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“Who is it?” he called again, clear but low, so as not to be heard by the sleeper within.
For answer there came a far away, mocking laugh, harsh and long-drawn. Then silence.
With every drop of blood tingling in his veins, John Ames sprang within the cave again, for an awful idea had seized him. This thing must have been, right inside their hiding-place. His hand shook so that he could hardly get out a match and strike it. He bent down over the sleeping girl. She still slumbered – breathing softly, peacefully, but with brow slightly ruffled as though by dreams. He gazed upon her unconscious face until the match burned out, then turned away, filled with unutterable relief. No harm had happened to her, at any rate.
Then the first grey of dawn lightened upon the mountains.
Chapter Twenty.
Alone
“I think we’ll move on a little further to-day, if you feel equal to it, Nidia.”
She looked up in surprise.
“Certainly, if you think it advisable,” she answered.
“Well, to tell the truth, I do. It’s not a good plan to remain too long in the same place. My notion is to work our way gradually to the northern edge of the range, where we can reconnoitre the open country between it and Bulawayo. It’ll be that way we shall be most likely to strike a patrol.”
John Ames was occupied in plucking the guinea-fowls he had brought in yesterday. Nidia had just lighted the fire and was engaged in making it burn. The sun had just risen upon a glorious day of cloudlessness, of coolness too, judging from the keen edge which still ran through the atmosphere.
“John,” she said, looking up suddenly, “is it because of what I told you yesterday?”
“The proposed move? N-no. Yet, perhaps a little of that too. You would never feel easy if left alone here again. But I have other reasons – that smoke, for instance, I saw yesterday. It may mean natives. There may have been fighting down Sikumbutana way or on the Umgwane, and they may be taking to the mountains. We had better get further on.”
“Do you know, I am glad you have come to that conclusion. What I told you yesterday has rather got upon my nerves, and, now we are going to move, I’ll tell you something more. I dreamt of it – dreamt that awful face was bending over me looking into mine. You know – one of those dreams that is horribly real, one that remains with you after you wake, and, in fact, that you remember as though it had actually happened. Are those birds ready?”
“Yes. Never mind. I’ll fix them,” he replied; and in a moment, fixed on a deft arrangement of sticks, they were hissing and sputtering over the fire. His mind was full of Nidia’s dream. But was it a dream? That shape, brushing past him in the darkness – the hollow, demoniacal laugh? Had the being, whatever it was, actually entered the cave, passing him seated there on guard? Was it a dream, indeed, or was it the actual face which she had seen? The latter seemed far more like it. Then he remembered that even if such were the case, it was too dark for features to be distinguishable. He was fairly puzzled. And by way of finding some solution to the mystery he went down to the spot which Nidia pointed out to him as the scene of the first apparition, and examined the ground long and carefully. There was not a trace of a human footmark – not a stone displaced. He felt more puzzled than ever.
But not to Nidia was he going to impart his misgivings. With a change of camping-place she would forget this rather unpleasant mystery, if only it did not take to following them, that is – and indeed they would be fortunate if they met with no more material cause for alarm.
“On the whole it’s rather lucky we struck old Shiminya’s place,” he remarked, as they were seated at their primitive breakfast. “Blankets, matches, everything we have – and that’s not much – we owe to him, even the rifle and cartridges. When I cleared from Sikumbutana, with nothing on earth but a pipe, a sword-bayonet, and a bunch of keys, I felt pretty helpless, I can tell you. What must you have felt, when you first found yourself adrift?”
“It was awful. That night – shall I ever forget it? And how strange we should have met like that. The very next day I was going to send over to let you know I was at the Hollingworths’. I only heard from Mr Moseley that you were so near. Would you have come to see me?”
“Have you forgotten that last long day of ours, down by the sea, that you can ask such a question?” he said gravely, his full, straight glance meeting hers. Nidia was conscious of ever so slight a flush stealing over her face. “How ingenious you are,” intently examining one of the wooden forks which he had roughly carved for her as they went along. “You must let me keep these as a memento of this wandering of ours.”
“How many are there?” he answered. “Three – may not I keep one of them? I want a memento, too.”
“Am I getting irremediably freckled and tanned?” she said. “And tattered? Yet one would be in absolute rags, but for that thorn-and-fibre needle and thread of yours.”
