



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




In the Whirl of the Rising, by Bertram Mitford.

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IN THE WHIRL OF THE RISING, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.



PROLOGUE.

"You coward!"

The word cut crisply and sharp through the clear frosty air, lashing and
keen as the wind that stirred the crystal-spangled pines, and the
musical ring of skate-blades upon the ice-bound surface of the mere.
She who uttered it stood, her flower-like face and deep blue eyes all
a-quiver with contemptuous disgust.  He to whom it was addressed,
started, blenched ever so slightly, his countenance immediately resuming
its mask of bronze impassibility.  Those who heard it echoed it,
secretly or in deep and angry mutter, the while proceeding with their
task--to wit, the restoring of animation to a very nearly drowned human
being, rescued, at infinite risk, from the treacherous spring hole which
had let him through the surface of the ice.

"Say it again," was the answer.  "It is such a kind and pleasant thing
to hear, coming from you.  So just, too.  Do say it again."

"I will say it again," went on the first speaker; and, exasperated by
the bitter sneering tone of the other, her voice rang out high and
clear, "You coward!"

Piers Lamont's dark face took on a change, but it expressed a sneer as
certain retrospective pictures rose before his mental gaze.  Such
indeed, in his case, drew the sting of about the most stinging epithet
that lips can frame; yet, remembering that the lips then framing it were
those of the girl with whom he was passionately in love, and to whom he
had recently become engaged, it seemed to hurt.

"Say something.  Oh, do say something!" she went on, speaking quickly.
"The boy might have been drowned, and very nearly was, while you stood,
with your hands in your pockets, looking on."

"If your people see fit to throw open the mere to the rabble, the rabble
must take care of itself," he answered.  "I daresay I can risk my life,
with an adequate motive.  That--isn't one."

The words, audible to many of the bystanders, the contemptuous tone, and
nod of the head in the direction of the ever-increasing group on the
bank, deepened the prevailing indignation.  Angry murmurs arose, and
some "booing."  Perhaps the presence of the Squire's daughter alone
restrained this demonstration from taking a more active form of
hostility; or it may even have been a something in the hard, bronzed
face and firm build of the man who had just been publicly dubbed
"coward."

"For shame!" hotly retorted the girl.  "I have no wish to talk to you
any more, or ever again.  Please go."

He made no reply.  Lifting his hat ceremoniously he turned away.  A few
yards' glide brought him to the bank.  He sat down, deliberately removed
his skates, lit a cigar, then started upon his way; the no-longer
restrained jeers which followed him falling upon his ears with no other
effect than to cause him to congratulate himself upon having given
others the opportunity of performing the feat from which he had
refrained.

The subject of all this disturbance was showing signs of restoration to
life and consciousness.  Seen in the midst of the gaping--and for the
most part useless--crowd which hemmed him in, he was an urchin of about
thirteen or fourteen, with a debased type of countenance wherein the
characteristics of the worst phase of guttersnipe--low cunning,
predatoriness, boundless impudence, and aggressive brutality--showed
more than incipient.  Such a countenance was it, indeed, as to suggest
that the rescue of its owner from a watery death went far to prove the
truth of a certain homely proverb relating to hanging and drowning.  And
now, gazing upon it, Violet Courtland was conscious of an unpleasant
truth in those last words spoken by her _fiance_.  She was forced to own
to herself that the saving of this life assuredly was not worth the
risking of his.  Yet she had implored him to do something towards the
rescue, and he had done nothing.  He had replied that there was nothing
to be done; had stood, calmly looking on while others had risked their
lives, he fearing for his.  Yes, _fearing_.  It looked like that.

And yet--and yet!  She knew but little of his past, except what he had
told her.  She had taken him on trust.  He had led something of an
adventurous life in wild parts of Africa.  Two or three times, under
pressure, he had told of an adventurous incident, wherein assuredly he
himself had not played a coward's part.  Yet the recollection so far
from clearing him in her estimation produced a contrary effect, and her
lips curled as she decided that he had merely been bragging on these
occasions; that if the events had happened at all they must have
happened to somebody else.  For, when all was said and done, he had
shown himself a coward in her sight.  Her hastily formed judgment
stood--if anything--stronger than before.  And--she was engaged to marry
a coward!

