Harley Greenoak's Charge. Mitford Bertram

round to the submerged three, and although this could not be done all in a minute, it could be in far less time than that taken to pull a boat any distance in such a choppy sea.

      Hurrah! The boat dropped from the davits, and went plashing through the waves as fast as sinew and muscle could send her.

      “We’re all jolly,” bawled Dick Selmes, “only look sharp. It’s beastly cold.”

      The words, audible to those on the ship, raised a laugh that rounded off into a mighty cheer, as the boat was seen to gain its objective and the three were hoisted in.

      “Thirteen minutes from the time of going over the side,” said the officer in charge of the ship, closing his watch with a snap. “Not bad time that, sir?”

      “No. It’s good,” said the captain, who, half asleep in his cabin, had been roused by the uproar and had quickly ascended to the bridge.

      “Drowned rat Number One,” sang out Dick Selmes, shoving the cause of all the bother in front of him, as they gained the deck. Then there was a great deal of hugging and kissing on the part of the mother, which was cut short by the decisive voice of the doctor, ordering the drenched and shivering boy to be taken below at once.

      “Dick, you scoundrel, what do you mean by behaving like that?” exclaimed Sir Anson rather unsteadily, as he wrung the defaulter’s hands again and again. “What d’you mean by it, sir? Ah, Greenoak, I told you you’d find him a handful, and he’s lost no time in backing up what I said. And you— Why, man, after what you were just telling me—swarming with sharks, eh? Heroic—that’s what it is. You’re a hero, sir—both heroes—and—”

      “I say, dad,” interrupted Dick, quizzically, “let’s have the speech later. We want to go and change and get something hot. I swear I do.”

      This raised a great laugh among the lookers on, tailing off into a cheer, in the midst of which the dripping ones disappeared in the companion way, followed by Sir Anson.

Chapter Two.

       Table of Contents

      A Beginning.

      “Good-bye, Greenoak.”

      “Good-bye, Sir Anson.”

      “No need to repeat my absolute confidence in leaving him in your hands,” went on the latter. “You’re already begun by saving his life.”

      “Oh, as to that I only helped him. He’d have been all right anyhow,” replied Greenoak. “And,” he added, “you won’t mind my reminding you of one agreement—that of that subject we have heard more than enough!”

      “I agreed to nothing of the sort. It’s a subject of which we could not hear enough! Well, Greenoak, when your wanderings with the boy are over, come back home with him and make a good long stay at our place, though we have nothing more ferocious to shoot than pheasants and hares. Is that a promise?”

      “Delighted, Sir Anson.”

      The above conversation took place in the otherwise empty smoking-room of the Port Elizabeth Club. The old gentleman was returning to England that afternoon, incidentally by the same liner that had brought them out. It would be more comfortable, he reckoned, than returning by a strange boat, and the sooner Dick set off on his travels the better; a theory, by the way, which was held by Dick even more firmly than by his father. The said Dick now put in his appearance.

      “Time, dad,” he said, comparing his watch with the mantelpiece clock. “The last launch, you know, and she won’t wait. So come along.”

      “Good-bye again, Greenoak,” said Sir Anson, as the two men heartily gripped hands. “And don’t forget your promise.”

      “Good-bye to you, Sir Anson. And I won’t.”

      So Dick and his father betook themselves to the landing-place, and Harley Greenoak betook himself to lunch. With characteristic judgment he had divined that father and son would prefer to be alone together at the last, and so had refrained from seeing the old gentleman off to the ship. Now as he sat in the club dining-room he was thinking, and his thoughts, needless to say, ran upon the charge he had just undertaken. To that end he was rather glad there was nobody he knew in the room.

      Needless to say, too, that after the episode off Danger Point, which might so nearly have ended in tragedy, the tendency now among his fellow-passengers was to make very much of a hero of Dick Selmes, and more especially did this hold good of the “fair” section thereof. It was as well, perhaps, decided Harley Greenoak, that only a day or two remained for the absorption of all this adulation. Towards himself the tendency was not so marked, for which he was unaffectedly glad. He had borne part in too many strange and perilous episodes in his time for one, more or less, to afflict him with “swelled head.” It was all in the day’s work.

      Dick Selmes, of course, had plenty of invitations, and could have got through six months easily before he had run through them all. But not to this end had he been placed in charge of Harley Greenoak. The latter meant him to see something of the hard and adventurous life of the country, even of its perils, and this Dick could scarcely effect by pleasant stays at this or that comfortable stock farm, with sport made easy; perchance, too, flirting like the mischief with this or that pretty daughter of his host pro tem. All of which Greenoak had put to him square and straight, and Dick Selmes had whole-heartedly agreed.

      “I don’t want to fool about, old chap,” he had said. “I want to see something of the real thing.”

      “Thought you would, Dick,” had been the answer. “Well, I see we’re going to make a real up-country man of you before we’ve done.”

      Thinking over these things Greenoak sat. Then deciding that Dick would be returning from the ship about now, he concluded to stroll down and meet him.

      He left the club. From the steep hill leading down to Main Street there was a view of the bay and the shipping, the homeward-bound liner flying the blue peter and sending up a thickening volume of smoke, while away behind the Winterhoek mountains rose soft and hazy against the unclouded sky.

      “Hi!—hallo, Greenoak,” and a hand dropped on his shoulder from behind; but he did not start, his nerves were in far too good training for that. He only stopped.

      “That you, Simcox? How are you?”

      The man thus addressed was about Greenoak’s own age, hard, wiry, weather-beaten. A typical colonist of the downright rough-and-ready type. Now he exclaimed:

      “Well, this is a surprise. And what brings you down here?”

      The other told him.

      “Rum thing, isn’t it,” he said with a laugh, “that at my time of life I should start out in the bear-leading line? Well, this is a particularly nice young chap, so that the job’s likely to turn out ‘clovery’ all round.”

      “So?” said Simcox. “Why not bring him out to my place. We could get up a hunt or two, if he’s fond of sport.”

      The very thing, decided Greenoak. The question of how and where to make a start was solved, so he answered:

      “He just is. Well then, Simcox, thanks awfully, and we’ll come. When?”

      “Now. To-morrow morning.”

      “But we’ve got no horses.”

      “I can drive you out—that is, if that young Britisher can do without top-hats and swallow-tail suits. No room in the cart for all that sort of thing.”

      “He’ll have to. Why, here he comes. This is an old friend of mine, Dick,” he went on, introducing them. “He’s got a farm out on the borders of the Addo Bush, and we’re going out there with him to-morrow to