Kitabı oku: «Haviland's Chum», sayfa 13
Chapter Twenty Five.
The King
“Down, Amakosi,” whispered Kumbelwa again. “Down.”
The whole assembly had fallen flat, but our two friends drew the line at that. However, they compromised by dropping into a kind of squatting attitude, and at once the King’s gaze rested upon them.
It was a sufficiently terror-striking glance. They saw before them a magnificent specimen of a savage, very tall and broad, and of a rich red copper colour. He was clad in a mútya of leopard skin, and wore a short cloak of the same, dangling from one shoulder. His head was shaven, but it and the large thick ring were partly concealed by a towering head-dress of black ostrich plumes, a continuation of which fell on either side so as to cover his shoulders. But the face would have commanded attention anywhere, such an impression did it convey of relentless ferocity, of absolute pitilessness, and, at the same time, of indomitable courage. Yet it was the countenance of quite a young man.
For some time the King’s eyes rested on the two white men with a fierce and penetrating stare. Then, pointing at them with the broad-bladed assegai in his hand, he said:
“Who are these?”
A confused murmur arose among the crowd, a sort of deprecatory wail. Then the chiefs of the impi crawled to the King’s feet and began to make their report, a mere matter of ceremony, for of course swift runners had already been sent on ahead to tell what had happened. He listened in silence, gazing down upon them with a haughty stare.
“It is well,” he said at last. “Bring these people now before me.”
He strode forth, proceeding along the edge of the prostrate crowd. Three or four old indunas were with him, keeping just a pace in the rear. When he had passed, the whole impi sprang to its feet – and broke into shouts of praise:
“Fire-maker!”
“Mighty tree that crackleth into sparks!”
“Burner up of the sun at noon!”
“Thou, whose glance scorches up men!”
“Heat of two suns!”
“Scorcher up of the world!”
These and other extravagant attributes were thundered forth from the excited and adoring multitude, and Haviland, who understood a little about that sort of thing, was quick to observe that these attributes mostly referred to fire. A few others were uttered, such as “Swallower up of Rumaliza!” “Thou who makest dust of Mushâd!” and so forth, but the sibonga was always brought back again to the attribute of fire. It interested him, and he made up his mind to ask Kumbelwa about it by and by.
But now the King had reached his chair of state and was seated thereon. It was a genuine throne, of very old and quaint workmanship, beautifully carved, with couchant lions on the arms, and guarding the steps, and had probably been obtained from some slaver who traded in the north. This chair was placed on a kind of raised verandah with a wide grass roof, and was well sheltered from the sun. The indunas squatted on the floor of the verandah on either side of the throne.
“Come forward, ye white men,” said the King, and they noticed that his voice was extraordinarily full and deep.
Our two friends advanced to the throne, and as they did so it was not reassuring to notice ten or a dozen men standing rather conspicuously at hand, armed with wicked-looking scimitars, also thongs and raw-hide whips – all most uncomfortably suggestive of their grim vocation.
“You who speak with our tongue,” said the King, pointing at Haviland, “how know you it?”
“In the land of Cetywayo, Great Great One.”
“Now thou liest, for Cetywayo is there no more. Your people have upset his throne long since.”
Haviland wondered how on earth that news should have travelled to this remote, hardly heard-of tribe, but he answered:
“That is true, Ndabezita (A term of honour addressed to royalty). But his people still exist.”
“Ha! How came ye here, ye two?”
Then, beginning, Haviland narrated all that had befallen them up to their battle with and capture by Mushâd. The King and all within earshot listened attentively.
“Somala? Where is he?” said the King.
The Arab was pushed forward and stood before the throne. A fell and menacing scowl overclouded the royal countenance.
“Another of these dogs of Rumaliza’s,” said the King. “Take him, ye Black Ones.”
The executioners sprang forward to seize the Arab. But, before they could reach him, Haviland had stepped between.
“Spare him, Burner of the Sun,” he said. “He is not of Rumaliza’s tribe. He is no enemy to the people of Inswani.”
A great groan went up from the assembly. Men held their breath. Had such a thing ever before been known, that a man should stand before another that the King had doomed to die? As for the despot himself, he had risen from his seat. His towering form seemed to dilate, and the scowl on his enraged countenance was terrible to behold.
“Thou hast thy head in the lion’s mouth,” he said, “and dost still dare to tickle the lion’s jaws. Are all white men mad?”
“He is my tried and faithful servant, Ndabezita,” pleaded Haviland. “He is not the enemy of this people – indeed, very much the reverse, for who delivered him – delivered all of us – out of the hand of Mushâd?”
“Ha! Mushâd!” exclaimed the King, whom an idea seemed to strike – perhaps also a little impressed by the absolute fearlessness evinced by Haviland, and which decided him to spare Somala for the present. “Bring forward Mushâd and his other dogs.”
