Page images
PDF
EPUB

"I thought I had better do so," he said, as Sir George examined it. "I feared to show it to any one."

"Where did you get it?" asked the General.

In a few words Reginald told him of his adventure in the trenches.

"You did not recognize either of the speakers, you say."

"No, sir. My most unfortunate fall startled the survivor, and by the time I had recovered he had clean disappeared. I turned out the guard and searched the place thoroughly,-and the dead man, too, they are at him now, and I examined the sentries, but they had seen nothing suspicious."

"And where found you this?"

"Just by the spot over which the survivor passed. I have set a secret watch all round in case he should return to search for it."

"The conversation you heard was a curious one."

"It was, sir. And from the way the man spoke it seemed as if he were one who would have ample opportunity of learning your intentions, sir.

"That is what struck me, Curtis."

The General took two or three strides across the room.

"I don't mind telling you, Curtis," he said, "but it must go no further. The place is honeycombed with spies our slightest movements seem to be known to the enemy. That affair of Friday week, when the Loamshires were so cut up,Colonel Hamilton tells me the enemy were clearly forewarned, and were on the alert. They were actually in strong force behind him."

"One of the Dutch Colonists, perhaps, sir."

"How would a civilian learn of that plan which was known only to myself, Hamilton, and his officers?

[ocr errors]

"Among whom you would hardly look for the traitor, sir."

The General shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose not, Curtis; and yet I am getting to that frame of mind when I would hardly trust my own brother."

There was a momentary pause, broken first by Reginald.

"I had a suggestion to make, sir, on

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

"The chances of getting through are not more than one in twenty."

66

I would trust to the one, sir." The General resumed his pacing up and down the room.

"Look here, Curtis," he said; "I know to a day when we must capitulate if we are not relieved. I want General Buller to know just how we are situated-it is vital he should know, not only for our sakes but for his. It may influence his movements. How would you set about it?"

"I should go as directly south as I could, sir. I know the road to the Tugela intimately."

"Ah-Rieker's farm, I see," said the General, smiling slyly.

It's a soldier's business to know the roads, sir."

[ocr errors]

Ay, and he does n't learn any the less quickly because he has a sweet young lady to teach him."

"And then again, sir, I can speak the Dutch fluently."

"Again the young ladies, Curtis?"

"I began to study it before I came out, sir."

"But found your tutors on this side more to your liking-eh? However, I've a good mind to accept your offer. How will you proceed?

"I should start at dark, sir,—say tomorrow night, and attempt to to get through their lines without making a closer acquaintance with them, but if not I should pose as a Boer and trust to that paper. I could give them some information about Ladysmith you know, sir, information that might do them good."

"It's very risky, Curtis, but I don't know how to refuse. And the dispatches?" "Could they not be verbal, sir?" "Certainly, why not?"

And they spent the next twenty minutes in earnest converse, the General rapidly summarizing for the benefit of his heroic subordinate the information that was to be conveyed to the Commander-in-Chief.

[blocks in formation]

tered the name in his hearing, and it sounded like the sweetest music in his thirsty ears.

"Yes, dear," he said, taking her hand. "I am to leave Ladysmith to-night on duty-perhaps I may never return.'

The next moment, all barriers flung away, she was clinging to his arm, sobbing bitterly.

Reginald clasped her to him passionately.

"Hilda!" he cried, "Hilda, dearest!" She drew away, glancing at him shyly through a mist of tears.

“Is it—is it another sortie?" she whispered.

"No. I am going alone. I must not say more, and on this you will be silent as death, dear?"

She nodded, unable to trust herself to speak.

"Hilda, dear," he whispered, bending towards her, "may I-I kiss you before I go?"

She shook her head, then with a sudden forward movement flung her arms round his neck, and laid her cheek against his. "Darling Hilda - do you do you mean— this?" he whispered brokenly.

[ocr errors]

Must you go, dear?”

Yes. It is the call of duty, and I am a soldier. Good-by!"

"My own dear boy! Heaven take you through in safety!" she sobbed.

