jumped into a luxuriously-furnished carriage.
It was a long and monotonous journey to Durban. Many of the towns they passed through, however, bore names which only a few months later were to be in the mouths of all Englishmen, in fact of the whole of the civilised world.
Running south towards the Orange Free State border, the railway curved towards the south-east, passing in succession Heidelberg, Standerton, and Volksrust. Then, with a loud and piercing shriek from the engine whistle, the train dived into a long, dark tunnel in the Drakenberg range of mountains, and emerged into Natal, one of England’s most loyal colonies. Sweeping past Laing’s Nek and Majuba Hill, names which will ever cause our countrymen to grit their teeth with vexation and regret, the train passed through a mountainous and extremely rugged country, and finally pulled up at Newcastle, one of the towns where the opening scenes of the second Boer war were to be laid. Then, after a ten-minute wait, the guard’s whistle sounded, and they steamed on past Glencoe and Dundee, and, swerving to the right away from the neighbourhood of Rorke’s Drift (that little mission station on the banks of the deep, swift-flowing Buffalo River, where a mere handful of English soldiers kept at bay the flower of Cetewayo’s army of fierce Zulus), they ran through Elands Laagte and Reitfontein, and drew up once more, at Ladysmith. On proceeding, the train ran down to the river Tugela, skirted its western bank, and thundered across the bridge, and on past Chieveley and Frere to Estcourt, stopping only when it had run into the station at Pietermaritzburg. From there to Durban was only a short spin, and very soon Jack had arrived, and had been whirled to his hotel on a “rickshaw” drawn by a strapping Kafir.
On the following day he called on the agents, and inspected the leather goods he had been commissioned to buy; and having decided how many to take, and offered a certain sum down for the articles he required, he left the warehouses, promising to call at the same hour next day and hear whether they would accept it or not.
Then he took a “rickshaw” a little way out of the town, and called upon a young fellow who had sailed out from England with him.
“What! Somerton! The fellow with a groggy leg whom the ladies on board took so much care of!” the latter exclaimed, shaking Jack cordially by the hand, and forcing him into a chair on the shady verandah on which the two lads had met.
“Boy! Joko! Do you hear?” he shouted. “Look lively! I’m on the verandah.”
“Coming, Baas! coming!” sounded away from the opposite side of the house, from which a Kafir appeared a moment later, in a desperate hurry to obey his master.
“Now, Somerton,” said Jack’s jovial friend, whose name was Turner, “join me in a lemon-squash and a cigarette. It’s a funny combination, but I find it agrees with me, and I’m sure it’s far better for one than drinking spirits as many fellows do.”
Jack gladly agreed to do so, and soon they were lolling back out of the heat of the sun, puffing their cigarettes, for that was a habit which Jack had already learnt to appreciate, and chatting about their respective doings for the past few months.
“So you’re up in the Transvaal with Mr Hunter, and under the eyes of the Boers, are you?” said Turner, when he had heard how Jack had been employing his time. “Well, I dare say you fellows up there know more about affairs than we do here; but there are going to be ructions, awful ructions, I feel sure, and if I were you I should get ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”
“Yes, everyone says the same, Turner,” replied Jack, “and from what I can understand, trouble is certain to follow. Some say it will lead to war, and others say it is likely to be merely a kind of storm in a tea-cup. Whatever happens, though, I expect I shall stick to Johannesburg till the Hunters clear out I’ve thrown in my lot with theirs, and I couldn’t very well leave them, you know. Besides, I am not anxious to do so.
“If matters come to a head before August, then I shall stay in the country and see the trouble through; if not, why, I suppose I shall have to go back to England and begin to cram for the army, a grind which I don’t fancy at all.”
“Then the chances are you will be in the thick of it, Somerton, for by August there will either be war, or old Kruger will have knuckled under. I can tell you this, at any rate: the Boers have been arming for years, and if I were in your shoes I should certainly smuggle in some weapon, a revolver for choice. And mark my words, you’ll have need of it before long or I’m a Dutchman! Now what do you say to a spin round the town or down to the quays?
“Joko! We want a couple of ‘rickshaws’. Bustle up and fetch them!”
Jack and his friend were soon bowling along through the streets of Durban, and spent a pleasant afternoon together.
On the following day Jack called on the agents again, and having come to an agreement with them, and arranged that the goods should be despatched by the train which left for Johannesburg the next morning, he sauntered through the town in the direction of his hotel.
“I wonder whether Turner was right about that revolver!” he suddenly thought, a window full of sporting guns and rifles having caught his eye, and caused him to remember the conversation of the previous day. “If all these Boers are really arming it might come in very handy some day. Yes, I will buy one, with plenty of ammunition, and see whether I cannot hide it away where a pretty close search would not discover it.”
To make up his mind was to act, and within a few minutes Jack was in the gun-shop.
“I want a revolver of some sort,” he said. “Something which would be useful, and at the same time not too big and heavy.”
“Then you couldn’t do better than take one of these Mausers,” the owner of the shop, an Englishman, replied. “They lie much flatter than a revolver, are not given to jamming, and fire ten shots in rapid succession. Come in here, sir, and try one. I have a range specially fitted up.”
Jack followed the man into a big shed behind, and here, for an hour, he practised with various pistole, finally deciding upon a Mauser.
“There will be a run on that weapon soon, sir,” remarked the shopman knowingly, “and if all is true that one hears, or indeed only half one hears, the Boers have been buying a heap of them.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that too,” replied Jack, “and also that they take precious good care that none of the Uitlanders get hold of any.”
“That’s so, sir; but still, I dare say there are many of our countrymen who have managed to smuggle in arms. That Mauser you’ve bought could be easily managed if fixed with a good deal of padding beneath the arm.”
“Ah, I dare say!” Jack answered casually, and then left the shop.
“That was a good idea,” he thought, as he walked back to the hotel, “and I’ll just see how I can manage it.”
Arrived at the hotel, he first begged a reel of cotton, a needle, and a small piece of dark serge from the manageress, and then retired to his room. He was wearing a navy-blue suit at the time, and whipping the coat off, he first fitted the Mauser pistol beneath the waistcoat, pushing the muzzle up till it rested in the right armpit.
“Now, all I have to do is to open the seams down each side and let them out,” he murmured. “Then I will sew on a kind of inner pocket, and as soon as it is finished I must pad the waistcoat all round with cotton-wool. It will make it awfully hot, and I dare say I shall make rather a muddle of it, as I never was very grand at sewing. Still, it’s got to be done, and after all, what does it matter how neat the stitching is?”
It took a good two hours to let out the seams and add the pocket,
