Renshaw Fanning's Quest: A Tale of the High Veldt

Chapter Twenty Nine.
Renshaw’s Discovery

The summit seemed quite flat and level as far as they could judge, for the night had now fully set in. But at the side of it on which they stood the great cock’s-comb ridge rose high in the air, the loom of its precipitous sides sheering up against the starry zenith, showing indistinct and shadowy in the darkness. The night wind, cool and refreshing, sang in tuneful puffs through the grasses, and aloft in the gold-spangled sky the Southern Cross and many a flashing constellation glowed forth with that clear incandescence never so vivid as when gazed upon from desert solitudes.

“We can do nothing until the moon rises,” pronounced Renshaw. “There are some lively krantzes around here, I reckon, and it would never do to take a five-hundred foot header, for want of a little patience. We’ll make for the foot of the ridge, and lie by until the moon gets up.”

Proceeding cautiously, he led the way up the slope which culminated in the precipitous cliffs of the ridge. He was close under the latter, when his horse suddenly swerved aside, snuffing the air.

“What is it, old horse?” he murmured soothingly, reining in, and peering eagerly into the gloom. Was there a deep cleft in front – or did the rocks shelter a lurking enemy? Both these speculations flashed through his mind, as he whispered back a caution to his companion.

But the horse didn’t seem inclined to stand still either. He gently sidled away at an angle, and his rider, curious to fathom the mystery, let him have his head. A few steps more and they were right under the cliff. Then something flashed in the starlight. The horse came to a standstill – down went his head, and a long continuous gurgle told of the nature of his find. He drank in the grateful fluid as if he was never going to stop.

“Well done, old horse!” said his master, dismounting to investigate this inexpressibly welcome phenomenon. It was a deep cleft in the rock about six feet long by three wide, full to the brim of delicious water, in which a great festoon of maidenhair fern trailing from above, was daintily dripping. “Sellon, this is a find, and no mistake. We’ll camp down here, and wait for the moon.”

“And won’t we have a jolly good sluice in the morning. We’ll fill that goat-skin of ours, and pour it over each other. I believe it’s a week since I had a good wash – not since we left the river. The fellow who laid down the axiom that you’re never thoroughly comfortable until you’re thoroughly dirty must have been born in a pigsty himself. I know that for the last few days I’ve been wondering whether I’ve been looking a greater brute than I felt – or the other way about. Hooray for a good sluice to-morrow, anyhow.”

Both were too excited to sleep. Even the consolation of tobacco they denied themselves lest the glimmer of a spark of light should betray their whereabouts to hostile eyes. And they were on short commons, too; the death of the packhorse and the necessity of jettisoning a portion of his load having narrowed down their stock of provisions to that which was the most portable, viz. biltong and ship-biscuit; which comestibles, as Renshaw declared, besides containing a vast amount of compressed nutriment, had the additional advantage of being so hard that a very little of them went a long way. So they lay under the cliffs munching their ration of this very hard tack, and speculating eagerly over the chances the next day might bring forth.

The night wore on. Save for the tuneful sighing of the wind in the grass, no sound broke through the calm of that wild and elevated solitude. Meteors and falling stars flashed ever and anon in the spangled vault. A whole world seemed to slumber.

Soon Renshaw began to notice an incoherency in his companion’s replies. Fatigue versus excitement had carried the day. Sellon, who was of a full-blooded habit, and uninured to such calls as had of late been made upon his energies, had succumbed. He was fast asleep.

Left alone in the midst of a dead world, while the whole wilderness slumbered around, Renshaw strove to attune his faculties to the prevailing calm – to try and gain a few hours of much-needed jest. But his nerves were strung to their utmost tension. The speculation of years, the object of his thoughts sleeping and waking, were about to be attained. Sleep utterly refused to visit him.

He could not even rest. At last he rose. Taking up his trusty double gun – rifle and shot-barrel – he wandered forth from the fireless camp.

By the light of the burning stars he picked his way cautiously along the base of the rocky ridge, keeping a careful eye in front of him, above, around, everywhere. Yes, the object of years of anxious thought, of more than one lonely and perilous expedition into the heart of these arid and forbidding wilds, was within reach at last. It must be. Did not that gruesome find down there in the gully point unmistakably to that?

The cool night wind fanned his brow. All the influences of the dead, solemn wilderness were upon him, and his thoughts reverted to another object, but to one upon which he had schooled himself to think no more.