“I never saw you look better in my life. There are no freckles, and the brown will soon wear off, if you want it to. Though really it’s becoming – makes the eyes larger. So make your mind easy on that score. As for tatters” – looking at his own attire – “I’m afraid we are rather a ragged pair. By the way, I wonder what your people in England would say if they could see you now.”
“I know what they’d say to you for the care you’ve taken of me,” she answered seriously, “what they will say, I hope, one of these days.”
He turned away suddenly, and bending down, began busying himself over the rolling up of their scanty kit.
“Oh, as to that,” he rejoined, speaking in a tone of studied carelessness, “where should I have been all this time without you? Nice cheerful work it would have been romping about the mountains alone, wouldn’t it?”
“You would have been in safety long ago without myself as a drag upon you.”
“Possibly; possibly not. But, speaking selfishly, I prefer things as they are. But it’s rough on you, that’s what I’m thinking about. By the way, old Shiminya isn’t quite such a rip as I thought. I was more than half afraid he’d have given us away when they cut him loose. But he doesn’t seem to have done so, or we’d have heard about it before now.”
This apparently careless change of subject did not impose upon Nidia. She saw through and appreciated it – and a thrill of pride and admiration went through her. Whimsically enough, her own words, spoken to her friend on the day of that first meeting, came into her mind. “I think we’ll get to know him, he looks nice.” And now – he had impressed her as no man had ever before done. Full of resource, strong, tactful, and eminently companionable as he had shown himself, she was intensely proud of the chivalrous adoration with which she knew he regarded her, and all manifestation of which he was ever striving to repress. What would she do when they returned to safety, and their ways would lie apart? For somehow in Nidia’s mind the certainty that they would return to safety had firmly taken root.
“Perhaps they haven’t cut him loose yet,” she suggested.
Her companion gave a whistle, and looked scared. Only for a moment, though.
“Bad for him in that case. It would have been better for him and safer for us – to have given him a tap on the head. I couldn’t prove anything against him, though I’ve had my eye on him for some time – besides, he seems to have taken some care of you. But he’s sure to have been found. He’s one of these Abantwana ’Mlimo, and too much in request just now.”
“Is there anything in that Umlimo superstition, do you think, John?”
“There is, to this extent. From what I can get out of the natives it is of Makalaka origin, and manifests itself in a voice speaking from a cave. Now I believe that to be effected by ventriloquy. There is a close ‘ring’ of hierarchs of the Abstraction, probably most of them ventriloquists, and they retain their power by the very simple but seldom practised expedient of keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut. That is about the secret of all necromancy, I suspect, from its very beginning.”
“Then you don’t believe in a particular prophet who talks out of a cave?”
“No; if only for the reason that the cave the Umlimo is supposed to speak from is one that no man could get into or out of – at least, so the Matabele say. No; the thing is a mere abstraction; an idea cleverly fostered by Messrs Shiminya and Co. They shout up questions to the cave, and ventriloquise the answers back.”
What was it? Did the speaker actually hear at that moment a shadowy echo of the mocking laugh which had been hurled at him from the darkness, or did he imagine it? The latter, of course. But here, in the very home of the superstition they had been discussing, could there, after all, be more in it – more than met the eye? He could not but feel vaguely uneasy. He glanced at his companion. She had altered neither attitude nor expression. He felt relieved.
Over less forbidding looking ground their way now lay. The grey chaotic billowings and craters of granite blocks gave way to table-land covered with long grass and abundant foliage. Here they advanced ever with caution, conversing but little, and then only in whispers. Indeed, after the rest and comparative safety of their late refuge, it was like entering into all the anxiety and apprehensions of peril renewed. Not very fast, however, could they travel, for Nidia, though a good walker, felt the heat, and John Ames, although, as he declared, he had “humped” a heavier “swag” than that comprised by their load, yet it demoralised him too.
