Ennis

“ And as the Door dwindled, the light in the cavern was failing.
"Ruth!" yelled Ennis madly, and sprang forward and grasped her, his pistol leaping into his other hand.
"Ennis—quick!" shouted Campbell's voice across the cavern.
The Door dwindled away altogether; the great oval facet was completely black. The light was fast dying too.
The chief priest sprang madly toward Ennis, and as he did so, the hooded hordes of the Brotherhood recovered from their paralysis of horror and surged madly toward the dais. ”

“ Ennis had her doubts. He was very vain; underneath his urbanity there might be an elastic hardness.
There were, moreover, at times indications of a rather contemptuous attitude toward a world less highly trained than himself. She turned to Pollen, trying to recollect what for the last few moments he had been saying to her. He perceived her more scrutinizing attention and faced toward her. From under lowered eyelids he had been watching, with a moody furtiveness, Mary Rochefort and Burnaby, who were oblivious to the other two in the manner of people who are glad they have met. ”

“ As the colossal response thundered, the priest who had jerked Ennis back whispered urgently to him. "You go too close to the victims, Chandra Dass! Do you wish to be taken with them?"
The fellow had a tight grip on Ennis' arm. Desperate, tensed, Ennis heard the chief priest roll forth the last of the ritual.
"Shall the Door be opened that They may take the sacrifices?" ”

“ Ennis and Inspector Campbell, keeping their hands elevated, started at the Hindoo's command down the softly lit rock tunnel. Chandra Dass and the two hooded men with pistols followed.
Ennis saw that the inspector's sagging face was expressionless, and knew that behind that colorless mask, Campbell's brain was racing in an attempt to find a method of escape. For himself, the young American had almost forgotten all else in his eagerness to reach his wife. Whatever happened to Ruth, whatever mysterious horror lay in wait for her and the other victims, he would be there beside her, sharing it! ”

“ A decent man in Ennis thus expressed himself anent the Bodyke affair. (My friend is a Catholic Nationalist.) "The Bodyke men are not all out so badly off as they seem. But their acts are bad, for they can pay, and they will not. No, I do not call the Colonel a bad landlord. We know all about it in Ennis; everybody agrees, too. The farmers meet in this town and elsewhere. Two or three of the best talkers lead the meeting, and everything is done their way. The more decent, sensible men are not always the best talkers. Look at Gladstone, have ye anybody to come up to him? ”

“ Ennis, were coming here tonight. We let you get this far only because it was evident that somehow you had learned too much about us, and that it would be best to let you come here and meet your deaths."
"Chandra Dass, I've men outside," rasped Campbell. "If we don't come out, they'll come in after us."
The Hindoo's proud, dark face did not change its scorn. "They will not come in for a little while, inspector. By that time you two will be dead and we shall be gone with our captives. Yes, Mr. Ennis, your wife is one of those captives," he added to the prostrate young American. ”

“ Ennis, despite her feminine approval of success, couldn't imagine herself being as much interested in him—dangerously interested—as she knew her friend Mary Rochefort to be. How odd! From all the world to pick out a tall, blond, willowy man like Pollen! ”

“ It is needless to say that Maryfort is a long way from Ennis. Every place is a long way from everywhere in this western part of Ireland—a fact, by the way, not unfrequently forgotten by critics of the much-criticised constabulary. ”

“ Smoothly, resistlessly, the current bore them on in the tunnel, whose winding turns ahead were lit up by their searchlight.
"God, that was close!" exclaimed Inspector Campbell.
His eyes flashed. "Ennis, I believe that we have found the gathering-place of the Brotherhood. That boat we sighted is somewhere ahead in here, and so must be Chandra Dass, and your wife."
Ennis' hand tightened on his gun-butt. "If that's so—if we can just find them——"
"Blind action won't help if we do," said the inspector swiftly. ”

“ In the meeting of Pollen and Burnaby and Mary Rochefort, Mrs. Ennis foresaw contingencies; just what these contingencies were likely to be she did not know, but that an excellent chance for them existed she had no doubt, even if in the end they proved to be no more than the humor to be extracted from the reflection that a supposedly rational divinity had spent his time creating three people so utterly unalike. ”

