After a further hour’s progress they began to appreciate the warning which they had received about the journey up to Johannesburg. The train was comfortable enough, but the dust became a serious inconvenience. Every few miles a dust devil would rise from the rocky soil and come sweeping towards the train, a whirling column of infinitesimal red particles which penetrated every cranny of the compartments even if the windows were whipped up at its approach. It was impossible to keep them closed for any length of time owing to the stifling heat.
For hours they watched the unchanging scene roll past while the dust coated their faces and hands and got into their eyes and hair. The monotony was broken by a glorious sunset but the dust seemed to have coated every morsel of food which they put in their mouths at dinner. Sleep was a welcome respite from the torment, but all the following day they were compelled to sit in their shirt sleeves mopping their perspiring faces, and growing ever dirtier as they gradually climbed another four thousand feet to the level of Johannesburg.
At a little after six they arrived at their destination and drove straight to the Carlton, rejoicing in the immediate prospect of hot baths. Then, feeling that they could not very well call on Mrs. Orkney that night, they dined and did a cinema together.
On Wednesday Michael made inquiries from the hall porter as to the whereabouts of Park Town, where Mrs. Orkney lived. On being informed that it was one of the most fashionable suburbs, some way outside the town, he decided that it would be best to telephone before driving out there in case she was away from home.
Mrs. Orkney was there however and said she would be very pleased to see them if they would come out and join her for morning tea at eleven o’clock, so they hired a taxi and admiring, as Patricia had seven days before, the great modern office buildings in Eloff Street and the fine private houses and blocks of flats which lay beyond the station, they drove out to see her.
She turned out to be a small, elderly lady whose white hair, sweeping back from her forehead, clear eyes and regular features betrayed the fact that she must have been very lovely when she was a younger woman.
The Bennetts obviously amused her greatly but she took an immediate fancy to Michael and, for his sake rather than the others, told them what she knew of their uncle, while they sat on the stoep above her garden, gay with cannas, gladiolas, dahlias, fairy daisies, and golden shower.
‘He was a reprobate of course, but he had charm, oh, great charm,’ the old eyes twinkled kindly as she looked at Michael. ‘You have something of his looks yourself, but not his wonderful physique. I knew him first in 1908 and I fear my poor husband objected rather to our friendship because John had quite a reputation even then. He went away of course and for a long time it made me most unhappy. You will think it very wicked of me I suppose, seeing that I had a husband already, but life so seldom turns out to be exactly as we expect it. John came back, just as the bad pennies of this world always do, and after that—well, we became very friendly. I never left my husband, but I had no children to think of and by that time I had found out that he was no better than he should have been, so he couldn’t very well prevent me doing as I liked.’
‘What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, eh?’ Ernest interjected cheerfully.
She nodded and went on: ‘From time to time John would stay with us in Cape Town and then disappear again, often for months at a stretch. After the War he was just the same as before and I began to despair of his ever settling down to marry or earn an honest living, so I took no particular notice when in 1923 he stayed with us for a few days before going on one of his expeditions, and said that if he ever saw me again it would be as a man who had at last made his fortune. John had told me that sort of thing so often before, you see, and there was no special reason why I should believe him on this occasion.’
Michael quickly swallowed a piece of melon comfyt and asked eagerly: ‘Did you ever see him again?’
‘Yes,’ the old lady smiled at his keenness, ‘I saw him about two months afterwards and he looked a changed man. He was lean—haggard—and could hardly stand for the fever that was on him. I put him to bed and it was from his delirium in the days that followed that I learnt something of John’s last journey. Hostile Bushmen had attacked his outspan, murdering two of his native boys before he could drive them off. Then one night when he was in a part of the desert where no fuel of any kind was available, he was unable to light fires and so the leopards killed and carried away his oxen. Yet despite everything he had managed to reach his objective and return from it with a fortune in uncut diamonds. I saw them, although he never knew it, for they were round his waist in a thick pouch-belt. When he was well again he left us and I never saw or heard of him again until I learned that he had remembered me in his Will.’
‘That’s very interesting, Mrs. Orkney, George remarked, unwrapping a brown paper parcel which he had picked up from beside Michael’s chair. ‘Now could you tell us if you’ve ever see this thing before?’
‘I hardly know,’ she murmured taking the leopard skin from him. ‘This is just an ordinary kaross, I have seen hundreds such in the last fifty years.’
‘We were hoping you might be able to give us the name of in original owner,’ Ernest commented. ‘You see Uncle John left this thing to us and it’s the only clue we’ve got.’
‘Yes, I remember now,’ she nodded slowly as she drew her wrinkled fingers over the coarse hair of the skin. ‘John had one with him in his baggage that last time when I unpacked for him when he was so ill. There was a necklace of monkey’s skulls and a knobkerrie with it if my memory serves me. Except for a few pairs of shorts and an extra pair of boots, I think that was all the luggage that poor John possessed; although of course he had a fortune on him at the time. Perhaps those things belonged to one of the native boys who made the journey with him.’
