In the Whirl of the Rising

"You did well to keep those Abantwana Mlimo off me last night. They might have pricked me with a poisoned blade, or have done anything." The speaker little guessed he had hit th...

Day dawned, cloudless and golden, in its full African splendour. The night had passed without any alarm, but, to make sure, the force had divided the night between it to mount g...

The Kezane Store--shop, inn, farm, posting-stables rolled into one--was almost a small fort, in that its buildings were enclosed within a stout stockade of mopani poles. This is...

Even with the first slip and stumble of his horse Lamont realised that his last moment had come; and, as he lay pinned there and unable to move, he restrained a natural instinct...

Before that stage was attained, however, Fullerton was making nasty remarks on the wholly unnecessary quantity of baggage without which lovely woman professes herself unable to...

Clare Vidal's beautiful eyes are strained upon the farthest limits of vision in a certain direction, and, not for the first time, the thought rather than the utterance, expresse...

Over the slumbering land the dawn has not yet broken, though but for the chill mist lying upon bush and earth the first faint streaks might be lining the eastern sky. Nor are th...

"Quite right. It isn't," answered Peters. "We'll get there kind of roundabout. You see, if by any chance our trap should miss fire, and they come after us, they'd head along the...

When the strokes of the horse's hoofs told that he had mounted and was riding away, Clare could not resist turning to glance back at him. How well he looked in the saddle, she t...

It was a large, circular space, surrounded by a not particularly strong bush-fence, and now on the day of the race meeting and gymkhana it presented a very lively scene indeed;...

In crediting his unwelcome guest with a desire to `take over the whole show,' Lamont was stating no more than was warranted by fact. For Ancram had made himself rather more than...

"It was thanks to you, Driffield," said a man who was within earshot. "He was asking for you. Told them at the gate that you and Lamont had invited him to come."

The township of Gandela was practically in a state of siege. Taught tardy wisdom--providentially not too tardy--by recent happenings, its authorities had caused a strong laager...

Once clear of Gandela, Lamont had subsided into moody silence. Only the eager glow in his eyes, as he sent his horse along at a brisk pace at the head of his troop, told how his...

In telling Ancram that the Matabele were likely to give trouble in the event of a further extensive destruction of their cattle, Lamont had been indulging in prophecy that was a...

Ancram felt his face going cold and white. He was not by temperament especially brave, and had never seen a shot fired, or a blow struck in anger, with lethal weapon that is, in...

And Lamont, swinging himself into his saddle, rode away from Lyall's store, quite content with the price he had obtained from that worthy for a dozen young oxen, which he had de...

His brain was giddy and his eyes wearied with the unvarying vista on every hand, the straight stems of the mopani forest, enclosing him; a still and ghastly wilderness devoid of...

When Clare Vidal awoke on the morning after the race meeting, and her thoughts went back to some of the events and incidents of that sporting and festive gathering, she was fain...

It was lunch time at Peters' prospecting camp, and Peters, seated on a pile of old sacks, was busy opening a bully-beef tin. Having extracted its indifferently appetising conten...

The vedettes had signalled. Away over the veldt to the westward a pillar of dust was visible; and it was moving, drawing nearer. A group, outside the stockade, was watching it i...

"What on earth have you been doing to Jim Steele, Clare?" said Mrs Fullerton, as she came into her drawing-room, and sank into a cane chair. "He passed me in the gate looking as...

For a good deal had happened, and that since the averted tragedy of the race meeting. True to his word Lamont had made another visit to Zwabeka's kraal, and had persisted in mak...

His greeting of the new arrival was polite rather than cordial; even pleasant, but not spontaneous. There was a vast difference in his handshake here to that wherewith he had we...

"Isn't that a perfect picture of savage life, set in a savage surrounding?" said Lamont, as he stood with his travelling companion before the door of the hut allotted to them. "...

"That is a very great _isanusi_ in there, _umfane_," said Lamont, as he splashed his head and face in a large calabash bowl. His travelling companion the while was engaged in hi...

"Why, certainly. Didn't you make a point of my entering for the tent-pegging? What would have happened if I'd won? I couldn't receive a prize by deputy. Didn't you want me to he...

It was only at night they could travel with any degree of safety. The appearance of some armed Matabele had driven them into hiding almost within sight of poor Tewson's homestea...

The walls of the room were hung with dark blue "limbo," which gave an impression of refreshing coolness and restful, subdued light, in grateful contrast to the hot, white glare...

"Do you mean to tell me, Clare, that the real reason you wanted me to take you into Buluwayo was because Lamont told you there was going to be a rising?"

He shook up the reins and cracked his whip. The long-suffering beasts tautened to their collars, and pulled out again. They were rather fine animals, with a strong Spanish cross...