“ Theunis would ride Ferus home.
The horses dashed through the deep grass of the high veldt, taking the shortest route home. Petrus could already see a blackening cloud in the distance overcasting the sky.
"Nothing will be left of my crops!—nothing!" excitedly exclaimed his uncle. "There is no time to be lost! Terrible swarms cover everything! My Kafirs are doing what they can, and your Aunt Johanna and some of the neighbors are holding a prayer-service for relief from the pests. We must be quick and add our prayers to theirs, else all will be lost!" ”

“ He stood still in deference to their calls and parried their banter with easy words. How characterless they looked: Shuley without his deep unbuttoned collar, Ennis without his scarlet belt with the snaky clasp, and Connolly without his Norfolk coat with the flapless sidepockets! It was a pain to see them, and a swordlike pain to see the signs of adolescence that made repellent their pitiable nakedness. Perhaps they had taken refuge in number and noise from the secret dread in their souls. ”

“ Uncle Abraham lashed the horses into a wild gallop. The lieutenant again took careful aim and fired. The Zulus went tumbling back into the tall grass.
"They're afraid of our fire-arms! Hurrah!" cried Petrus in joy. "Hurrah! George, you're safe! They are gone!"
"Yes, thank heavens! We've escaped their poisoned assegais so far—the savages! I know that giant Zulu who was in the lead. I know him well. He is Dirk," continued the lieutenant. "He looked me straight in the eye, as he passed close and drew his assegai. No, Petrus, I'll take George home to-night. He's safer there. ”

“ Indeed, I thought by his manner that he wanted tacitly to apologize for his bad behaviour when we first met; so probably, when I fancied he looked wicked that night at Ennis's Rooms, it was because he wanted to sneeze. You have taught me to give everybody, except young men, the benefit of the doubt; but I don't see why one shouldn't give it to young men, too. I think they're rather easier to forgive, somehow, than women. ”

“ In a twinkling Petrus' arms were flung around the old man's neck.
"A penny for your thoughts, Grandfather dear! Please let me stay here with you a while," begged the boy.
"Ah, Koos, is it you, my boy? Yes, yes, [56] you may stay a while if you do not ask too many questions. It is easy to guess your thoughts. Let me try. Your visit with Aunt Kotie at Johannesburg next week. Your trip to Cape Town with Lieutenant Wortley and George. Hurrying back home in time for Christmas. Isn't that right, Koos?"
"Yes, Grandfather, and George is expecting a big Christmas box from his Aunt Edith in England. ”

“ So the lieutenant hailed an old vehicle. There was just time between trains for a glance at the famous Kimberley diamond mines, which Petrus had never seen. The wheels of the old vehicle often sank a foot deep as it rattled along [82] through clouds of dust, past miserable corrugated-iron shanties and mounds of débris, left after the diamonds had been sorted out. Kimberley seemed to lie in a sea of sand. ”

“ Loyalty to the mother country is deepening in the Transvaal every day. Premier Botha and all his people are ready to fight in her behalf at any time. Now run along. There comes George galloping across to see you, Koos. I'll put these things back in the chest myself."
"Thank you, Grandfather dear, for all you've told me," called back Petrus, as he bounded downstairs to meet George, who had come to take part in the short twilight games of the early tropical evening which Petrus, Franzina, Yettie and Theunis always played together just before dinner-time. ”

“ Few things have more charm for man than flight. The soaring of a bird is beautiful and the gliding of a yacht before the wind has something of the same beauty. The child’s swing; the exercise of skating on good ice; a sixty-mile-an-hour spurt on a smooth road in a motor car; even the slightly passé bicycle: these things have all in their time appealed to us because they produce the illusion of flight—of progress through the intangible air with all but separation from the prosaic earth. ”

“ That must have been Dirk! The boy must have been George!" cried Petrus, with sparkling eyes. "Mutla, up-saddle the ponies at once! We have no time to lose!"
"No, wait until morning. Your ponies are tired. The road from here to Durban is a rough one at best. Even the bravest would not be foolhardy enough to undertake it by night," insisted the old missionary.
"You are right. We will sleep to-night. In the early morning, long before you are up, we will be far on our way. Good-night, and thank you for all your kindness," said Petrus, handing the kind Kafir a sovereign to aid him in his work. ”

