, no blade of grass or breath of air stirred upon its surface. The only sign of life was the continual flickering of those awful tongues of light as they licked the lips of the storm. On for mile after mile, on through the desolation! They were not far from the river now, and could hear the distant growling of the thunder, echoing down it solemnly.

It was an awful night. Great pillars of mud-coloured cloud came creeping across the surface of the veldt towards them, seemingly blown along without a wind. Now, too, a ghastly-looking ringed moon arose throwing an unholy and distorted light upon the blackness that seemed to shudder in her rays as though with a prescience of the advancing terror. On crept the mud-coloured columns, and on above them, and resting on them, came the muttering storm. The cart was quite close to the river now, and they could distinguish the murmur of its waters. To their left stood a koppie, covered with white, slab-like stones, on which the sickly moonbeams danced.

"Look, John, look!" cried Jess with an hysterical laugh; "it is like a huge graveyard, and the dark shadows between are the ghosts of the buried."

"Nonsense," said John sternly; "why do you talk such rubbish?"

He felt that her mind had lost its balance, and, what is more, his own nerves were shaken. Therefore he was naturally the angrier with her, and the more determined to be perfectly matter-of-fact.

Jess made no answer, but she was frightened, she could not tell why. The scene resembled that of some awful dream, or of one of Dore's pictures come to life. No doubt, also, the near presence of the tempest exercised a physical effect upon her. Even the wearied horses snorted and shook themselves uneasily.

They crept over the ridge of a wave of land, and the wheels rolled softly on the grass.

"Why, we are off the road!" shouted John to Muller, who was still guiding them, fifteen or twenty paces ahead.

"All right! all right! it is a short cut to the ford!" he called in answer, and his voice rang strange and hollow through the great depths of the silence.

Below them, a hundred yards away, the light, such as it was, gleamed faintly upon the wide surface of the river. Another five minutes and they were on the bank, but in the gathering doom they could not see the opposite shore.

"Turn to the left!" shouted Muller; "the ford is a few yards up. It is too deep here for the horses."

John turned accordingly, and followed Muller's horse some three hundred yards up the bank till they came to a spot where the water ran with an angry music, and there was a great swirl of eddies.

"Here is the place," said Muller; "you must make haste through. The house is just the other side, and it will be better to get there before the tempest breaks."

"It is all very well," said John, "but I cannot see an inch before me; I don't know where to drive."

"Drive straight ahead; the water is not more than three feet deep, and there are no rocks."

"I am not going, and that is all about it."

"You must go, Captain Niel. You cannot stop here, and if you can we will not. Look there, man!" and he pointed to the east, which now presented a truly awful and magnificent sight.

Down, right on to them, its centre bowed out like the belly of a sail by the weight of the wind behind, swept the great storm-cloud, while over all its surface the lightning played unceasingly, appearing and disappearing in needles of fire, and twisting and writhing serpentwise round and about its outer edges. So brilliant was the intermittent light that it appeared to fire the revolving pillars of mud-coloured cloud beneath, and gave ghastly peeps of river and bank and plain, miles upon miles away. But perhaps its most awful circumstance was the preternatural silence. The distant boom and muttering of thunder had died away, and now the great storm swept on in voiceless majesty, like the passage of a ghostly host, from which there arose no sound of feet or of rolling wheels. Only before it sped the swift angels of the wind, and behind it swung the curtain of the rain.

Even as Muller spoke a gust of icy air caught the cart and tilted it, and the lightning needles began to ply more dreadfully than ever. The tempest was breaking upon them.

"Come, drive on, drive on!" he shouted, "you will be killed here; the lightning always strikes along the water;" and as he said it he struck one of the wheelers sharply with his whip.

"Climb over the back of the seat, Mouti, and stand by to help me with the reins!" called out John to the Zulu, who obeyed, scrambling between him and Jess.

"Now, Jess, hold on and say your prayers, for it