Chapter 1 | Query Bad Shillings? | Diamond Dyke

“Hi!”

No answer.

“Hi! Dyke!”

The lad addressed did not turn his head, but walked straight on, with the dwarf karroo bushes crackling and snapping under his feet, while at each call he gave an angry kick out, sending the dry red sand flying.

He was making for the kopje or head of bald granite which rose high out of the level plain—where, save in patches, there was hardly a tree to be seen—for amongst these piled-up masses of glittering stone, lay deep moist crevices in which were shade and trickling water, the great blessings of a dry and thirsty desert.

“Hi! Do you hear, Dyke?” came again, shouted by a big athletic-looking young man, in flannels and a broad-brimmed Panama hat, and he gave his thick brown beard an angry tug as he spoke.

“Oh yes, I hear,” muttered the lad; “I can hear you, old Joe. He’s got away again, and I shan’t come. A stupid-headed, vicious, long-legged beast, that’s what he is.”

“Hi!” roared the young man, as he stood in front of an ugly corrugated iron shed, dignified by the name of house, from which the white-wash, laid thickly over the grey zinc galvanising to ward off the rays of the blinding Afric sun, had peeled away here and there in patches.

Some attempts had been made to take off the square, desolate ugliness of the building by planting a patch of garden surrounded by posts and wire; but they were not very successful, for, as a rule, things would not grow for want of water.

Vandyke Emson—the Dyke shouted at—had been the gardener, and so long as he toiled hard, fetching water from the granite kopje springs, a quarter of a mile away, and tended the roots he put in the virgin soil, they rushed up out of the ground; but, as he reasonably said, he couldn’t do everything, and if he omitted to play Aquarius for twenty-four hours, there were the plants that looked so flourishing yesterday shrivelled to nothing. He had planted creepers to run all over the sides and roof, but the sun made the corrugated iron red hot—the boy’s exaggerated figure of speech, but so hot that you could not keep your hand upon the roof or wall—and the creepers found the temperature too much for their constitution, and they rapidly turned to hay. Then he trained up tomatoes, which grew at express speed so long as they were watered, formed splendid fruit, were left to themselves a couple of days, and then followed suit with the creepers. Joseph Emson smiled behind his great beard, and said they were a success because the tomatoes were cooked ready for use; but Dyke said it was another failure, because they were just as good raw, and he did not like to eat his fruit as vegetables cooked in a frying-pan covered with white-wash.

Still all was not bare, for a patch of great sunflowers found moisture enough for their roots somewhere far below, and sent up their great pithy stalks close to the house door, spread their rough leaves, and imitated the sun’s disk in their broad, round, yellow flowers. There was an ugly euphorbia too, with its thorny, almost leafless branches and brilliant scarlet flowers; while grotesque and hideous-looking, with its great, flat, oblong, biscuit-shaped patches of juicy leaf, studded with great thorns, a prickly pear or opuntia reared itself against the end gable, warranted to stop every one who approached.

“It’s no good,” Dyke once said; “the place is a nasty old desert, and I hate it, and I wish I’d never come. There’s only six letters in Africa, and half of them spell fry.”

“And that’s bad grammar and bad spelling,” said his half-brother; “and you’re a discontented young cub.”

“And you’re another,” said Dyke sourly. “Well, haven’t we been fried or grilled ever since we’ve been out here? and don’t you say yourself that it’s all a failure, and that you’ve made a big mistake?”

“Yes, sometimes, when I’m very hot and tired, Dicky, my lad. We’ve failed so far; but, look here, my brave and beautiful British boy.”

“Look here, Joe; I wish you wouldn’t be so jolly fond of chaffing and teasing me,” said Dyke angrily.

“Poor old fellow, then! Was um hot and tired and thirsty, then?” cried his half-brother mockingly. “Take it coolly, Dicky.”

“Don’t call me Dicky,” cried the boy passionately, as he kicked out both legs.

“Vandyke Emson, Esquire, ostrich-farmer, then,” said the other.

“Ostrich-farmer!” cried Dyke, in a tone full of disgust. “Ugh! I’m sick of the silly-looking, lanky goblins. I wish their heads were buried in the sand, and their bodies too.”