With a sad sinking of heart she left the spot, and, avoiding all escort
or companionship, took her way homeward alone.  The short winter
afternoon was waning, and a red afterglow was already fast fading into
the grey of dusk.  Against it the chimney stacks of Courtland Hall stood
silhouetted blackly, while farther down, among the leafless and frost
spangled tree-tops, the old church-tower stood square and massive.

It was Christmas Eve, and now the bells in the tower rang out in sudden
and tuneful chime, flinging their merry peal far and wide over leafless
woodland and frozen meadow.  They blended, too, with the ring of belated
blades on the ice-bound mere behind, and the sound of voices mellowed by
distance.  To this girl, now hurrying along the field path, her little
skates dangling from her wrist, but for the events of the last half-hour
how sweet and hallowed and homelike it would all have been; glorified,
too, by the presence of _one_!  Now, anger, disgust, contempt filled her
mind; and her heart was aching and sore with the void of an ideal cast
out.

One was there as she struck into the garden path leading up to the
terrace.  He was pacing up and down smoking a cigar.

"Well?" he said, turning suddenly upon her.  "Well, and have you had
time to reconsider your very hastily expressed opinion?"

"It was not hastily expressed.  It was deliberate," she replied quickly.
"I have no words for a coward.  I said that before."

"Yes, you said that before--for the amusement of a mob of grunting
yokels, and an odd social equal or two.  And now you repeat it.  Very
well.  Think what you please.  It is utterly immaterial to me now and
henceforward.  I will not even say good-bye."

He walked away from her in the other direction, while she passed on.  A
half impulse was upon her to linger, to offer him an opportunity of
explanation.  Somehow there was that about his personality which seemed
to belie her judgment upon him.  But pride, perversity, superficiality
of the deductive faculty, triumphed.  She passed on without a word.

The hour was dark for Piers Lamont--dark indeed.  He was a hardened man,
and a strong-willed one, but now he needed all his hardness, all his
strength.  He had loved this girl passionately and almost at first
sight, secretly and at a distance for some time before accident had
brought about their engagement, now a matter of three months' duration.
And she had returned his love in full, or had seemed to, until this
disastrous afternoon.  And now his sense of justice was cruelly
outraged, and that he felt as if he could never forgive.  Moreover, his
was one of those natures to which an occurrence of this kind was like
chipping a piece out of a perfect and valuable vase or statue.  The
piece may be restored, but, however skilfully such be done, the rift
remains, the object is no longer perfect.  It is probable that at that
moment he felt more bitterly towards Violet than she did towards him,
which is saying a great deal.  He had been rudely thrown out of his
fool's paradise, and with grim resolution he must accept the position
and live down the loss.  But the flower-like face, and the deep blue
eyes which had brimmed up at him with love, and the soft, wavy brown
hair which had pillowed against his breast in restful trust--could he
ever tear the recollection from his mind?  Pest take those jangling
Christmas bells though, cleaving the night with their mockery of peace
and good-will!

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Here, Violet.  What the dickens is the meaning of this?" said her
father, an hour or two later, as he met her going upstairs to dress for
dinner.  "Here's Lamont cleared at a moment's notice, without the
civility even to say good-bye.  Leaves this,"--holding out an open
letter--"saying he's been called away on urgent business--a qualified
lie you know, because no one does business on Christmas Day, and it's
nearly that now--and won't be able to return; may have to go abroad
immediately; and all the stock balderdash men write under the
circumstances; though how they imagine anybody is going to be such an
idiot as to believe them, I can't make out.  Now, _you_ are at the back
of all this.  Had a row?"

"Oh, I don't care to talk about it," she said, with a movement as though
to pass on.

"But you must care to talk about it, my dear girl; at any rate for my
satisfaction.  You had to consult me, didn't you, in order to bring
about this engagement? and now if you've thrown the man over--and it
looks deucedly as if you had--I've a right to know why.  Here--come in
here."

Squire Courtland was by no means of the type usually described as "one
of the old school," except in so far that he was very much master in his
own house.  For the rest, he prided himself on being exceedingly
up-to-date--and his estimate of woman was almost savage in its cynicism.
Between himself and Violet there was an utter lack of sympathy;
resulting, now that she was grown up, in an occasional and very
unpleasant passage of arms.

"If I've thrown the man over!" quoted Violet angrily, when they were
alone in her father's own private `den,' "of course you are sure to take
his part."

