Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman, E. W. Hornung [free e reader .TXT] 📗

the Kaffirs flogging their teams in a fury of fear, and our precious corporal sullen but defiant.

I have said this was the conclusion of the matter, and I blush to repeat that it practically was. Connal was indeed wheeled up before the colonel, but his instructions were not written instructions, and he lied his way out with equal hardihood and tact.

“You said ‘over there,’ sir,” he stoutly reiterated; and the vagueness with which such orders were undoubtedly given was the saving of him for the time being.

I need not tell you how indignant I felt, for one.

“The fellow is a spy!” I said to Raffles, with no nursery oath, as we strolled within the lines that night.

He merely smiled in my face.

“And have you only just found it out, Bunny? I have known it almost ever since we joined; but this morning I did think we had him on toast.”

“It’s disgraceful that we had not,” cried I. “He ought to have been shot like a dog.”

“Not so loud, Bunny, though I quite agree; but I don’t regret what has happened as much as you do. Not that I am less bloodthirsty than you are in this case, but a good deal more so! Bunny, I’m mad-keen on bowling him out with my own unaided hand—though I may ask you to take the wicket. Meanwhile, don’t wear all your animosity upon your sleeve; the fellow has friends who still believe in him; and there is no need for you to be more openly his enemy than you were before.”

Well, I can only vow that I did my best to follow this sound advice; but who but a Raffles can control his every look? It was never my forte, as you know, yet to this day I cannot conceive what I did to excite the treacherous corporal’s suspicions. He was clever enough, however, not to betray them, and lucky enough to turn the tables on us, as you shall hear.

III

Bloemfontein had fallen since our arrival, but there was plenty of fight in the Free Staters still, and I will not deny that it was these gentry who were showing us the sport for which our corps came in. Constant skirmishing was our portion, with now and then an action that you would know at least by name, did I feel free to mention them. But I do not, and indeed it is better so. I have not to describe the war even as I saw it, I am thankful to say, but only the martial story of us two and those others of whom you wot. Corporal Connal was the dangerous blackguard you have seen. Captain Bellingham is best known for his position in the batting averages a year or two ago, and for his subsequent failure to obtain a place in any of the five Test Matches. But I only think of him as the officer who recognized Raffles.

We had taken a village, making quite a little name for it and for ourselves, and in the village our division was reinforced by a fresh brigade of the Imperial troops. It was a day of rest, our first for weeks, but Raffles and I spent no small part of it in seeking high and low for a worthy means of quenching the kind of thirst which used to beset Yeomen and others who had left good cellars for the veldt. The old knack came back to us both, though I believe that I alone was conscious of it at the time; and we were leaving the house, splendidly supplied, when we almost ran into the arms of an infantry officer, with a scowl upon his red-hot face, and an eye-glass flaming at us in the sun.

“Peter Bellingham!” gasped Raffles under his breath, and then we saluted and tried to pass on, with the bottles ringing like church-bells under our khaki. But Captain Bellingham was a hard man.

“What have you men been doin’?” drawled he.

“Nothing, sir,” we protested, like innocence with an injury.

“Lootin’ ’s forbidden,” said he. “You had better let me see those bottles.”

“We are done,” whispered Raffles, and straightway we made a sideboard of the stoop across which he had crept at so inopportune a moment. I had not the heart to raise my eyes again, yet it was many moments before the officer broke silence.

“Uam Var!” he murmured reverentially at last. “And Long John of Ben Nevis! The first drop that’s been discovered in the whole psalm-singing show! What lot do you two belong to?”

I answered.

“I must have your names.”

In my agitation I gave my real one. Raffles had turned away, as though in heart-broken contemplation of our lost loot. I saw the officer studying his half-profile with an alarming face.

“What’s your name?” he rapped out at last.

But his strange, low voice said plainly that he knew, and Raffles faced him with the monosyllable of confession and assent. I did not count the seconds until the next word, but it was Captain Bellingham who uttered it at last.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Now you see I am not.”

“But you are at your old games!”

“I am not,” cried Raffles, and his tone was new to me. I have seldom heard one more indignant. “Yes,” he continued, “this is loot, and the wrong ’un will out. That’s what you’re thinking, Peter—I beg your pardon—sir. But he isn’t let out in the field! We’re playing the game as much as you are, old—sir.”

The plural number caused the captain to toss me a contemptuous look. “Is this the fellah who was taken when you swam for it?” he inquired, relapsing into his drawl. Raffles said I was, and with that took a passionate oath upon our absolute rectitude as volunteers. There could be no doubting him; but the officer’s eyes went back at the bottles on the stoop.

“But look at those,” said he; and as he looked himself the light eye melted in his fiery face. “And I’ve got Sparklets in my tent,” he sighed. “You make it in a minute!”

