It will make a mat.”
Dyke nodded, and the Kaffir now helping, the bird’s tough skin was stripped off, and laid, feathers downward, on the roof to dry.
“Jackals can’t reach it there, can they?” said Emson.
“No, I think not. Leopard might come and pull it down.”
“Yes: don’t let Duke be out of a night; there has been one hanging about lately.—But what are you going to do?”
“Dissect him,” said Dyke, who was on his knees with his sharp sheath-knife in his hand.
“Nonsense! Leave it now.”
“I want to see the poor old goblin’s gizzard, and open it. I know he has got knives and all sorts of things inside.”
“Then you may look,” said Emson. “I’m going to feed the horses and have a wash; they haven’t been unsaddled yet.”
He went to the thorn-fence and disappeared, while, hot and tired now, Dyke made short work of opening the great bird, and dragging out the gizzard, which he opened as a cook does that of a fowl, and exclaimed aloud at the contents:
“Here, Jack, fetch me some water in the tin;” and while the “boy” was gone, Dyke scraped out on to the sand quite a heap of pieces of flinty stone, rough crystals, and some pieces of iron, rusty nails, and a good-sized piece of hoop.
“I must have a look at you afterwards,” said the boy, as he picked out some forty or fifty of the dingy-looking rough crystals, gave them a rub over and over in the dry sand upon which he knelt, to dry them, and then thrust them—a good handful—into his pocket.
“Do for the collection,” he said to himself with a laugh. “Label: crystals of quartz, discovered in a goblin’s gizzard by Vandyke Emson, Esquire, F.A.S., Kopfontein, South Africa.”
“Wanterwater?”
“Yes, I do ‘wanterwater,’ ” cried Dyke, turning sharply on the Kaffir, who had returned. “I want to wash my hands. Look at ’em, Jack!”
“Narcy!” said the man, making a grimace.
“Hold hard, though; let’s have a drink first,” cried the boy. “It looks clean;” and raising the tin, he took a deep draught before using the vessel for a good wash, taking a handful of sand in the place of soap.
“Find the knife?” said Emson, coming back from the stable.
“No, but look here,” cried Dyke, pointing to the great piece of hoop-iron. “Fancy a bird swallowing that.”
“Iron is good for birds, I suppose,” said Emson quietly.—“Here, Jack, drag that bird right away off; remember, a good way. Mind, I don’t want the jackals too close to-night.”
The Kaffir nodded, seized the bird’s legs as if they were the shafts of a cart or handles of a wheelbarrow.
The load was heavy, though, and he shook his head, with reason, for such a bird weighed three hundred pounds, and it spoke well for its leg muscles that it could go at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour.
“Too big,” grumbled Jack; so Dyke seized one of the legs, and together they walked away with the dead bird, dragging it quite a quarter of a mile out beyond the ostrich-pens, ready for the jackals to come and play scavenger. After which Dyke returned to his brother, and they went in to where Tanta Sal, Jack’s wife, had prepared a substantial meal.
Chapter Five.
Big Birdnesting.
“You’re a dissatisfied young dog, Dyke,” cried Joe Emson good-humouredly, as he smiled down from his high horse at his brother; “always grumbling.”
“I’m not,” cried Dyke indignantly.
“You are, boy. Just as if any one could be low-spirited when he is young and strong, out in this wide free place on such a lovely morning.”
“It’s all right enough now,” replied Dyke, “because it’s early and cool; but it is so horribly lonely.”
“Lonely! Why, I’m always with you,” cried Emson—“the best of company. Then you’ve Jack and Tanta Sal, and Duke, and Breezy, and all the ostriches for pets, and the oxen; while, if you want more company, there’s old Oom Schlagen out one way, and old Morgenstern out the other.”
“Ugh! Stupid old Boers!” cried Dyke.
“Well, they’re civil to you, and that’s more than Oom Schlagen is to me. It’s because you have got that Dutch name. I say, father meant you to be a painter, I’ll be bound, and here you are, an ostrich-farmer.”
“Oh yes, and we’re going to be very rich when the birds are all dead.”
“And they seem as if they meant to die, all of them,” said Emson sadly, as he rode along by his brother, each with his rifle across his saddle-bow. “I don’t seem to have got hold of the right way of managing them, Dyke: we must follow nature more by watching the habits of the wild ones. I have tried so hard, too.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Dyke merrily. “Who’s grumbling now!”
“That’s better, and more like yourself, old fellow,” said Emson, smiling down pleasantly. “That’s more like the light-hearted chap who promised to stick to and help me like a brother should. You hurt me, Dyke, when you turn so low-spirited and sulky. I’ve plenty of troubles, though I say little, over my venture here; and when I see you so down, it worries me more than I can say.”
They rode on over the open veldt that glorious morning in silence for some minutes, and Dyke looked down at his horse’s mane.
“It makes me feel that I have done wrong in bringing a bright, happy lad away from home and his studies to this wild solitary place. I ought to have known better, and that it was not natural for a boy like you to feel the hard stern determination to get on that I, ten years older, possessed. I ought to have known that, as soon as the novelty had passed away, you would begin to long for change. Father did warn me, but I said to him: ‘I’m a man, and he’s only a boy; but we’ve been together so much, and always been companions, Dyke and I can’t help getting on together.’ ”
“And we can’t,” cried the boy in a husky voice. “Don’t, please don’t, Joe, old chap; I can’t bear it. I’ve been a beast.”
“Oh, come, come,” cried Emson, leaning over to clap him on the shoulder; “I didn’t mean to upset you like that.”
“But I’m glad you have,” cried Dyke in half-suffocated tones. “I know well enough I have been a beast to you, Joe, and the more quiet and patient you’ve been with me, the worse I’ve got, till I quite hate myself.”
“Oh no, not so bad as that.”
“Yes,” cried Dyke excitedly, “it’s been worse; and all the while you’ve been the dear, good old chap to me; just the same as it always was when I was little, and grew tired and cross when we were out, and you took me up on your back and carried me miles and miles home.”
“Why, of course I did,” said Emson, smiling.
“There’s no of course in it. I was always petty and disagreeable, and ready to impose on your good-nature; but you never had an unkind word for me.”
“Well, you were such a little one, and I was always so big.”
“I can see it all, Joe, and it’s made me miserable many a time; but the kinder you’ve been, the worse it has made me. You and father always spoiled and petted me.”
“Not