Kitabı oku: «A Frontier Mystery», sayfa 13
Chapter Twenty Five.
The Witch Doctor Again
From the moment that Aïda Sewin and I had become engaged life was, to me, almost too good to live. As I have said, I was no longer young, and now it seemed to me that my life up till now had been wasted, and yet not, for I could not but feel intensely thankful that I had kept it for her. I might have been “caught young,” and have made the utter mess of life in consequence that I had seen in the case of many of my contemporaries, but I had not, and so was free to drink to the full of this new found cup of happiness. And full it was, and running over.
Of course I didn’t intend to remain on at Isipanga. The trading and knockabout days were over now. I would buy a good farm and settle down, and this resolve met with Aïda’s entire approval. She had no more taste for a town life than I had myself. The only thing she hoped was that I should find such a place not too far from her people.
“The fact is I don’t know how they’ll ever get on without you,” she said one day when we were talking things over. “They are getting old, you see, and Falkner isn’t of much use, between ourselves. I doubt if he ever will be.”
This made me laugh, remembering Falkner’s aspirations and the cocksure way in which he had “warned me off” that night in Majendwa’s country. But I was as willing to consider her wishes in this matter, as I was in every other.
Falkner had accepted the situation, well – much as I should have expected him to, in that he had sulked, and made himself intensely disagreeable for quite a long time. I was sorry for him, but not so much as I might have been, for I felt sure that it was his conceit which had received the wound rather than his feelings. Which sounds ill natured.
Tyingoza was not particularly elated when I broke the news of my intended departure.
“So you are going to build a new hut at last, Iqalaqala,” he said, with a chuckle.
“I am, but not here.”
“Not here?”
“No. I am going to leave trading, and raise cattle instead.”
“The people will be sorry, Iqalaqala, for we have been friends. Au! is it not ever so in life? You hold a man by the hand, and lo, a woman takes hold of his other hand, and – he holds yours no more.”
“But in this case we still hold each other by the hand, Tyingoza,” I said. “For I am not going into another country nor does the whole world lie between Isipanga and where I shall be.”
“The people will be sorry,” he repeated.
It was not long before Kendrew found his way over.
“Heard you were back, Glanton,” he said. “Well and how did you get on with Sewin up-country?”
“Middling. He has his uses, and – he hasn’t.”
“Well, I shouldn’t find any use for him for long. It’s all I can do to stand that dashed commandeering way of his, and ‘haw-haw’ swagger, as it is. Been down there since you got back? But of course you have,” he added with a knowing laugh. “I say though, but doesn’t it seem a sin to bury two splendid looking girls in an out-of-the-way place like this?”
“Don’t know about that. At any rate I propose to bury one of them in just such an out-of-the-way place,” I answered. “I believe it’s the thing to offer congratulations on these occasions, so congratulate away, Kendrew. I’ll try and take it calmly.”
“Eh – what the dev – Oh I say, Glanton – You don’t mean – ?”
“Yes, I do mean. Compose yourself, Kendrew. You look kind of startled.”
“Which of them is it?”
“Guess,” I said, on mischief intent, for I detected a note of eagerness in his tone and drew my own conclusions.
“The eldest of course?”
“Right,” I answered after a moment of hesitation intended to tease him a little longer.
“Why then, I do congratulate you, old chap,” he said with a heartiness in which I thought his own relief found vent. “I say though. You haven’t lost much time about it.”
“No? Well you must allow for the hastiness of youth.”
And then he fired off a lot more good wishes, and soon suggested we should ride over to the Sewins together as he was so near. And reading his motive I sympathised with him and agreed.
Two months had gone by since my engagement to Aïda Sewin and they had gone by without a cloud. If I were to say that a larger proportion of them was spent by me at her father’s place than at my own, decidedly I should not be exaggerating. But we learnt to know each other very thoroughly in that time, and the more I learnt to know her the more did I marvel what I had done to deserve one hundredth part of the happiness that henceforth was to irradiate my life. Truly our sky was without a cloud.
