Haviland's Chum

“Ran?” taking in the woeful state to which the unfortunate man had manifestly been brought. “Why did you run? Who was after you?”

“The devil.”

“Who?”

“The devil.”

“But – where are your pals? Where are the rest of you?”

“Pals? Oh, dead.”

“Dead?”

“Rather. Dead as herrings, the whole lot. Fancy that!”

The coolness with which the man makes this statement is simply eerie, as he stands there in the moonlight, a horrible picture in his blood-stained rags. More than a doubt as to his sanity crosses the minds of at any rate two of his hearers. Nor do his next words tend towards in any wise dispelling it.

“They were killed, the whole lot of them. Cut up, by Jove! I’m the only man left alive out of the whole blessed crowd. Funny thing, isn’t it?”

“Rather. Who killed them, and where?” And there is a note of anxiety in the tone of the question.

“We were attacked by Rumaliza’s people couple of days’ march back. They surprised us, and I am the only one left alive. But, I say, don’t bother me with any more questions. I’m tired. D’you hear? I’m tired.”

“I expect you are. Well, come along and join us. We’re going to camp down yonder by the water. You’ll want a little overhauling after the cutting and wounding you seem to have gone through, and here’s the very man to overhaul you – Dr Ahern,” indicating his white comrade.

But the response to this friendly overture is astounding.

“Oh, go away. I don’t want you at all. I didn’t ask you to come, and I don’t want you here bothering me. When I do I’ll tell you.” And without another word the speaker turns and dives into the hut again. The two left outside stare blankly at each other.

“A clear case for you, doctor. The chap’s off his chump. Say, though, I wonder if there’s anything in that yarn of his about being attacked by Rumaliza’s people.”

“Might easily be. We’ll have to keep a bright look-out, if any of them are around. But we must get him out.”

“We must.”

The same idea was in both their minds. It was not a pleasant thing to have to creep through that open door with the probability of being brained by a powerful maniac waiting for them in the pitchy darkness beyond.

“I’ll strike a light,” says the younger of the two men. And, taking out his match-box, he passes quickly through the aperture, at the same time striking a couple of wax vestas.

The object of his search is lying in a corner. Beside him, gleaming whitely, are two fleshless skeletons. There is a third, all battered to pieces. It is a weird and gruesome spectacle in the extreme.

But the unfortunate man’s dispositions seem scarcely aggressive as they bend over him. He does not move.

“He’s unconscious,” pronounces the doctor. “That simplifies matters. Pick up that end of him, and we’ll carry him out.”

Chapter Eighteen.

After Ten Years

“I say! Was I very ‘dotty’?”

“Pretty well. But that’s only natural under the circs.”

“Talk much, and all that sort of thing – eh, did I?”

“Oh, yes. The usual incoherencies. But that’s nothing. We’re used to it. In fact, we now and then take a turn at it ourselves when this beastly up-country fever strikes us. Eh, doctor?”

“We do,” answered Dr Ahern, turning away to attend to the unpacking and examination of some scientific specimens, but not before he had added: —

“I wouldn’t talk too much if I were you. It won’t hurt you to keep quiet a little longer.”

A fortnight had gone by since the rescue of the solitary fugitive when in his last and desperate extremity; and, indeed, nothing but the most careful tending had availed to save his life even then – that, and his own constitution, which, as Dr Ahern declared, was that of a bull. Several days of raging and delirious fever had delayed the expedition at the place where it had found him, and then it had moved on again, though slowly, carrying the invalid in an improvised litter. At last the fever had left him, and his wounds were healing; by a miracle and the wonderful skill of the doctor he had escaped blood-poisoning.

The latter’s back turned, the convalescent promptly started to disregard his final injunction.

“I say,” he went on, lowering his voice, “it won’t hurt me to talk a little, will it?”

The other, his tall frame stretched upon the ground, his hat tilted over his eyes, and puffing contentedly at a pipe, laughed.

