that Umbooni and about twenty of his men had managed to evade our ring
of scouts and got clear away to the south.  This was all to our
advantage, as it removed from the coming indaba the most irreconcilable
of the chiefs.

That indaba was a queer business.  Arcoll and I left our escort at the
foot of a ravine, and entered the kraal by the same road as I had left
it.  It was a very bright, hot winter's day, and try as I might, I
could not bring myself to think of any danger. I believed that in this
way most temerarious deeds are done; the doer has become insensible to
danger, and his imagination is clouded with some engrossing purpose.
The first sentries received us gloomily enough, and closed behind us as
they had done when Machudi's men haled me thither.  Then the job became
eerie, for we had to walk across a green flat with thousands of eyes
watching us.  By-and-by we came to the merula tree opposite the kyas,
and there we found a ring of chiefs, sitting with cocked rifles on
their knees.

We were armed with pistols, and the first thing Arcoll did was to hand
them to one of the chiefs. 'We come in peace,' he said.  'We give you
our lives.'

Then the indaba began, Arcoll leading off.  It was a fine speech he
made, one of the finest I have ever listened to.  He asked them what
their grievances were; he told them how mighty was the power of the
white man; he promised that what was unjust should be remedied, if only
they would speak honestly and peacefully; he harped on their old
legends and songs, claiming for the king of England the right of their
old monarchs.  It was a fine speech, and yet I saw that it did not
convince them.  They listened moodily, if attentively, and at the end
there was a blank silence.

Arcoll turned to me.  'For God's sake, Davie,' he said, 'talk to them
about Laputa.  It's our only chance.'

I had never tried speaking before, and though I talked their tongue I
had not Arcoll's gift of it.  But I felt that a great cause was at
stake, and I spoke up as best I could.

I began by saying that Inkulu had been my friend, and that at Umvelos'
before the rising he had tried to save my life.  At the mention of the
name I saw eyes brighten.  At last the audience was hanging on my
words. I told them of Henriques and his treachery.  I told them frankly
and fairly of the doings at Dupree's Drift.  I made no secret of the
part I played.  'I was fighting for my life,' I said. 'Any man of you
who is a man would have done the like.'

Then I told them of my last ride, and the sight I saw at the foot of
the Rooirand.  I drew a picture of Henriques lying dead with a broken
neck, and the Inkulu, wounded to death, creeping into the cave.

In moments of extremity I suppose every man becomes an orator.  In that
hour and place I discovered gifts I had never dreamed of.  Arcoll told
me afterwards that I had spoken like a man inspired, and by a fortunate
chance had hit upon the only way to move my hearers.  I told of that
last scene in the cave, when Laputa had broken down the bridge, and had
spoken his dying words--that he was the last king in Africa, and that
without him the rising was at an end.  Then I told of his leap into the
river, and a great sigh went up from the ranks about Me.

'You see me here,' I said, 'by the grace of God.  I found a way up the
fall and the cliffs which no man has ever travelled before or will
travel again.  Your king is dead.  He was a great king, as I who stand
here bear witness, and you will never more see his like.  His last
words were that the Rising was over. Respect that word, my brothers.
We come to you not in war but in peace, to offer a free pardon, and the
redress of your wrongs.  If you fight you fight with the certainty of
failure, and against the wish of the heir of John.  I have come here at
the risk of my life to tell you his commands.  His spirit approves my
mission.  Think well before you defy the mandate of the Snake, and risk
the vengeance of the Terrible Ones.'

After that I knew that we had won.  The chiefs talked among themselves
in low whispers, casting strange looks at me.  Then the greatest of
them advanced and laid his rifle at my feet.

'We believe the word of a brave man,' he said.  'We accept the mandate
of the Snake.'

Arcoll now took command.  He arranged for the disarmament bit by bit,
companies of men being marched off from Inanda's Kraal to stations on
the plateau where their arms were collected by our troops, and food
provided for them.  For the full history I refer the reader to Mr
Upton's work.  It took many days, and taxed all our resources, but by
the end of a week we had the whole of Laputa's army in separate
stations, under guard, disarmed, and awaiting repatriation.

Then Arcoll went south to the war which was to rage around the
Swaziland and Zululand borders for many months, while to Aitken and
myself was entrusted the work of settlement.  We had inadequate troops
at our command, and but for our prestige and the weight of Laputa's
dead hand there might any moment have been a tragedy.  The task took
months, for many of the levies came from the far north, and the job of
feeding troops on a long journey was difficult enough in the winter
season when the energies of the country were occupied with the fighting
in the south.  Yet it was an experience for which I shall ever be
grateful, for it turned me from a rash boy into a serious man.  I knew
then the meaning of the white man's duty.  He has to take all risks,
recking nothing of his life or his fortunes, and well content to find
his reward in the fulfilment of his task.  That is the difference
between white and black, the gift of responsibility, the power of being
in a little way a king; and so long as we know this and practise it, we
will rule not in Africa alone but wherever there are dark men who live
only for the day and their own bellies.  Moreover, the work made me
pitiful and kindly.  I learned much of the untold grievances of the
natives, and saw something of their strange, twisted reasoning.  Before
we had got Laputa's army back to their kraals, with food enough to tide
them over the spring sowing, Aitken and I had got sounder policy in our
heads than you will find in the towns, where men sit in offices and see
the world through a mist of papers.

