“Oh, some card-sharper, most likely,” would reply a Kimberley-bound Jew, disgusted in that he had met with more than his match. But this of course was no more than conjecture, and a satisfactory answer was not to be had.
“Now who can that Mr Musgrave be?” was the more soft-toned interrogative of the saloon. “Surely you must know, Captain Cheyne. What is he going out for?”
To which the captain would reply, with a laugh of cynical delight, that he knew no more than they did, but that the readiest way of solving the difficulty would be to apply to Musgrave himself, drawing down from the discomfited fair ones the oft-repeated verdict that he was so horridly sarcastic.
But whoever Musgrave was or was not, the fact remained that he went down the side of the Siberian that afternoon, glad to take up the subordinate post in the Cape Government service, which a bit of lucky interest had procured for him; content to start afresh at his time of life in a far-away, up-country township, upon a not extravagant salary.
Chapter Two.
The Post-Cart Travellers.
Drip, drip, drip, in one unbroken downpour falls the rain. Scuds of floating wrack are wreathing the tree-tops and boulders higher up the bush-grown slopes, and the grey, opaque, lowering sky renders the desolate waste yet more gloomy and forbidding. Floundering, splashing, stumbling, even the team of four serviceable nags appears to experience some difficulty in drawing its load, a two-wheeled Cape cart to wit, crammed pretty nearly to the full measure of its carrying capacity; for the whole well of the cart is filled up. Even the seats cannot be turned to their original purpose, for they too are loaded up with sacks; and upon this irregular pile are three human beings, who are under the necessity of holding on as best they may, insecurely perched upon a sort of dome of rough and uneven surface. Some reims, or rawhide thongs, have been lashed across the top of this perch for them to hold on to, a concession to human weakness for which they are expected to feel jubilantly grateful; for they are only passengers, and—as those who have gone through the experience can certify, to their cost—the comfort, well-being, and safety of mere passengers are held by every self-respecting colonial post contractor in the profoundest contempt. For the vehicle is a post-cart, and the sacks upon which a limited number of Her Majesty’s lieges are graciously permitted to travel—if haply they can hold on—contain Her Majesty’s mails.
Some of the oft-detailed horrors of post-cart travelling seem to have fallen to the lot of the occupants of this one. Apart from the insecurity of their perch already mentioned, they are shelterless, and it has been raining hard and unintermittently for about seven hours. Swathed in theoretical waterproofs—for no waterproof displays a practical side when put to such a test—they grovel upon the lumpy and uneven surface of the sacks, jolted, shaken, bruised, the beat of the rain in their faces, varied from time to time by a copious splash of rich, red liquid mud—lately dust—thrown up from the road. All are wet, cramped and uncomfortable; sore and aching from the jolting and constrained position.
Of this luckless trio, one is a female. Another is a small wiry-looking, stolid-faced man, who might be a farmer or a transport rider, and is very likely both. The third is our newly formed acquaintance, Roden Musgrave.
We have referred to three occupants of this luxurious vehicle. It boasted a fourth. He, however, was not in like pitiable case. He was the proud occupier of a seat—a tolerably secure one. Likewise was he able to indulge in the use of his limbs, and occasional strong language—this, however, in subdued tone, in deference to the presence of the lady passenger—untrammelled by the dire necessity of clinging on for dear life. He was, in fact, the driver. To him the colonial-born passenger:
“How are our chances of getting through the drift to-night, Henry? The river must be rolling yards high.”
“Chances!” echoed the man—a stalwart fellow whose yellowish skin betrayed just a strain of native blood, notwithstanding his ruddy and slightly grizzled beard. “Chances? Ha-ha! No chance at all—no damn chance. There’s nothing to keep you from going over it though.”
“How are we going to poll that off?” struck in Roden.
“There’s a very good box. Swing you across in no time,” replied the driver, with a grin, and a wink at the colonial man.
“Mercy on us!” exclaimed the lady passenger, showing a very white face beneath the hood of her mackintosh. “I’ll never be able to do it. Those horrible boxes! I know them.”
“You’ve got to do it, Missis, or stay this side!” returned the driver, with a fiendish grin.
And now as the cart crests another rise, a dull rumbling sound is audible through splash of hoof and wheel, which, as they draw nearer, breaks into a booming roar. It is the voice of the swollen river. The clouds hang low above the scrub, lying, an opaque veil, against the slopes of the opposite heights; and ever, without a break, the rain falls steadily down. The colonial man has managed to light a pipe, and, with characteristic philosophy, smokes steadily and uncomplainingly; an example Roden Musgrave would fain follow, but that he finds his fair companion in adversity literally such a handful, that he cannot even get at his pipe, let alone fill and light it: the fact being that he is obliged to devote all his energies to holding the latter on her perch, for so exhausted is the poor thing with fatigue and discomfort that, were it not for his support, her insecure place would promptly know her no more.
Another rise is topped, and now the river-bed lies before and beneath them; and in truth the spectacle is enough to make the heart of the timid or inexperienced traveller feel somewhat small. The stream is indeed rolling yards high—a red, turbid flood coursing along some fifty feet below, in the bottom of its bed—rearing its mighty masses up in great hissing, crashing waves, rolling over tree-trunks and all kinds of driftwood, with here and there a drowned bullock, whose branching horns and ghastly staring eyes leap weirdly into view, immediately to be drawn in and sucked under by the flood. And this wild, roaring, seething horror—this crashing resistless current whose thunderous voice alone is deafening, appalling—has to be crossed somehow.
“Nay, what! Can’t even swim the horses through that!” says the driver, Henry, as he descends from his seat, while a couple of Hottentot boys, who have emerged from a squalid shanty by the roadside, are busy outspanning. “We shall have to send over passengers and mails in the box.”
“Oh heavens!” faintly ejaculates the distressed fair one; “I can never do it!”
“Oh yes you can!” says Roden, who has assisted her to alight. “It’s perfectly safe if you sit still and keep your head. Don’t be in the least afraid; I’ll see you across all right.”
She gives him a grateful glance, and answers that she will try. Seen as she stands up she is a good-looking woman of about thirty, with light brown hair and blue eyes. She is rather above the middle height, and there is a piteous look in her white and travel-worn face, half expressive of a consciousness of looking her worst, half of the mingled apprehension and discomfort born of the situation.
“Go on up to the box, lady and gentlemen,” says Henry, the post driver. “I’ll bring along your traps, and send ’em over with the mail-bags.”
Roden recognises that if he is to get his charge, for such she has now become, to cross at all, the less time she has to think about it the better; wherefore he seconds this proposition, and accordingly they get under way.
The bed of the river is some sixty feet deep by nearly twice that distance in width, and, like that of most South African streams, in ordinary weather is threaded by a comparative trickle. Such rivers, however, after a few hours of heavy rain, or even one of those deluging thunder showers which are at certain times of the year of frequent and momentous occurrence, are wont to roll down in a furious,