From Veldt Camp Fires. H. A. Bryden

and graver look deepening about the lines of his mouth.

      Suddenly Kensley sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, his face flushed with anger.

      “You damned cheat!” he gasped, throwing down his cards. “For a long time I couldn’t believe my eyes, but there’s no other word for it – you’re a common swindler. I saw you pass that card,” – pointing to a king – “I’ve seen you doing the same thing before. Not one cent will you get out of me. Leave my rooms, and take care neither I nor my friends ever see the face of you again. If we do there’ll be trouble.”

      At first, as the Englishman blurted out his indignation – which, it may be said at once, was perfectly honest and deserved – Barreto attempted, with a gesture of courteous deprecation, to offer explanations. At last he obtained speech. “You are mistaken, utterly mistaken,” he said calmly. “I think you must be mad. Anyhow I have won this money fairly, and I demand it. If you don’t pay, I shall make the fact public.”

      “You damned villain!” gasped Kensley; “get out of my rooms at once, before I put you out.”

      The expression upon Barreto’s face changed now instantly from a plausible calm to one of wild and deadly hate. He saw that Kensley was firm, and not to be played upon. He glanced round the room. As ill luck would have it, there hung, among other trophies upon the wall near him, an Indian knife in its sheath. In an instant Barreto grasped the handle, drew the knife flashing from its cover, and turned upon Kensley. “Now, Mr Kensley,” he said, with a very unpleasant look upon his face, “you will pay me that 55 pounds, and withdraw what you just now said, or take the alternative.”

      Few Englishmen care for knife play; unlike the men of Southern Europe, they seem to have an instinctive horror of the weapon. Kensley little liked the job; the adversary before him looked very evil – far more evil than he could ever have imagined him; yet, being a man of courage and of action, he took the only course that seemed at the moment open to him. He flung himself in a flash upon Barreto, trying to seize the man’s arm before he should strike. He was not quick enough to avoid the blow; the keen knife ripped through his smooth shirt-front, and penetrated the upper part of his chest, just under the collar-bone. Kensley’s fighting blood was now up; the wound, though a nasty one, was not disabling; he grappled with Barreto, forced his right arm and dagger behind his back, and then, twining his right leg round his opponent’s, put forth all his strength and threw him, falling upon him as he did so. The room was thickly carpeted, and the fall, though a heavy one, made no great noise. The Portuguese gave a choking cry, and shuddered, as Kensley thought, very strangely. Barreto had ceased struggling from the instant he fell, and, in a strangely altered voice, gasped once in Portuguese, “I am a dead man.” Kensley cautiously released his grip; he feared treachery – some trick. But Barreto moved no more. One glance he gave as Kensley rose; his eyes rolled, then he lay quite still. A horrible fear dawned upon the Englishman. He gently lifted the man, and looked at his back. The right arm lay listless now, and had released its grip of the knife. Alas! that long knife, fashioned by some cunning artificer for wild hill men, so keen and deadly for the taking of life, had done its work. By some ghastly misfortune, it had penetrated the ribs and pierced Barreto’s heart. The man lay there, flabby and inert – as Kensley soon convinced himself, dead beyond all hope of recovery.

      As Kensley rose, and with a sickening feeling at his heart surveyed the dead man’s face, something in its appearance touched a chord of memory. “Great God!” he said to himself, “is it reality, or am I still dreaming? This is the face of the Portuguese soldier I saw as I sat asleep before the fire this evening!” His eye wandered from the dead man’s face to the great yellow tusk gleaming there still and silent in the corner of the chamber. As he looked, a new light seemed to leap into his mind. Again he saw, as in a flash, before the eye of memory, those strange scenes in the African forest.

