Marie

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On the broad stoep, which commanded a pleasant view over rolling,
park-like country, where mimosa and other trees grew in clumps, two men
were seated, drinking strong coffee, although it was not yet ten o'clock
in the morning.

Hearing the sound of the horses, one of these, Mynheer Marais, whom I
already knew, rose from his hide-strung chair. He was, as I think I
have said, not in the least like one of the phlegmatic Boers, either in
person or in temperament, but, rather, a typical Frenchman, although no
member of his race had set foot in France for a hundred and fifty years.
At least so I discovered afterwards, for, of course, in those days I
knew nothing of Frenchmen.

His companion was also French, Leblanc by name, but of a very different
stamp. In person he was short and stout. His large head was bald
except for a fringe of curling, iron-grey hair which grew round it just
above the ears and fell upon his shoulders, giving him the appearance of
a tonsured but dishevelled priest. His eyes were blue and watery, his
mouth was rather weak, and his cheeks were pale, full and flabby. When
the Heer Marais rose, I, being an observant youth, noted that Monsieur
Leblanc took the opportunity to stretch out a rather shaky hand and fill
up his coffee cup out of a black bottle, which from the smell I judged
to contain peach brandy.

In fact, it may as well be said at once that the poor man was a
drunkard, which explains how he, with all his high education and great
ability, came to hold the humble post of tutor on a remote Boer farm.
Years before, when under the influence of drink, he had committed some
crime in France--I don't know what it was, and never inquired--and fled
to the Cape to avoid prosecution. Here he obtained a professorship at
one of the colleges, but after a while appeared in the lecture-room
quite drunk and lost his employment. The same thing happened in other
towns, till at last he drifted to distant Maraisfontein, where his
employer tolerated his weakness for the sake of the intellectual
companionship for which something in his own nature seemed to crave.
Also, he looked upon him as a compatriot in distress, and a great bond
of union between them was their mutual and virulent hatred of England
and the English, which in the case of Monsieur Leblanc, who in his youth
had fought at Waterloo and been acquainted with the great Emperor, was
not altogether unnatural.

Henri Marais's case was different, but of that I shall have more to say
later.

"Ah, Marie," said her father, speaking in Dutch, "so you have found him
at last," and he nodded towards me, adding: "You should be flattered,
little man. Look you, this missie has been sitting for two hours in the
sun waiting for you, although I told her you would not arrive much
before ten o'clock, as your father the predicant said you would
breakfast before you started. Well, it is natural, for she is lonely
here, and you are of an age, although of a different race"; and his face
darkened as he spoke the words.

"Father," answered Marie, whose blushes I could see even in the shadow
of her cap, "I was not sitting in the sun, but under the shade of a
peach tree. Also, I was working out the sums that Monsieur Leblanc set
me on my slate. See, here they are," and she held up the slate, which
was covered with figures, somewhat smudged, it is true, by the rubbing
of my stiff hair and of her cap.

Then Monsieur Leblanc broke in, speaking in French, of which, as it
chanced I understood the sense, for my father had grounded me in that
tongue, and I am naturally quick at modern languages. At any rate, I
made out that he was asking if I was the little "cochon d'anglais," or
English pig, whom for his sins he had to teach. He added that he judged
I must be, as my hair stuck up on my head--I had taken off my hat out of
politeness--as it naturally would do on a pig's back.

This was too much for me, so, before either of the others could speak, I
answered in Dutch, for rage made me eloquent and bold:

"Yes, I am he; but, mynheer, if you are to be my master, I hope you will
not call the English pigs any more to me."

"Indeed, gamin" (that is, little scamp), "and pray, what will happen if
I am so bold as to repeat that truth?"

"I think, mynheer," I replied, growing white with rage at this new
insult, "the same that has happened to yonder buck," and I pointed to
the klipspringer behind Hans's saddle. "I mean that I shall shoot you."

"Peste! Au moins il a du courage, cet enfant" (At least the child is
plucky), exclaimed Monsieur Leblanc, astonished. From that moment, I
may add, he respected me, and never again insulted my country to my
face.