A fireless camp amid the rocks, then on again in the cool of the morning. And as their way lay over high ground, the sun rose upon such a sea of vast and unrivalled wildness – castellated peaks and needle-like granite shafts, here a huge grey rock-dome, smooth, and banded round by a beautiful formation of delicate pink; there, and all around, cone-like kopjes of tumbled angular boulders, as though the fire whirlpool beneath earth’s surface had swept round and round, throwing on high its rocky billows, leaving in the centre this great dome, smooth and unriven. Doves cooed among the greenness of the acacias, whose feathery sprays gleamed bright against the background of grim rock in sombre masses.
“Yes, it is about as wild a bit of scene as you could find anywhere,” said John Ames, in reply to his companion’s cry of amazement and delight. “You will have something to talk about after this; for you can safely say you have been where very very few whites have ever set foot. Even now there are parts of the Matopos which have never been explored. The old-time hunters avoided them because there was no game – as we, by the way, know to our cost; the traders because there were no natives – as we know to our advantage; and the prospectors because granite and gold don’t go together.”
The foliage grew more abundant as they advanced; the “marula” and wild fig, and omnipresent acacia. Winding around the spurs of the great hills every turn of their way would reveal some fresh view of exquisite wildness and beauty.
“Look over there, Nidia. That might be the cave of the Umlimo himself,” said John Ames, pointing to a great granite cone which rose up from the valley bottom some little distance off. It was apparently about two hundred feet in height, and in the centre of its face yawned a great square hole, black and darksome.
“I wonder is it?” she said, gazing with interest at what was in fact a sufficiently remarkable object, “If it isn’t, it ought to be.”
“Look,” he went on. “Imagine it a bright moonlight night, and that valley bottom crowded with about half the Matabele fighting-men, all ranged in crescent formation, looking up at the cave there. Then imagine the oracle booming forth its answers from the blackness of yonder hole. Wouldn’t that make a scene – eh?”
“Yes, indeed it would. But – how could anybody get up there? It looks quite inaccessible.”
“So it probably is. But there would be no necessity for anybody to get up there. Messrs Shiminya and Co. would take care of that part of the entertainment, as I was telling you the other day. Well, we won’t camp near it on the off chance that it may be the real place.”
The spot they did select for a camp-ground was some little way further on, and a wild and secluded one it was, right in among rocks and trees, and well up on the hillside. This elevated position was of further advantage in that a reedy swamp wound through the valley bottom; two water-holes of oval formation, gleaming like a pair of great eyes from its midst.
“I’m afraid ‘skoff’ is running low, Nidia,” remarked John Ames, surveying gravely a pair of turtle-doves and a swempi, the latter a small variety of partridge, which he had knocked over with stones during their journeying. “A brace of record pedestrians can’t afford to let themselves run down in condition. The English of which is that I must go out and kill something – or try to.”
“Mayn’t I go with you?” she asked, rather wistfully. He looked doubtful.
“I wish you could,” he answered slowly. “But – you have walked enough the last couple of days; and apart from the discomfort to you, it is essential you should not overtire yourself. In fact, it might become a matter of life or death. No. Be good now, and remain perfectly quiet here, and rest. I’ll be back before dark. Good-bye.”
What impulse moved her to put out both her bands to him? He took them.
“Good-bye,” he said again. One second more of their eyes thus meeting and his resolution would be shattered. With a farewell pressure he dropped her hands and was gone.
It was early in the afternoon, and warm withal. Left alone Nidia grew drowsy and fell into a doze. When she awoke the sun was just going off the valley beneath, and she was still alone. She sat up congratulating herself upon having got through those lonely hours in sleep. He would be back now at any moment. Rising, she went over to the runnel of water which trickled down the rocks just behind their resting-place, and bathed her face in one of its clear basins. Then she returned. Still no John Ames.
The sun was off the valley now – off the world. In the brief twilight the stars began to rush forth. A terrible loneliness came over her. Oh, why was he so late? The two water-holes in the valley glared up at her with a lack-lustre stare, as of a pair of gigantic eyes, watching her loneliness. Still he came not.
Was he uncertain of the place? They had but just arrived there, and he might well be. Fool that she was not to have thought of it, and now her hands trembled with eagerness as she collected some dry grass and sticks together, and caring nothing what other eyes might see it if only his would, kindled them into a bright blaze.
