you have talked, and it’s all over now; so come along.”
“No,” cried Dyke firmly, and he caught his brother’s rein.
“I say, old chap, are you the boss here, or am I?”
“I am, this morning,” said the boy, looking up in his brother’s big manly face. “I want you to listen to me.”
“Well, go ahead then, and let’s get it over.”
“It’s been like this, Joe. I’ve got in a bad way of thinking lately. It’s all been so disappointing, and no matter what one did, nothing came right.”
“Yes, that’s true enough, old chap,” said Emson, rather drearily; “and we have tried precious hard.”
“You have, Joe, and I’ve been a regular sulky, disappointed sort of brute.”
“Coat been a bit rough, Dyke, old chap, eh? Out of sorts.”
“I suppose in my head; but, Joe, I am sorry—I can’t say it as I should like to, but I—I will try now.”
“Just as if I didn’t know. We’ve been chums so long, old man, ever since you first took to me when I was a big stupid fellow, all legs like a colt, and as ugly, and you were a pretty little golden-haired chap, always wanting to stick your soft chubby little fist in my big paw. There, it’s all right. Old times again, old un, and we’re going to do it yet, eh?”
“And you’ll forgive me, Joe?” said Dyke earnestly.
“Forgive you?” cried Emson, looking at his brother with his big pleasant manly face all in wrinkles. “Get along with you! What is there to forgive?”
“I will try now and help you, Joe; I will, indeed.”
“Of course you will, old chap,” cried Joe, a little huskily too; “and if you and I can’t win yet, in spite of the hot sun and the disease and the wicked ways of those jolly old stilt-stalkers, nobody can.”
“Yes, we will win, Joe,” cried Dyke enthusiastically.
“That’s your sort!” cried Emson. “We’ll have a good long try, and if the ostriches don’t pay, we’ll hunt, as, I know, we’ve got plenty of room out here: we’ll have an elephant farm instead, and grow ivory, and have a big warehouse for making potted elephant to send and sell at home for a breakfast appetiser. Who’s going to give up, eh? Now, then, what about this canter? The horses want a breather—they’re getting fidgety. I say, feel better now, old chap, don’t you?”
Dyke pinched his lips together and nodded shortly.
“So do I.—Here! What’s that?”
He checked his horse, and pointed far away in the distance.
“Ostrich!” cried Dyke.
“Yes, I saw her rise and start off! My word! how she is going. I can see the spot where she got up, and must keep my eyes on it. There’s a nest there, for a pound. That means luck this morning. Come along steady. Lucky I brought the net. Why, Dyke, old chap, the tide’s going to turn, and we shall do it yet.”
“But the goblin’s dead.”
“Good job, too. There’s as good ostriches in the desert as ever came out, though they are fowl instead of fish. It’s my belief we shall snatch out of that nest a better game-cock bird than ever the goblin was, and without his temper. Come along.”
Dyke felt glad of the incident occurring when it did, for his mind was in a peculiar state just then. His feelings were mingled. He felt relieved and satisfied by having shifted something off his mind, but at the same time there would come a sense of false shame, and a fancy that he had behaved childishly, when it was as brave and manly a speech—that confession—as ever came from his lips.
All the same, on they rode. And now the sky looked brighter; there seemed to be an elasticity in the air. Breezy had never carried Dyke so well before, and a sensation came over him, making him feel that he must shout and sing and slacken his rein, and gallop as hard as the cob could go.
“Yohoy there! steady, lad,” cried Emson; “not so fast, or I shall lose the spot. It’s hard work, little un, keeping your eye on anything, with the horse pitching you up and down.”
Hard work, indeed, for there was no tree, bush, or hillock out in the direction they were taking, and by which the young Englishman could mark down the spot where he imagined the nest to be.
So Dyke slackened speed, and with his heart throbbing in a pleasantly exhilarated fashion, he rode steadily on beside his brother, feeling as if the big fellow were the boy once more whom as a child he used to tease and be chased playfully in return. Emson’s way of speaking, too, enhanced the feeling.
“I say, little un,” he cried, “what a game if there’s no nest after all. You won’t be disappointed, will you?”
“Of course not.”
“ ’Member me climbing the big elm at the bottom of the home-close to get the mag’s nest?”
“To be sure I do.”
“Didn’t think we two would ever go bird’s-nesting in Africa then, did we?”
“No; but do you think there is a nest out yonder, Joe?”
“I do,” cried Emson, “I’ve seen several hen birds about the last few days; but I never could make out which way they came or went. I’ve been on the lookout, too, for one rising from the ground.”
“But is this a likely place for a nest?”
“Well, isn’t it? I should say it’s the very spot. Now, just look: here we are in an open plain, where a bird can squat down in the sand and look around for twenty miles—if she can see so far—in every direction, and see danger coming, whether it’s a man, a lion, or a jackal, and shuffle off her nest, and make tracks long before whatever it is gets near enough to make out where she rose. Of course I don’t know whether we shall find the nest, if there is one. It’s hard enough to find a lark’s or a partridge’s nest at home in an open field of forty or fifty acres; so of course, big though the nest is, and the bird, it’s a deal harder, out in a field hundreds of miles square, eh?”
“Of course it is.”
“ ’Scuse my not looking round at you when I’m speaking, old chap; but if I take my eye off the spot, I shall never find it again.”
“I say, don’t be so jolly particular, Joe,” cried Dyke, laughing.
“Why not? It’s just what you and I ought to be,” said the big fellow with simple earnestness. “We’re out here in a savage land, but we don’t want to grow into savages, nor yet to be as blunt and gruff as two bears. I’m not going to forget that the dear old governor at home is a gentleman, even if his sons do rough it out here.”
“Till they’re regular ruffians, Joe.—I say: see the nest?”
“Oh no; it’s a mile away yet.”
“Then there isn’t one. You couldn’t have seen it at all that distance.”
“I never said I could see the nest, did I? It was enough for me that I’ve seen the birds about, and that I caught sight of that one making off this morning. We call them stupid, and they are in some things; but they’re precious cunning in others.”
“But if they were only feeding?”
“Why, then, there’s no nest. But I say breeding, and not feeding; and that’s rhyme if you take it in time, as the old woman said.”
“But you talked about hen birds. Then there may be more than one nest?”
“Not here. Why, you know how a lot of them lay in the same nest.”
“At home,