Then Marais broke out, speaking in Dutch that I might understand:

"It is you who should be called pig, Leblanc, not this boy, for, early
as it is, you have been drinking. Look! the brandy bottle is half
empty. Is that the example you set to the young? Speak so again and I
turn you out to starve on the veld. Allan Quatermain, although, as you
may have heard, I do not like the English, I beg your pardon. I hope
you will forgive the words this sot spoke, thinking that you did not
understand," and he took off his hat and bowed to me quite in a grand
manner, as his ancestors might have done to a king of France.

Leblanc's face fell. Then he rose and walked away rather unsteadily; as
I learned afterwards, to plunge his head in a tub of cold water and
swallow a pint of new milk, which were his favourite antidotes after too
much strong drink. At any rate, when he appeared again, half an hour
later, to begin out lesson, he was quite sober, and extremely polite.

When he had gone, my childish anger being appeased, I presented the Heer
Marais with my father's compliments, also with the buck and the birds,
whereof the latter seemed to please him more than the former. Then my
saddle-bags were taken to my room, a little cupboard of a place next to
that occupied by Monsieur Leblanc, and Hans was sent to turn the horses
out with the others belonging to the farm, having first knee-haltered
them tightly, so that they should not run away home.

This done, the Heer Marais showed me the room in which we were to have
our lessons, one of the "sitkammer", or sitting chambers, whereof,
unlike most Boer stead, this house boasted two. I remember that the
floor was made of "daga", that is, ant-heap earth mixed with cow-dung,
into which thousands of peach-stones had been thrown while it was still
soft, in order to resist footwear--a rude but fairly efficient
expedient, and one not unpleasing to the eye. For the rest, there was
one window opening on to the veranda, which, in that bright climate,
admitted a shaded but sufficient light, especially as it always stood
open; the ceiling was of unplastered reeds; a large bookcase stood in
the corner containing many French works, most of them the property of
Monsieur Leblanc, and in the centre of the room was the strong, rough
table made of native yellow-wood, that once had served as a butcher's
block. I recollect also a coloured print of the great Napoleon
commanding at some battle in which he was victorious, seated upon a
white horse and waving a field-marshal's baton over piles of dead and
wounded; and near the window, hanging to the reeds of the ceiling, the
nest of a pair of red-tailed swallows, pretty creatures that,
notwithstanding the mess they made, afforded to Marie and me endless
amusement in the intervals of our work.

When, on that day, I shuffled shyly into this homely place, and,
thinking myself alone there, fell to examining it, suddenly I was
brought to a standstill by a curious choking sound which seemed to
proceed from the shadows behind the bookcase. Wondering as to its
cause, I advanced cautiously to discover a pink-clad shape standing in
the corner like a naughty child, with her head resting against the wall,
and sobbing slowly.

"Marie Marais, why do you cry?" I asked.

She turned, tossing back the locks of long, black hair which hung about
her face, and answered:

"Allan Quatermain, I cry because of the shame which has been put upon
you and upon our house by that drunken Frenchman."

"What of that?" I asked. "He only called me a pig, but I think I have
shown him that even a pig has tusks."

"Yes," she replied, "but it was not you he meant; it was all the
English, whom he hates; and the worst of it is that my father is of his
mind. He, too, hates the English, and, oh! I am sure that trouble will
come of his hatred, trouble and death to many."

"Well, if so, we have nothing to do with it, have we?" I replied with
the cheerfulness of extreme youth.

"What makes you so sure?" she said solemnly. "Hush! here comes Monsieur
Leblanc."

CHAPTER II

THE ATTACK ON MARAISFONTEIN

I do not propose to set out the history of the years which I spent in
acquiring a knowledge of French and various other subjects, under the
tuition of the learned but prejudiced Monsieur Leblanc. Indeed, there
is "none to tell, sir." When Monsieur Leblanc was sober, he was a most
excellent and well-informed tutor, although one apt to digress into many
side issues, which in themselves were not uninstructive. When tipsy, he
grew excited and harangued us, generally upon politics and religion, or
rather its reverse, for he was an advanced freethinker, although this
was a side to his character which, however intoxicated he might be, he
always managed to conceal from the Heer Marais. I may add that a
certain childish code of honour prevented us from betraying his views on
this and sundry other matters. When absolutely drunk, which, on an
average, was not more than once a month, he simply slept, and we did
what we pleased--a fact which our childish code of honour also prevented
us from betraying.

