The Settler and the Savage - Robert Michael Ballantyne (reading a book .txt) 📗

repeated it again and again. Dobson could see her through an opening in the branches, standing helpless, with her hands clasped and eyeballs glaring. Thoroughly alarmed, he dashed towards the gate. At the same moment the voice of a child was heard:--

"Oh, look!--look 'ere, nuss, ain't I cotched a pritty ting--such a pritty ting!"

Springing through the gate, Dobson beheld Master Junkie, staggering up the track like a drunken man, with one hand clasped tight round the throat of a snake whose body and tail were twining round the chubby arm of its captor in a vain effort at freedom, while its forked tongue darted out viciously. It was at once recognised as one of the most deadly snakes in the country.

"Ain't it a booty?" cried Junkie, confronting Dobson, and holding up his prize like the infant Hercules, whom he very much resembled in all respects.

Dobson, seizing the child's hand in his own left, compressed it still tighter, drew his hunting-knife, and sliced off the reptile's head, just as Edwin Brook with his wife and daughter, attracted by the nurse's outcry, rushed from the cottage to the rescue. Scholtz and George Dally at the same time ran out respectively from stable and kitchen.

Mrs Scholtz had gone into a hysterical fit of persistent shrieking and laughter, which she maintained until she saw that her darling was saved; then, finishing off with a prolonged wail, she fell flat on the grass in a dead faint.

Junkie at the same moment, as it were, took up the cry. To be thus robbed of his new-found pet would have tried a better temper than his. Without a moment's hesitation he rushed at Frank Dobson and commenced violently to kick his shins, while he soundly belaboured his knees with the still wriggling tail of the poor snake.

"What a blessing!" exclaimed Mrs Brook, grasping Dobson gratefully by the hand.

"What a mercy!" murmured Gertie, catching up the infant Hercules and taking him off to the cottage.

"What a rumpus!" growled Dally, taking himself off to the kitchen.

Scholtz gave no immediate expression to his feelings, but, lifting his better half from the grass, he tucked her under one of his great arms, and, with the muttered commentary, "zhe shrieckz like von mad zow," carried her off to his own apartment, where he deluged her with cold water and abuse till she recovered.

"Your arrival has created quite a sensation, Dobson," said Edwin Brook, with a smile, as they walked up to the house.

"Say, rather, it was opportune," said Mrs Brook; "but for your prompt way of using the knife our darling might have been bitten. Oh! I do dread these snakes, they go about in such a sneaking way, and are so very deadly. I often wonder that accidents are not more frequent, considering the numbers of them that are about."

"So do I, Mrs Brook," returned Dobson; "but I suppose it is owing to the fact that snakes are always most anxious to keep out of man's way, and few men are as bold as your Junkie. I never heard of one being collared before, though a friend of mine whom I met on my last visit to the karroo used sometimes to catch hold of a snake by the tail, whirl it round his head, and dash its brains out against a tree."

"You'll stay with us to-day, Dobson!" said Brook.

Frank, involuntarily casting a glance at the pretty face of Gertie--who had by that time attained to the grace of early womanhood,--accepted the invitation, and that day at dinner entertained the family with graphic accounts of his experiences among the wild beasts of the Great Fish River jungles, and dilated on his prospects of making a fortune by trading in ivory. "If that foolish law," he said, "had not been made by our Governor, prohibiting traffic with the Kafirs, I could get waggon-loads of elephants' tusks from them for an old song. As it is, I must knock over the elephants for myself--at least until the laws in question are rescinded."

"The Governor seems to have a special aptitude," said Brook, with a clouded brow, "not only for framing foolish laws, but for abrogating good ones."

The Governor referred to was Lord Charles Somerset, who did more to retard the progress of the new settlements on the frontiers of Kafirland than any who have succeeded him. Having complicated the relations of the colonists and Kafirs, and confused as well as disgusted, not to say astonished, the natives during his first term of office, he went to England on leave of absence, leaving Sir Rufane Shaw Donkin to act as Governor in his place.

