“Do you think he is capable of that?” I cried.  For, in spite of all, I had still a sort of lingering respect for Sebastian.  “It seems so reckless—­like the worst of anarchists—­when he strikes at one head, to involve so many irrelevant lives in one common destruction.”

Hilda’s face was like a drowned man’s.

“To Sebastian,” she answered, shuddering, “the End is all; the Means are unessential.  Who wills the End, wills the Means; that is the sum and substance of his philosophy of life.  From first to last, he has always acted up to it.  Did I not tell you once he was a snow-clad volcano?”

“Still, I am loth to believe—­” I cried.

She interrupted me calmly.  “I knew it,” she said.  “I expected it.  Beneath that cold exterior, the fires of his life burn fiercely still.  I told you we must wait for Sebastian’s next move; though I confess, even from him, I hardly dreamt of this one.  But, from the moment when I opened the door on poor Tant Mettie’s body, lying there in its red horror, I felt it must be he.  And when you started just now, I said to myself in a flash of intuition—­ ’Sebastian has come!  He has come to see how his devil’s work has prospered.’  He sees it has gone wrong.  So now he will try to devise some other.”

I thought of the malign expression on that cruel white face as it stared in at the window from the outer gloom, and I felt convinced she was right.  She had read her man once more.  For it was the desperate, contorted face of one appalled to discover that a great crime attempted and successfully carried out has failed, by mere accident, of its central intention.

CHAPTER VIII

THE EPISODE OF THE EUROPEAN WITH THE KAFFIR HEART

Unfashionable as it is to say so, I am a man of peace.  I belong to a profession whose province is to heal, not to destroy.  Still there are times which turn even the most peaceful of us perforce into fighters—­times when those we love, those we are bound to protect, stand in danger of their lives; and at moments like that, no man can doubt what is his plain duty.  The Matabele revolt was one such moment.  In a conflict of race we must back our own colour.  I do not know whether the natives were justified in rising or not; most likely, yes; for we had stolen their country; but when once they rose, when the security of white women depended upon repelling them, I felt I had no alternative.  For Hilda’s sake, for the sake of every woman and child in Salisbury, and in all Rhodesia, I was bound to bear my part in restoring order.

For the immediate future, it is true, we were safe enough in the little town; but we did not know how far the revolt might have spread; we could not tell what had happened at Charter, at Buluwayo, at the outlying stations.  The Matabele, perhaps, had risen in force over the whole vast area which was once Lo-Bengula’s country; if so, their first object would certainly be to cut us off from communication with the main body of English settlers at Buluwayo.