



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Haviland's Chum, by Bertram Mitford.

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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 quick to
recognise the difference between constituted authority and the spurious
and usurped article--besides, here was one who had intervened to turn
the tables on his oppressor.

"Rum name that!" said his new questioner, eyeing him with some
curiosity, at the full-throated native vowels.  "Haven't you got any
other?"

"Other?  Oh, yes, Anthony.  Missionary name me Anthony."

"Anthony?  Well, that's better.  We can get our tongues round that.
What are you, eh?  Where d'you come from, I mean?"

"I'm a Zulu."

A murmur of real interest ran through the listeners.  Not so many years
had passed since the dramatic episodes of '79 but that some of the
bigger boys there, including Haviland, were old enough to remember the
war news reaching English shores, while all were more or less familiar
with it in story.  And here was one of that famous nationality among
them as a schoolfellow.

"Now look here, you fellows," said the prefect, when he had put a few
more questions to the newcomer.  "This chap isn't to be bullied, d'you
see, because he doesn't happen to be like everybody else.  Give him a
fair show and see what he's made of, and he'll come out all right I
expect."

"Please, Haviland, he cheeked Jarnley," cut in a smaller boy who was one
of the last-named's admirers.

"Small wonder if he did," was the uncompromising answer.  "Now clear
inside all of you, for you're blocking the way, and it's time for
call-over.  Who'll ring the bell for me?"

"I will!" shouted half a dozen voices; for Haviland was prefect of the
week, and as such responsible for the due ringing of the calling-over
bell, an office almost invariably performed by deputy.  There was no
difficulty in finding such; incipient human nature being as willing to
oblige a very real potentate as the developed and matured article.

It was half term at Saint Kirwin's--which accounted for the arrival of a
new boy in the middle of the term.  Now, Saint Kirwin's was not a
first-rate public school, but it was run as nearly as possible upon the
lines of one.  We say as nearly as possible, because the material was so
essentially different.  There was no such thing as the putting down of
names for the intending pupil, what time that interesting entity was in
the red and squalling phase of existence.  At Saint Kir