By this time peace was at hand, and I went back to Inanda's Kraal to
look for Colin's grave.  It was not a difficult quest, for on the sward
in front of the merula tree they had buried him. I found a mason in the
Iron Kranz village, and from the excellent red stone of the
neighbourhood was hewn a square slab with an inscription.  It ran thus:
'Here lies buried the dog Colin, who was killed in defending D.
Crawfurd, his master. To him it was mainly due that the Kaffir Rising
failed.'  I leave those who have read my tale to see the justice of the
words.

CHAPTER XXIII

MY UNCLE'S GIFT IS MANY TIMES MULTIPLIED

We got at the treasure by blowing open the turnstile.  It was easy
enough to trace the spot in the rock where it stood, but the most
patient search did not reveal its secret.  Accordingly we had recourse
to dynamite, and soon laid bare the stone steps, and ascended to the
gallery.  The chasm was bridged with planks, and Arcoll and I crossed
alone.  The cave was as I had left it.  The bloodstains on the floor
had grown dark with time, but the ashes of the sacramental fire were
still there to remind me of the drama I had borne a part in.  When I
looked at the way I had escaped my brain grew dizzy at the thought of
it.  I do not think that all the gold on earth would have driven me a
second time to that awful escalade.  As for Arcoll, he could not see
its possibility at all.

'Only a madman could have done it,' he said, blinking his eyes at the
green linn.  'Indeed, Davie, I think for about four days you were as
mad as they make.  It was a fortunate thing, for your madness saved the
country.'

With some labour we got the treasure down to the path, and took it
under a strong guard to Pietersdorp.  The Government were busy with the
settling up after the war, and it took many weeks to have our business
disposed of.  At first things looked badly for me.  The
Attorney-General set up a claim to the whole as spoils of war, since,
he argued, it was the war-chest of the enemy we had conquered.  I do
not know how the matter would have gone on legal grounds, though I was
advised by my lawyers that the claim was a bad one.  But the part I had
played in the whole business, more especially in the visit to Inanda's
Kraal, had made me a kind of popular hero, and the Government thought
better of their first attitude.  Besides, Arcoll had great influence,
and the whole story of my doings, which was told privately by him to
some of the members of the Government, disposed them to be generous.
Accordingly they agreed to treat the contents of the cave as ordinary
treasure trove, of which, by the law, one half went to the discoverer
and one half to the Crown.

This was well enough so far as the gold was concerned, but another
difficulty arose about the diamonds; for a large part of these had
obviously been stolen by labourers from the mines, and the mining
people laid claim to them as stolen goods.  I was advised not to
dispute this claim, and consequently we had a great sorting-out of the
stones in the presence of the experts of the different mines.  In the
end it turned out that identification was not an easy matter, for the
experts quarrelled furiously among themselves.  A compromise was at
last come to, and a division made; and then the diamond companies
behaved very handsomely, voting me a substantial sum in recognition of
my services in recovering their property.  What with this and with my
half share of the gold and my share of the unclaimed stones, I found
that I had a very considerable fortune.  The whole of my stones I sold
to De Beers, for if I had placed them on the open market I should have
upset the delicate equipoise of diamond values.  When I came finally to
cast up my accounts, I found that I had secured a fortune of a trifle
over a quarter of a million pounds.

The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me.  I had no
impulse to spend any part of it in a riot of folly.  It had come to me
like fairy gold out of the void; it had been bought with men's blood,
almost with my own.  I wanted to get away to a quiet place and think,
for of late my life had been too crowded with drama, and there comes a
satiety of action as well as of idleness.  Above all things I wanted to
get home. They gave me a great send-off, and sang songs, and good
fellows shook my hand till it ached.  The papers were full of me, and
there was a banquet and speeches.  But I could not relish this glory as
I ought, for I was like a boy thrown violently out of his bearings. Not
till I was in the train nearing Cape Town did I recover my equanimity.
The burden of the past seemed to slip from me suddenly as on the
morning when I had climbed the linn. I saw my life all lying before me;
and already I had won success.  I thought of my return to my own
country, my first sight of the grey shores of Fife, my visit to
Kirkcaple, my meeting with my mother.  I was a rich man now who could
choose his career, and my mother need never again want for comfort.  My
money seemed pleasant to me, for if men won theirs by brains or
industry, I had won mine by sterner methods, for I had staked against
it my life.  I sat alone in the railway carriage and cried with pure
thankfulness.  These were comforting tears, for they brought me back to
my old common-place self.