In vain. There on that lonely mountain-top at midnight, in his utter solitude, the man’s heart melted within him at the thought of his hopeless love – at the recollection of that anguished face, that broken voice pleading for his forgiveness; for his sympathy in her own dire extremity. What was she doing at that moment, he idly speculated? Ah! her regrets, her longings, her prayers were not for him, were all for the other; for the man who shared his present undertaking, who slumbered so peacefully but a few hundred yards away.

Why had he brought this man to Sunningdale, to steal away that which should have been his? Why had he brought him here now, to enrich him in order that nothing might be wanting to complete his own utter self-sacrifice? He owed him nothing, for had he not twice paid the debt in full? Why had he stepped between him and certain death? But for his ready promptitude Maurice Sellon would now be almost as sad a relic of humanity as that upon which they had gazed but a few hours back. But the solemn eyes of the stars looking down upon him, the very grandeur of the mountain solitude, seemed to chide him for such thoughts. What was the puny fate of a few human beings compared with the immensity of ages upon which those stars had looked down – the roll of centuries during which those silent mountains had stood there ever the same?

A perceptible lightening suffused the velvety vault above. The horned moon rose higher over the drear sea of peaks. The crags stood forth silvery in the new-born light – and then, as his glance wandered downwards, Renshaw felt every drop of blood flow back to his heart.

Far below shone a tiny glimmer – the glimmer of a mere spark. But withal so powerful that it pierced the darkness of the far depths as the flash of a ray of fire.

He stood as one turned to stone, holding his very breath. He rubbed his eyes, and looked again. There it was still. Again he averted his gaze, and again he looked. The distant spark was glittering more brilliantly than ever. It seemed to gain in size and power as he looked. It held him spellbound with its green incandescence flashing forth from the darkness down there in the far depths.

He tore out the white lining of his soft hat, and bending down, nailed it to the ground with his pocket knife. Then he walked away a few yards and looked again. The spark had disappeared.

Feverishly he returned to the mark which he had set, now almost fearing to look. He need not have feared. There shone the “Eye” – more dazzling than ever.

Maurice Sellon, sleeping the dreamless slumber of a thoroughly exhausted man, started up with a smothered imprecation, as a hand gently shook him by the shoulder. But his deadened faculties sprang into quick life at the low impressive voice.

“At last! Come and look. The ‘Eye’ is shining like a star.”

Chapter Thirty.
“Like a Star.”

“Like a star!”

The two men stood gazing in silence not untinged with awe, upon this wonderful, this beautiful phenomenon. For how many ages – for how many generations of the human race had that marvellous Eye shone forth in the gloom of its untrodden solitude. The heart of the earth was unfolding a glimpse of its treasure-house.

Like a star! Yet that Eye, flashing, scintillating in its mysterious bed – was it not in a measure diabolical, luring men to destruction? Of the two who had sought to meddle with it, one had returned only to die; the other – had they not but a few days since handled his bleached and unburied skull?

These thoughts passing through Renshaw’s mind could not but temper the degree of wild exultation which he felt now that he had conquered at last. Sellon, on the other hand, could hardly restrain the wild hurrahs wherewith, but for the consciousness of probable peril, he would fain have given vent to his feelings.

“How far down is it, old chap?” said the latter, eagerly.

“Impossible to say. We can go forward a little now, and explore. It’s not much of a moon, but there’s light enough. But, for Heaven’s sake, Sellon, restrain that excitable temperament of yours, or we shall have you plunging over one of these krantzes before you know where you are.”

“All right, old boss. I’ll keep cool. You can take the lead, if you like.”

The light was misty and uncertain. The ground here took an abrupt fall. Proceeding cautiously for a little distance down, they halted. The Eye had disappeared.

“Come on. We shall see it again directly,” said Sellon, starting forward again.

But the other’s hand dropped on his shoulder like a vice.

“Stop – for your life!”

“Eh? What’s up? – Oh, Lord!”

He stood still enough then. Three or four steps further and he would have plunged into space. In the faint illusive light of the spent moon, the treacherous cliff brow was well-nigh indistinguishable even to Renshaw’s tried vision. But the unerring instincts of the latter were quick to interpret the sudden puff of cold air sweeping upwards, and well for the other that it was so.

