The Claw

On the Fort George side of the court next day I noticed a woman I had not seen before. She was handsome and rather extraordinary looking, and had a number of men talking to her;...

"Salisbury lies behind that big brown hill," said Judy, "about an hour's drive from here." She was perched with a certain daintiness upon Dirk Mackenzie's water _fykie_, sipping...

"We shall not be leaving Mashonaland. When I made you some such promise I had not reckoned with my dear uncle Alexander. It appears that he objects to my going away from Africa."

Once more I was alone in the coach with my driver, moving onwards towards my destination--Fort Salisbury. In an hour or two I should reach Fort George, which was only a day or s...

Hour after hour Zeederberg's post-cart and all that therein was straggled deviously across the landscape, bumping along the rutty road, creaking and craking, swaggling from side...

A cloud of dark and brooding melancholy settled upon Fort George after the departure of the troops. The streets were silent. Many of the huts had their doors padlocked and rough...

I suppose I fainted, and later perhaps I slept. At any rate it seemed, and must have been, a long while afterwards that I waked up to a sound so pleasant and comforting that I b...

We were sitting under a mimosa tree outside the drawing-room hut, elbows on the tea-table, enjoying the sunset lights and the extraordinary content that nothing so well bestows...

"No news from the front yet!" That was always the answer to our daily inquiries, and there was nothing to do but feed our anxious, hungry hearts with the old supposition that no...

"Do we think Victory great? And so it is. But now it seems to me, when it cannot be helped, That Defeat is great, and Death and Dismay are great!"

When we met at the breakfast table the bloom of the dawn was on none of us. Mrs Valetta was pale and haggard as a murderess. Judy, cross and dishevelled, had a black smudge on h...

On the second day after my arrival I descended upon my enemies in open field, or rather on open court. Judy, having reviewed my toilette before starting, was suddenly smitten wi...

Fort George was a busy place again. Wives worn with watching and waiting in suspense, braced themselves afresh to the task of nursing sick husbands, while those who had no men-f...

Brown cotton stockings from Salzar's General Stores fell into holes before one had worn them twice: yet they cost four and sixpence a pair! Almost as much as spun silk ones at h...

For a reason that had to do with my intense love for animals I had steadfastly refused to have any pets, though I had been offered an adorable Irish terrier puppy, a tame _meerk...

As I followed the little pathway which led from the house to the post-office buildings, where we were all to be shut in for the night, some one came running towards me and I pre...

"I know not where the white road runs, Nor what the blue hills are; But a man can have the Sun for his friend, And for his guide a Star."

Later they all rode away, and Maurice with them, leaving me to pack for our exeunt that afternoon to a little place called Water-lily Farm. It was the home of a fellow N.C. of M...

There followed many blank days. Week after week went by without news of any kind coming in. We only knew that our men were all together now, and marching on to Matabeleland. The...

The big main doors of the post-office were thrown open at an early hour of morning but the inmates of _laager_ did not rise with the lark. They trickled forth at intervals, acco...

He was sleeping, sprawled in a canvas chair beside the table frowsy now, and littered with empty tins, spilt wine, and overturned flowers. His mouth hung open, and I saw that it...

"And a clever business man. And he adores me. I do not see how you can think yourself justified in being so hard and unsympathetic about it, Deirdre. I am one of those extremely...