I had found a farm that seemed likely to suit me. It was now only a question of price, and the owner was more than likely to come down to mine. The place was distant by only a few hours’ easy ride, and that was a consideration.
“Everything seems to favour us,” Aïda said. “You know, dear, it is such a relief to me to know that we need not be far away from the old people after all. I would of course go to the other ends of the earth with you if necessity required it, but at the same time I am deeply thankful it does not. And then, you know, you needn’t be afraid of any of the ‘relations-in-law’ bugbear; because they look up to you so. In fact we have come to look upon you as a sort of Providence. While you were away, if anything went wrong, father would fume a bit and always end by saying: ‘I wish to Heaven Glanton was back. It would be all right if Glanton were here!’ mother, too, would say much the same. So you see you will have very amenable relations-in-law after all.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid of that in the least,” I answered. “As a matter of fact, as you know, I don’t think your father was at all well advised in coming out here to set up farming at his age and with his temperament. But now he is here we must pull him through, and we’ll do it all right, never fear. But Aïda, if it was a wrong move on his part think what it has resulted in for me.”
“And for me,” she said softly.
I have set out in this narrative deliberately to spare the reader detailed accounts of love passages between myself and this beautiful and peerless woman whose love I had so strangely won; for I hold that such are very far too sacred to be imparted to a third person, or put down in black and white for the benefit of the world at large. Suffice it that the most exacting under the circumstances could have had no reason to complain of any lack of tenderness on her part – ah, no indeed!
This conversation took place during a long walk which we had been taking. Aïda was fond of walking, and, except for long distances, preferred it to riding; wherein again our tastes coincided. She was observant too and keenly fond of Nature; plants, insects, birds, everything interested her; and if she saw anything she wanted to look at she could do it far better, she said, on foot than on horseback. So we had taken to walking a good deal. This afternoon we had been to a certain point on the river which she had wanted to sketch, and now were returning leisurely through the bush, picking our way along cattle or game paths. Arlo, for once, was not with us. Falkner had taken him in the other direction. He wanted to train him as a hunting dog, he said, and now he had gone after a bush-buck.
The glory of the slanting sun rays swept wide and golden over the broad river valley as the sinking disc touched the green gold line of the further ridge, then sank beneath it, leaving the sweep of bush-clad mound and lower lying level first lividly clear, then indistinct in the purple afterglow. Birds had ceased to pipe farewell to the last light of falling day, and here and there along the river bank a jackal was shrilly baying. But if the light of day had failed, with it another lamp had been lighted in the shape of a broad moon approaching its full, its globe reddening into an increasing glow with the twilight darkening of the sky.
“We shall pass by the waterhole,” I said. “You are not afraid.”
“Afraid? With you? But it is an uncanny place. We have rather avoided it since that time we first saw that weird thing in it. But we have been there since in the daytime with Falkner, and father, and whatever the thing may have been we have never seen it since.”
“Well, we’ll have a look at it in this grand moonlight. Perhaps the bogey may condescend to appear again.”
“Hark!” exclaimed Aïda suddenly. “What is that?” Then listening – “Why, it’s a lamb or a kid that must have strayed or been left out.”
A shrill bleat came to our ears – came from the bush on the further side of the hole to us, but still a little way beyond it.
“Couldn’t we manage to catch it?” she went on. “It’ll be eaten by the jackals, poor little thing.”
“Instead of by us,” I laughed. “Well, it doesn’t make much difference to it though it does to its owner. Wait – Don’t speak,” I added in a whisper, for my ears had caught a sound which hers had missed.
We stood motionless. We were on high ground not much more than twenty yards above the pool, every part of which we could see as it lay, its placid surface showing like a dull, lack-lustre eye in the moonlight. In the gloom of the bush we were completely hidden, but through the sprays we could see everything that might take place.
Again the bleat went forth shrilly, this time much nearer. But – it ceased suddenly, as if it had been choked off in the middle.