“With their legs sticking straight up to make fences, eh, old man?” said Joseph Emson, smiling behind his beard—a smile that would have been all lost, if it had not been for a pleasant wrinkle or two about his frank blue eyes.

“Well, they would be some good then,” said Dyke, a little more amiably. “These wire fences are always breaking down and going off spang, and twisting round your legs. Oh, I do wish I was back at home.”

“Amongst the rain and clouds and fog, so that you could be always playing cricket in summer, and football in winter, and skating when there was ice.”

“Don’t you sneer at the fog, Joe,” retorted Dyke. “I wish I could see a good thick one now.”

“So that you could say, ‘Ah, you should see the veldt where the sun shines brightly for weeks together.’”

“Sun shines!” cried Dyke. “Here, look at my face and hands.”

“Yes; they’re burnt of good Russia leather colour, like mine, Dyke. Well, what do you say? Shall we pack the wagon, give it up, and trek slowly back to Cape Town?”

“Yes, I’m ready!” cried the boy eagerly.

“Get out, you confounded young fibber! I know you better than that.”

“No, you don’t,” said Dyke sulkily.

“Yes, I do, Dicky. I know you better than you know yourself. You’re not of that breed, my boy. You’ve got too much of the old dad’s Berserker blood in your veins. Oh, come, now: withdraw all that! British boys don’t look back when they’ve taken hold of the plough handles.”

“Bother the plough handles!”

“By all means, boy; but, I say, that isn’t English, Dyke. Where would our country’s greatness have been if her sons had been ready to sing that coward’s song?”

“Now you’re beginning to preach again, Joe,” said the boy sulkily.

“Then say ‘Thank you,’ my lad. Isn’t it a fine thing for you to have a brother with you, and then, when there isn’t a church for hundreds of miles—a brother who can preach to you?”

“No; because I know what you’re going to say—that we ought to go on and fight it out.”

“That’s it, Dicky. Didn’t some one say that the beauty of a British soldier was that he never knew when he was beaten?”

“I’m not a soldier, and I am beaten,” cried Dyke sourly.

“Not you. I know you better. Why, if I said ‘Yes; let’s give it up,’ and packed up all we cared to take, and got the wagon loaded to-night, you’d repent in the morning when we were ready to start, and say, ‘Let’s have another try.’”

“Well, perhaps I might say—”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Joseph Emson; “what a young humbug you are, Dicky. Fancy you going back with me to the old dad, and us saying, ‘Here we are, back again, like two bad shillings, father. We’ve spent all our money, and we’re a pair of failures.’”

“Well, but it is so hot and tiresome, and the ostriches are such horribly stupid beasts, and—”

“We’re both very tired, and disappointed, and thirsty, and—”

“I am, you mean,” said Dyke. “Nothing ever seems to worry you.”

“Hah! I know you, Dicky, better than you know me. I feel as keenly as you do, boy. No: we will not give up. We haven’t given the ostriches a fair trial yet.”

“Oh, haven’t we!”

“No; not half. I know we’ve had terribly bad luck just lately. We did begin well.”

“No: it has all been a dreary muddle, and I’m sick of it.”

“Yes, you often are of a night, Dyke; but after a night’s rest you are ready enough to go on again in a right spirit. No, my lad, we’ll never say die.”

“Who wants to! I want to have a try at something else. Let’s go and hunt and get lion and leopard skins, and fill the wagon, and bring them back and sell them.”

“Plenty of people are doing that, Dicky.”

“Well then, let’s go after ivory; shoot elephants, and bring back a load to sell. It’s worth lots of money.”

“Plenty of people are doing that too, boy.”

“Oh, you won’t try, Joe, and that’s what makes me so wild.”

“You mean, I won’t set a seed to-day and dig it up to-morrow to see why it hasn’t come up.”

“That’s what you always say,” said Dyke grumpily.

“Yes, because we came out here with so many hundred pounds, Dicky, to try an experiment—to make an ostrich-farm.”

“And we’ve failed.”

“Oh dear, no, my lad. We’ve spent all our money—invested it here in a wagon and oxen and house.”

“House! Ha, ha, ha! What a house!”

“Not handsome, certainly, Dicky.”

“Dicky! There you go again.”