“I don’t know. Doctor’s orders, you see. Still – well, for one thing, we’ve been wondering, of course, who you are, and how you got into the hobble we found you in.”

“Well, I’m Oakley, and I’ve been inland a year and a half in the plant-hunting line.”

“That so? I’m Haviland, and I’ve been up rather more than two years in the bug-hunting line, as the Americans would call it. Ornithology, too.”

“So! Made a good haul?”

“Uncommonly. We’ve got some specimens here that’ll make our names for us.”

“Let’s see them,” said the other eagerly. “I was – am, in fact – keen on beetles, but I’m professionally in plants now.”

And then these two enthusiasts set to work comparing notes. They clean forgot about the circumstances of their meeting or knowing more about each other; forgot recent perils and the brooding mysteries of the wilderness, as they hammered away at their pet subject, and talked bird and beetle to their hearts’ content. In the midst of which a displeased voice struck in: —

“I’d like to ask if that’s what you call keeping quiet, now.”

Both started guiltily.

“My fault, doctor,” said Haviland. “I let him go on. He’s in the same line as ourselves, you know.”

“Is he? He’ll be in a different line from any of us if he gets thinking he’s all right before he is. Sure, the constitution of a bull won’t pull a man through everything – not quite.”

The patient accepted this grave rebuke with a smile, and lay still. He had not yet put these friends in need in full possession of the facts of his misfortunes, but there was plenty of time for that.

Ten years had gone by since last we saw Haviland, in imminent danger of expulsion from Saint Kirwin’s, and which it is probable he only escaped through a far greater grief than that – the death of his father; and for the most part of that period his career has been pretty much as we find him now – a wandering one, to wit. He had not returned to Saint Kirwin’s, for the potent reason that the parson had left his family in somewhat of straits, and the eldest member thereof was old enough, at any rate, to do something for himself. This had taken the form of a bank clerkship, obtained for him by an uncle. But to the young lover of Nature and the free open air and the woods and fields, this life was one that he loathed. It told upon his health at last, and realising that he would never do any good for himself in this line, the same relative assisted him to emigrate to South Africa. There he had many ups and downs – mostly downs – and then it occurred to him to try to turn his much-loved hobby into a profession. He obtained introductions to one or two scientific men, who, seeing through the genuineness of his gifts, offered him employment, sending him as assistant on scientific expeditions, and finally entrusting the leadership of such entirely to his hands. And he succeeded wonderfully. He had found his line at last, and followed it up with an entire and whole-hearted enthusiasm.

Yet such expeditions were no child’s play. A capacity for every kind of hardship and privation, indomitable enterprise, the multifold perils of the wilderness to face, starvation and thirst, the hostility of fierce savage tribes, treachery and desertion or overt mutiny on the part of his own followers, and the deadly, insidious malaria lurking at every mile in the miasmatic equatorial heat. But the same spirit which had moved those midnight poaching expeditions at Saint Kirwin’s was with Haviland now, and carried him through in triumph. Young as he was – well under thirty – he had already begun to make something of a name for himself as a daring and successful exploring naturalist.

He had kept in touch with Mr Sefton, as much as a correspondence of the few-and-far-between order could so be called, and from time to time obtained the latest news about Saint Kirwin’s. Among other items was one to the effect that after his own departure the Zulu boy, Anthony – otherwise Mpukuza – had turned out badly, had become so intractable and such a power for mischief that the missionary who had placed him there had been invited to remove him. This was done, and they had lost sight of him. Probably he had returned to his own land and reverted to savagery; and this, Haviland thought, was very likely the case. Yet he himself had been in Zululand, and had made frequent inquiries with regard to Mpukuza, but could obtain no satisfactory information, even in the locality where the boy was said to hail from. It was no uncommon thing for missionaries to take away their children and place them in schools, declared the inhabitants, and one case more or less was not sufficiently noteworthy to remain in their recollection. Nor did they know any such name as Mpukuza, and in the ups and downs of a somewhat struggling and busy life the matter faded from Haviland’s mind as well.