Kitabı oku: «John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising», sayfa 16
“Forward.”
“And that is all?” he said to himself, perhaps a trifle disappointedly, turning the enclosure round and round. “Well, that’s no trouble. I’ll go and do it.”
Chapter Twenty Seven.
The Fight Outside
MacFurdon’s troop, about two hundred strong, was sweeping up the long slope which ran northward from the township of Bulawayo, and the line it was taking would bring it out a little to the right of Government House and the site of the old kraal.
It was bitterly cold, for the dawn had not yet risen. The insurgents had waxed bolder and yet more bold. They were holding the ridge, and were in calm possession of Government House itself, and now the idea was to teach them that the time had come when they could no longer have everything their own way. To this end it had been decided to get well within striking distance of them at break of day.
MacFurdon’s troop was rather a scratch concern, got together in a hurry, but consisting of good material. With it went many volunteers. It was, however, in this instance, as much a reconnoitring party as one for fighting purposes. On its right flank moved a contingent of the Cape Boy corps, feeling the ground towards the Umguza. This, too, was rather a scratch force, composed of every conceivable kind of South African native, but, like the other, of excellent fighting material.
“Say, Ames – what sort of show you think we got?” whispered one of the volunteers aforesaid, as they drew near the crest of the rise. “Now, if they was Indians, I guess we’d boost them out of yon White House of yours in no time, striking them in the dark so.”
The speaker was an American, by name Shackleton, commonly called “The Major,” by virtue of his having claimed to hold that rank in Uncle Sam’s regular army. He likewise claimed to have seen service in the Indian wars on the Plains. In more peaceful times he was a prospector by occupation.
“Show? Oh, the usual thing,” answered John Ames. “We shall get in touch with each other, and there’ll be a big swap in bullets, and a general hooroosh. They’ll all sneak away in the grass, and we shall get back into camp feeling as if our clothes all wanted letting out. If there are more of them than we can take care of all at once, why, we shan’t be feeling so vast.”
“That so? You ever fight Matabele before?”
“Yes. I was up here with the column in ’93. That used to be the programme then.”
The wind was singing in frosty puffs through the grass, bitterly cold. Riding along in the darkness, the numbed feet of most there advancing could hardly feel the stirrups. Then upon the raw air arose a sound – a strange, long-drawn wailing sound, not devoid of rhythm, and interspersed every now and then with a kind of humming hiss.
“They are holding a war-dance, so there must be plenty of them there,” whispered John Ames. “Listen! I can hear the words now.”
It was even as he said. They were near enough for that. Louder and louder the war-song of Lobengula swelled forth upon the darkness, coming from just beyond the rise —
“Woz ’ubone! Woz ’ubone, kiti kwazula! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba yemkonto – Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!
“Nants ’indaba. Indaba yezizwe. Akwazimúntu. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba kwa Matyobane. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!”
(“Jjí-jjí” is the cry on striking a foe.)
A translation of the war-song:
“Come behold, come behold, at the High Place!
Come behold. That is the tale – the tale of the spear.
That is the tale – the tale of the nation. Nobody knows.
Come behold. That is the tale – the tale of Matyobane.”
The barbaric strophes rolled in a wave of sound, rising higher with each repetition, and to the measured accompaniment of the dull thunder of stamping feet, the effect was weirdly grand in the darkness.
“It makes something very like nonsense if turned into English,” whispered John Ames, in reply to his comrade’s query, “but it contains allusions well understood by themselves. There isn’t anything particularly bloodthirsty about it, either. That sort of hiss, every now and then, is what we shall hear if we get to close quarters.”
“Their kind of war-whoop, maybe. I recollect at Wounded Knee Creek, when Big Foot’s band made believe to come in – ”
But what the speaker recollected at Wounded Knee Creek was destined never to be imparted to John Ames, for at that juncture a peremptory word was passed for silence in the ranks.
Now the dawn was beginning to show, revealing eager faces, set and grim, and rifles were grasped anew. Then what happened nobody seemed to know individually. A straggling volley was poured into the advancing troop from the crest of the rise, and the bugle rang out the order to charge. As John Ames had described it, there followed a sort of “hooroosh” in which each man was acting very much to his own hand, as, the troop having whirled over the ridge, the order was given to dismount, and the men stood pouring volley upon volley after the loose masses of flying savages.
This, however, was not destined to last. The first shock over of surprise and dismay, the Matabele dropped down into cover and began to return the fire with considerable spirit. They were in some force, too, and it behoved the attacking whites to seize what shelter they could, each man taking advantage of whatever lay to his hand, whether stone or bush or ant heap, or even a depression in the ground.
