TWO ON SAFARI

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 108, 8 May 1937, Page 13 (Supplement)

TWO ON SAFARI

(CHAPTER XXl.—Continued.) Seizing it he turned it over and gripped her fingess, not as a suppliant, but like a tossed boat coming to anchor. "You're a good sport, Jo; this is what I needed. I've got something to tell you, and I've been putting it off." "The longer you put off saying a thing, the harder it gets," ehe said in her natural low voice. "I know that, but the chance never •seemed to come. I had to make it, and now it's here, I don't know how to begin." "What's it about? Make a start— any old start," she encouraged him. "Laurence Morland." "Oh!" Once he had taken the plunge words came easily. "Africa does queer things to a man; it either makes or breaks him. I don't mean it's a breeding place for towering successes, but that when lie grade isn't up it's bound to go down —» lot further down than anywhere «4*e. Sometimes it's the solitude that does it. That's why a lone missionary da absolutely taboo, and why the.British never let a resident commissioner stay out more than 18 months at a stretch. But sometimes it's something else — something a lot worse." "What?" "A sort of farewell to all the shackles

of behaviour —a headlong plunge out of decency. Hero's my question, Jo. If you found Morland had done just that, wouldn't it change your feeling toward him T" "No," she answered so promptly that his eyes shot to her face ia doubting interrogation. "It wouldn'jb make any difference," he insisted. ' "It couldn't. It would hurt me terribly, of couree, but I would feel toward him as I do now. Begin at the top," she suggested lightly. Anger stained his cheeks a dark red. "Black women or black drink, then both together. Illusion of omnipotence. The screaming voice, the good-bye to control, the sjambok in an ignorant hand. Spurting blood and the dead servant. Astonishment, dismay, terror. The eye too bleary to bring down game, but sharp enough to shoot down the first mutineer. Followers, blood drunk, howling for food. The sense of bridge burnt, of in-for-a-penny, in-for-a-pound—a sense as contagious as smallpox. The first inglorious raid. Then the last descent, the frenzy to kill the defenceless—the jaded appetite for butchery that can ge,t a thrill only out of the slaughter of a child." Josephine's fingers twitched violently and her face turned deathly white; then, astonishingly, she laughed. "You can laugh!" he gasped. "Because I don't believe you," she answered. "But it's an old story—a formula!" he insisted. "It's been written in blood across the face of Africa a dozen times!" "I don't believe it," she repeated almost inaudibly. He sank back and her fingers would have slipped from his hand had not an almost imperceptible pressure on their part induced him to cling to them. 'Then I'd be a fool," he murmured, "to try and say the rest." "How can you tell? It might help you even if it can't change me." The words urged him on as gentlv as the faint pressure of her fingers had led him to retain his hold. "It's this," he continued. "Suppose Morland were dead?" "But you assured me he isn't," she said quickly, half raising her head. "I know, but suppose he were. Can you imagine ever loving me as you love him t" Her head sank back. "No," she

answered deliberately. "It would'be impossible." i "Never V I "Never." j He released her fingers definitely and' sat with his shoulders slouched and his ' hand* hanging between his knees, his j eyes on the floor. "Then that ends it." | "Ends what?" "Everything between you and me, for ; there has been something between us; | I don t know what, but there's been ! something. It's ended. To-morrow I'm going to send you to the coast." I won't go." "Don't be silly. If I tell Ali to put you on board a steamer for Delagoa Bay y o u can be sure you'll go even if he has to have you sewed into Matogada's machilla. You'll go, all right" M .™ ca ™ e . + ha " erect with a movement «o smooth it seemed slow, yet was not. J^J^ me 7 °?- l Won,t «°." sh e reiterated in a. whisper. He dismissed the words with a vesture of his, dangling hand. "Feelin* the way you do about Morland" he murmured half absently, "there's no choice, either for you or for me; I must get you out of the way. You'll •tart to-morrow." Had he been watching her eyes, he might have been forewarned of what •was coming. They had finished with measuring Jrim and were burnin-r with the fire of a settled resolve. On the upended box that served for a dressino table lay her scissors. She extended 1 steady hand, took them up and held .them like a dagger. The movement drew his languid attention, but before he could dream what she was about she had driven the points deep into her left wrist. The final action was so quick there seemed to be no interval between its inception and the spurtiiiT of her blood. ° His eyes starting from his head, he seized her arm and jammed his thumb against the severed vein, simultaneously shouting to Ali to fetch the medicine chest. For an anxious quarter of an "hour he worked at sterilising the wound with permanganate crystals and staunching the flow of blood." At last the job was finished,- the wrist bandaged, and only now had he time for anger. He got up from his knees and stood looking down at her pale face. "I always thought you were mad: now I'm sure of it. Why? Why did you do it? Of course you'll isav you don't know!" "I do know, and so do you," she answered quietly. "I've shown you whether I'll go to the coast or not." He made a gresture toward her bandaged arm. "That? It won't lay you up fr >r a day." She gave him a faint commiserating smile. "You're being a little stupid. aren't you ?" He stared at her, studying her face, reading it as Tugo might read a spoor. "Yea,*' he admitted finally. "What's

By GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN

a wrist? You mean there's etill your throat or your heart, and I believe you. I'm licked." Of course she was right: the unconquerable spirit knows no master. He went out, stooping to weight down the bobbinet behind him. As for her, she lay awake most of the night with an aching arm; nevertheless the next day she was able to be about, though it took her twice as long to dress. She could not handle a gun, even the light one which had been assigned to her so often it began to seem her own, but with Abdul's help she could mount, and once in the saddle felt quite all right. At the start Ballard ignored her, but she was content to be let alone. For several hours the desolation he had predicted was not in evidence, which made the shock all the greater when the safari, its marching songs abruptly stilled, stumbled into the first ruined kraal. CHAPTER XXII. Death Sentence. All the villages were built exactly alike, and their construction conforming to tribal decrees a thousand years old; always circular, they varied only in the number of their huts. The chief of this hamlet had been a humble man with only three wives - and his establishment had been easily sacked. "Do you get the lay-out!" Ballard asked, an unusual sharpness in his voice. "You may be so blind you still can't see, but you're looking at a first mild sample. The author of this mess expects never to come back; he may have some fool notion he can push through into another jurisdiction, or cross the boundary into Rhodesia, but he knows he can never come back." Her eyes, troubled, wandered over the

scene. "Why did he do it?" she whispered. "What was the use of it?" "I told you," said Ballard brusquely, "but you wouldn't hear. Why does "a mad dog bite? We'll hardly need a tracker or a guide from here on, but we'll have to shed half our stuff before we go in. I'm going to cut back to Wemba's town and reorganise." They left the path of desolation and before sunset arrived at a settlement whose size and importance had saved it from molestation, although its outlying plantations had heen pilfered. Contrary to his usual procedure, Ballard ordered the camp set inside the village enclosure and immediately plunged into the arduous task of rearranging loads, of discarding every item, however trifling, that could possibly be done without. He abandoned work for a moment to make a last appeal to Josephine. "Please, Jo, stay here for the next week or ten days; you'll be a lot happier than if you tag along. But if you insist on proing, make up your mind to this: 110 bath and no clean clothes—there'll be only one porter to carrv vour things and mine. What do you say?" "I'm going." "You answered without thinking. Don t he pig-headed. You'll be quite safe here and your being with me can't change in the least what I intend to do When it s done I give you mv word I'll come back and tell you all" that happened. l "It's no use, Ballard." She met his eyes squarely. "Where you go, I «,.» From the vain effort to bend her will he turned to bulldozing the natives in hurrv qUa A y h ° i,e ° f maki "S them hur.y Again he met defeat, not by any individual but by the countless loose end* of red tape which must be tied in exact accord with ritual before so 'rave

an expedition dared set out. A single clay sufficed to lay out his skeleton loads and organ.se the relays destined to earrv column r»o n,g] lts ,„ oro t « the first in the reading of the bone/ the va C r On Ln n ce th ? )° W *l ° f the ''»^tWe -?r e^1o ;'^;td d^h h " t »o entranced by a divers itvof "„?*£? Scarcely a moment passed\h, ,i i '<! brmg with it some euro L I If "', " nt your tent and stav there to to agree JJ* £ * J" nic Incd she turned away her eye caLt li *t I of an object which first drew 2,* T nveted her attention. He came so confused tliof . s ,ie forced her feet to'continue while the other held her head swive Jed back over her shoulder Her eyes still fixed to the rear sli« I npped over one of the ff uv ropes o the kitchen tarpaulin and fell headlonfortunately on her right side. Even so pains shot through her bandawri wrist and she lay lialfwhiraperlng the watchful Abdul arrived to help lie ?«; • * e ?, dvent of the «n«ibari made her mstantly forget her hurt. She seized his sleeve and tu^ed "Come, Abdul; take me around. Show me the way to the other side of the dance. .He hesitated, but only for a moment since her wish coincided exactly wi+li his own. "J)is way, missis." Passing behind the tarpaulin ami around the tents he plunged into tht opening between two hut*, and Icadiu<> her over the ash heaps at their re.u filially brought her out at the farthei side of the great oval concourse illu mined by its ring of torches. Craninj; her neck she strove to measure the ?po't where she had stood before, and ther searched around her for the article 01 wear which had drawn her eye. She pressed into the serried rankt of blacks, so intent on what they watchec that they yielded subconsciously to lu>i determined pushing. At last she stooo in the first rank and anxiously scan not the line up and down. The object was gone. She gulped under the' crushing disappointment, stared blankly at th. dancer, then suddenly gulped again, this time in the access of her joy. A magnificent young male was leap ing straight into the air and batting his heels together three times befors he descended to stamp the ground agaii and again in rhythm and with a force which would have broken his leg hac not ecstasy endowed bone and sinew with superhuman strength. On his head skewered fast with thorns, incon gruously perched a European cap—a cat whose large black and white checks, no>\ dim, had once been glaring. Pusliin; furiously, she backed her way out o J the throng, dragging an unwilling Abdu with her.

