Chapter One.

Query Bad Shillings?

“Hi!”

No answer.

“Hi! Dyke!”

The lad addressed did not turn his head, but walked straight on, with the dwarf karroo bushes crackling and snapping under his feet, while at each call he gave an angry kick out, sending the dry red sand flying.

He was making for the kopje or head of bald granite which rose high out of the level plain—where, save in patches, there was hardly a tree to be seen—for amongst these piled-up masses of glittering stone, lay deep moist crevices in which were shade and trickling water, the great blessings of a dry and thirsty desert.

“Hi! Do you hear, Dyke?” came again, shouted by a big athletic-looking young man, in flannels and a broad-brimmed Panama hat, and he gave his thick brown beard an angry tug as he spoke.

“Oh yes, I hear,” muttered the lad; “I can hear you, old Joe. He’s got away again, and I shan’t come. A stupid-headed, vicious, long-legged beast, that’s what he is.”

“Hi!” roared the young man, as he stood in front of an ugly corrugated iron shed, dignified by the name of house, from which the white-wash, laid thickly over the grey zinc galvanising to ward off the rays of the blinding Afric sun, had peeled away here and there in patches.

Some attempts had been made to take off the square, desolate ugliness of the building by planting a patch of garden surrounded by posts and wire; but they were not very successful, for, as a rule, things would not grow for want of water.

Vandyke Emson—the Dyke shouted at—had been the gardener, and so long as he toiled hard, fetching water from the granite kopje springs, a quarter of a mile away, and tended the roots he put in the virgin soil, they rushed up out of the ground; but, as he reasonably said, he couldn’t do everything, and if he omitted to play Aquarius for twenty-four hours, there were the plants that looked so flourishing yesterday shrivelled to nothing. He had planted creepers to run all over the sides and roof, but the sun made the corrugated iron red hot—the boy’s exaggerated figure of speech, but so hot that you could not keep your hand upon the roof or wall—and the creepers found the temperature too much for their constitution, and they rapidly turned to hay. Then he trained up tomatoes, which grew at express speed so long as they were watered, formed splendid fruit, were left to themselves a couple of days, and then followed suit with the creepers. Joseph Emson smiled behind his great beard, and said they were a success because the tomatoes were cooked ready for use; but Dyke said it was another failure, because they were just as good raw, and he did not like to eat his fruit as vegetables cooked in a frying-pan covered with white-wash.

Still all was not bare, for a patch of great sunflowers found moisture enough for their roots somewhere far below, and sent up their great pithy stalks close to the house door, spread their rough leaves, and imitated the sun’s disk in their broad, round, yellow flowers. There was an ugly euphorbia too, with its thorny, almost leafless branches and brilliant scarlet flowers; while grotesque and hideous-looking, with its great, flat, oblong, biscuit-shaped patches of juicy leaf, studded with great thorns, a prickly pear or opuntia reared itself against the end gable, warranted to stop every one who approached.

“It’s no good,” Dyke once said; “the place is a nasty old desert, and I hate it, and I wish I’d never come. There’s only six letters in Africa, and half of them spell fry.”

“And that’s bad grammar and bad spelling,” said his half-brother; “and you’re a discontented young cub.”

“And you’re another,” said Dyke sourly. “Well, haven’t we been fried or grilled ever since we’ve been out here? and don’t you say yourself that it’s all a failure, and that you’ve made a big mistake?”

“Yes, sometimes, when I’m very hot and tired, Dicky, my lad. We’ve failed so far; but, look here, my brave and beautiful British boy.”

“Look here, Joe; I wish you wouldn’t be so jolly fond of chaffing and teasing me,” said Dyke angrily.

“Poor old fellow, then! Was um hot and tired and thirsty, then?” cried his half-brother mockingly. “Take it coolly, Dicky.”

“Don’t call me Dicky,” cried the boy passionately, as he kicked out both legs.

“Vandyke Emson, Esquire, ostrich-farmer, then,” said the other.

“Ostrich-farmer!” cried Dyke, in a tone full of disgust. “Ugh! I’m sick of the silly-looking, lanky goblins. I wish their heads were buried in the sand, and their bodies too.”

“With their legs sticking straight up to make fences, eh, old man?” said Joseph Emson, smiling behind his beard—a smile that would have been all lost, if it had not been for a pleasant wrinkle or two about his frank blue eyes.

“Well, they would be some good then,” said Dyke, a little more amiably. “These wire fences are always breaking down and going off spang, and twisting round your legs. Oh, I do wish I was back at home.”

“Amongst the rain and clouds and fog, so that you could be always playing cricket in summer, and football in winter, and skating when there was ice.”

“Don’t you sneer at the fog, Joe,” retorted Dyke. “I wish I could see a good thick one now.”

“So that you could say, ‘Ah, you should see the veldt where the sun shines brightly for weeks together.’”

“Sun shines!” cried Dyke. “Here, look at my face and hands.”

“Yes; they’re burnt of good Russia leather colour, like mine, Dyke. Well, what do you say? Shall we pack the wagon, give it up, and trek slowly back to Cape Town?”

“Yes, I’m ready!” cried the boy eagerly.

“Get out, you confounded young fibber! I know you better than that.”

“No, you don’t,” said Dyke sulkily.

“Yes, I do, Dicky. I know you better than you know yourself. You’re not of that breed, my boy. You’ve got too much of the old dad’s Berserker blood in your veins. Oh, come, now: withdraw all that! British boys don’t look back when they’ve taken hold of the plough handles.”

“Bother the plough handles!”

“By all means, boy; but, I say, that isn’t English, Dyke. Where would our country’s greatness have been if her sons had been ready to sing that coward’s song?”

“Now you’re beginning to preach again, Joe,” said the boy sulkily.

“Then say ‘Thank you,’ my lad. Isn’t it a fine thing for you to have a brother with you, and then, when there isn’t a church for hundreds of miles—a brother who can preach to you?”

“No; because I know what you’re going to say—that we ought to go on and fight it out.”

“That’s it, Dicky. Didn’t some one say that the beauty of a British soldier was that he never knew when he was beaten?”

“I’m not a soldier, and I am beaten,” cried Dyke sourly.

“Not you. I know you better. Why, if I said ‘Yes; let’s give it up,’ and packed up all we cared to take, and got the wagon loaded to-night, you’d repent in the morning when we were ready to start, and say, ‘Let’s have another try.’”

“Well, perhaps I might say—”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Joseph Emson; “what a young humbug you are, Dicky. Fancy you going back with me to the old dad, and us saying, ‘Here we are, back again, like two bad shillings, father. We’ve spent all our money, and we’re a pair of failures.’”

“Well, but it is so hot and tiresome, and the ostriches are such horribly stupid beasts, and—”

“We’re both very tired, and disappointed, and thirsty, and—”

“I am, you mean,” said