“Yes, there I go again. And in our enclosures and pens, and horses and guns and ammunition, and in paying our men. So we can’t afford to give up if we wanted to.”

“But see what a desolate place it is!”

“Big, vast, level, and wild, but the very spot for our purpose.”

“And not a neighbour near.”

“To quarrel with? No, not one. No, Dyke, we mustn’t give it up; and some day you’ll say I’m right.”

“Never,” cried the boy emphatically.

“Never’s a long day, Dyke.—Look here, lad, I’m going to tell you an old story.”

“Thankye,” said Dyke sullenly. “I know—about Bruce and the spider.”

“Wrong, old fellow, this time. Another author’s story that you don’t know.”

“Bother the old stories!” cried the boy.

The big manly fellow laughed good-humouredly.

“Poor old Dyke! he has got it badly this time. What is it—prickly heat or home-sickness, or what?”

“Everything. I’m as miserable as mizzer,” cried Dick. “Oh, this desert is dreary.”

“Not it, Dyke; it’s wild and grand. You are tired and disappointed. Some days must be dark and dreary, boy. Come, Dyke, pluck! pluck! pluck!”

“I haven’t got any; sun’s dried it all out of me.”

“Has it?” said his brother, laughing. “I don’t believe it. No, Dicky, we can’t go home and sneak in at the back door with our tails between our legs, like two beaten hounds. There are those at home who would sorrow for us, and yet feel that they despised us. We came out here to win, and win we will, if our perseverance will do it.”

“Well, haven’t we tried, and hasn’t everything failed?”

“No, boy,” cried the young man excitedly. “Look here: my story is of a party of American loafers down by a river. Come, I never told you that.”

“No,” said Dyke, raising his brown face from where he rested it upon his arm.

“That’s better. Then you can be interested still.”

“One needs something to interest one in this miserable, dried-up desert,” cried the boy.

“Miserable, dried-up desert!” said his brother, speaking in a low deep voice, as he gazed right away through the transparent air at the glorious colours where the sun sank in a canopy of amber and gold. “No, Dicky, it has its beauties, in spite of all you say.”

“Oh Joe!” cried the boy, “what a tiresome old chap you are. Didn’t you say you were going to tell me a story about some Americans down by a river? Oh, how I should like to get to a mill-race and have a bathe. Do go on.”

“Ah! to be sure. Well, I only want you to take notice of one part of it. The rest is brag.”

“Then it’s a moral story,” cried Dyke, in a disappointed tone.

“Yes, if you like; but it may be fresh to you.”

“’Tain’t about ostriches, is it?”

“No.—They were throwing stones.”

“What!—the loafers?”

“Yes, from a wharf, to see who could throw farthest, and one man, who was looking on, sneered at them, and began to boast about how far he could throw. They laughed at him, and one of them made himself very objectionable and insulting, with the result that the boasting man said, if it came to the point, he could throw the other fellow right across the river. Of course there was a roar of laughter at this, and one chap bet a dollar that he could not.”

“And of course he couldn’t,” said Dyke, who forgot his prickly heat and irritation. “But you said it was all brag. Well?”

“The boastful fellow, as soon as the wager was laid, seized the other by the waistband, heaved him up, and pitched him off the wharf into the river, amidst roars of laughter, which were kept up as the man came drenched out of the river, and asked to be paid.

“‘Oh no,’ said the other; ‘I didn’t say I’d do it the first time. But I kin dew it, and I will dew it, if I try till to-morrow morning;’ and catching hold of the wet man, he heaved him up again, and threw him by a tremendous effort nearly a couple of yards out into the river. Down he went out of sight in the deep water, and out he scrambled again, hardly able to speak, when he was seized once more.

“‘Third time never fails,’ cried the fellow; but the other had had enough of it, and owned he was beaten.”

“But it was by an artful trick,” cried Dyke.

“Of course it was, boy; but what I want you to notice was the spirit of the thing, though it was only bragging; I kin dew it, and I will dew it, if I try till to-morrow morning. We kin dew it, and we will dew it, Dyke, even if we have to try till to-morrow morning—to-morrow-come-never-morning.”

“Oh!” groaned Dyke, sinking back upon the sand; “I am so hot and dry.”