Then, for a space, things grew very lively. The sharp spit of rifles was never silent, with the singing of missiles overhead. The enemy had the advantage in the matter of cover, and now and then a dark form, gliding like a snake among the grass and thorns, would be seen to make a convulsive spring and fall over kicking. One trooper was shot dead, and more than one wounded, and meanwhile masses of the enemy could be descried working up to the south-west. Reinforcements? It looked like it, remembering that the force at first engaged was not inconsiderable. The word went forth to retreat.
This was done in good order – at first. But now appeared a great outflanking mass, pouring up from the northern side, and its object was clear. A long wire fence ran down from the apex of the rise. It was necessary to retreat round the upper end of this. Did this outflanking mass reach it first, the white force would probably be destroyed, for they could not get their horses through the wire, and would have crushing odds to overwhelm them. It became a race for the end of the fence, which, however, the cool intrepidity and sound judgment of the leaders prevented from being a helter-skelter one.
John Ames and “The Major” and a trooper were on the extreme left flank, now become the right one, all intent on a knot of savages, who were keeping them busily employed from a thick bit of thorn bush, and did not at once become alive to the retreat. When they did, they became alive to something else, and that was that by nothing short of a miracle could they gain the upper end of that fence in time.
“Your horse jump, Ames?” said the American.
“Don’t know. Never tried.”
“You got to try now, then, by God! Our only chance. Look!”
John Ames did look, and so did the other man. At the upper end of the fence a mass of savages were in possession, pouring a volley after the retreating troop. Below on their right the three men saw the other outflanking “horn” now closing in upon them, and a line of warriors coming through the grass and thorns in front at a trot. It was a strong impi, and a large one.
In that brief flash of time, John Ames was curiously alive to detail. He could see the ostrich-feather mútyas worn by the warriors, the parti-coloured shields and the gleam of spears, and decided this was a crack regiment. He could see, too, the township of Bulawayo lying in its basin below, and the retreating horsemen now already far away. He noted the look of fear on the face of the trooper, and that of desperate resolve in the keen eyes of the American.
“Now for it!” he cried. “Put your horses at it here. I’ll give you a lead.”
A wire fence is a trying thing to jump, with an uncertain steed. To his surprise, John Ames lighted in safety on the other side. Not so Shackleton. His horse’s hoofs caught the top wire, and turning a complete somersault, threw its rider heavily, but on the right side of the fence, while that of the trooper refused point-blank and trotted off, snorting idiotically, right down the fence into the very teeth of the advancing enemy.
John Ames turned, then rode back.
“Get up, Major, for Heaven’s sake!”
Shackleton had already been on his feet, but subsided again with a groan.
“Can’t. Ankle gone. Guess my time’s here – right here,” he panted. “You go on.”
“We don’t do things that way, damn it!” John Ames answered, in his strong excitement. “Here, get up on my horse.”
He had dismounted. Shackleton’s fool of an animal had already recovered itself and made itself scarce. The advancing impi was barely three hundred yards distant, pouring onward, shivering the air with its deep vibrating “Jjí-jjí!”
“You go on!” repeated the American. “I won’t be taken alive.”
John Ames said no more. He did. Shackleton, fortunately, was rather a small man, and light. The other seized him under the shoulders, and by dint of half lifting, half pushing, got him bodily into the saddle.
“Now go!” he shouted. “I’ll hold on the stirrup.”
All this had taken something under a minute.
They went. The impi was now pouring through the fence, whose momentary obstruction almost made a difference of life or death to the fugitives. How they escaped John Ames never knew. Sky, earth, the distant township beneath, all whirled round and round before him. Twice he nearly lost hold of the stirrup-leather and would have fallen; then at last became aware of slackening pace. Turning, dizzy and exhausted, he saw that the enemy had abandoned pursuit.
And what of the unfortunate trooper? Not much, and that soon over, luckily. Abandoning his mount, he made a rush for the fence, but too late. A very hail of assegais was showered upon him, and he fell, half in, half out, across the wire. With a roar of exultation the savages were around him. Assegais gleamed in the air, first bright, then red, and in a second nothing was left but a shapeless and mangled mass.
Such tragedies, however, come but under the simple word “losses,” and these, all things considered, had not been great. On the other hand, the enemy had suffered severely, and if, by sheer force of overwhelming numbers, he had succeeded in driving them back, those forming the reconnaissance were not disposed to feel it acutely. They were quite ready to go in at him another day, and thus make things even.