A ferocious murmur of delight hummed through the whole assembly. The hated slavers were about to suffer. Many willing hands dragged them forward into the presence of the King.
His iron frame wasted with exhaustion and ill-treatment, Mushâd’s spirit was still unbent.
He met the fierce scowl of the despot with a scowl every whit as savage and defiant.
“Ho! Mushâd!” cried the King, mockingly. “But a short while since thou didst swear to seize me and make a slave of me. How now? I think thou didst swear thine oath upside down.”
“God is God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God. He shall turn the foul unbeliever into worse than a dog. It matters not who is his instrument in doing so,” answered the Arab, defiantly.
“Whau!” cried the King. “If Mohammed comes near the land of Inswani he shall taste what you are about to taste. But you – you have made slaves of certain of my people. Slaves of the people of Inswani! Hear you it, my children?”
Even our two friends, tried, intrepid adventurers as they were, could not help a sense of heart-failing as they heard the terrific roar of hate and vengeance which was hurled from every throat as these words of the King fell upon their ears: “Warriors of Inswani, slaves beneath the lash of this Arab dog!” Well, he was at their mercy at last.
“Let him taste the lash!” they roared.
The King nodded to the executioners. Mushâd was seized and the clothing rent from his back, revealing the weals of former scourgings. But no cry for mercy escaped him as the cruel whips of raw-hide fell upon his emaciated form, striping it until the blood spurted. The two white men felt perfectly sick, but to display signs of any such weakness would be as impolitic as any display of weakness in the presence of these fierce and truculent savages. Even the effort made to remind themselves of Mushâd’s own barbarities was not sufficient to reconcile them to the horrid sight. But with every cruel whistling blow, the Inswani roared with delight.
“Hold!” cried the King at last. “He has had enough. Take him away and give him plenty of food. He must be made quite strong for what he has to undergo. We have only begun upon thee as yet, Mushâd. And now, bring forward yon other dogs, and let them taste of what they have dared to inflict upon my children – the warriors of the Inswani. For them, too, it is only a foretaste of what is to come.”
The other slave-hunters, to the number of nearly three score, were then dragged forth. There were not enough of the regular lictors, but willing hands were only too ready to take their place, so intense and rancorous was the hatred borne towards them, and soon the whole ground in front of the King was converted into a hideous and writhing torture-chamber. Yet it was not that the Inswani held these people’s trade in especial abhorrence; far from it, for they took a hand at it themselves upon occasion. But what they could not pardon was the fact of the Arab raiders seizing and enslaving their own men, and towards Mushâd and his followers their vengeful hatred was now kindled to white heat, and they gloated over the anguish of these whose power had hitherto been able to rival their own.
“Hold!” cried the King at last. “They, too, have had enough. Take yonder ten,” designating those who looked the lowest in standing of the party, “and impale them on the stockade. The rest will follow in due time.”
A roar of delight greeted these words. The miserable wretches were seized and dragged off, and presently were writhing each on a hard stake, pointing outward from the stockade, crowds of the savages dancing round and taunting them. Indeed, it seemed as though the whole nation had gone mad in its lust for blood. The expression of even the King’s countenance had grown indescribably cruel and ferocious, and beholding it, our two friends felt that their peril was hardly less than it had been when they were in the hands of Mushâd.
“Go ye,” he said, pointing at them. “Go, lest my mind changes. Let them be given a house for the present. Hold! Who is this?”
He had for the first time remembered the presence of Kumbelwa, who sufficiently resembled the Inswani to escape notice.
“Inkose! Nkulu’nkulu, Inyoka ’mninimandhla!” began the Zulu, crouching low, and breaking forth into the sibonga of his race. “The servant of the Royal House of Inswani is a Zulu of the tribe of Umtetwa.”
“Of Umtetwa!” echoed the King. “That which the House of Senzangakona swallowed. Thou shouldst be a great fighter,” running his eyes appreciatively over Kumbelwa’s fine stature.
“I wielded a spear in the ranks of the Umbonambi, father, when we fought the English, although now we are friends.”
“Good,” said the King. “Thou hast the look of a warrior indeed, and thou shalt wield thy spear in the ranks of my army now. See now, Kumbelwa. Take charge of these two white men, whose servant thou wouldst seem to be. I will talk with thee later. Go.”
Thus dismissed, Haviland and Oakley breathed more freely. It was a respite at any rate. Yet with the scenes of horror and vengeance weighing heavy upon them, their minds were full of foreboding as to what was to come, as they took up their quarters in the large square hut assigned to them. And even yet, the stakes with their writhing victims seemed to haunt them, and in the mind of each was the unspoken thought that they themselves might be the next.