"Abdul, do you know tne name of the boy who is dancing?" For a moment the Zanzibari, vicariously the victim of the same ecstasy which possessed the dancer, stared at her stupidly out of lack-lustre eyes. Then a slow sigh began to stretch"his thin lips. "His name Papu. Good dancer. He induna, son of Wemba, chief this place." She hurried back to her tent, partly to escape Abdul's leer, partly because her heart ached to be alone. For weeks she had imagined she was playing a lone hand. Illusion. All she had done was to dangle at Ballard's side, depend on him, feed off him. Here and now she was on her own for the first time. Nobody could help, least of all Ballard —nobody but she could decide whether she should go on with him or stay behind. She went to sleep with the question still unanswered to be awakened by a great hullabaloo an hour before dawn. She rose, dressed, stepped out into the blaze of torches, lanterns and lamps to collide with Ballard's striding figure.

"I was coming to tell you we're off in ten minutes," he said. "Get your breakfast. Better stuff yourself." Josephine snatched a hasty breakfast with Swayback standing at her side. She mounted, not so much in preparation* for the start as to see what | was going on. The huge concourse was thronged with warriors fantastically got up in vague imitation of various animals. Presently site singled out Matogada, his face set in stern lines and holding in his hand a hyena's tail. Way was made for nun and he stepped inside the vast circle. Groups of younger bloods ran toward him shouting: "Kwe-kwe-kwe!" Then their elders came in quick succession, each division uttering the cry of its tribe. He pointed with the hanging hyena's tail and immediately the whole impi swerved and was off to a marching song. Josephine awoke to the fact that Ballard was shouting at her to come on. Instantly the question which had troubled her on the night before seemed to have its answer; she 'would go—go and come back. Already Pepper was off at a canter, and touching her heels to Swayback she followed.

During the next 48 hours she had reason to recall the first two days out of Machiche. In comparison with this, that ride had been mere child's play. Yet she could smile. Weeks of hard work of life in the open and sound sleep at night, had set her young muscles for any strain, and her wrist, though still bandaged, was as good as new. In addition to no bath, there was no Jocko and no tent. Except for slabs of chocolate at the noon hour, she and Ballard shared the common Kaffir fare, and slept in their clothes on the ground under one mosquito netting.

Bongo and Shilling missed no chance to snatch bunches of green grass, which they fed to their charges. The two Zanzibaris cached their pants and trotted doggedly with their loose shirts hanging halfway to their knees. Even the naked blacks slowly changed; no longer did their bodies gleam under the rivulets, of sweat, for they were gray with its dried salt. Toward evening of the second day she noticed that the eyes of the whole party, including those of the horses, were sharply sunken, and wondered if hers [ were the same. At night Ballard rolled his jacket for a pillow, and shared it with her as usual. So far they had talked little, even though bumps in the uneven ground boring into their weary bones, kept them wide awake. But to-night he spoke, looking straight up i into the stirs. "Jo, you're the greatest little sport God ever packed into one skin. I loved you before; now I adore you. I want to tell you about it, because thus is my last chance —the last night we'll be together, the last time you'll ever listen to my voice. To-morrow I'm going to kill Laurence Morland." She made no sound; she lay quite still, scarcely breathing. "For £5000," she murmured at last. A long pause, an empty break in time ensued, before he spoke again. "So you lied to me about Grast, Furman and Menck." "No; I had never heard those names before William Jones told me. All he said was that an American with a queer hat had taken on the contract to kill Larry for £3000." "You believed him?" "Yes." "But after you met me—" He broke i o(T, then continued. "Have you believed : I'd do it right along?" (To be continued Saturday next.)