The next minute he was gone, and Hilda, left to the drearier part, flung herself face down on the soft rugs which covered the floor, striving in vain to still the they would rack her slender frame to heavy sobs which almost seemed as though pieces.

An hour later Reginald, with all the "slimness" of an educated scout and a disciple of Baden-Powell, was twisting a snake-like course amidst the long grass and kopjes which cover the southern approach to Ladysmith.

CHAPTER XVI.

PIERCING THE ENEMY'S LINES.

Reginald's idea had been to cover as large a distance as possible during the night, and then to lie concealed among the

rocks throughout the daylight. He had three days' rations with him, but he carried no arms save a small revolver, which he could easily throw away if he found himself in any danger of being captured by the enemy. He was hoping he might get safely through the lines by sheer maneuvering, but if not he would use that pass of Kruger's, pose as a Boer spy, and make his escape from the Boer camp at the earliest opportunity.

For an hour, nearly two, he marched stolidly on beneath the friendly shelter of the darkness, hoping to reach certain rocky ground he knew of where he might lie concealed through the day. He knew he must be approaching the Boer lines, however, and as he was ignorant of their exact whereabouts he retarded his steps and redoubled his caution.

Six miles out from Ladysmith, as he was marching steadily southward, he suddenly heard the muttering of voices, apparently only a few yards from him. He dropped to earth as if he had been shot, and lay there, extended at full length, with every sense on the alert. It was some minutes, however, before he could locate the voices he could so plainly hear; but before that time had elapsed, he had an experience which all but put a premature end to his expedition.

He felt suddenly the clutch of a hand on his ankle. It was only a gentle touch, but it almost stilled the beating of Reginald's heart. He lay motionless, however, awaiting developments.

The hand traveled along his leg and so right up to his face, where it rested a moment on his chin. Then some one murmured in Dutch.

"It is not he. This has no beard. A youngster."

A rustle among the grass, and Reginald knew that his strange visitant had departed. But it was some minutes before he could get grip of all his faculties again.

Then, once more there was a murmuring of voices, and the cold sweat broke out on Reginald's brow as he realized that they were behind him as well as before. Was he surrounded by Boers? he asked himself.

There was a rustle in the grass about a dozen feet away, and two men of huge

build arose and stood almost over him, talking in rumbling undertones.

"It is time," said one of them, striking a match and glancing at a huge silver watch he lugged from his pocket.

Ja," assented the other.

The first speaker swung round and shouted something in stentorian_tones, and immediately the ground around Reginald seemed to spring to sudden life. There must have been thirty of them, and they had evidently halted there to snatch an hour or two of repose in the middle of some night expedition-foraging scouting, perhaps.

or

In ten minutes they had disappeared, and Reginald breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"God! what a narrow shave!" he muttered. "I must have stumbled right into the middle of them in the darkness."

When at length he rose again to his feet he found the night had changed and for the worse. A heavy mist was rolling up from the south, causing the rocks and crags and hillocks to take on weird, uncanny shapes at short range of vision, and rendering them invisible until they were almost on top of him.

"An infernal nuisance this!" he muttered. "I wonder where the deuce I am.”

He pressed carefully forward, examining the way before him as well as he could, and for half an hour met with no further

impediment than was presented by the bowlders over which he now and again. tripped.

"I can't get through their lines yet," he said to himself. I wonder where I am? This infernal mist has spoiled everything."

As he uttered the words, he caromed sharply against a broad, yielding form, and the next moment a pair of arms had clasped his body in a vise-like hug, and he was struggling frantically with an unknown, unseen opponent. Had it been they two alone, Reginald would have come off conqueror for he was a Devonshire man, and in Devonshire the traditions of Jan Ridd yet flourish. Indeed, he had gained the victory, so far as his opponent went, for, with a hug that seemed to crack the frame of his foe like a basket under a cartwheel, Reginald twisted the Boer

round and brought him to earth with a mighty crash.