‘That’s it—that’s it,’ urged Michael. ‘Can you possibly remember his mentioning the name of any of his guides?’
She thought for a moment and then said slowly: ‘There was one name that he often mentioned in his delirium and that was Kieviet and there was another—let me think now—yes, N’hluzili—“Quick, N’hluzili, quick, your assegai!” I can hear him shouting now as he tossed about the tumbled bed.’ Michael jotted the two names down on a piece of paper while George refolded the leopard skin kaross but although they talked for a further hour with the delightful old lady they could obtain no other information from her which promised additional help.
Having returned to Johannesburg they congratulated themselves on learning so much from their first inquiry, and George suggested that they should press on to the Van Niekerks at Pretoria that afternoon.
After lunch they walked through the crowded streets, where the colourful frocks of the white women relieved the dull background of shoddily-clad negroes and long lines of cars parked in herring-bone formation along either pavement—to the station. The journey of thirty miles seemed little more than a tram ride after the long hours spent in the train the day before and by five o’clock the three of them were entering the garden gate of the Jacarandas.
Cornelius Van Niekerk received them courteously, studying each in turn with concealed interest which he masked by an air of apparent surprise when they stated the reason of their visit.
They showed him the leopard skin but he shook his head and assured them that he had never seen that particular skin before, as far as he knew. He was, however, happy and willing to give then any information about their late uncle which he possessed.
They questioned him at some length and particularly as to if he could remember anything which their uncle might have let drop about two natives called Kieviet and N’hluzili.
Cornelius made a careful mental note of the two names and regretted that in this too he was unable to help them. To their further inquiries be let it slip out, quite casually, that he was certain beyond question that John Thomas Long had started on his journey from a place called Zwart Modder about sixty-miles north-west o
f the town of Upington, because his father had told him so on a number of occasions.
The delighted Bennetts promptly exchanged a hearty handshake while Michael smiled with quiet satisfaction. Their quest seemed to be far easier than any of then had imagined. In half a dozen hours they had not only secured the names of two men who were most probably their late uncle’s guides, but also the village from which he started out. It was reasonable to assume that tidings of the guides might be picked up there, as the chances were all in favour of them being local men.
Van Niekerk provided the Bennetts with whiskies-and-sodas and Michael with a gin-and-french, after which they thanked him for his kindness and left his house hoping to be back in Johannesburg for dinner.
No sooner were they outside the railings of the garden than Sandy, with Sarie beside him, came hurrying in to Cornelius from the room beyond, where they had been concealed.
‘How did it go?’ they asked in one breath.
‘Marvellously!’ Cornelius helped himself to another drink. ‘They positively leapt for joy when I gave them the name of Zwart Modder and, not suspecting that I was an interested party, gave me the names of two of the old man’s guides, Kieviet and N’hluzili, which they must have fished up from somewhere—better jot them down while they are still fresh in our minds.’
‘Splendid! that’s a real bit of luck,’ agreed Sandy; ‘yet all the same I’m devilish nervous of that crowd. By sending them on ahead of us like this we’re trebling the risk of the authorities getting wind of the fact that people are out prospecting in the neighbourhood.’
‘My dear fellow, if you’d managed to keep possession of that knobkerrie it would have been quite another matter. Without it or one of the other clues what chance should we have had of getting the guides to talk, even if we could find them. As it is they have the leopard skin and now that we have given them the district they’ll be off on to-morrow’s train to do all the dirty work of hunting up some wretched nigger and persuading him to risk another journey into the “Great Thirst”.’ Cornelius, with a happy grin, set down his glass.
‘That’s right, darling,’ Sarie flung a slim brown arm round his neck, ‘and all we’ll have to do, once they set off, puffing and blowing across that filthy desert in their wretched out-span, is to follow them in your plane.’
11
The Return from Durban to the Rand
As Wisdon had forseen, his every effort to tempt N’hluzili into acting as their guide failed completely. At length they were compelled to drop the matter and content themselves with such information as they could secure from the old Induana about his last journey with John Thomas Long.
He told them that oxen and a wagon had been secured at Upington and that thence they had travelled by road to a tiny dorp, the name of which he could not remember. After that they had journeyed for a day and a half to the north-westward by a rough trail to a place where there existed a great pan or lake. There they had entered the trackless waste to the north and, after a further day’s journey, had rested at another much larger pan, where they were attacked by one of the miserable remnants of the almost extinct bushmen tribe, the enemy of white and Zulu alike. They turned then a little and trekked for seven days, bearing to the north-eastward across seemingly endless rolling slopes of coarse grass until they finally entered a sandy waste, beyond which lay a great range of mountains; during all that time no sign of human habitation was ever seen. On the eighth day they reached the foothills and at the hour when they would normally have restarted their journey after the midday rest, his master had ordered him to remain with the out-span while he went forward with his Hottentot guide into those desolate spirithaunted gorges. It had been two days and a night before he rejoined them and N’hluzili could tell them nothing of the white man’s doings during that period. Having regained his camp, old John had been about to turn south once more but that night was overtaken by a great misfortune. They had already used all the wood and scrub which could be found and, their fires dying down, the leopards had attacked them. Only by barricading themselves in the wagon had they escaped with their lives, and in the morning they found that not a single one of their oxen remained to them. The days that followed had been a veritable nightmare of which even the old Zulu, with the poetry of his race, could give no adequate description. Of the party of seven that had set out, three only had survived: the white man, himself, and the young bushman tracker who, being a native of that particular territory, had more easily withstood the rigours of the journey.
