



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Haviland's Chum, by Bertram Mitford.

________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________
HAVILAND'S CHUM, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE NEW BOY.

"Hi!  Blacky!  Here--hold hard.  D'you hear, Snowball?"

The last peremptorily.  He thus addressed, paused, turned, and eyed
somewhat doubtfully, not without a tinge of apprehension, the group of
boys who thus hailed him.

"What's your name?" pursued the latter, "Caesar, Pompey, Snowball--
what?"

"Or Uncle Tom?" came another suggestion.

"I--new boy," was the response.

"New boy!  Ugh!" jeered one fellow.  "Time I left if they are going to
take <DW65>s here.  What's your name, sir--didn't you hear me ask?"

"Mpukuza."

"Pookoo--how much?"

For answer the other merely emitted a click, which might have conveyed
contempt, disgust, defiance, or a little of all three.  He was an
African lad of about fifteen, straight and lithe and well-formed, and
his skin was of a rich copper brown.  But there was a clean-cut look
about the set of his head, and an almost entire absence of <DW64>
development of nose and lips, which seemed to point to the fact that it
was with no inferior race aboriginal to the dark continent that he owned
nationality.

Now a hoot was raised among the group, and there was a tendency to
hustle this very unwonted specimen of a new boy.  He, however, took it
good-humouredly, exhibiting a magnificent set of teeth in a tolerant
grin.  But the last speaker, a biggish, thick-set fellow who was
something of a bully, was not inclined to let him down so easily.

"Take off your hat, sir!" he cried, knocking it off the other's head, to
a distance of some yards.  "Now, Mr Woollyhead, perhaps you'll answer
my question and tell us your name, or I shall have to see if some of
this'll come out."  And, suiting the action to the word, he reached
forward and grabbed a handful of the other's short, crisp, jetty curls--
jerking his head backwards and forwards.

The African boy uttered a hoarse ejaculation in a strange tongue, and
his features worked with impotent passion.  He could not break loose,
and his tormentor was taller and stronger than himself.  He put up his
hands to free himself, but the greater his struggles the more the bully
jerked him by the wool, with a malignant laugh.  The others laughed too,
enjoying the fun of what they regarded as a perfectly wholesome and
justifiable bout of <DW65> baiting.

But a laugh has an unpleasant knack of transferring itself to the other
side, and in this instance an interruption occurred--wholly
unlooked-for, but sharp and decisive, not to say violent, and to the
prime mover in the sport highly unpleasant--for it took the shape of a
hearty, swinging cuff on the side of that worthy's head.  He, with a
howl that was half a curse, staggered a yard or two under the force of
the blow, at the same time loosing his hold of his victim.  Then the
latter laughed--being the descendant of generations of savages--laughed
loud and maliciously.

"Confound it, Haviland, what's that for?" cried the smitten one, feeing
round upon his smiter.

"D'you want some more, Jarnley?" came the quick reply.  "As it is I've a
great mind to have you up before the prefects' council for bullying a
new boy."

"Prefects' council," repeated Jarnley with a sneer.  "That's just it.
If you weren't a prefect, Haviland, I'd fight you.  And you know it."

"But I don't know it and I don't think it," was the reply.  The while,
something of a smothered hoot was audible among the now rapidly
increasing group, for Haviland, for reasons which will hereinafter
appear, was not exactly a popular prefect.  It subsided however, as by
magic, when he darted a glance into the quarter whence it arose.

"Come here--you," he said, beckoning the cause of all the disturbance.
"What's your name?"

"Mpukuza."

"What?"

The African boy repeated it unhesitatingly, willingly.  He was