Chapter Twenty Six.
The End of Mushâd
After this they saw nothing of the King. The days went by, growing into weeks, and still there seemed no prospect of their perilous and irksome captivity drawing to its end. Though outwardly treated as guests, there were not wanting downright intimations that they could not come and go as they pleased, and they received a significant hint that the country was very unhealthy did they venture out of sight of the stockade. At first they strove to take an interest in the novelty of their position, and in the conditions of life of this strange race; but the people were very reserved, and seemed afraid to say much; so that except through Kumbelwa they could learn but little about them – and not a great deal through him. The King’s name, they gathered, was Umnovunovu; and yet it was in reality only a title, like that of the Pharaohs of Egypt, for the kings of the Inswani had no name, and their former one became very much hlonipa, i.e. not to be uttered.
“You see, Oakley,” Haviland said, “there’s no end to the curious twists and turns of native etiquette – and the unformulated, or what would be to us the unwritten laws, are the strangest of all. In Zululand, for instance, white men who have had the country and people at their fingers’ ends all their lives have told me that the more certain they were they knew everything, the more certain something was to occur to show them they didn’t.”
“Well, this is a mighty ugly crowd, anyway,” answered Oakley, “and, like Pharaoh of old, Mr Umnovunovu doesn’t intend to let us go in a hurry.”
They were growing very dejected under their enforced detention. The climate was not bad, and a great improvement on the steamy heat of the lower country; indeed, the nights were at times distinctly sharp. But everything tended to depress them. They had nothing on earth to do, and, as Oakley said, all their time to do it in. For another thing, the atmosphere of continuous slaughter and death got very much upon their nerves. Besides the slaver captives, who were done to death under varying circumstances of barbarity, at the rate of several a day, and whose tortured shrieks it was impossible to keep out of their ears, several of the Inswani were taken out and put to death, as they were informed, by order of the King. This young savage seemed positively to wallow in blood and torture; yet, so far from the feet undermining the loyalty of his subjects, it seemed rather to cement their adherence. But, though cruel and bloodthirsty, he was of unimpeachable courage, and more than one tale of heroic valour did Kumbelwa narrate in which the young King was the central figure.
At times, when they were taking their walks abroad, a sudden hubbub, and a roaring crowd on the move, would denote that his Majesty was out, and his faithful subjects were hailing his progress. But they deemed it expedient to keep out of the way of such demonstrations.
“Hallo!” cried Haviland, one hot morning, as they were lying in their hut. “Here, quick, give us that box! Why, that’s the most whacking big scorpion I’ve ever seen, even here.”
In a trice the great crawling venomous brute was, like themselves, a prisoner, savagely walking round and round, and wondering what had happened.
“It’ll be a job to get him into the lethal jar, Oakley! If we use the tongs on him we’re sure to damage his legs, like we did that mammoth tarantula that was taking a stroll over you the other night. Here, hold the box a minute.”
So for upwards of a quarter of an hour, these two enthusiastic collectors were busily at work circumventing the ugly venomous insect. They had forgotten their troubles; the Inswani, the king, Mushâd, everything.
“Well done!” cried Haviland. “We’ve got him at last. What a specimen! Poor old Ahern, how he would have enjoyed this! If only he hadn’t been in such a hurry – . Get out of the way, Kumbelwa. You’re in our light,” he added, without looking up, as a shadow darkened the door. With a smothered grunt this was removed. Then, when at last they did look up, the figure squatted on the ground was not that of Kumbelwa at all. It was Dumaliso.
They exchanged greetings, not very cordially on either side. They were not particularly fond of the chief, whom Oakley defined as “a cruel brute, who’d cut our throats as soon as look at us, if he dared.” Moreover, they were vexed that he should appear on the scene when he did, for they had received more than one hint from Kumbelwa that the Inswani looked with considerable suspicion on their collecting propensities. None but abatagati, or evilly disposed sorcerers, went about collecting insects and plants, it was argued – of course to work witchcraft with – and they had deemed it wise to refrain. Their position was quite risky enough without doing anything to add to its complications, and now here was one of the most influential men in the nation – and toward themselves the most hostile – entering just in time to find them capturing one of the ugliest and most vicious specimens of the insect world. What could they want with such save for purposes of witchcraft?
“The King, the Great Great One, has a word unto ye two,” began Dumaliso.
They nodded assent.
“With the firearms we have taken from the slave-hunting dogs many of the King’s warriors might be armed. His ‘word’ is that ye shall teach them to shoot, beginning with myself.”
“What do you think of the idea, Oakley?” said Haviland, when he had translated this to his companion, who was himself picking up a moderate knowledge of the tongue.
