Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland Page 14
At ten o'clock all the camp was asleep, excepting the two men told offto keep guard; who paced from one end of the camp to the other to keepthemselves awake; or stood chatting by the large fire, which still burntat one end.
In the Captain's tent a light was kept burning all night, which shonethrough the thin canvas sides, and shed light on the ground about; but,for the rest, the camp was dead and still.
By half-past one the moon had gone down, and there was left only a blazeof stars in the great African sky.
Then Peter Halket rose up; softly he lifted the canvas and crept out.On the side furthest from the camp he stood upright. On his arm was tiedhis red handkerchief with its contents. For a moment he glanced up atthe galaxy of stars over him; then he stepped into the long grass, andmade his way in a direction opposite to that in which the camp lay. Butafter a short while he turned, and made his way down into the river bed.He walked in it for a while. Then after a time he sat down upon the bankand took off his heavy boots and threw them into the grass at the side.Then softly, on tip-toe, he followed the little footpath that the menhad trodden going down to the river for water. It led straight up to theCaptain's tent, and the little flat-topped tree, with its white stem,and its two gnarled branches spread out on either side. When he waswithin forty paces of it, he paused. Far over the other side of thecamp the two men who were on guard stood chatting by the fire. A deadstillness was over the rest of the camp. The light through the walls ofthe Captain's tent made all clear at the stem of the little tree; butthere was no sound of movement within.
For a moment Peter Halket stood motionless; then he walked up to thetree. The black man hung against the white stem, so closely bound toit that they seemed one. His hands were tied to his sides, and his headdrooped on his breast. His eyes were closed; and his limbs, which hadonce been those of a powerful man, had fallen away, making the jointsstand out. The wool on his head was wild and thick with neglect, andstood out roughly in long strands; and his skin was rough with want andexposure.
The riems had cut a little into his ankles; and a small flow of bloodhad made the ground below his feet dark.
Peter Halket looked up at him; the man seemed dead. He touched himsoftly on the arm, then shook it slightly.
The man opened his eyes slowly, without raising his head; and looked atPeter from under his weary eyebrows. Except that they moved they mighthave been the eyes of a dead thing.
Peter put up his fingers to his own lips--"Hus-h! hus-h!" he said.
The man hung torpid, still looking at Peter.
Quickly Peter Halket knelt down and took the knife from his belt. In aninstant the riems that bound the feet were cut through; in another hehad cut the riems from the waist and neck: the riems dropped tothe ground from the arms, and the man stood free. Like a dazed dumbcreature, he stood, with his head still down, eyeing Peter.
Instantly Peter slipped the red bundle from his arm into the man'spassive hand.
"Ari-tsemaia! Hamba! Loop! Go!" whispered Peter Halket; using a wordfrom each African language he knew. But the black man still stoodmotionless, looking at him as one paralysed.
"Hamba! Sucka! Go!" he whispered, motioning his hand.
In an instant a gleam of intelligence shot across the face; then a wildtransport. Without a word, without a sound, as the tiger leaps when thewild dogs are on it, with one long, smooth spring, as though unwoundedand unhurt, he turned and disappeared into the grass. It closed behindhim; but as he went the twigs and leaves cracked under his tread.
The Captain threw back the door of his tent. "Who is there?" he cried.
Peter Halket stood below the tree with the knife in his hand.
The noise roused the whole camp: the men on guard came running; gunswere fired: and the half-sleeping men came rushing, grasping theirweapons. There was a sound of firing at the little tree; and the crywent round the camp, "The Mashonas are releasing the spy!"
When the men got to the Captain's tent, they saw that the nigger wasgone; and Peter Halket was lying on his face at the foot of the tree;with his head turned towards the Captain's door.
There was a wild confusion of voices. "How many were there?" "Where havethey gone to now?" "They've shot Peter Halket!"--"The Captain saw themdo it"--"Stand ready, they may come back any time!"
When the Englishman came, the other men, who knew he had been a medicalstudent, made way for him. He knelt down by Peter Halket.
"He's dead," he said, quietly.
When they had turned him over, the Colonial knelt down on the otherside, with a little hand-lamp in his hand.
"What are you fellows fooling about here for?" cried the Captain. "Doyou suppose it's any use looking for foot marks after all this tramping!Go, guard the camp on all sides!"
"I will send four coloured boys," he said to the Englishman and theColonial, "to dig the grave. You'd better bury him at once; there's nouse waiting. We start first thing in the morning."
When they were alone, the Englishman uncovered Peter Halket's breast.There was one small wound just under the left bosom; and one on thecrown of the head; which must have been made after he had fallen down.
"Strange, isn't it, what he can have been doing here?" said theColonial; "a small wound, isn't it?"
"A pistol shot," said the Englishman, closing the bosom.
"A pistol--"
The Englishman looked up at him with a keen light in his eye.
"I told you he would not kill that nigger.--See--here--" He took up theknife which had fallen from Peter Halket's grasp, and fitted it into apiece of the cut leather that lay on the earth.
"But you don't think--" The Colonial stared at him with wide open eyes;then he glanced round at the Captain's tent.
"Yes, I think that--Go and fetch his great-coat; we'll put him in it. Ifit is no use talking while a man is alive, it is no use talking when heis dead!"
They brought his great-coat, and they looked in the pockets to see ifthere was anything which might show where he had come from or who hisfriends were. But there was nothing in the pockets except an emptyflask, and a leathern purse with two shillings in, and a littlehand-made two-pointed cap.
So they wrapped Peter Halket up in his great-coat, and put the littlecap on his head.
And, one hour after Peter Halket had stood outside the tent looking up,he was lying under the little tree, with the red sand trodden down overhim, in which a black man and a white man's blood were mingled.
All the rest of the night the men sat up round the fires, discussingwhat had happened, dreading an attack.
But the Englishman and the Colonial went to their tent, to lie down.
"Do you think they will make any inquiries?" asked the Colonial.
"Why should they? His time will be up tomorrow."
"Are you going to say anything?"
"What is the use?"
They lay in the dark for an hour, and heard the men chatting outside.
"Do you believe in a God?" said the Englishman, suddenly.
The Colonial started: "Of course I do!"
"I used to," said the Englishman; "I do not believe in your God; but Ibelieved in something greater than I could understand, which moved inthis earth, as your soul moves in your body. And I thought this workedin such wise, that the law of cause and effect, which holds in thephysical world, held also in the moral: so, that the thing we calljustice, ruled. I do not believe it any more. There is no God inMashonaland."
"Oh, don't say that!" cried the Colonial, much distressed. "Are yougoing off your head, like poor Halket?"
"No; but there is no God," said the Englishman. He turned round on hisshoulder, and said no more: and afterwards the Colonial went to sleep.
Before dawn the next morning the men had packed up the goods, andstar
ted.
By five o'clock the carts had filed away; the men rode or walked beforeand behind them; and the space where the camp had been was an emptycircle; save for a few broken bottles and empty tins, and the stonesabout which the fires had been made, round which warm ashes yet lay.
Only under the little stunted tree, the Colonial and the Englishman werepiling up stones. Their horses stood saddled close by.
Presently the large trooper came riding back. He had been sent by theCaptain to ask what they were fooling behind for, and to tell them tocome on.
The men mounted their horses to follow him; but the Englishman turnedin his saddle and looked back. The morning sun was lighting up thestraggling branches of the tall trees that had overshadowed thecamp; and fell on the little stunted tree,