Lord Charles seems to have been a resentful as well as an incapable man, for immediately after his return to the colony in 1821 he overturned the policy of the acting Governor, simply because he and Sir Rufane were at personal enmity. The colony at that time, and the Home Government afterwards, approved of the wise measures of the latter. He had arranged the military forces on the frontier so as to afford the new settlers the greatest possible amount of protection; the Cape corps men had been partly placed at their disposal, both to assist and defend; those who found their allotted farms too small, had them increased to the extent of the farms of their Dutch neighbours; acceptable public officers were appointed; provisions were supplied on credit, and everything, in short, had been done to cheer and encourage the settlers during the period of gloom which followed their first great calamity, the failure of the wheat-crops. All this was upset on the return of Lord Charles Somerset. With a degree of tyranny and want of judgment worthy of a mere "Jack-in-office," he immediately removed from the magistracy of the British Settlement of Albany a favourite and able man, to make room for one of his own proteges and supporters. He withdrew troops from one of the most important frontier villages (in a strategic point of view), and stopped the formation of a road to it, thus compelling the settlers to desert it and leave their standing crops to the surprised but pleased Kafirs, who were perplexed as well as emboldened by the vacillating policy of white Governors! In addition to this he gave permission to the savage chief Macomo to occupy the land so vacated, thus paving the way for future wars. Instead of encouraging traffic with the Kafirs he rendered it illegal. He issued a proclamation forbidding all public meetings for political purposes; he thwarted the philanthropic and literary Pringle and Fairbairn in their attempts to establish a newspaper, and drove the former from the colony. But why proceed? We cite these facts merely to account for the cloud on Edwin Brook's brow, and for the fact that at this time many of the British settlers, who would gallantly have faced the "rust" and other troubles and difficulties sent to them by Providence, could not bear the oppression which "driveth a wise man mad," but, throwing up all their hopes and privileges as settlers, scattered themselves far and wide over the colony. This, as it happened, was much to the advantage of themselves and the old Dutch settlers with whom they mingled. Those of them who remained behind, however, continued to fight the battle against oppression and circumstances most manfully.

Long and patiently did Mrs Brook listen to her visitor and husband while they indignantly discussed these subjects.

"But why," said she, at last giving vent to her feelings, "why does the Government at home not remove such an incapable and wicked Governor and give us a better?"

"Because, my dear," replied Edwin, with a smile, "the incapable and wicked Governor happens to possess almost despotic _power_, and can gain the ear of men in high places at home, so that they are deceived by him, while all who venture to approach them, except through this Governor, are regarded with suspicion, being described as malcontents. And yet," continued Brook, growing warm at the thought of his wrongs, "we do not complain of those at home, or of the natural disadvantages of the country to which we have been sent. We settlers are actuated by one undivided feeling of respect and gratitude to the British Government, which future reverses will never efface; but it is peculiarly hard to have been sent to this remote and inaccessible corner of the globe, and to be left to the control of one individual, who misrepresents us and debars us the right to express our collective sentiments. Why, we might as well be living under the dominion of the Turk. But a word in your ear, Frank Dobson; meetings _have_ been held, private ones, while you were away in the bush, and our case _has_ been properly represented at last, and a Royal Commission of Inquiry is to be sent out to put things right. So there's hope for us yet! The clouds which have been so long lowering, are, I think, beginning to clear away."

While the sanguine settler was thus referring to the clouds of adversity which had for more than two years hovered over the young settlement, the natural clouds were accumulating overhead in an unusually threatening manner. Long periods of drought are frequently followed in South Africa by terrible thunderstorms. One of them seemed to be brewing just then.

"I fear Hans and Considine will get wet jackets before they arrive," said Frank Dobson, rising and going to the window.

"Hans and Considine!" exclaimed Gertie, with a flush; "are they here?"

"Ay, they came with me as far as Grahamstown on business of some sort.-- By the way, what a big place that is becoming, quite a town! When we saw it first, you remember, it was a mere hamlet, the headquarters of the troops."

"It will be a city some day," prophesied Brook as he put on an old overcoat that had hitherto survived the ravages of time; "you see all our comrades who have discovered that farming is not their vocation are hiving off into it, and many of them, being first-rate mechanics, they have taken to their trades, while those with mercantile tendencies have opened stores. You shall see that things will shake into their proper places, and right themselves in time, and this will become a flourishing colony, for the most of us are young and full of British pluck, while the climate, despite a few trifling disadvantages, is really splendid."

Edwin Brook spoke heartily, as he clapped his hat firmly on, preparatory to going out to make things secure against the expected storm.

At the same moment the South African storm-fiend (an unusually large though not frequently obtrusive one) laughed in a voice of thunder and nearly dashed in the windows with a tempest of wind and rain! As if his voice had called up spirits from the "vasty deep," two horsemen suddenly appeared approaching at full speed. One of them was of unusual size.

"Here they come just in time!" exclaimed Gertie, clapping her hands in excitement.

The _girl_ spoke and acted there. Then she blushed for the _woman_ interfered!

Hans Marais reached the quince hedge first and sprang off his steed. Charlie Considine came second. With a wild whoop he caused his steed to leap the garden gate and dismounted at the cottage door.

Then there was a hearty welcoming and inquiring, and shaking of bands, while the travellers were congratulated on having just escaped