But, on the whole, we got on very well together, for, after the incident
of our first meeting, Monsieur Leblanc was always polite to me. Marie
he adored, as did every one about the place, from her father down to the
meanest slave. Need I add that I adored her more than all of them put
together, first with the love that some children have for each other,
and afterwards, as we became adult, with that wider love by which it is
at once transcended and made complete. Strange would it have been if
this were not so, seeing that we spent nearly half of every week
practically alone together, and that, from the first, Marie, whose
nature was as open as the clear noon, never concealed her affection for
me. True, it was a very discreet affection, almost sisterly, or even
motherly, in its outward and visible aspects, as though she could never
forget that extra half-inch of height or month or two of age.

Moreover, from a child she was a woman, as an Irishman might say, for
circumstances and character had shaped her thus. Not much more than a
year before we met, her mother, whose only child she was, and whom she
loved with all her strong and passionate heart, died after a lingering
illness, leaving her in charge of her father and his house. I think it
was this heavy bereavement in early youth which coloured her nature with
a grey tinge of sadness and made her seem so much older than her years.

So the time went on, I worshipping Marie in my secret thought, but
saying nothing about it, and Marie talking of and acting towards me as
though I were her dear younger brother. Nobody, not even her father or
mine, or Monsieur Leblanc, took the slightest notice of this queer
relationship, or seemed to dream that it might lead to ultimate
complications which, in fact, would have been very distasteful to them
all for reasons that I will explain.

Needless to say, in due course, as they were bound to do, those
complications arose, and under pressure of great physical and moral
excitement the truth came out. It happened thus.

Every reader of the history of the Cape Colony has heard of the great
Kaffir War of 1835. That war took place for the most part in the
districts of Albany and Somerset, so that we inhabitants of Cradock, on
the whole, suffered little. Therefore, with the natural optimism and
carelessness of danger of dwellers in wild places, we began to think
ourselves fairly safe from attack. Indeed, so we should have been, had
it not been for a foolish action on the part of Monsieur Leblanc.

It seems that on a certain Sunday, a day that I always spent at home
with my father, Monsieur Leblanc rode out alone to some hills about five
miles distant from Maraisfontein. He had often been cautioned that this
was an unsafe thing to do, but the truth is that the foolish man thought
he had found a rich copper mine in these hills, and was anxious that no
one should share his secret. Therefore, on Sundays, when there were no
lessons, and the Heer Marais was in the habit of celebrating family
prayers, which Leblanc disliked, it was customary for him to ride to
these hills and there collect geological specimens and locate the strike
of his copper vein. On this particular Sabbath, which was very hot,
after he had done whatever he intended to do, he dismounted from his
horse, a tame old beast. Leaving it loose, he partook of the meal he
had brought with him, which seems to have included a bottle of peach
brandy that induced slumber.

Waking up towards evening, he found that his horse had gone, and at once
jumped to the conclusion that it had been stolen by Kaffirs, although in
truth the animal had but strolled over a ridge in search of grass.
Running hither and thither to seek it, he presently crossed this ridge
and met the horse, apparently being led away by two of the Red Kaffirs,
who, as was usual, were armed with assegais. As a matter of fact these
men had found the beast, and, knowing well to whom it belonged, were
seeking its owner, whom, earlier in the day, they had seen upon the
hills, in order to restore it to him. This, however, never occurred to
the mind of Monsieur Leblanc, excited as it was by the fumes of the
peach brandy.

Lifting the double-barrelled gun he carried, he fired at the first
Kaffir, a young man who chanced to be the eldest son and heir of the
chief of the tribe, and, as the range was very close, shot him dead.
Thereon his companion, leaving go of the horse, ran for his life. At
him Leblanc fired also, wounding him slightly in the thigh, but no more,
so that he escaped to tell the tale of what he and every other native
for miles round considered a wanton and premeditated murder. The deed
done, the fiery old Frenchman mounted his nag and rode quietly home. On
the road, however, as the peach brandy evaporated from his brain, doubts
entered it, with the result that he determined to say nothing of his
adventure to Henri Marais, who he knew was particularly anxious to avoid
any cause of quarrel with the Kaffirs.

So he kept his own counsel and went to bed. Before he was up next
morning the Heer Marais, suspecting neither trouble nor danger, had
ridden off to a farm thirty miles or more away to pay its owner for some
cattle which he had recently bought, leaving his home and his daughter
quite unprotected, except by Leblanc and the few native servants, who
were really slaves, that lived about the place.