“Seems reasonable. You see, it isn’t like arming them against our own countrymen, because they’ll never see any of them, and to arm them against the slave-hunters is all right. We’d better agree.”
“I think so too.” Whereupon, turning to the chief, they expressed their willingness to organise a corps of sharpshooters among the more promising of the Inswani.
“That is well,” said Dumaliso, rising. “And now, O strangers, if you would see the end of this dog Mushâd, the time is at hand.”
“Tell him we don’t want to see it, Haviland. Brute as Mushâd is, I don’t want to see him tortured. It makes me sick.”
Haviland at first made no reply. He seemed to be thinking.
“We will go, Oakley,” he said at last. “I have got an idea or saving the poor brute from torture, at any rate.”
As they went forth with Dumaliso, a strange subdued roar was arising, and from every part of the town people were hurrying towards the great space at the head of which stood the King’s throne. In thousands and thousands the densely packed mass of surging humanity blocked the way, and it required all Dumaliso’s authority to clear a passage. A new spectacle seemed to be anticipated, and the pitiless crowd thrilled with delight as it speculated by what particular form of torment their traditional enemy was to die. It was horrible, and there, thickly studding the outer stockade, were numerous fresh heads, grinning in anguished distortion, being those of the slave-hunters, who had been put to death in batches. And now their leader, the famous and terrible Mushâd, was the last.
There was the usual roaring outburst of sibonga as the King appeared and took his seat. There were the executioners, savage-looking and eager, and then – the last of the slave captives was dragged forward.
Heavens! what was this? The bowed and shrunken figure, palsied and shaking, was that of an old, old man. The snow-white hair and ragged beard, the trembling claws and the blinking watery eyes – this could never be Mushâd, the keen-eyed, haughty, indomitable Arab of middle age and iron sinewy frame, whom they had last seen, here on this very spot, hurling defiance at his captors in general and at the King in particular. No – no, such a transformation was not possible.
But it was. Ill-treatment, starvation, torture had reduced the once haughty, keen-spirited Arab to this. Where he had defied, now he cringed. Yet no spark of ruth or pity did his miserable plight call forth in those who now beheld him. Brutal jeers were hurled at him. They had come to see him die in torments. They had looked forward to it from day to day. They were not to be baulked now.
Of all this Haviland was aware, and an intense pity arose in his heart as he gazed upon the miserable wreck. He had thought he knew what savages really were, but now realised that it was reserved for the Inswani to teach him.
“Ho! Mushâd, my dog!” jeered the King, in his deep voice. “Thou who namedst thyself the scourge of the world. Why, I think the meanest slave thou hast ever sold would crack his whip over thee now.”
“Look yonder,” went on Umnovunovu. “Thou seest those four poles? Good. Thou wilt be tied to those by an ankle and wrist to each, half a man’s height from the ground, with fire beneath thee, and for a whole day thou shalt rest upon a warm blanket, I promise thee.”
The two Englishmen shuddered with horror as they saw what was to happen. The miserable slave-hunter was to be slowly roasted to death. Then Haviland spoke, as he admitted to himself, like a fool.
“Spare him, Great, Great One. Spare him the torture. See, he has undergone enough. Put him to the swift death of the sword.”
The King’s face was terrible to behold as he turned it upon the interruptor; no less terrible as they beheld it was the roar of rage that went up from the spectators.
“Wilt thou take his place upon yon glowing bed, thou fool white man?” he said with a sneer that was more than half a menacing snarl.
“Haviland, go easy, man,” warned Oakley. “This won’t do at all. Why should we sacrifice ourselves for that infernal villain? Haviland, you’re an ass.”
The sneer had gone out of the King’s face. For a moment he contemplated the two white men in silence.
“What were his words?” he said, pointing to Oakley. Haviland told him.
“Not so,” said Umnovunovu, with an impatient stamp of the foot. “Let him say the words exactly as he said them. Or – ” The last was rolled out in a roar of menace.
Oakley, greatly wondering, repeated his words. The King, still wondering, pointed with his spear at Mushâd. In a moment the executioners were upon him, and he was dragged to the place of his torment and death.
But to make him fast to the poles it was necessary to cut the thongs which bound his wrists. Mushâd, apparently more helpless than a new-born babe, saw his opportunity and characteristically seized it. From one of the executioners he snatched a heavy two-edged dagger, and with all the old determination reviving, in a twinkling he drove it home – hard, strong, and straight – cleaving his own heart.
It took the spectators some moments to realise that they were cheated of the glut of revenge for which they were there. Then went up the most awful ravening roar. The two white men! They had bewitched the Arab! They it was who had saved him from their vengeance! Let them take the slaver’s place!
For a few minutes the King listened to their frenzied bellowing. Then, slowly, he raised his spear and pointed at Haviland.