Not a word from Raffles, and none, you may be sure, from me. Then suddenly Bellingham told me where his tent was, and, adding that our case was one for serious consideration, strode in its direction without another word until some sunlit paces separated us.

“You can bring that stuff with you,” he then flung over a shoulder-strap, “and I advise you to put it where you had it before.”

A trooper saluted him some yards further on, and looked evilly at us as we followed with our loot. It was Corporal Connal of ours, and the thought of him takes my mind off the certainly gallant captain who only that day had joined our division with the reinforcements. I could not stand the man myself. He added soda-water to our whiskey in his tent, and would only keep a couple of bottles when we came away. Softened by the spirit, to which disuse made us all a little sensitive, our officer was soon convinced of the honest part that we were playing for once, and for fifty minutes of the hour we spent with him he and Raffles talked cricket without a break. On parting they even shook hands; that was Long John in the captain’s head; but the snob never addressed a syllable to me.

And now to the gallows-bird who was still corporal of our troop: it was not long before Raffles was to have his wish and the traitor’s wicket. We had resumed our advance, or rather our humble part in the great surrounding movement then taking place, and were under pretty heavy fire once more, when Connal was shot in the hand. It was a curious casualty in more than one respect, and nobody seems to have seen it happen. Though a flesh wound, it was a bloody one, and that may be why the surgeon did not at once detect those features which afterwards convinced him that the injury had been self-inflicted. It was the right hand, and until it healed the man could be of no further use in the firing line; nor was the case serious enough for admission to a crowded field-hospital; and Connal himself offered his services as custodian of a number of our horses which we were keeping out of harm’s way in a donga. They had come there in the following manner: That morning we had been heliographed to reinforce the C.M.R., only to find that the enemy had the range to a nicety when we reached the spot. There were trenches for us men, but no place of safety for our horses nearer than this long and narrow donga which ran from within our lines towards those of the Boers. So some of us galloped them thither, six-in-hand, amid the whine of shrapnel and the whistle of shot. I remember the man next me being killed by a shell with all his team, and the tangle of flying harness, torn horseflesh, and crimson khaki, that we left behind us on the veldt; also that a small red flag, ludicrously like those used to indicate a putting-green, marked the single sloping entrance to the otherwise precipitous donga, which I for one was duly thankful to reach alive.

The same evening Connal, with a few other light casualties to assist him, took over the charge for which he had volunteered and for which he was so admirably fitted by his knowledge of horses and his general experience of the country; nevertheless, he managed to lose three or four fine chargers in the course of the first night; and, early in the second, Raffles shook me out of a heavy slumber in the trenches where we had been firing all day.

“I have found the spot, Bunny,” he whispered; “we ought to out him before the night is over.”

“Connal?”

Raffles nodded.

“You know what happened to some of his horses last night? Well, he let them go himself.”

“Never!”

“I’m as certain of it,” said Raffles, “as though I’d seen him do it; and if he does it again I shall see him. I can even tell you how it happened. Connal insisted on having one end of the donga to himself, and of course his end is the one nearest the Boers. Well, then, he tells the other fellows to go to sleep at their end—I have it direct from one of them—and you bet they don’t need a second invitation. The rest I hope to see to-night.”

“It seems almost incredible,” said I.

“Not more so than the Light Horseman’s dodge of poisoning the troughs; that happened at Ladysmith before Christmas; and two kind friends did for that blackguard what you and I are going to do for this one, and a firing-party did the rest. Brutes! A mounted man’s worth a file on foot in this country, and well they know it. But this beauty goes one better than the poison; that was wilful waste; but I’ll eat my wideawake if our loss last night wasn’t the enemy’s double gain! What we’ve got to do, Bunny, is to catch him in the act. It may mean watching him all night, but was ever game so well worth the candle?”

One may say in passing that, at this particular point of contact, the enemy were in superior force, and for once in a mood as aggressive as our own. They were led with a dash, and handled with a skill, which did not always characterize their commanders at this stage of the war. Their position was very similar to ours, and indeed we were to spend the whole of next day in trying with an equal will to turn each other out. The result will scarcely be forgotten by those who recognize the occasion from these remarks. Meanwhile it was the eve of battle (most evenings were), and there was that villain with the horses in the donga, and here were we two upon his track.

Raffles’s plan was to reconnoitre the place, and then take up a position from which we could watch our man and pounce upon him if he gave us cause. The spot that we eventually chose and stealthily occupied was behind some bushes through which we could see down into the donga; there were the precious horses; and there sure enough was our wounded corporal, sitting smoking in his cloak, some glimmering thing in his lap.

“That’s his revolver, and it’s a Mauser,” whispered Raffles. “He shan’t have a chance of using it on us; either we must be on him before he knows we are anywhere near, or simply report. It’s easily proved once we are sure; but I should like to have the taking of him too.”

There was a setting moon. Shadows were sharp and black. The man smoked steadily, and the hungry horses did what I never