saw that Emson was standing far away with the horses, and that no one else was near. His next glance was at the cloudless sky, and the dripping eaves, to which a few bright drops still hung and ceased to fall.
Only a rare shower, the man seemed to think; and, muttering to himself, he shuffled a little into a dry spot to lie down yawning, when rush came the rest of the water, deluging him this time, and making him jump up and burst into a torrent of objurgations against the sky in his own tongue, shaking both his fists the while, till, bang, clatter, crash! the bucket came rattling down, and he turned and ran out toward where Emson stood looking on.
Dyke descended quickly, and making a circuit, he ran round, and then appeared slowly from the end of a fence fifty yards from the house, walking quietly across to join his brother.
As he drew near, the Kaffir was gesticulating and talking away in broken English, mingled with more words of his own tongue; and when Dyke joined them and took the rein of his little cob, the man turned excitedly to him.
“What’s the matter, Jack?”
The Kaffir looked at him suspiciously for a moment or two, but Dyke mounted and returned the gaze in the most unruffled manner.
“Big rain—big wet rain—big water—big bucket—all wet, wet,” cried the Kaffir.
“Make the mealies grow,” said Dyke coolly.
“Make mealie grow!” cried the man. Then a change came over him. The look of doubt and wonder became one of certainty, and his face expanded into a broad grin which displayed all his white teeth. “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!” he cried, pointing to a couple of wet patches on the leg of the boy’s trousers; “you make rain—Massa Dyky make rain. Wet, wet. Ah-ah-ah-ah!”
“You come along and help drive the ostrich,” said Dyke, setting his cob to canter; and, followed by the Kaffir at a quick trot, which soon dried up his moisture, they went over the heated red sand toward where the speck in the distance had been pointed out as the object they sought.
Chapter Three.
An Ostrich Race.
“I say, Joe, you are right,” said Dyke now, with animation. “ ’Tisn’t half so hot riding.”
“Of course not. One begins to get moist, and the sun and air bring a feeling of coolness. It’s only the making a start. Now then, shall I try to cut him off?”
“No, no!” cried Dyke excitedly; “I’ll do it. I’ll make the brute run. You follow up.”
“Right!” said Emson; “that is, unless he tracks my way.”
“Oh, he won’t do that,” said Dyke, with a merry laugh, and in his animation the boy seemed to be quite transformed.
It was a good long ride to where the ostrich they sought to bring back to its pen could be seen stalking about, looking about as big as a guinea-fowl, but gradually growing taller and taller to its pursuers as they rode on. After a time it ceased picking about and ran first in one direction and then in another, as if undecided which line of country to take before leading its pursuers a wild race out and across the veldt.
By this time it looked fully four feet high; soon after it was fully five, as it stood up with its neck stretched out, and its weak, large-eyed, flat head turned to them with a malicious expression.
The trio now separated, the horsemen riding more and more apart as they advanced, till they were each a couple of hundred yards from the Kaffir, who suddenly uttered a warning cry, to indicate that the great bird was beginning to run off straight away.
“All right, Jack, I see,” cried Dyke; and pressing his cob’s sides he went off at a gallop, not, however, in pursuit of the bird, which ran right forward, with its head turned to watch its pursuers all the time.
Dyke’s tactics, the result of experience, were of quite another kind. He turned his cob’s head, and went off like the wind at right angles to the course the ostrich was taking, and the effect was instantaneous. There was all the open veldt, or plain, spreading out for hundreds of miles before the bird, and it had only to dart off and leave the swiftest horse far behind. But its would-be cunning nature suggested to it that its enemy had laid a deep scheme to cut it off, and instead of going straight away, it turned on the instant to spin along in the same direction as that taken by the boy, and get right across him.
“Ah, you silly, muddled-brained, flat-headed idiot!” yelled Dyke, as he raced along over the plain, his steed sending the red sand flying at every spurn of its hoofs as it stretched itself out. “I’ll be there first, and cut him off. You can’t do it—you can’t do it. Ah-h-h-h!”
This last shout, ending in a rattle of the tongue, seemed to stimulate the little cob to make fresh efforts; and laughing merrily to himself in the exhilaration of the race, Dyke had only to keep slightly drawing his left rein, to make the ostrich curve more and more round towards him, till he had actually deluded the bird into taking the exact direction he wished—namely, right for the pens from which it had escaped.
On sped the cob, running over the sand like a
And so they rode on and on, till the low range of buildings in front became nearer, the yellow sunflower disks grew bigger, and the sun glared from the white house. Still the bird saw nothing of this, but continued to run in its curve, trying to pass its pursuer, till all at once it woke to the fact that there was a long range of wire fence before it, over which were bobbing about the heads of Joe Emson’s flock of its fellows, and there it was with the fence in front, and the two horsemen and Kaffir behind.
Then there was a change of tactics.
Dyke, who was hundreds of yards in front of his companions, knew what was coming, and gave his short-handled rhinoceros-hide whip a whish through the air, and then cracked it loudly, while a chorus of discordant cries arose from the pens.
“Give up, you ugly old rascal, or I’ll twist this round your long neck,” cried Dyke; and a great chorus arose from the pens, as if the tame birds within the wire fence were imploring the great truant to be good, and come home.
But nothing was further from the great bird’s thoughts. It could easily now have darted away, but it felt that it was driven to bay, and began to show fight in the most vicious fashion, snapping its flat beak, hissing, snorting, rattling its plumage, and undulating its long neck, as it danced about, till it looked like a boa constrictor which had partially developed into a bird.
Then it dashed at its pursuer, snapping at him in its rushes. But the bill was not the thing to mind; a few lashes with the whip were enough to ward off its attack. The danger to be avoided came from those tremendous legs, which could deliver kicks hard enough to break a man’s bones.
Three times over did the great bird strike at Dyke, as it was driven down to the pen with lash after lash