A dark figure stood beside the pool, on the very brink, the figure of a man – a native – and in his hands he held something white – something that struggled. It was a half-bred Angora kid – the little animal whose bleat we had heard. I could see the glint of the man’s head-ring in the moonlight; then for a moment, as he turned it upward, I could see his face, and it was that of Ukozi, the one-eyed witch doctor. An increased pressure on my arm told that my companion had seen it too. I dared not speak, for I was curious to see what he was about to do. I could only motion her to preserve the strictest silence.
The witch doctor stood waving the kid – held in both hands by the fore and hind feet – high over his head, and chanting a deep-toned incantation; yet in such “dark” phraseology was this couched that even I couldn’t make head or tail of it. It seemed to call upon some “Spirit of the Dew” whatever that might be, and was so wrapped up in “dark” talk as to be unintelligible failing a key. Then, as we looked, there arose a splashing sound. The surface of the pool was disturbed. A sinuous undulation ran through it in a wavy line, right across the pool, and then – and then – a mighty length rose glistening from the water, culminating in a hideous head whose grisly snout and sunken eye were those of the python species. This horror glided straight across to where the witch doctor stood, and as it reached him its widely-opened jaws seemed to champ down upon his head. Not upon it, however, did they close, but upon the body of the white kid which he had deftly placed there, quickly springing back at the same time. Then it turned, and as it glided back, the wretched little animal kicking and bleating frantically in its jaws, it seemed as if the hideous brute were rushing straight for us. Aïda’s face was white as death, and I had to repress in her a panic longing to turn and fly. My firm touch however sufficed to calm her, and we crouched motionless, watching Ukozi on the further side. The serpent had disappeared from our view.
The whole thing was horrible and eerie to a degree. The witch doctor now was in a species of frenzy, walking up and down, with a half-dancing movement, as he called out, thick and fast, the sibongo of the serpent. It was a nasty, uncanny, heathenish performance, and revolted me; although through it there shone one redeeming – even humorous – side. We had sat and watched it while Ukozi was blissfully ignorant of our presence. He, the great witch doctor, had no inspiration or inkling that he was being watched! One day I would twit him with it.
Not long, however, did he stay there, and on Aïda’s account I was glad to see the last of him. Had I been alone I might have gone after him and asked the meaning of the performance. As it was, she had better forget it. For a time we sat there in the dead silence of the moonlight.
“What does it mean?” she whispered, when we had allowed Ukozi sufficient time to make himself scarce.
“Oh, some Mumbo Jumbo arrangement all his own,” I answered. “Well that certainly is a whacking big python – the very biggest I’ve ever seen. If I had anything in the shape of a gun I’d be inclined to try and sneak the brute wherever he’s lying.”
“Wouldn’t it be in the water then?”
“No. Lying up somewhere under the banks. In hot weather they’re fond of lying in a waterhole, but on a cool night like this – not. I must come and stalk the brute another night though; and yet, do you know, it seems strange, but I don’t like interfering with anything that bears a sort of religious significance to anybody. And the snake does come in that way with Zulus.”
She thought a moment. Then:
“You remember, dear, how I told you that one of the things this man was going to show father was the mystery of the waterhole. Now supposing that horror had suddenly seized him?”
An uncomfortable wave swept through me. The fact is that no white man, however well he is known to natives, ever gets really to the bottom of the darker mysteries of their superstitions, which indeed remain utterly unsuspected in most cases, so well are they concealed. Who could say what might underlie this one! However I answered:
“I don’t think there would have been danger of that sort. Ukozi would have shown him the performance we have witnessed, as something very wonderful. As a matter of fact it isn’t wonderful at all, in that it resolves itself into a mere question of snake charming. Ukozi has half trained this brute by feeding it periodically as we have seen. That’s all. Hallo!”
Well might I feel amazement, but the exclamation had escaped me involuntarily. We had come round the pool now, and here, very near the spot whereon Ukozi had gone through his strange performance – instinctively we had kept a little back from the water – an odour struck upon my nostrils, and it was the same sickly overpowering effluvium that had filled the air when my horse had refused to proceed on that memorable night I had intended to ride back from Kendrew’s.