Now on the Monday night I went to bed as usual, and slept, as I have
always done through life, like a top, till about four in the morning,
when I was awakened by someone tapping at the glass of my window.
Slipping from the bed, I felt for my pistol, as it was quite dark, crept
to the window, opened it, and keeping my head below the level of the
sill, fearing lest its appearance should be greeted with an assegai,
asked who was there.

"Me, baas," said the voice of Hans, our Hottentot servant, who, it will
be remembered, had accompanied me as after-rider when first I went to
Maraisfontein. "I have bad news. Listen. The baas knows that I have
been out searching for the red cow which was lost. Well, I found her,
and was sleeping by her side under a tree on the veld when, about two
hours ago, a woman whom I know came up to my camp fire and woke me. I
asked her what she was doing at that hour of the night, and she answered
that she had come to tell me something. She said that some young men of
the tribe of the chief Quabie, who lives in the hills yonder, had been
visiting at their kraal, and that a few hours before a messenger had
arrived from the chief saying that they must return at once, as this
morning at dawn he and all his men were going to attack Maraisfontein
and kill everyone in it and take the cattle!"

"Good God!" I ejaculated. "Why?"

"Because, young baas," drawled the Hottentot from the other side of the
window, "because someone from Maraisfontein--I think it was the Vulture"
(the natives gave this name to Leblanc on account of his bald head and
hooked nose)--"shot Quabie's son on Sunday when he was holding his
horse."

"Good God!" I said again, "the old fool must have been drunk. When did
you say the attack was to be--at dawn?" and I glanced at the stars,
adding, "Why, that will be within less than an hour, and the Baas Marais
is away."

"Yes," croaked Hans; "and Missie Marie--think of what the Red Kaffirs
will do with Missie Marie when their blood is up."

I thrust my fist through the window and struck the Hottentot's toad-like
face on which the starlight gleamed faintly.

"Dog!" I said, "saddle my mare and the roan horse and get your gun. In
two minutes I come. Be swift or I kill you."

"I go," he answered, and shot out into the night like a frightened
snake.

Then I began to dress, shouting as I dressed, till my father and the
Kaffirs ran into the room. As I threw on my things I told them all.

"Send out messengers," I said, "to Marais--he is at Botha's farm--and to
all the neighbours. Send, for your lives; gather up the friendly
Kaffirs and ride like hell for Maraisfontein. Don't talk to me, father;
don't talk! Go and do what I tell you. Stay! Give me two guns, fill
the saddle-bags with powder tins and loopers, and tie them to my mare.
Oh! be quick, be quick!"

Now at length they understood, and flew this way and that with candles
and lanterns. Two minutes later--it could scarcely have been more--I
was in front of the stables just as Hans led out the bay mare, a famous
beast that for two years I had saved all my money to buy. Someone
strapped on the saddle-bags while I tested the girths; someone else
appeared with the stout roan stallion that I knew would follow the mare
to the death. There was not time to saddle him, so Hans clambered on to
his back like a monkey, holding two guns under his arm, for I carried
but one and my double-barrelled pistol.

"Send off the messengers," I shouted to my father. "If you would see me
again send them swiftly, and follow with every man you can raise."

Then we were away with fifteen miles to do and five-and-thirty minutes
before the dawn.

"Softly up the slope," I said to Hans, "till the beasts get their wind,
and then ride as you never rode before."

Those first two miles of rising ground! I thought we should never come
to the end of them, and yet I dared not let the mare out lest she should
bucket herself. Happily she and her companion, the stallion--a most
enduring horse, though not so very swift--had stood idle for the last
thirty hours, and, of course, had not eaten or drunk since sunset.
Therefore being in fine fettle, they were keen for the business; also we
were light weights.

I held in the mare as she spurted up the rise, and the horse kept his
pace to hers. We reached its crest, and before us lay the great level
plain, eleven miles of it, and then two miles down hill to
Maraisfontein.

"Now," I said to Hans, shaking loose the reins, "keep up if you can!"

Away sped the mare till the keen air of the night sung past my ears, and
behind her strained the good roan horse with the Hottentot monkey on its
back. Oh! what a ride was that!

Further I have gone for a like cause, but never at such speed, for I
knew the strength of the beasts and how long it would last them. Half
an hour of it they might endure; more, and at this pace they must
founder or die.