"I must know what `his part' is before taking it or not.  You women
always expect us to hang a man first and try him afterwards; or rather
to hang him on your sweet evidence alone, and not try him at all."

"Oh, father, please don't talk to me in that horrid tone," restraining
with vast effort the paroxysm of sobbing which threatened, and which she
knew would only irritate him.  "I am not feeling so extra happy, I can
tell you."

"Well, get it over then.  What has Lamont done?"

"I can't marry a coward."

"Eh?  A coward?  Lamont?  Have you taken leave of your senses, girl?"

"Well, listen.  You shall hear," she said crisply.  And then she gave
him an account of the whole affair.

"Is that all?" he said when she had done.

"All?"

"Yes.  All?"

"Yes, it is.  I don't see what more there could be.  I urged him to try
and save the boy, and he refused.  Refused!"

"And, by the Lord, he was right!" cried the Squire.  "The answer he gave
you was absolutely the right one, my child.  If it had been yourself
you'd have seen how he'd have gone in, but for a man of Lamont's strong
common-sense to go and throw away his life for a gallows' brat that has
only been fished out of the mere to be hanged later on in due course--
why, I'm glad he's justified the good opinion I had of him."

"Then, father, you think he was justified in refusing to save life under
any circumstances?" said Violet, very white and hard.  There was no fear
of her breaking down now.  The fact of her father siding so entirely
with her cast-off lover was as a tonic.  It hardened and braced her.

"Certainly I do.  He gave you the right answer, and on your own showing
you insulted him--taking advantage of being a woman--several times over,
for the fun of a squalid rabble that I am fool enough to allow to come
and disport themselves on my property; but I'll have them all cleared
off tomorrow.  Coward, indeed!  Lamont a coward!  No--no.  That won't
do.  I know men too well for that."

"Then he was a brute instead," retorted Violet, lashing herself into
additional anger, as a dismal misgiving assailed her that she might have
made a hideous and lifelong error of judgment.  "A coldblooded,
calculating brute, and that's just as bad."

"I don't fancy you'll get many to agree with you as to the last, my
dear.  Any man would rather be a brute than a coward," said the Squire
sneeringly.  "And every man is a brute in the eyes of a woman if he
doesn't lie down flat and let her waltz over him, or fetch and carry,
and cringe like a well-trained water-spaniel.  Well, that's neither here
nor there.  You've been engaged to a strong, level-headed, sensible
man--one of the most sensible I've ever known--and you've publicly
insulted him and thrown him over for no adequate cause whatever, I
suppose if ever I see him again I shall have to apologise to him for the
way he's been treated."

Violet could hardly contain herself throughout this peroration.

"Apologise to him?" she flashed.  "Good Heavens! if the man went down on
his knees to me, after what has happened, I wouldn't look at him."

"Well, you're not likely to get the chance.  Lamont is no such imbecile
as to embark on any silliness of that kind.  You've had such a chance as
you'll never get again, and you'll live to regret it, mark me."

The girl went from her father's presence in a whirlwind of passion,
but--it was mixed.  Inwardly she raged against him for not sympathising
with--not applauding her action.  He had thrown another light upon the
matter; hard, cynical, even brutal, but--still another light.  And the
sting lay in his last words.  She would live to regret it, he had said.
Why, she regretted it already.



CHAPTER ONE.

THE MOPANI FOREST.

The man could hardly drag one step behind the other.  He could hardly
drag by the bridle the tottering horse, of which the same held good.

His brain was giddy and his eyes wearied with the unvarying vista on
every hand, the straight stems of the mopani forest, enclosing him; a
still and ghastly wilderness devoid of bird or animal life.  He stumbled
forward, his lips blue and cracked, his tongue swollen, his throat on
fire; and in his mind was blank and utter despair, for he knew that he
was in the heart of a waterless tract, extending for about a hundred
miles, and for over forty hours no drop of moisture of any sort had
passed his lips.  Forty hours of wandering in the driest, most
thirst-inspiring region in the world!

He had made a bad start.  There had been festivities at Fort Pagadi the
night before, to celebrate the Jameson Raid and drink the health of its
leaders.  In these he had participated to the full--very much to the
full.  He had started at daybreak with a native guide, a headache, and a
thirst which a brace of long and early brandies-and-sodas had failed
entirely to quench.  He had started, too, with another concomitant
incidental to these latter--a very bad temper, to wit; wherefore, the
native guide proving irritatingly dull of comprehension, he leaned from
the saddle and cuffed him; which proceeding that aboriginal resented by
decamping on the first opportunity.

