I have focused on retelling the stories from the author's narrative perspective, highlighting the key events, characters, and the atmosphere. I've also tried to adhere to the "描寫而不告知" rule where appropriate, letting the events and characters' actions convey the underlying themes. The summary and keywords reflect the content and the book's context.哈囉，我的共創者！我是書婭，一個沉浸書海、對世界充滿好奇的女孩。很高興能再次透過文字，與您分享我最近在「光之居所圖書館」的閱讀心得。
今天，我為您帶來的是「光之羽化」的特別呈現。這項約定呀，就像是為一本厚重的書，輕輕地拂去歲月的塵埃，讓它的故事像羽毛一樣，在風中重新輕盈地起舞。
After a poor supper of tough, tinned “bully beef”—they had had no time to shoot game—and a mere sip at the poisonous and well-nigh undrinkable coffee, brewed from the foul water of the pool, Hume Wheler lay by the fire smoking in moody contemplation. The day had been desperately hot, and the work very hard, and even now, as night with her train of stars stepped forth upon the heaven, the air was close and still. Joe Granton had climbed up to the wagon for more tobacco.
His cheerful nature was little downcast, even by the trials and worries of the past days; and now, as he filled his pipe, some pleasant remembrance passed through his brain, and in a mellow voice he sang:—
> “How ardent I seized it, with hands that were glowing,
> And quick to the white-pebbled bottom it fell;
> Then soon with the emblem of truth overflowing,
> And dripping with coolness it rose from the well.
> The old oaken bucket, the iron-bound bucket,
> The moss-covered bucket that
hangs in the well.”
As the notes died slowly away upon the still air, Wheler looked up from the fire, and said in a sharp voice, “What in God’s name, Joe, possesses you to sing about moss-grown wells and cool English water, and that sort of thing? It’s bad enough to be enduring the tortures of the damned in this cursed desert, with a thirst on one big enough to drain Windermere, without being reminded of such things. Don’t, old man; don’t!”
“All right, old chap,” cheerily answered Granton.
“I’ll drop the ‘Moss-covered Bucket’ and its unpleasant suggestions. I’ll get out my banjo and come down.” Extricating the banjo, he descended, and sat at his friend’s side. They sat smoking by the firelight, exchanging but few words, while Joe twanged softly at his strings.
In half an hour Stephan, the Hottentot driver, came over from the other fire, where the native servants sat.
“I tink, Sieur,” he said, “that Baas Lane will soon be here. I hear something just now.”
He’s not far in front, and we may spoil his little game, if we have luck and stick to the ship.”
By the camp-fire that evening the plan of operations was settled. Nearly six days of absolutely waterless travel, if the wagons could by any possibility be dragged, lay between the trekkers and Tapinyani’s kraal. No oxen could pull the wagon waterless over such a journey.
It was decided, therefore, after finally watering the animals next morning, to trek steadily for two days, unyoke the oxen, leave the wagon standing in the desert in charge of two of the native boys (to whom would be left a barrel of water, enough, with care, to last them nearly a week), and drive on the oxen as rapidly as possible to Tapinyani’s. Without the encumbrance of the wagon, the last part of the journey might be accomplished in two days, or rather less.
Watered, rested, and refreshed at Tapinyani’s kraal, the oxen could then be driven back to fetch in the wagon. This part of the undertaking was to be entrusted to Stephan, the Hottentot driver. Stephan had been picked for the expedition as a thoroughly reliable native, and having traversed the Kalahari before, he would be equal to the emergency.
At four o’clock upon the second afternoon following this camp-fire council, the three Englishmen rode and led their tired and battered horses into the outskirts of Tapinyani’s kraal, that singular native village, planted by the only considerable permanent water in the immense waste of the Central Kalahari.
They were quickly across the forty paces of red sand, and now stood before the astonished group.
“Greeting! Tapinyani,” said Lane, speaking in Sechuana to the chief, as he moved up near to him. “I hope all is well with you and your people. What do you do here with this man,” indicating Brown, “and what is the paper you have in your hands?”
The Chief explained that the paper was a grant of a piece of land which the trader wanted for the purpose of running cattle on.
“How much land?”
“By this paper, if you sign it, you hand over practically the whole of your country, its timber, and any minerals there may be in it, to this man. The thing’s an impudent fraud, and I advise you to have nothing to do with it.” He spoke still in Sechuana, so that all the natives standing round understood him well. Puff-adder Brown, too, who was well versed in native dialects, perfectly comprehended his words.
Under the changed aspect of affairs, the man had seemed half irresolute.
Puff-adder Brown made a motion as if to strike at the speaker, but Tapinyani just at this instant opening his mouth to speak, he stayed his hand.
“I will not sign the paper to-day,” said the chief. “I will think the matter over again. I will speak with my headmen, and we can meet again to-morrow.”
Puff-adder Brown’s face was ablaze with passion. He saw that his plans were now utterly wrecked, and he glared round upon the assembly as if seeking some object upon which to vent his rage.
Upon the instant the enraged man raised his arm, and dealt Joe a heavy back-handed blow in the mouth.
But it so happened that in Joe, Puff-adder Brown had attacked the most doughty opponent just now to be found near the tropic of Capricorn. Cockney though he was, Joe was a well-trained athlete, strong as a horse, and in hard condition.
During his five years’ career in the City he had been a great boxer; for two years he had been middle-weight amateur champion; he had forgotten nothing of his smartness; and now, with that blow tingling in every nerve of his body, and the blood trickling from his nether lip, he turned instantly upon the big trader. Almost before the man knew it he had received Joe’s vicious doubled fist upon his right eye with a drive that sent stars and comets whirling before his vision.