“Pheugh!” shuddered Sellon, turning pale as he awoke to the awful peril he had escaped. “What a blundering ass I am, to be sure. But – look! There’s the Eye again – larger – brighter than ever – by Jove!”

“Yes; and I don’t believe it’s a couple of hundred feet below us either. Let’s see what sort of a drop there is here.”

Lying full length on the edge of the cliff, he peered over. Then loosening two or three stones, he let them fall – one after the other. A single clink as each struck the bottom.

“We can’t get down this side, Sellon. It’s sheer – as I thought, even if it doesn’t overhang. The stones never hit the side once. But now, to mark the Eye. It won’t shine in the daylight.”

He proceeded to untie what looked like a bundle of sticks. In reality it contained a short bow and several arrows. Next he produced some lumps of chalk rolled up in rags.

“What an ingenious dodger you are, Fanning!” cried Sellon, admiringly, watching his companion carefully fitting the lumps of chalk on the heads of several of the arrows. “So that’s what you brought along that bundle of sticks for. I thought you had an eye to the possibility of our ammunition giving out.”

Renshaw smiled. Then stringing the bow, he bent it once or twice, tentatively.

“That’ll do, I think. It’s pretty strong is this little weapon of war. Old Dirk made it for me after the most approved method of his people. You know Korannas and Bushmen are archers in contra-distinction to the assegai-throwing Kafir tribes. Now for a shot.”

Drawing out one of the chalk-tipped arrows to its head, he took a careful aim and let fly. The bow twanged, and immediately a faint thud told the expectant listeners that the shaft had struck very near the mark.

“That’ll make a good splash of chalk wherever it has struck,” said the marksman approvingly, fitting another arrow. But on the twang of the bow there followed a metallic clink instead of the softer thud of the first missile.

“That bit of chalk’s come off,” said Renshaw. “However, let’s try again.”

This time the result seemed satisfactory. Again and again was it repeated until half a dozen arrows had been shot away.

“That’ll put half a dozen chalk splashes round the Eye, or as near it as possible, for our guidance at daybreak,” said Renshaw, approvingly. “Now we’ll drop a white flag or two about.”

Fixing small strips of rag, well chalked, to the butt-ends of several more arrows, he shot them away, one after another, in the direction of the first.

“We’ll go back now, and get out our gear. We can’t do anything before daybreak. The place may be easy to get down into on one side, or it may be well-nigh impossible. But, hang it all, Sellon, there ought to be no such word for us as impossible with that in front of us.”

Once more they turned to look back, as though unwilling to go out of sight of the marvel, lest it should elude them altogether. Opposite, the misty loom of cliffs was now discernible, and between it and them, down in the shadowy depths, that flashing star still shone clear in its green scintillations.

Dawn rose, chill and clear, upon the endless tossing mountain waste. But before the night silvered into that pearly shade which should preface the golden flush of the sunrise, our two adventurers, loaded with all the implements of their enterprise, stood waiting on the spot where Renshaw had left his mark on first making the discovery.

Then as the lightening earth began to unfold its mysteries, they took in the whole situation at a glance. Standing with their backs to the precipitous cock’s-comb ridge, they looked down upon the terraced second summit of the mountain. But between this and where they stood yawned a crater-like rift. An ejaculation escaped Renshaw.

“By Jove! Just look. Why, the crater itself is the exact shape of an eye!”

It was. Widening outward at the centre and terminating in an acute angle at each extremity, it was indeed a wonderful formation. Shaped like an eye-socket, and shut in on every side by precipitous rock walls, the gulf looked at first sight inaccessible. It seemed about half a mile in length, by four hundred yards at the widest point, and although this extraordinary hollow extended nearly the whole width of the mountain, dividing the flat table summit from the sheering ridge – yet there was no outlet at either end. Both stood gazing in amazement upon this marvellous freak of Nature.

“What did I tell you, old chap?” cried Sellon, triumphantly. “There’s more room on the top of this old berg than you’d think. Who’d have thought of finding a place like that up here? I believe it’s an extinct volcano, when all’s said and done.”

“Likely. Now let’s get to work.”

They descended the steep slope to the spot whence the arrow experiment had been made, and where Sellon had so narrowly escaped a grisly death. It was near the widest part of the rift. As they had expected, the cliff fell away in a sheer, unbroken wall at least two hundred feet. Nor did the opposite sides seem to offer any greater facility. Whichever way they looked, the rock fell sheer, or nearly so.