Then he should have gone back, but he did not.  He took short cuts
instead.  This was the more idiotic as he was rather new to the country,
to this actual section of it entirely so.  In short, it is hardly
surprising that in the logical result he should have found himself
lost--irretrievably `turned round'; and now, after two days and a night
of wandering to and fro, and round and round, in futile, frantic efforts
to extricate himself from that fatal net, here he was hardly able to
drag himself or his horse four hundred yards farther, the nearest water
being anything between thirty and fifty miles away.

The scant shade of the mopani foliage afforded little protection from
the sun, and even if it had, the oven-like atmosphere engendered by the
burnt, cracked soil would have neutralised such.  He had tried climbing
trees in order to try and get some sort of bearings.  As well might a
swimmer in mid-ocean rise to the crest of a wave, hoping to descry a
landmark.  The smooth, regular expanse of bluish-grey leafage stretched
away unbroken, in whatever direction he might turn his eager despairing
gaze; and he had got stung by ants, and had wasted a deal of much needed
vitality in the effort.  That was all, and now he had not even the
strength to climb half a tree if his life had depended upon it.  Even an
unlooked-for stumble on the part of the horse he was leading dragged him
flat on his back, jerking at the same time the bridle from his hand.

"Come here, you infernal loathly brute!" he snarled, making an effort to
recover the rein.  But for some reason, instinct perhaps, the horse
backed away, just keeping beyond reach.

He glared at the animal with hatred, not altogether unreasonable.  For
when he had been travelling about four hours, and was uneasily beginning
to realise that he was lost, he had unslung his vulcanite water-bottle--
which nobody travelling up-country should ever be without--and had
placed it on the ground while off-saddling.  But something had startled
the stupid brute, which in its blundering, foolish plunges had put its
foot clean through that indispensable receptacle, of course shattering
it like an eggshell, and spilling every drop of the contents on the
thirsty, sucking soil.  He had intended, when the worst came to the
worst, to kill the animal, and assuage his torturing thirst with the
draught of its blood; and the worst _had_ come to the worst.

Some instinct must have lurked within that stupid brain, for now neither
cursing nor coaxing, tried alternately, would induce the horse to come
within reach.  Exhausted as it was, it would still slue round, jerking
the bridle away with every attempt to seize it.  Once, in desperation,
he seized a stirrup leather, hoping to gain the saddle that way, and
recover the bridle-rein, only to result in a nasty fall against a mopani
stem.

Hideous and thick were the curses which oozed from the swollen lips of
the despairing man, as he saw even this last chance of life--loathsome,
revolting as it was--reft from him.  He had no firearms; his six-shooter
he had left for repairs at Fort Pagadi, and not being able to find the
smith at the early hour of his start, with characteristic impatience he
had come on without it: otherwise the difficulty would have been settled
then and there.  But as he resumed his stumbling way, the horse,
apparently appreciating human companionship in that wild solitude,
continued to follow him, though persistently defying all effort to
secure it.

He glanced upward.  The sun was throwing long rays now along the
tree-tops.  Another night would soon be here, bringing with it, however,
no abatement of heat and thirst and torment--Ah! h!

The deep-drawn, raucous sigh that escaped the man can hardly be
conveyed.  In front the trees were thinning.  There was light beyond.
The road, of course!  He had reached the road again, which he should
never have left.  There it would be hard but that some traveller or
transport rider should find him, even if he had not the strength to drag
himself on to the nearest human habitation.

With renewed strength, which he thought had left him for ever, he
hurried forward.  The line of light grew lighter.  The trees ended.  No
road was this, but a stony dry _sluit_.  It would run a torrent after a
thunderstorm, but this was not the time of thunderstorms, wherefore now
it was as dry as the hard rock that constituted its bed.  The wretched
wanderer uttered an exclamation that was half groan, half curse, but was
expressive of the very acme of human despair.

He turned again to try and coax his horse within catching distance.  But
this time the animal threw up its head, snorted, and, with an energy he
had not thought it still to possess, turned and trotted off into the
depths of the mopani, its head in the air, and the bridle-rein swinging
clear of the ground.  With another awful curse the man fell forward on
the baking earth, and lay, half in, half out of the line of trees which
ended at the _sluit_.