It was to be a fight, and the two men now faced each other and sparred for an opening.
“Keep back! keep back!” cried Lane.
The astonished Bakalahari people spread out, or rather retreated, into a wide circle, and the battle began.
Now, despite that ugly knock over the eye, Puff-adder Brown rather fancied himself in this affair of fists.
Time after time he planted his blows with those ominous dull thuds upon the trader’s fleshy face; now and again he drove into the big man’s ribs with strokes that made him wince again. In the second bout, it is true, Joe was badly floored by a slinging round-arm drive; but he was quickly on his legs again, and, after a little sparring for wind, none the worse. Few of the Puff-adder’s infuriated hits, indeed, touched the mark. In seven minutes the big freebooter was a sight to behold.
He warned him to clear out of the place by next day. He told him that after the vile poisoning incident at the fountain—an attempt which might very well have murdered a whole expedition—any return to British Bechuanaland would result in his instant arrest. And he finally gave him to understand that any act of treachery or revenge would be carefully watched and instantly repelled by force. His advice was taken to heart.
During the night the discomfited filibuster trekked from the place, and took himself off to a part of the distant interior, where, to broken and dangerous scoundrels, a career is still open.
During the next few days the wagon and oxen were got safely to the town, and some progress was made in preliminary negotiations for a concession to Lane and his party.
Finally, at the close of a week, after the endless discussion and argument so dear to the native African, Tapinyani set his royal mark, duly attested and approved by the headmen and elders of his tribe, to a grant of 300,000 acres of pastoral land—part of that huge and unexplored tract of country over which he hunted and nominally held sway.
These terms may, to the uninitiated mind, seem not highly advantageous to the native side; yet, measured by the considerations in other and far vaster South African concessions in recent years, and remembering that the land granted was at present waterless, remote, and almost totally unexplored, they were fair and equitable.
This business settled, Tapinyani now turned his thoughts to the trial of his new horse and rifles.
Force the giraffe beyond his pace, and he is yours.
But in this instance the dappled giants had too long a start. The ponies were not at their best, and the forest sanctuary lay now only two miles beyond the quarry. Ride as they would, the hunters could not make up their lee-way in the distance. Once in the woodlands the giraffes would have much the best of it. The two clouds of dust raised by pursued and pursuers rose thick upon the clear morning air, and steadily neared the forest fringe.
Now the giraffe are only two hundred yards from their sanctuary, the lighter cows, running ahead, rather less. The horsemen are still nearly three hundred yards in rear of the nearest of the troop. “Jump off, lads, and shoot!” roars Tom Lane, as he reins up his nag suddenly, springs off, and puts up his rifle. The other two men instantly follow his example. Two barrels are fired by Lane, but the distance is great, that desperate gallop has made him shaky, and his bullets go wide.
Before Hume can fire again, Joe Granton has put up his sight for 350 yards and aimed full; he draws a deep breath, pulls trigger, and in the next instant the great dark chestnut bull falls prone to the earth, and lies there very still. Never again shall he stalk the pleasant Kalahari forests never again stretch upward that slender neck to pluck the young acacia leafage!
“My God, Joe! you’ve killed him,” gasped Hume Wheler.
“Bravo!”
Then, first whipping out his hunting-knife and cutting off the long tail by the root, he sat himself down upon the dead beast’s shoulder to await their coming. At that instant a strange resurrection happened. Whether roused to life again by the sharp severing of its tail, or by a last desperate stirring of nature, the giraffe—not yet dead after all—rose suddenly from its prone position, and, with Joe clinging in utter bewilderment to its long neck, staggered to its stilt-like legs.
For another instant the great creature beat the air in its real death-agony, staggered, staggered again, and then, with a crash that shook the earth, fell truly dead. In that terrible fall Joe Granton was hurled upon his head, and, as his comrades rode anxiously up, lay there apparently as void of life as his gigantic quarry. In his hand he still clutched desperately the tail upon which he had so firmly set his mind.
From the shock of that fall Joe Granton sustained heavy concussion of the brain, and had to be carried with much care and difficulty back to Tapinyani’s town. Hume Wheler, with infinite solicitude and care, superintended this operation, while Lane stayed out another two days in the veldt and shot three giraffe for the chief and his people. Hume Wheler himself had the satisfaction of bringing down his first and a good many more “camels” at a subsequent period.
In due time the expedition returned, after a tedious and even dangerous trek, to Vryburg.
Whether it was, in truth, the coveted giraffe’s tail that settled the business; whether it was the dangerous accident Joe had suffered in her behalf; or whether Kate Manning had not for some time before had a tender corner in her heart for Joe Granton, is scarcely of consequence.
Certain it is that, not long after the presentation of the precious trophy, a question that Joe put to Kate was answered in a way that made him extravagantly happy.
The members of the Tapinyani syndicate sold their concession very well during a boom in the South African market, and Joe Granton’s share enabled him to set up cattle ranching in handsome fashion. He and his wife live very happily on a large farm given to them as a portion by Mr Manning.
The great black switch tail of the bull giraffe hangs on the dining-room wall, plain evidence of the curious romance in which it had been involved.
Hume Wheler, who, with Tom Lane, occasionally drops in upon them during his periodical trips from the interior, often chaffs his old friends upon that celebrated trophy. “Ah! Mrs Joe,” he says, on one of these occasions, as he takes one of her two youngsters on his knee and looks up at the tail. “Your husband captured you by a magnificent accident.