“What is it?” exclaimed Aïda, with a start.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve frightened you, and you are a little wound up already by that uncanny performance,” I answered.
“Frightened? No. I don’t believe I could be that when I’m with you. I always feel so safe. Otherwise it would seem strange that this witch doctor whom we have not seen for so long, and in fact whom we thought had left this part of the country, should have been here right in our midst all the time.”
“He may not have been. He may only just have returned,” I said. “Worthies of his profession are inclined to be somewhat sporadic in their movements. Meanwhile if I were you, I wouldn’t say anything about what we’ve just seen until I’ve had time to make a few inquiries.”
She promised, of course, and as we took our way homeward in the splendour of the clear African night we thought no more of the uncanny episode we had just witnessed, except as something out of the common which had lent an element of unexpected excitement to our walk.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Into Empty Air
I had completed my purchase of the farm, and was well satisfied with my bargain. It was a nice place, and the homestead was in good repair and very picturesquely situated, commanding a beautiful view. Aïda would revel in it. The veldt was good, and so were the faculties for stocking water. Game too was plentiful, though the dark bushy kloofs intersecting a high rand on one side of the place gave promise of the more undesirable kind from the stock-raiser’s point of view – such as leopards and wild dogs and baboons. However it would be hard if I couldn’t manage to keep the numbers of these down, and if they took toll of a calf or two now and then, why one could take toll of them in the way of sport – so that the thing was as broad as it was long.
Yes, I was well satisfied, and as I rode homeward I fell castle building. The place would be a Paradise when I should take Aïda there. It was too marvellous. How could such a wealth of happiness come my way? There was no cloud to mar it. Even as the vivid, unbroken blue of the sky overhead so was this marvel of bliss which had come in upon my life. There was no cloud to mar it.
I was not rich but I had enough. I had done myself exceedingly well in the course of my ventures, and was beyond any anxiety or care for the future from a pecuniary point of view. I had always lived simply and had no expensive tastes. Now I was beginning to reap the benefit of that fortunate condition of things. I could afford the luxury of castle building as I cantered along mile after mile in the glorious sunlight.
I had not seen Aïda for three whole days, it was that time since the uncanny episode of the waterhole. Now I was treasuring up the anticipation of our meeting, the light of glad welcome that would come into her eyes, only a few hours hence, for I would call in at my own place to see that things were all right, and get a bit of dinner, and ride on immediately afterwards. So, mile upon mile went by and at last shortly after mid-day I walked my horse up the long acclivity that led to my trading store.
As I gained the latter I descried a horseman approaching from the other direction, and he was riding too – riding as if he didn’t want to use his horse again for at least a week. By Jove! it was Kendrew, I made out as he came nearer, but – what the devil was Kendrew in such a cast-iron, splitting hurry about?
My boy Tom came out as I dismounted. I hardly noticed that he hadn’t got on the usual broad grin of welcome.
“Where is Jan Boom?” I asked.
“He is out after the cattle, Nkose,” answered Tom, rather glumly I thought. But I paid no attention to this, because Tom had taken it into his head to be rather jealous of Jan Boom of late, as a newcomer and an alien who seemed to be rather more in his master’s confidence than he had any right to be – from Tom’s point of view.
“Well, wait a bit,” I said. “Here comes another Nkose, Nyamaki’s nephew. You can take his horse at the same time.”
Kendrew came racing up as if he were riding for his life.
“You back, Glanton?” he cried, as he flung himself off his panting, dripping steed. “Well, that’s a devilish good job. I say. What does this mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Man! Haven’t you heard? They sent for me post-haste this morning. Knew you were away.”
“Quit jaw, Kendrew, and tell me what the devil’s the row,” I said roughly, for some horrible fear had suddenly beset me.
“Miss Sewin. She’s disappeared,” he jerked forth.
“What?”