My last memory of Africa is my meeting with Tam Dyke.  I caught sight
of him in the streets of Cape Town, and running after him, clapped him
on the shoulder.  He stared at me as if he had seen a ghost.

'Is it yourself, Davie?' he cried.  'I never looked to see you again in
this world.  I do nothing but read about you in the papers.  What for
did ye not send for me?  Here have I been knocking about inside a ship
and you have been getting famous.  They tell me you're a millionaire,
too.'

I had Tam to dinner at my hotel, and later, sitting smoking on the
terrace and watching the flying-ants among the aloes, I told him the
better part of the story I have here written down.

'Man, Davie,' he said at the end, 'you've had a tremendous time.  Here
are you not eighteen months away from home, and you're going back with
a fortune.  What will you do with it?' I told him that I proposed, to
begin with, to finish my education at Edinburgh College.  At this he
roared with laughter.

'That's a dull ending, anyway.  It's me that should have the money, for
I'm full of imagination.  You were aye a prosaic body, Davie.'

'Maybe I am,' I said; 'but I am very sure of one thing.  If I hadn't
been a prosaic body, I wouldn't be sitting here to-night.'

* * *

Two years later Aitken found the diamond pipe, which he had always
believed lay in the mountains.  Some of the stones in the cave, being
unlike any ordinary African diamonds, confirmed his suspicions and set
him on the track.  A Kaffir tribe to the north-east of the Rooirand had
known of it, but they had never worked it, but only collected the
overspill.  The closing down of one of the chief existing mines had
created a shortage of diamonds in the world's markets, and once again
the position was the same as when Kimberley began.  Accordingly he made
a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken Proprietary Mine is one of the
most famous in the country.  But Aitken did more than mine diamonds,
for he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned together in the work
of resettlement.  He laid down a big fund for the education and
amelioration of the native races, and the first fruit of it was the
establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein itself of a great native
training college.  It was no factory for making missionaries and black
teachers, but an institution for giving the Kaffirs the kind of
training which fits them to be good citizens of the state.  There you
will find every kind of technical workshop, and the finest experimental
farms, where the blacks are taught modern agriculture.  They have
proved themselves apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of
the Berg and in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any
in Africa.  They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and fruit;
the cotton promises well; and there is talk of a new fibre which will
do wonders.  Also along the river bottoms the india-rubber business is
prospering.

There are playing-fields and baths and reading-rooms and libraries just
as in a school at home.  In front of the great hall of the college a
statue stands, the figure of a black man shading his eyes with his
hands and looking far over the plains to the Rooirand.  On the pedestal
it is lettered 'Prester John,' but the face is the face of Laputa.  So
the last of the kings of Africa does not lack his monument.

Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head.  He writes to me weekly,
for I am one of the governors, as well as an old friend, and from a
recent letter I take this passage:--

'I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I sat on the
stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs and our future.  I
had about a dozen pupils then, and now I have nearly three thousand;
and in place of a tin-roofed shanty and a yard, I have a whole
countryside.  You laughed at me for my keenness, Davie, but I've seen
it justified.  I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide
at home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles.
But when it was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't
do--I was the physician to heal wounds.  You mind how nervous I was
when I heard the drums beat.  I hear them every evening now, for we
have made a rule that all the Kaffir farms on the Berg sound a kind of
curfew.  It reminds me of old times, and tells me that though it is
peace nowadays we mean to keep all the manhood in them that they used
to exercise in war.  It would do your eyes good to see the garden we
have made out of the Klein Labongo glen.  The place is one big orchard
with every kind of tropical fruit in it, and the irrigation dam is as
full of fish as it will hold.  Out at Umvelos' there is a
tobacco-factory, and all round Sikitola's we have square miles of
mealie and cotton fields.  The loch on the Rooirand is stocked with
Lochleven trout, and we have made a bridle-path up to it in a gully
east of the one you climbed.  You ask about Machudi's.  The last time I
was there the place was white with sheep, for we have got the edge of
the plateau grazed down, and sheep can get the short bite there.  We
have cleaned up all the kraals, and the chiefs are members of our
county council, and are as fond of hearing their own voices as an
Aberdeen bailie.  It's a queer transformation we have wrought, and when
I sit and smoke my pipe in the evening, and look over the plains and
then at the big black statue you and Aitken set up, I thank the
Providence that has guided me so far.  I hope and trust that, in the
Bible words, "the wilderness and the solitary place are glad for us."
At any rate it will not be my fault if they don't "blossom as the
rose".  Come out and visit us soon, man, and see the work you had a
hand in starting....'

I am thinking seriously of taking Wardlaw's advice.