How her hearing was strained to its uttermost tension! Every rustle of a leaf, every snapping of a twig, sent a thrill of anticipatory joy through her being, only to give way to sickening disappointment. An hour went by, then two. Faint and exhausted, she had not even the energy to prepare food. The one consciousness of her appalling loneliness here in this scarcely trodden waste seemed to sap and paralyse all her facilities. The weird voices of the night held a different meaning now that she was lying out alone on the hillside. Below, in the swamp, the trailing gleam of will-o’-the-wisps played fitfully, and the croaking of frogs was never stilled.
Had anything befallen him? It must be so. Nothing short of that could have kept him from returning to her. And she? She could do nothing to aid him. She was so absolutely helpless.
“Oh, darling! why did I ever allow you to leave me, my own, my true chivalrous love?” she murmured to herself amid a rain of tears, confiding to herself the secret of her heart in the agony of her distress and terror. And still the dark hours wore on, one upon another, and he – the companion, protector – lover – did not return.
The night she had spent hiding in the river-bank after the slaughter of the Hollingworths could hardly be surpassed for horror and apprehension, Nidia had thought at the time. Now she recognised that it had been as nothing to this one. Then she had hardly known the secret of her heart – now she had discovered it. But – too late.
Yet, was it too late? Harm might not have befallen him, after all. He might have missed his way in the darkness. In the very earliest dawn he would return, and then the joy of it! This hope acted like a sedative to poor Nidia’s overwrought brain. The night air was soft and balmy. At last she slept.
It was grey dawn when she awoke, but her awakening was startling, for it was brought about by a loud harsh shout – almost in her ear. Nidia sprang to her feet, trembling with terror. Several great dark shapes fled to the rocks just overhanging her resting-place, and, gaining them, faced round again, uttering their harsh, angry shout. Baboons? Could they be? Nidia had seen here and there a dejected looking baboon or two chained to a post; but such had nothing in common with these great fierce brutes up there, barely twenty yards distant, which skipped hither and thither, champing their great tusks and barking savagely. One old male of enormous size, outlined against the sky, on the apex of a cone, looked as large as a lion. Others came swarming down the rocks; evil-looking horrors, repulsive as so many gigantic spiders.
Wild-eyed with fear, Nidia snatched up a blanket, and ran towards them, waving it, and shouting. They retreated helter-skelter, but only to skip forward again, mowing and gibbering. Three of the foremost, indeed, great males, would hardly move at all. They squatted almost within springing distance, gnashing their tusks, hideously threatening.
Then, as by magic, the whole gnome-like troop wildly fled; but the cause of this change of front was hard and material. “Whizz – Bang – Whack!” came a succession of stones, forcibly hurled, splintering off a rock like a bullet, thudding hard upon simian ribs. Yelling and jabbering, the whole crew skipped and shoggled up the rocks, and Nidia, with a very wan and scared smile upon her pallid face, turned to welcome her companion and protector – turned, to behold – not John Ames at all, but a burly savage – a tall Matabele warrior, barbarously picturesque in the weird panoply of his martial adornments.
Chapter Twenty One.
Trapped
His mind aglow with the recollection of that farewell, his one thought how soon he should be able to return, John Ames strode forth upon his quest, and as he did so it is probable that the whole world could not have produced another human being filled with such a rapturous exaltation as this refugee from a fiendish massacre, hiding for his life in the grim fastnesses of the Matopo Hills.
That last look he had discerned in Nidia’s eyes, that last pressure of her hands, could mean but one thing, and that the one thing to obtain which he would have laid down his life again and again. She was beginning to care for him. Other little spontaneous acts of cordiality during their enforced exile, had more than once stirred within him this wild hope, yet he had not encouraged himself to entertain it. Such he had of course deemed to be the outcome of their position. Now, however, the scales seemed to fall from his eyes, and he could read into them a very different meaning.
These last few days! Why, they seemed a lifetime. And when they should be over – what then? Was not his resolution a quixotic one; now, indeed, an impossible one? He almost made up his mind to abandon it, and on his return to ascertain once and for all how matters stood. As against that, what if he were mistaken, or partially so? There was such a thing as being too precipitate. Would it not be better to wait until he had brought Nidia safely and triumphantly through the multifold perils which still overhung their way?