But his triumph was short-lived. The shouts of the Boer and the noise of the struggling had brought out a score more of them, and Reginald, seeing himself surrounded, surrendered as gracefully as he could to overwhelming force.

With no very gentle hands they dragged him about a score of yards, where stood a wooden hut, into which they thrust him, while one of them went in search of the veldt-cornet.

Reginald began seriously to consider the situation. Should he pose as a rooinek officer who had been out reconnoitering and had lost his way? Would they take his word for that, and make him a prisoner of war? Or would they shoot him as a spy? Even if they took the more merciful view of it, his mission to the south would be at an end, for he would be sent to Pretoria. And he had that pass! If he used that, and was discovered, it would be death to a certainty. But at all costs he must try and bluff them, that he might carry the Chief's messages south. He must not consider how to save his own skin. Life was but a trifle; but he must, at all hazards, try to deliver the General's message. Was that pass of Kruger's a trump card? He felt a trifle more dubious about it than he had in the General's quarters at Ladysmith. Nevertheless, he determined to play it for all it was worth.

He had arrived at this decision when the veldt-cornet-an old man with a flowing iron-gray beard and a face of stone-entered, followed by half a dozen burghers, two of whom bore lanterns. Reginald rose to his feet.

"Dag, Oom," he said, tranquilly.

The old man started, then turned to his companions.

"You said you had captured a rooinek spy," he exclaimed half angrily.

"The darkness deceived them, Oom," said Reginald with the utmost calm. "I am as good a Transvaaler as yourself.

See, I have Oom Paul's voucher for that, here."

He produced the pass and handed it to the veldt-cornet with a hand that never deviated by a hair's-breadth from its icelike steadiness. The old man took the paper and carried it to one of the lanterns.

"Ja," he muttered, more to himself than to the others. "It is Paul Kruger's signature. I know it well."

Then he confronted Reginald again, peering keenly at him from below his bushy evebrows.

"Whence come you?" he asked. “From Ladysmith?"

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Reginald even ventured to hope that the old man might order his release. But in this he was doomed to disappointment.

"It may be all as you say," the old man muttered; "but I will take you to the General. He will know."

The old man took one of the prisoner's arms, and signed to one of the burghers. to take the other. Within ten minutes Reginald was being led into a ruinouslooking farmhouse, which he judged had been hastily evacuated by its Colonist owner on the approach of the Boers.

"The General, is he sleeping?" the cornet asked of a man who was lounging on a settee in the entrance hall.

"No; he is within there," was the reply, with a nod toward the door on the left.

The next moment Reginald was being ushered into a long, low-browed room, lit only by two lamps placed upon a table in

the center.

And at the table with a mass of maps and papers before him sat Piet Joubert, the Commandant-General of the allied forces of the two Republics.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

[graphic][ocr errors][merged small]

This is a valuable antique, but the design is excellently well imitated in some of the better modern rugs. The section shown is a large quarter of the rug.

TH

FINE RUGS

BY DINAH STURGIS

HE appreciation of fine rugs has grown in this country from practically nothing to a craze within the past few years. This is also true, only in less degree, of Western Europe; there the appreciation began earlier, but it has not attained the momentum of popularity that rug-collecting has acquired here, where money is more quickly obtained and spent with more freedom.

Since rugs have become so fashionable as a furnishing, one who is not fairly well informed as to their varieties and relative values finds himself at a disadvantage. To be able to say of a rug after glancing at it, What a handsome Sarak!"-or Khorasan, or whatever it may be,-seems to give the speaker that species of moral

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

support which Emerson says good clothes supply. At any rate, the possessor of even this comparatively small amount of information is envied by the uninitiated. A good many people, too, are "making money as amateur rug-collectors, picking up a fine rug here and another there at a bargain, and later on disposing of them singly or together at a profit. It probably is not worth while learning anything for the sake of being able to air that learning in public, and many people are devoid of the trading instinct, but it is well to be able to buy rugs intelligently for one's own use, and the pleasure to be derived from studying rugs for their own sake is compensation for any effort that the study requires. At present it does

« PreviousContinue »