And yet such was the agony of my fear, that it seemed to me as though I
only crept along the ground like a tortoise.

The roan was left behind, the sound of his foot-beats died away, and I
was alone with the night and my fear. Mile added itself to mile, for
now and again the starlight showed me a stone or the skeleton of some
dead beast that I knew. Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so
suddenly, that a springbok, unable to stop itself, leapt right over me.
Once the mare put her foot in an ant-bear hole and nearly fell, but
recovered herself--thanks be to God, unharmed--and I worked myself back
into the saddle whence I had been almost shaken. If I had fallen; oh!
if I had fallen!

We were near the end of the flat, and she began to fail. I had
over-pressed her; the pace was too tremendous. Her speed lessened to an
ordinary fast gallop as she faced the gentle rise that led to the brow.
And now, behind me, once more I heard the sound of the hoofs of the
roan. The tireless beast was coming up. By the time we reached the
edge of the plateau he was quite near, not fifty yards behind, for I
heard him whinny faintly.

Then began the descent. The morning star was setting, the east grew
grey with light. Oh! could we get there before the dawn? Could we get
there before the dawn? That is what my horse's hoofs beat out to me.

Now I could see the mass of the trees about the stead. And now I dashed
into something, though until I was through it, I did not know that it
was a line of men, for the faint light gleamed upon the spear of one of
them who had been overthrown!

So it was no lie! The Kaffirs were there! As I thought it, a fresh
horror filled my heart; perhaps their murdering work was already done
and they were departing.

The minute of suspense--or was it but seconds?--seemed an eternity. But
it ended at last. Now I was at the door in the high wall that enclosed
the outbuildings at the back of the house, and there, by an inspiration,
pulled up the mare--glad enough she was to stop, poor thing--for it
occurred to me that if I rode to the front I should very probably be
assegaied and of no further use. I tried the door, which was made of
stout stinkwood planks. By design, or accident, it had been left
unbolted. As I thrust it open Hans arrived with a rush, clinging to the
roan with his face hidden in its mane. The beast pulled up by the side
of the mare which it had been pursuing, and in the faint light I saw
that an assegai was fixed in its flank.

Five seconds later we were in the yard and locking and barring the door
behind us. Then, snatching the saddle-bags of ammunition from the
horses, we left them standing there, and I ran for the back entrance of
the house, bidding Hans rouse the natives, who slept in the
outbuildings, and follow with them. If any one of them showed signs of
treachery he was to shoot him at once. I remember that as I went I tore
the spear out of the stallion's flank and brought it away with me.

Now I was hammering upon the back door of the house, which I could not
open. After a pause that seemed long, a window was thrown wide, and a
voice--it was Marie's--asked in frightened tones who was there.

"I, Allan Quatermain," I answered. "Open at once, Marie. You are in
great danger; the Red Kaffirs are going to attack the house."

She flew to the door in her nightdress, and at length I was in the
place.

"Thank God! you are still safe," I gasped. "Put on your clothes while I
call Leblanc. No, stay, do you call him; I must wait here for Hans and
your slaves."

Away she sped without a word, and presently Hans arrived, bringing with
him eight frightened men, who as yet scarcely knew whether they slept or
woke.

"Is that all?" I asked. "Then bar the door and follow me to the
'sitkammer', where the baas keeps his guns."

Just as we reached it, Leblanc entered, clad in his shirt and trousers,
and was followed presently by Marie with a candle.

"What is it?" he asked.

I took the candle from Marie's hand, and set it on the floor close to
the wall, lest it should prove a target for an assegai or a bullet.
Even in those days the Kaffirs had a few firearms, for the most part
captured or stolen from white men. Then in a few words I told them all.

"And when did you learn all this?" asked Leblanc in French.

"At the Mission Station a little more than half an hour ago," I
answered, looking at my watch.

"At the station a little more than half an hour ago! Peste! it is not
possible. You dream or are drunken," he cried excitedly.

"All right, monsieur, we will argue afterwards," I answered. "Meanwhile
the Kaffirs are here, for I rode through them; and if you want to save
your life, stop talking and act. Marie, how many guns are there?"

"Four," she answered, "of my father's; two 'roers' and two smaller
ones."

"And how many of these men"--and I pointed to the Kaffirs--"can shoot?"

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