How casual had been their meeting in the first instance, how marvellous and providential in the second. If anything seemed to point a significant augury, this did. But what of the more practical side? What would Nidia’s own people have to say in the matter? From things let drop he had gleaned incidentally that they were people of very considerable wealth, whereas he himself had little beyond the by no means princely salary wherewith the Chartered Company saw fit to remunerate his valuable services. Well, he would not think of that just then. Time enough to do so when they were safely back in prosaic civilisation once more. Let him revel in his happiness while it was his.
And it was happiness. Here he was – enjoying advantages such as rarely fall to the lot of the ardent lover. The daily intercourse, for all present purposes, each representing all the world to the other, beyond the reach of officious or intrusive outsider; she dependent upon him for everything – protection, companionship, even the very means of subsistence – what a labour of love was all this.
A slight rattle, as of stones, above his head, brought his mind back to the object of his quest; and lo! there stood the aforesaid means of subsistence personified, in the shape of a klip-springer, which from its boulder pedestal was regarding him with round-eyed amazement and distrust. Dare he use his rifle? There was no other way of securing the little buck. It was out of throwing-range, and in any case would be nimble enough to dodge a kerrie. He thought he would risk it. Game was alarmingly scarce.
But the question was decided for him. The animal suddenly sprang from the boulder, and in a couple of bounds had disappeared among the rocks. What – who – had scared it? The answer came – and a startling one it was. A score of Matabele warriors rose from among the long grass, and, uttering their fierce vibrating war-shout, flung themselves upon him. So intent had he been upon his thoughts, and on watching the klip-springer, that, crawling like snakes in the grass, they had been able to surround him unperceived. So sudden was the onslaught, that not a moment was given him for defence. His rifle was knocked from his grasp by a blow with a kerrie which he thought had shattered his wrist. Assegais flashed in front of his eyes, battle-axes were flourished in his face, his ears were deafened with the hubbub of voices. Then arose a great shout.
“Au! U’Jonémi!”
They had recognised him. Did that account for the fact that he was still alive? He had expected instant death, and even in that brief flash of time had crossed his mind a vision of Nidia left alone, of her agony of fear, of her utter helplessness. Oh, fool that he was, to have been lulled into this false security!
As though satisfied with having disarmed him, they had so far refrained from offering him further violence. No, he dared not hope. Others came swarming up, crowding around to look at him, many of them recognising him with jeers.
“Au! Jonémi! Thou art a long way from home!” they would cry. “Where are thy people – the other Amakiwa – and thy horses?”
“No people have I, nor horses, amadoda. I am alone. Have I not always wished well and acted well towards you? Return me, therefore, my rifle, and let me go my way in peace.”
It was putting a bold face on things; but, in his miserable extremity, as he thought of Nidia it seemed to John Ames that he was capable of any expedient, however insane. The proposal was greeted with shouts of derisive laughter by some. Others scowled.
“Wished well and acted well towards us?” echoed one of these. “Au! And our cattle – whose hand was it that destroyed them daily?”
This was applying the match with a vengeance.
“Yea – whose?” they shouted. “That of Jonémi.”
Their mood was rapidly growing more ugly, their demeanour threatening. Those who had been inclined to good humour before, now looked black. Several, darting out from the rest, began to go through the performance of “gwaza,” throwing themselves into every conceivable contortion of attack or defence, then, rushing at their prisoner, would make a lightning-like stab at him, just arresting the assegai blade within a foot of his body, or the same sort of performance would be gone through with a battle-axe. It was horribly trying to the nerves, dangerous, too, and John Ames was very sick of it.
“Keep the gun, then, if you will,” he said. “But now I must go on my way again. Hlalani-gahle ’madoda.” And he made as if he would depart. But they barred his way.
“Now, nay, Jonémi. Now, nay,” they cried, “Madúla, our father, would fain see his father again, and he is at hand. Come now with us, Jonemi, for it will be good for him to look upon thy face again.”
The words were spoken jeeringly, and he knew it. But he pretended not to. Boldness alone would serve his course. Yet his heart was like water within him at the thought of Nidia, how she would be waiting his coming, hour after hour – but no – he must not think of it, if he wanted to keep his mind. Madúla, too, owed him a bitter grudge as the actual instrument for carrying out the cattle destroying edict, and was sure to order him to be put to death. Such an opportunity of revenge was not likely to be foregone by a savage, who, moreover, was already responsible for more than one wholesale and treacherous murder.