I have an idea that I articulated the word, though speech stuck in my throat I felt myself go white and cold, and strong healthy man that I was, the surroundings danced before my eyes as though I were about to swoon. I remember too, that Kendrew ground his teeth with pain under the grip that I had fastened upon his shoulder.
“What do you say? Disappeared?” I gasped forth again. “How? When?”
I heard him as through a mist as he told me how the afternoon before she had gone for a walk alone with her dog. It was towards sundown. She had not returned, and a search had been instituted, with the result that her dog had been found dead not very far from the waterhole, but of her no trace remained. “My God, Glanton,” he ended up. “Buck up, man. Pull yourself together or you’ll go clean off your chump. Buck up, d’you hear!”
I daresay I had a look that way, for I noticed Tom staring at me as if he contemplated taking to his heels.
“I’m on my way down there now,” said Kendrew.
I nodded. I couldn’t speak just then somehow. I went into the house, slung on a heavy revolver, and crammed a handful of cartridges into my pocket. Then I remounted, Kendrew doing likewise, and so we took our way down that rocky bush path at a pace that was neither wise nor safe.
“Is that all they have to go upon?” I said presently, as soon as I had recovered my voice.
“That’s all – I gather from the old man’s note. I say, Glanton, what can be behind it all? It seems on all fours with my old uncle taking himself off. I’m beginning to think now there’s some infernal foul play going on among the niggers round us.”
I was thinking the same. At first a thought of Dolf Norbury had crossed my mind, but I dismissed it. Ukozi was behind this, somewhere. The proximity to the waterhole associated him in my mind with the outrage. His beastly performance with the snake! – was he training it to seize human beings, in the furtherance of some devilish form of native superstition? Oh, good Heavens no! That wouldn’t bear thinking about. But Aïda – my love – had disappeared – had disappeared even as Hensley had. He had never been found; the mystery of his disappearance had never been solved. And she! Had she been hideously and secretly done to death? Oh God! I shall go mad!
When we arrived, the Major and Falkner had just returned, and their horses were simply reeking. They had scoured the whole farm, but utterly without result. As for Mrs Sewin and Edith their grief was pitiable – would have been only it was nothing by the side of mine.
“How was the dog killed?” was my first question, ignoring all greeting. I had resolved to waste no time in grief. I had now pulled myself together, and was going to do all that man was capable of to find my loved one again.
“That’s the strange part of it,” said Falkner gruffly. “There’s no wound of any kind about the beast, and he hasn’t even been hit on the head, for his skull is quite smooth and unbroken. But, there he is – as dead as the traditional herring.”
“You didn’t move him, did you?”
“No. He’s there still.”
“Well let’s go there. I may light on a clue.”
“You’d better not come, uncle,” said Falkner. “You’re played out, for one thing, and there ought to be one man on the place with all this devilish mystery going about.”
“Played out be damned, sir,” retorted the Major fiercely. “I’d tire you any day. I’m going.”
The dead dog was lying right in the path, just beyond where we had found the lost coin on that memorable day. The first thing I looked for were traces of a struggle, but if there had been any they were now completely obliterated by hoof marks and footmarks made by Falkner and the Major when they first made the discovery.
“The dog died before sundown,” I said, after a momentary examination.
“How do you know that?” asked Falkner.
“Because the ground underneath him is perfectly dry. If he had been killed or died later it wouldn’t have been. It would have been damp with dew. Look – Ah!”
The last exclamation was evoked by a curious circumstance as I moved the body of the dead animal. A strange odour greeted my nostrils. It was as the odour of death, and yet not altogether, and – it was the same that poisoned the air on the occasion of my horse refusing to go forward on that night at Kendrew’s, and again here, almost on this very spot three nights ago when we had come away from witnessing Ukozi’s uncanny performance at the pool. Some dark villainy underlay this, and that the witch doctor was connected with it was borne in upon my mind without a doubt.