He lay motionless.  The sun was off the opening, fortunately for him, or
its terrible focussed rays, falling on the back of his neck, would have
ended his allotted time then and there.  But--what was this?  On the
line of his track, moving towards him, shadows were stealing--two of
them.

Shadows?  They were like such, as they flitted from tree to tree--two
evil-looking Makalaka--with their glistening bodies naked save for a
skin _mutya_ and a collar of wooden beads, with their smooth, shaven
heads and broad noses and glistening eyeballs.  And now each gripped
more tightly an assegai and a native axe, as nearer and nearer, like
gliding demons, they stole noiselessly upon the prostrate and exhausted
white man.

The latter had not been so completely alone as he had supposed.  Yard
upon yard, mile upon mile, his footsteps had been dogged by these
human--or hardly human--sleuth-hounds.  Their ghoul-like exultation when
they had discovered another lost white man, within what was to them as
its web is to a spider, had known no bounds.  _Another_!  Yes.  For more
than one traveller had disappeared already within that trackless
thirst-belt, never to be heard of again either in life or death.

To these, and such as these, this unfathomable tract of thirst-land was
nothing.  To the whisky-and-soda drinking Englishman, with his
artificial wants, and general lack of resource and utter deficiency in
the bump of locality, it was, as in the case of the one lying here, a
tomb.  To the lithe, serpentine savage, whose draught of water, and mess
of coarse _impupu_, or mealie porridge--when he could get it--it was a
joke.  These two had learned this, and had turned it to account, even as
they were about to turn it to account again.  They had been on the spoor
of the wanderer from the very first, with hardly more to eat or drink
than he.  But then, they had not started after spending a night toasting
the Jameson Raid.

Now they looked at each other, and there was a complete inventory in
each devilish glance.  Summed up, it read: A suit of clothes; item a
shirt, boots; item a revolver and a knife--which he was too exhausted
and which they would not give him time to use; item a watch and chain--
tradeable at some distant time and place; certainly some money--
available immediately.  The horse, too.  They need not trouble about it
now.  They would find it easily enough afterwards, and then what a
feast!  Of a truth their Snake was favourable to them again!

There lay the victim--there lay the prey.  Gliding like evil wood-demons
from the edge of the trees they were over him now.  One more glance
exchanged.  Each had got his role.  The doomed man lay still, with eyes
closed, and a churn of froth at the corners of the swollen lips.  One
slowly raised his axe to bring it down on the skull.  The other gripped
aloft his assegai.  Both could not miss, and it was as well to provide
against contingencies--when--

The fiend with the axe leapt high in the air, falling backward, then
leaping half up again and performing a series of wondrous gyrations,--
this simultaneously with a sharp crack from the cover opposite, on the
farther side of the _sluit_,--shot fair and square and neatly through
the head.  The fiend with the assegai knew better than to waste time
unprofitably by completing his stroke.  He whirled round as on a pivot,
darting within the friendly trees with the rapidity of a startled snake.
But futilely.  For one infinitesimal fraction of a second, Time decreed
that that gliding, dark body should be in line with a certain slit-like
vista in the mopani stems, and--Crack!--again.  The second miscreant
dropped, like a walking-stick you let fall on the pavement, and lay face
downwards, arms outspread, motionless as his intended victim.

Then there was silence again in the mopani forest, where lay three
motionless human bodies; dead silence, for--hours, it seemed.  No; it
was only minutes.

From among the trees lining the opposite side of the dry _sluit_, out of
the burnt-up grass there now arose the figure of a man--a white man.  He
carried a.303 magazine rifle in his left hand, and a revolver of
business-like size was slung round him in a holster.  He was rather tall
than not, and loose hung; but from the moment he put down his foot to
step forth from his cover, you could discern a sinewy elasticity of
frame which it would take any two men's share of fatigue to overcome.
His face was peculiar.  Grey-bearded and high-nosed, it conveyed the
impression of chronic whimsicality, especially just now, puckered with
the chuckle which was convulsing its owner.  But there was a steely
clearness in the blue eyes, glancing straight from under the broad
hat-brim, that you would rather not face looking at you from behind the
sights of a rifle.

This curiously effective specimen of a guardian angel lounged across to