Five years of Benton's wandering life having been spent on the veldt--two of them passed in the Chartered Company's service--accounted for the curious South African trophies that were noticeable here and there. A stuffed _meerkat_ crouched half raised, like a gigantic gopher, and that ugly bald-headed vulture, known in the _Taal_ as an _aasvogel_, looked down with unpitying eyes. Two magnificent leopard skin karosses were flung over the armchairs, and a Zulu oxhide war shield was suspended in an angle of the walls, flanked crosswise with its companion weapons--a heavy knob-kerrie and a short, broad-bladed, stabbing assegai, whilst above hung those one-time sinister symbols of authority north of the Vaal--a rhinoceros-hide _sjambok_, a Mauser rifle, and a captured "_Vierkleur_" flag. Adjoining this room were the kitchen and a small compartment used as a storehouse.
His supper finished, and the daily diary, mileage report, and "monthly returns" made out, the Sergeant lit a pipe and lay back in one of the armchairs, lazily scanning the various criminal photographs in the last copy of _The Detective_ he had brought with him from the Post, until drowsiness overcoming him, the paper fluttered to the floor and his head sank back against the leopard skin. The rays of the lamp shone full on the strong, moody face, with the pipe still held clenched between the teeth, and the athletic frame which, even in repose, contrived somehow to convey in its posture an impression of instinctive, feline readiness for sudden action.
Indeed, the man's whole appearance seemed to fittingly bear out the many strange stories that were current of his strenuous and eventful past.
The elder was quelled, But the younger rebelled; So he spread out his wings and fled over the sea. Said the jackdaws and crows, "He'll be hanged I suppose, But what in the deuce does that matter to we?"
The second son of an English cavalry officer holding a high rank, young Benton's life up to the age of fifteen--with the exception of a few escapades at Shrewsbury--which were due more to an ingrained hardihood than viciousness, had passed very much the same as that of any other well-bred public school boy.
The death of his mother, however, and the later advent of a step-parent, wrought a disastrous change in the boy's hitherto happy enough life. His stepmother's intolerance with his high spirits led to many family quarrels and finally had the effect of provoking a naturally wayward temper to open rebellion and a definite course of action.