“Yes,” he answered, “Madúla was my friend. I would fain see him again – also Samvu.”
“Hau! Samvu? There is no Samvu,” said one, with a constrained air. “The whites have shot him.”
“In battle?” said John Ames, quickly.
“Not so. They found him and another man sitting still at home. They declared that he had helped kill ‘Ingerfiel,’ and they shot them both.”
“I am sorry,” John Ames said. “Samvu was also my friend. I will never believe he did this.”
A hum, which might have been expressive of anything, rose from the listeners. But this news had filled John Ames with the gravest forebodings. If the chief’s brother had been slain in battle, it would have been bad enough; but the fact that he had been shot down in cold blood out of sheer revenge by a band of whites, with or without the figment of a trial, would probably exasperate Madúla and his clan to a most perilous extent, and seemed to aggravate the situation as regarded himself, well-nigh to the point of hopelessness.
They had been travelling all this while, and John Ames noticed they were taking very much the direction by which he had come. If only it would grow dark he might manage to give them the slip. But it was some way before sundown yet.
Turning into a lateral valley, numerous smokes were rising up above the rocks and trees. Fires? Yes, and men came crowding around the newcomers. Why, the place was swarming with rebels; and again bitterly did John Ames curse his fancied and foolish security.
He glanced at the eager, chattering faces which crowded up to stare at him, and recognised several. Might not there be among these some who would befriend him, even as Pukele had done before? He looked for Pukele, but looked in vain.
He strode up to Madúla’s camp to all outward appearance as unconcernedly as when he used to visit the chief’s kraal before the outbreak. His line was to seem to ignore the fact of there being an outbreak, or at any rate that these here present had anything to do with it.
He found Madúla seated against a rock smoking a pipe, and tricked out in war-gear. With him sat Zazwe, and another induna named Mayisela. And then, as if his position were not already critical enough, a new idea came to John Ames. These men had been seen by him under arms, in overt rebellion. Was it likely they would suffer him to depart, in order hereafter to bear testimony against them? Indeed, their method of returning his greeting augured the worst Madúla was gruff even to rudeness, Mayisela sneeringly polite, while Zazwe condescended not to reply at all. Of this behaviour, however, he took no notice, and sitting down opposite them, began to talk. Why were they all under arms in this way? He was glad to have found Madúla. He had wanted to find Madúla to induce him to return to his former location. The police officer and his wife had been murdered, but that had been done by policemen. It was impossible that Madúla could have countenanced that. Why then had he fled? Why not return?
A scornful murmur from the three chiefs greeted these remarks. Madúla with great deliberation knocked his pipe empty on a stone, and stretched out his hand for tobacco, which John Ames promptly gave him. Then he replied that they had not “fled.” He knew nothing of Inglefield, and did not care. If his Amapolise were tired of him they were quite right to get rid of him. They had not fled. The time had come for them to take their own land again. There were no whites left by this time, except a few who were shut up in Bulawayo, and even for these a road was left open out of the country. If they failed to take it they would soon be starved out.
This was news. Bulawayo, at any rate, had not been surprised. It was probably strongly laagered. But they would give no detail. All the whites in the country had been killed, save only these few, they declared. Yet he did not believe this statement in its entirety.
John Ames, as he sat there, talking, to all outward appearance as though no rebellion had taken place, knew that his life hung upon a hair. There was a shifty sullenness about the manner of the indunas that was not lost upon him. And groups of their followers would continually saunter up to observe him, some swaggering and talking loud, though in deference to the chiefs, not coming very near, others quiet, but all scowling and hostile. Nothing escaped him. He read the general demeanour of the savages like an open book. Short of a miracle he was destined not to leave this place alive.
The day was wearing on, and now the sun was already behind the crags which rose above the camp. It would soon be dusk. Every faculty on the alert, always bearing in view the precious life which depended upon his, he was calculating to a minute how soon he could carry into effect the last and desperate plan, the while he was conversing in the most even of tones, striving to impress upon his hearers the futility, in the long run, of thinking to drive the white man out. They had done nothing overt as yet. Let them return, and all would be well.