      Now, whether it was coincidence, fate, black magic – call it what you will – the ivory tusk, standing there in the corner of that silent room, now a chamber of death and horror, was the tusk of the elephant seen by Kensley in his singular dream – vision it might rather be called – of that fateful evening. The name of the dead man upon the carpet there was Manoel Barreto. The name of the Portuguese captain whom Kensley had in his dream seen slain by the single-tusked elephant, more than two hundred years agone, was Manoel Barreto too. The one was a lineal descendant of the other. Zingesi’s death was again avenged. All this, however, Cecil Kensley, as he stood there, haggard and white-faced, knew not – he only surmised dimly some part of it.

      The clock chimed out two in soft, resonant tones. Kensley went to the spirit-stand, poured out some brandy in a tumbler and drank it down. Then he touched the electric bell. His man came to the door, heavy-eyed and sleepy. At sight of Barreto’s body, the scattered cards upon the floor, his master’s shirt-front soaked in blood, he turned ghastly pale and opened his mouth to make exclamation.

      “Thompson,” said his master, “there has been terrible work. Go into the street and fetch a policeman and a doctor.”

      Pressing a handkerchief to his wound, he sank into a chair as his man went forth upon the errand.

      The great tusk, the key to that grim tragedy, still gleamed there behind him, cold, inscrutable, majestic, its history of blood not yet ended.

      Chapter Three.

      Jan Prinsloo’s Kloof

      Far away in the gloomiest recesses of a range lying between Zwart Ruggens and the Zwartberg, Cape Colony, not far from where the mountains of that wild and secluded district give place to the eastern limits of the plateau of the Great Karroo, there lies hidden, and almost unknown, a kloof or gorge, whose dark and forbidding aspect, united to the wild and horrid legend with which it is invested, prevents any but the chance hunter or wandering traveller from ever invading its fastnesses. This kloof is about seven miles from the rough track that in these regions is dignified by the name of road; it is approached by a poort or pass through the mountains, and the way is, even for South Africa, a rough and dangerous one, although there are indications that a rude waggon-track did formerly exist there. Standing upon the steep side of this kloof are the remains of what must have once been a roomy and substantial Boer farmhouse; but the four walls are roofless, the windows and doorways naked and destitute of sashes, the euphorbia, the prickly pear, and clambering weeds grow within and without, the lizard and snake abide there, and the whole appearance of the place denotes that many years have elapsed since Prinsloo’s Kloof was tenanted by human life.

      In many respects the wild kloof gives evidence that the Boer who first tarried there had an eye for good pasturage for his flocks and herds. The spekboom and many another succulent bush, dear to the goal breeder, flourish amid the broken and chaotic rocks with which the hill sides are strewn. A strong fountain of water runs with limpid current from the mountain at the back of the house; the flat tops of the hills around are clothed with long waving grasses, and the valley is, manifestly, well fitted to be the nursery of a horse-breeding establishment. A tributary of the Gamtoos River flows deeply, if fitfully, below the sheer and overhanging cliffs in a chain of pools, called zee-koe gats (sea-cow or hippopotamus deeps) – the hippopotamus, though his name lingers behind, no longer revels in the flood – and the bottom of the valley is in many parts fertile and suited for the growth of grain and fodder crops.

      Broken and uncouth as are many portions of the Witteberg and Zwartberg, the neighbourhood of Prinsloo’s Kloof far surpasses them. There the volcanic action of a bygone age has perpetrated the most extraordinary freaks. The mountains are torn into shapes so wild and fantastic, that, viewed in profile against the red glow of the setting sun, all manner of weird objects may be conjured before the imagination. In some places, as the kloof runs into the heart of the hills, the cliff sides are so deep, so precipitous, and so narrow, that but little sunlight can penetrate beneath, and even on a hot day of African summer a chill strikes upon the spectator passing through.

      It is not difficult to understand, from a Boer point of view, that this stern valley was a well chosen spot in which to build a farmhouse. The distance from a roadway, is, in Boer eyes, of no great account, and, as a rule, the farther from human habitation the Dutch farmer can get the better he is pleased. As for the forbidding aspect of the kloof, the stolid, unimaginative Boer would be little troubled on that score;