Prester John by John Buchan Page A

been reading a lot about Ethiopianism, which educated American Negroes had been trying to preach in South Africa. He did not see why a kind of bastard Christianity should not be the motive of a rising. ‘The Kaffir finds it an easy job to mix up Christian emotion and pagan practice. Look at Haiti and some of the performances in the Southern States.’
    Then he shook the ashes out of his pipe and leaned forward with a solemn face. ‘I’ll admit the truth to you, Davie. I’m black afraid.’
    He looked so earnest and serious sitting there with his short-sighted eyes peering at me that I could not help being impressed.
    â€˜Whatever is the matter?’ I asked. ‘Has anything happened?’
    He shook his head. ‘Nothing I can put a name to. But I have a presentiment that some mischief is afoot in these hills. I feel it in my bones.’
    I confess I was startled by these words. You must remember that I had never given a hint of my suspicions to Mr Wardlaw beyond asking him if a wizard lived in the neighbourhood – a question anybody might have put. But here was the schoolmaster discovering for himself some mystery in Blaauwildebeestefontein.
    I tried to get at his evidence, but it was very little. He thought there were an awful lot of blacks about. ‘The woods are full of them,’ he said. I gathered he did not imagine he was being spied on, but merely felt that there were more natives about than could be explained.
    â€˜There’s another thing,’ he said. ‘The native bairns have all left the school. I’ve only three scholars left, and they are from Dutch farms. I went to Majinje to find out what was up, and an old crone told me the place was full of bad men. I tell you, Davie, there’s something brewing, and that something is not good for us.’
    There was nothing new to me in what Wardlaw had to tell, and yet that talk late at night by a dying fire made me feel afraid for the second time since I had come to Blaauwildebeestefontein. I had a clue and had been on the look-out for mysteries, but that another should feel the strangeness for himself made it seem desperately real to me. Of course I scoffed at Mr Wardlaw’s fears. I could not have him spoiling all my plans by crying up a native rising for which he had not a scrap of evidence.
    â€˜Have you been writing to anybody?’ I asked him.
    He said that he had told no one, but he meant to, unless things got better. ‘I haven’t the nerve for this job, Davie,’ he said; ‘I’ll have to resign. And it’s a pity, for the place suits my healthfine. You see I know too much, and I haven’t your whinstone nerve and total lack of imagination.’
    I told him that it was simply fancy, and came from reading too many books and taking too little exercise. But I made him promise to say nothing to anybody either by word of mouth or letter, without telling me first. Then I made a rummer of toddy and sent him to bed a trifle comforted.
    The first thing I did in my new room was to shift the bed into the corner out of line with the window. There were no shutters, so I put up an old table-top and jammed it between the window frames. Also, I loaded my shot-gun and kept it by my bedside. Had Wardlaw seen these preparations he might have thought more of my imagination and less of my nerve. It was a real comfort to me to put out a hand in the darkness and feel Colin’s shaggy coat.

SIX
The Drums Beat at Sunset
    Japp was drunk for the next day or two, and I had the business of the store to myself. I was glad of this, for it gave me leisure to reflect upon the various perplexities of my situation. As I have said, I was really scared, more out of a sense of impotence than from dread of actual danger. I was in a fog of uncertainty. Things were happening around me which I could only dimly guess at, and I had no power to take one step in defence. That Wardlaw should have felt the same without