“We can do nothing here!” said Renshaw, surveying every point with a fairly powerful field-glass. “There are our chalk-marks all right – flags and all. We had better make a cast round to the right. According to Greenway’s story, the krantzes must be in a sort of terrace formation somewhere. That will be at the point where he was dodging the Bushmen.”

Skirting the edge of the gulf, they soon rounded the spur. It was even as Renshaw had conjectured. The ground became more broken. By dint of a not very difficult climb, they soon descended about a hundred feet. But here they were pulled up by a cliff – not sheer indeed, but apparently unnegotiable. It dropped a matter of thirty feet on to a grassy ledge some six yards wide, thence without a break about twice that depth to the bottom of the crater.

“We can negotiate that, I guess!” cried Renshaw, joyously, as he unwound a long coil of raw-hide rope. “I came prepared for a far greater drop, but we can do it well here. I don’t see any other place that seems more promising. And now I look at it, this must be the very point Greenway himself tried from. Look! That must be the identical rock he squatted under while the Bushmen were peppering him. Yes, by Jove, it must!” pointing to a great overhanging mass of stone which rose behind them. “Why, he had already found a diamond or two even here. What shan’t we find down yonder?”

There was a boyish light-heartedness about Renshaw now, even surpassing the spirits of his companion. The latter stared. But the consciousness of being within touch of fabulous wealth is a wonderful incentive to light-heartedness.

He measured off a length of the rope for the shorter drop. Then they drove in a crowbar, and, securing the rope, a very few minutes sufficed to let themselves down to the grassy ledge.

“Pheugh! that’s something of a job!” cried Sellon, panting with the exertion of the descent. “Something of a job, with all this gear to carry as well. I could have sworn once the whole thing was giving way with me. I say, couldn’t we leave our shooting irons here, and pick them up on the way back?”

“H’m! Better not. Never get a yard away from your arms in an enemy’s country!”

The reply was unpleasantly suggestive. To Sellon it recalled all his former apprehensions. What a trap they would be in, by the way, in the event of a hostile appearance on the scene.

“You’re right,” he said. “Let’s get on.”

The second crowbar was driven in. This time they had some difficulty in fixing it. The turf covering the ledge was only a few inches thick. Then came the hard rock. At length a crevice was struck, and the staunch iron firmly wedged to within a few inches of its head.

“Our string is more than long enough,” said Renshaw, flinging the raw-hide rope down the face of the rock. The end trailed on the ground more than a dozen feet. “This krantz is on a greater slant than the smaller one. Don’t throw more of your weight on the reim than you can help. More climbing than hanging, you understand. I’ll go down first.”

Slant or no slant, however, this descent was a ticklish business. To find yourself hanging by a single rope against the smooth face of a precipice with a fifty-foot drop or so beneath is not a delightful sensation, whatever way you look at it. The crowbar might give. There might be a flaw in the iron – all sorts of things might happen. Besides, to go down a sixty-foot rope almost hand under hand is something of a feat even for a man in good training. However, taking advantage of every excrescence in the rock likely to afford passing foothold, Renshaw accomplished the descent in safety.

Then came Sellon’s turn. Of powerful and athletic build, he was a heavy man, and in no particular training withal. It was a serious ordeal for him, and once launched in mid-air the chances were about even in favour of a quicker and more disastrous descent than either cared to think of. The rope jammed his unwary knuckles against the hard rock, excoriating them and causing him most excruciating agony, nearly forcing him to let go in his pain and bewilderment. The instinct of self-preservation prevailed, however, and eventually he landed safely beside his companion – where the first thing he did on recovering his breath was to break forth into a tremendous imprecation. Then, forgetting his pain and exertion, he, following the latter’s example, glanced round curiously and a little awed, upon the remarkable place wherein they found themselves – a place whose soil had probably never before been trodden by human foot.

And the situation had its awesome side. The great rock walls sheering up around had shut in this place for ages and ages, even from the degraded and superstitious barbarians whose fears invested it and its guardian Eye with all the terrors of the dread unknown. While the history of civilisation – possibly of the world itself – was in its infancy, this gulf had yawned there unexplored, and now they two were the first to tread its virgin soil. The man who could accept such a situation without some feeling of awe must be strangely devoid of imagination – strangely deficient in ideas.