“ He was, in truth, the father of the second school of Latin poetry, the only school of which the works have descended to us. But from Ennius himself we learn that there were poets who stood to him in the same relation in which the author of the romance of Count Alarcos stood to Garcilaso, or the author of the Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode to Lord Surrey. Ennius speaks of verses which the Fauns and the Bards were wont to chant in the old time, when none had yet studied the graces of speech, when none had yet climbed the peaks sacred to the Goddesses of Grecian song. ”

“ George was better Petrus half hoped each day to see him at the farm.
The Joubert household arose early mornings. Aunt Johanna always had breakfast by six. Then there was an hour's rest in the hottest part of the day, right after dinner. Petrus was the first one to be up and out enjoying the balmy morning air—watching the Kafir herders feeding the flocks, milking the cows, yoking the oxen, and driving the horses and sheep off to pasture. The vast farm, with its miles of waving grain and mealie-fields, and rolling pasture lands, was one of the best cultivated in all the Transvaal. ”

“ The glare of the setting sun was behind them as they turned in the direction of the famous Zulu military kraals of Ekowe. Cutting through the undergrowth of rank luxuriance, they went at top speed. Often the Zulu grass met above their ponies' ears. Presently they emerged into a more open, grassy space where they passed a half-wild herd of Zulu cattle contentedly feeding. They were beautiful little creatures.
"Mutla, we must be very near the Ekowe kraals!" excitedly exclaimed Petrus, "otherwise this herd of Zulu cattle would hardly be grazing here! Look out for Dirk!" ”

“ Let the two rival Powers on whom the peace of the world depends settle their difficulties—surely the earth must be big enough for both!—and then as one would gently but firmly take away from a small boy his too destructive toy rifle, spike the guns and scuttle the ships, their own and all the rest, leaving to some unambitious and neutral power the prosaic task of policing the world. ”

“ Let armed international strife be viewed as it really is—senseless as the now dying duello. Let the navy that represents the wealth, the best engineering, the highest courage and skill, of our age, be powerless at the attack of a swarm of trifling gnats like Gulliver bound by Lilliputians—what happens then? It is a reductio ad absurdum. Destructive war becomes so superlatively destructive as to destroy itself. ”

“ Even the food tasted gritty. All the next day they were still passing over the same great burning waste of sandy, sun-swept veldt. "'Karroo' is a Hottentot name, meaning dry or barren," Petrus explained. Even the river-beds were dried up. Towards evening, when a sudden hard rain fell over the dry tussocky grass, the effect was magical. Hundreds of wild flowers burst suddenly into bloom, glowing brightly in the wilderness. ”

“ The long row of saddles against the red brick wall told of the large number of gayly decked riders who had already arrived—many of whom were standing in groups outside, shaking [136] hands, drinking coffee and discussing Petrus' heroism, as they watched the unloading of Cape carts, wagonettes, spiders, horse and ox-wagons full of Dutch vrouws and children, whose bright dresses flashed gayly in the sunlight. ”

“ Its colors tell of the time when the Transvaal was the 'South African Republic,' Koos."
"Shall we always have to fly the 'Union Jack' in the Transvaal, Grandfather? George says it helps him to feel more at home down here."
"It may be God's will, Petrus. Let us hope that the worst of our troubles are forever over. During the thirteen years since peace was signed between Great Britain and the Transvaal our friendly relations have been deepening. A new era of progress, prosperity and peace seems to have come for the Transvaal. Our future looks bright." ”

“ You ought to see clever little Shobo. Every time he spies a jackal he chases it into a porcupine's hole, only to see it speedily driven out. Suppose we go over towards the Kafir kraals, George? Shall we?"
"Oh, yes, Petrus, let's do!" exclaimed George in delight. They were riding along through the willow, wattle and wild-tobacco trees bordering the pretty little spruit of clear water, where the wool-washing would take place to-morrow.
It was George's first trip to South Africa. He had never seen a Kafir kraal. He had heard that South Africa was a "land of diamonds" ”