Tales of South Africa by H.A. Bryden

Author:H.A. Bryden
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A LEGEND OF PRINCE MAURICE.

It was Christmas-time at the Cape, when many a man and woman of British blood, jaded by the sun and drought of an up-country life, flocks down to the sea. Cape Town and her charming suburbs were crowded; and the pleasant watering-places of Muizenberg and Kalk Bay were thronged with folk dying once more to set eyes on the blue ocean, to inhale the fresh breezes, and to remind themselves of their own sea-girt origin. From every corner of South Africa--from the old Colony, the Free State, the Transvaal, from far Bechuanaland--they had come. You might see sun-scorched wanderers from the far interior, hunters, explorers, prospectors, and pioneers. Some had come to restore broken health; some to taste again the sweets of civilisation, to spend hard-won money; or, perchance, an enthusiast might be seen who had been attracted south a thousand miles and more by the week's cricket tournament on the Western Province ground at Newlands.

Cape Town was at her best and bravest. Adderley Street was as crowded as Bond Street in June; and upon every hand were to be seen and heard pleasant faces, cheery voices, and the hearty greetings of friends long severed by time and distance.

On the evening of the 23rd December, a young man sat in his pleasant bedroom in the annexe of the International Hotel, which lies rather out of the heat of the town on the lower slopes of Table Mountain. It was an hour before dinner, and the young man sat in his shirt-sleeves before the open window, idly smoking a pipe, and feasting his eyes on the glorious view that lay before him.

Jack Compton had just come down from two years' travel and sport in the far interior; you might tell that by his lean, sun-tanned face and deeply embrowned arms, and by the collection of curios--bird-skins, photographs, horns, heads, assegais, and other articles that littered the room--and, after a rough time of it, was now enjoying to the full the ease and relaxation of life at the Cape. It was a noble prospect that lay spread before him--none nobler in the world. Cape Town, with its white houses and dark-green foliage, contrasted strongly in the near foreground with the peerless blue and the sweeping contours of Table Bay. Out at the entrance to the bay, Robben Island swam dimly into the far Atlantic. Across the bay, the eye was first smitten by the blinding dazzle of the beach of white sand below Blaauwberg. Then rose chain upon chain of glorious mountain scenery, the jagged sierras of Stellenbosch and the far line of Hottentots Holland melting in blues and purples upon the horizon. Under the setting sun the crests of these distant sierras were rapidly becoming rose-tinted, and the warm browns and purples glorified a thousandfold. Never, thought Jack Compton, as he pulled contentedly at his pipe, had he beheld a more enchanting scene.

At that instant his door was flung open, and a tall, sunburnt, keen-eyed man of thirty entered the room.

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