"Chance it?" said Ingleborough laconically. "Very well; only don't leave it till it is too late."

"I'll mind," said West, and, as they rode out over the open veldt and into the gloom of the falling night, they kept a sharp look-out till they had to trust more to their ears for notice of danger, taking care to speak only in a whisper, knowing as they did that at any moment they might receive a challenge from the foe.

"What are you doing?" said Ingleborough suddenly, after trying to make out what his companion was doing. "Not going to eat yet, surely?"

"No--only preparing for the time when I must. Look here."

"Too dark," said Ingleborough, leaning towards his companion.

"Very well, then, I'll tell you: I'm making a sandwich."

"Absurd! What for?"

"I'll tell you. You can't see, but this is what I'm doing. I've two slices of bread here, and I'm putting between them something that is not good food for Boers. That's it. I've doubled the pa.s.s in half, and stuck it between two slices. If we have the bad luck to be taken prisoners I shall be very hungry, and begin eating the sandwich and the pa.s.s. I don't suppose it will do me any harm."

"Capital idea," said Ingleborough, laughing.

"That's done," said West, replacing his paper sandwich in his haversack, and a few minutes later, as they still rode slowly on, Ingleborough spoke again.

"What now?" he said.

"Making another sandwich," was the reply.

"Another?"

"Yes, of the Mafeking despatch."

"Ah, of course; but you will not eat that?"

"Only in the last extremity."

"Good," said Ingleborough, "and I hope we shall have no last extremes."

He had hardly spoken when a sharp challenge in Boer-Dutch rang out, apparently from about fifty yards to their left, and, as if in obedience to the demand, the two Basuto ponies the young men rode stopped suddenly.

Ingleborough leaned down sidewise and placed his lips close to his companion's ear.

"Which is it to be?" he said. "One is as easy as the other--forward or back?"

"One's as safe as the other," replied West, under his breath.

"Forward."

They were in the act of pressing their horses' sides to urge them on when there was a flash of light from the position of the man who had uttered the challenge, and almost immediately the humming, buzzing sound as of a large beetle whizzing by them in its nocturnal flight, and at the same moment there was the sharp crack of a rifle.

CHAPTER TEN.

ANSON'S BLESSING.

"Bless 'em!" said Anson to himself that same evening, "I don't wish 'em any harm. I only hope that before they've gone far the Boers will challenge them.

"I can almost see it now: getting dark, and an outpost challenges.

'Come on, gallop!' says old Ingle, and they stick their spurs into their nags and are off over the veldt. Then _crack, cracky crack_, go the rifles till the saddles are emptied and two gallant defenders of Kimberley and brave despatch-riders lie kicking in the dust.

"Ugh! How. I should like to be there with my flute. I'd stand and look on till they'd given their last kick and stretched themselves out straight, and then I'd play the 'Dead March' in 'Saul' all over 'em both. Don't suppose they'd know; but if they could hear it they wouldn't sneer at my 'tootling old flute'--as Ingle called it--any more.

"Urrrr! I hated the pair of 'em. Ingle was a hound--a regular sniffing, smelling-out hound, and Noll West a miserable, sneaking cur.

Beasts! So very good and nice and straightforward. Hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth--yes, millions' worth of diamonds being sc.r.a.ped together by the company, and a poor fellow not allowed to have a handful. I don't say it's the thing to steal 'em; but who would steal?

Just a bit of nice honest trade--buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. It's what the company does, but n.o.body else ought to, of course. Who's going to ask every Kaffir who comes to you and says: 'Buy a few stones, baas?' 'Where do you get 'em from?' Not me. They've as good a right to 'em as the company, and if I like to do a bit of honest trade I will, in spite of the miserable laws they make. Hang their laws! What are they to me? Illicit-diamond-buying! Police force, eh?

A snap of the fingers for it!

"A bit sooner than I expected," mused the flute-player. "A few months more, and I should have made a very big thing if the Boers hadn't upset it all and Master Ingle hadn't been so precious clever! Never mind: it isn't so very bad now! I'll be off while my shoes are good. I don't believe the Boers have got round to the south yet, and, if they have, I don't believe it'll matter. Say they do stop me, it'll only be: 'Who are you--and where are you going?' Down south or west or anywhere, to do a bit of trade. I'm sloping off--that's what I'm doing--because the British are trying to force me to volunteer to fight against my old friends the Boers. I'll soft-soap and b.u.t.ter 'em all over, and play 'em a tune or two upon the flute, and offer 'em some good tobacco. They won't stop me."

The quiet, plump, thoughtful-looking muser was on his way to a farm just beyond the outskirts of Kimberley, as he walked slowly through the darkness, hardly pa.s.sing a soul; and he rubbed his hands softly at last as he came in sight of a dim gleaming lantern some distance ahead.

"All ready and waiting," he said softly, and now he increased his pace a little in his excitement, but only to stop short and look back once or twice as if to make sure that he was not followed. But, neither seeing nor hearing anything, he rubbed his hands again, muttered to himself something about wiping his shoes of the whole place, and went on quickly.

"Das you, baas?" said a thick guttural voice just above the lantern.

"Yes, this is me," replied Anson. "Team in-spanned?"

"Yaas, baas: big long time ago. Not tink baas come."

"But I said I would," replied Anson. "Got the water-barrel slung underneath?"

The man grunted, Anson gave an order or two in a low tone, and in response to a shout a dimly-seen team of great bullocks roughly harnessed to the dissel boom and trek tow of a long covered-in wagon began to trudge slowly along over the rough track which led to the main road leading south. A second man led the way, while the Kaffir with the light swung himself up onto the great box in front of the wagon and drew out an unusually long whip, after hanging his horn lantern to a hook in the middle of the arched tilt over his head.

"Baas come alon' heah?" said the man.

"No, go on, and I'll walk behind for a bit," said Anson, in a low tone of voice. "Go on quietly, and keep off the track. Go straight away till I tell you to turn off."

The Kaffir grunted, and the oxen plodded on at their slow two-mile-an-hour rate, leaving the last sign of occupation far behind, Anson twice over giving instructions to the man who was leading which way to steer, the result being that the creaking wagon was driven right away south and west over the open veldt, avoiding the various farms and places till Kimberley was left far behind.

It was a bright starlit night, and the long procession of big bullocks looked weird and strange in the gloom, for at times they seemed to be drawing nothing, so closely did the tilt of the great lightly-loaded wagon a.s.similate with the drab dusty tint of the parched earth and the dusky-coloured scrub which the great wheels crushed down.

The driver sat on the box with his huge whip, his shoulders well up and his head down, driving mechanically, and seeming to be asleep, while the voorlooper kept pace with the leading oxen, and hour after hour pa.s.sed away without a word being spoken.

So the night wore on, the only watchful eyes being those of Anson, who kept on straining them forward right and left, while his ears twitched as he listened for the sounds which he knew would be uttered by a Boer vedette.

But no challenge came, and the fugitive breathed more freely as the stars paled, a long, low, sickly streak began to spread in the east, and the distance of the wide-spreading desolate veldt grew more clear.

"I knew they wouldn't be on the look-out," said Anson to himself, in an exulting fashion. "Hah! I'm all right, and I wonder how West and Ingle have got on."

It was growing broad daylight when the thoughtful-looking ex-clerk climbed up to the side of the driver.

"How far to the fontein?" he said.

"One hour, baas," was the reply.