Immediately the Induna finished his story Wisdon asked him what the bushman had been called, but he shrugged disdainfully and answered that he doubted even if he had ever heard the tracker’s name; it was for the men of his great nation to mix with a tribe whose nearest cousins were the larger apes. It was obvious that nothing more could be got out of him, so Wisdon and Henry retraced their steps down the hill to Patricia, who was waiting in the car.
They had a late lunch at Sezela and then returned to Durban. Over tea on the wide balcony of the Royal, they held a fresh council of war, while below them motors, pedestrians, and gaily decorated rickshaw boys, moving at a slow jogtrot between the hotel and the palm trees in the garden of the square, made an animated scene.
N’hluzuli had confirmed Wisdon’s view that Upington was the place to secure an out-span. From the railway map it seemed that the easiest way to reach it was by train via Bethlehem and Bloemfontein to Kimberley, where they would change on to the Johannesburg-Cape main line—go scuth as far as De Aar Junction—and, changing again, take the direct line from there.
Wisdon, however, pointed out that they had either to take the hired car back to Johannesburg, or else make some arrangement about it; and that it would probably be quicker in the long run to take the express from Johannesburg to De Aar than go by local train across country via Kimberley in any case.
In consequence, after tea they set out for Pietermaritzberg which was fifty-six miles away. If they slept there they should be able, by hard driving, to accomplish the other four hundred odd miles despite the bad roads on the following day and reach Johannesburg on Tuesday night.
At Pietermaritzburg they put up at the Imperial, took their coffee in its restful old-fashioned central courtyard, strolled round the town and went early to bed in preparation for the long day before them.
They made a very early start but the weather had changed for the better, and in the forenoon the Longs were able to enjoy the magnificent vistas which opened up before them as the car climbed the twisting road back towards the grassy uplands. The lunched at Newcastle, after which the passing scene became dull and tedious once more. By the time they passed the dump of the Village Deep Mine—strangely beautiful in the bright moonlight—on the outskirts of Johannesburg, Patricia was utterly weary. Fifteen minutes later she was throwing off her clothes in a bedroom at the Carlton preparatory to tumbling into bed.
Next morning they assembled in the so-called palm lounge. The place was innocent of any greenery and contained nothing but long rows of glass-topped tables surrounded by creaky wicker-work chairs. Wisdon, making his breakfast of a whisky-and-soda, then sprang it upon the Longs that at least two other white men would be necessary as assistants for the next stage of their journey. He pointed out that both Patricia and her father were incapable of playing any part but that of passengers upon the, expedition. Since they were to venture into the Great Thirst, water was their principal consideration, and their wagon should be loaded almost entirely with this vital necessity. For food they must depend upon such game as they could shoot and if an accident happened to him when they were a few days out from Zwart Modder they would be utterly helpless, as neither of them could handle a rifle. It was essential, then, that they should have companions who understood the natives and were capable of providing supplies for the pot.
Henry protested that an accident was most unlikely but Wisdon reminded him of the Valley of the Leopards, through which they had to pass, and the dangers of the journey
which N’hluzili had so graphically described. Their assistants would have to receive a handsome remuneration, of course, but owing to the many years that he had spent in Africa, he felt certain he could produce a couple of reliable, hard-bitten fellows, who were prepared to undertake any sort of journey. He then proposed to set about the business of looking up his old friends at once with a view to securing two who had the necessary qualifications.
Henry was reluctant to trust others with their secret for fear he would be subjected afterwards to blackmail if they succeeded in their quest. Wisdon, however, argued that the place of the Great Glitter held such an abundance of wealth that anyone’s claim could be amply satisfied; so, realising how helpless he and Patricia might be should some misfortune overtake their ally, Henry agreed to the proposal.
It amazed Patricia more each day to see how her unwelcome admirer had succeeded in gaining her father’s confidence. The former personified all that the latter hated in the normal way yet some strange bond seemed to link the two and Henry, like some clever but fascinated bird, was now completely under the influence of the python-like Philbeach, whom she knew as Philip Wisdon.
Actually Henry despised the man, but had fallen a victim to his own conceit. His narrow outlook led him to suppose that mental weakness always accompanied moral laxity, and, while he considered that he had made a shrewd move in securing the assistance of this adventurer, so experienced in the ways of a country strange to him, he believed that he would be able to bend him to his will and sever his connection with him directly his objective had been achieved. In the meantime, until they secured that fortune which coloured every thought in his money-ridden mind, Henry deliberately shut his eyes to Philbeach’s shortcomings on account of his very obvious usefulness.
The Fabulous Valley Page 9