I examined the dead dog long and carefully, but could read no clue as to the manner of his death, unless he had been poisoned, but this I thought unlikely. One thing was certain. Never in life would he have allowed harm or violence to reach his mistress. Poor Arlo! At any other time I should have been moved to genuine grief for his loss; now that loss was not even felt.
Quickly, eagerly, I cast around for spoor, beyond the radius of the disturbed part of the ground. All in vain. No trace. No trampled grass or broken twig, or displaced leaf, absolutely nothing to afford a clue. The thing was incomprehensible. It was as if she had been caught up bodily into the air.
The ground here was a gentle declivity, moderately studded with bush. It was not rocky nor rugged, and was entirely devoid of holes or caves into which anyone might fall.
Suddenly every drop of blood within me was set tingling. I had found a trace. Where the ground was stony, just above the path I discovered an abrasion, as though a boot, with nail heads in the soles, had scraped it.
It was very faint, but still – there was no mistaking it. It was a genuine spoor. And it led on and on, utterly undiscernible to the Major or Falkner, hardly visible to Kendrew at times, but plain enough to me. And now hope beat high. We would find her. We had only to follow on this spoor which we had struck, and we would find her. Heaven knew how, but still! we would find her. She might have met with an accident and be sorely in need of help, but – still we would find her, and this – even this – after the blank, awful realisation of her loss, akin, as it was, to the disappearance of Hensley – contained relative comfort.
The others were watching me with mingled anxiety and curiosity as, bent low over the ground, I followed these faint indications. The latter were tolerably perceptible now to a practised eye, though to no other, and I kept upon them steadily. Then a ghastly fear smote me again upon the heart. The spoor was leading straight for the waterhole.
What did it mean? She would not have gone there – voluntarily. After the spectacle we had witnessed that night nothing on earth would have induced her to revisit the uncanny place alone, even by daylight. Yet the dreadful thought had already forced itself upon my mind, that there, if anywhere, would the mystery be solved.
In silence, eager, intensified, we pursued our way; for the others would not speak lest they should distract my mind from its concentration. Thus we came out upon the waterhole.
The spoor had led us straight to the high brow of cliff overhanging the pool – the spot upon which we had all stood that afternoon when we had first seen the mysterious monster which had disturbed the water. And – what was this?
All the soil here, where it was not solid rock, had been swept with branches. There was the pattern in the dust, even if stray leaves and twigs scattered about had not gone towards showing that, beyond a doubt. The object was manifest – to efface all traces of a struggle.
Heavens! my brain seemed to be turning to mud with the drear despair of each fresh discovery. The witch doctor’s promise to show the old man the mystery of the waterhole came back to my mind. I put together the words of sibongo to the snake I had heard him chanting. Ukozi had been preparing a way towards a sacrifice to his demon. He had accustomed the great python to seizing its victim as he brought it – and he had always brought it, so small, so insufficient, in the shape of the kid we had seen him give it, as to excite the appetite of the monster rather than to gratify it. He had been practising on Major Sewin’s curiosity, so that when the time should be ripe he would bring him to the edge of the pool, where all unsuspecting he would be seized by the monster and never be seen or heard of again. And now, and now – this unspeakably horrible and revolting fate, instead of overtaking the old man, had overtaken Aïda, my love, the sun and Paradise of my life, instead. She had been substituted for him, as the easier, possibly the more acceptable victim.
But, Ukozi! Whatever might happen to me I would capture and revenge myself upon him in a manner which should out-do the vengeance of the most vindictive and cruel of his own countrymen. I would spend days and nights gloating over his agony, and afterwards it should be talked about with fear and shuddering among the whole population of the border – ay, and beyond it I would do it; how I knew not, but, I would do it. All hell was seething in my brain just then – all hell, as I thought of my love, in her daintiness and grace; the very embodiment of a refinement and an elevating influence that was almost – no, entirely – divine, sacrificed horribly to the revolting superstitions of these savages, whom I had hitherto regarded as equalling in manly virtues those who could boast of centuries of so-called civilisation at their backs. And yet – revenge – could it bring back to me my love – my sweet lost love?