But Shackleton, otherwise “The Major,” was not going to let the thing down so easily. His sprained ankle kept him tied by the leg for some days, but on the subject of the fight and the retreat he became somewhat of a bore. On the subject of John Ames he became even more of one. He was never tired of extolling that worthy’s readiness and nerve, and his self-devotion in risking his life to save a comrade.
“You British have got a little iron notion,” he would say, “a thing you call a Victoria Cross, I reckon. Well, when you going to get it for John Ames? He boosted me on to his broncho like a sack right away, and run afoot himself. But for him where’d I be now? Cut into bully beef by those treacherous savages. Yes, sir.”
But as these incisive utterances were invariably accompanied by an invitation to liquor, there were some who were not above drawing. The Major upon his favourite topic. To most, however, he became a bore, but to none so much as the subject thereof. Said the latter one day —
“Do you know, Major, I begin to wish I had left you where you were. It’s a fact that you’re making a perfect fool of me, and I wish you’d drop it.”
“Shucks! Now you quit that fool-talk, John Ames, and reach down that whisky over there – if you can call such drug-store mixture as your Scotch stuff by the same name as real old Kentucky. I’m going on at it until they give you that little nickel thing you British think such a heap of.”
“But I don’t want it, can’t you understand?” he retorted angrily; “nor anything else either. I believe I’ll get out of this country mighty soon. I’m sick of the whole show.”
Shackleton looked at his friend, and shook his head gravely. John Ames petulant, meant something very wrong indeed with John Ames. Then an idea struck “The Major” – a bright idea, he reckoned – and in the result he seized an early opportunity of making a call, and during that call he retold his favourite tale to just two persons – to one of whom it was pleasant and to one of whom it was not. You see, he was a shrewd observer, was Shackleton, otherwise “The Major.”
Chapter Twenty Eight.
The King and the Age
“Do try and be serious a little while if you can, Nidia, if only that I have something very serious to say to you.”
“Drive ahead, then, Govvie. I promise not even to laugh.”
Susie Bateman looked at the girl as she sat there, with hands clasped together and downcast eyes, striving to look the very picture of be-lectured demureness, and tried to feel angry with her. Yet, somehow, she could not – no, not even when she thought to detect a suspicious heave of the shoulders which denoted a powerful fund of compressed laughter. With the absent object of her intended “straight talk” she felt venomously savage. With this one – no, she could not.
“Well, what I want to say is this,” she went on. “Nidia, is it fair to encourage that man as you do?”
“Which man? There are so many men. Do I encourage them?”
“Oh, child, don’t be so wildly exasperating. You know perfectly well who I mean.”
Then Nidia lifted her eyes with a gleam of delightful mischief in them.
“I have a notion you are ungrammatical, Govvie. I am almost sure you ought to have said ‘whom I mean.’ Well, we won’t be particular about that. But, as my American adorer, ‘Major’ Shackleton, would say, ‘Oh, do drive on,’ By the way, is he the man I am encouraging?”
What was to be done with such a girl as this? But Susie Bateman was not to be put off.
“You know perfectly well that I mean John Ames.”
“Oh! Now you’re talking, as my ‘Major’ aforesaid would rejoin. And so I encourage John Ames, do I? Poor fellow! he seems to need it.”
There was an unconscious softness wherewith these words were uttered. It drove the other frantic, “Need it indeed! On the contrary, what he needs is discouragement, and plenty of it. Well, he gets it from me, at any rate.”
“Oh yes, he does,” came the softly spoken interpolation.
“Well, but, Nidia, how much further is this thing to go? Why, the man comes here and talks to you as if you belonged to him; has a sort of taken-possession-of-you way about him that it’s high time to put an end to.”
“And if he had not ‘taken possession’ of me in that ghastly place on the Umgwane, and kept it ever since, where would I be now?” came the placid rejoinder.
“Yes, I know. That is where the mischief came in. It was partly my fault for ever encouraging the man’s acquaintance. I might have known he would be dangerous. There is that about him so different to the general run of them that would make him that way to one like yourself, Nidia. Yes; I blame myself.”
“Yes; he is different to the general ruck, isn’t he?” rejoined Nidia, with a softness in her wide-opened eyes that rather intensified than diminished the bitterness of her friend and mentor.
“Well, at any rate he is nobody in particular,” flashed out the latter, “and probably hasn’t got a shilling to his name; and now I hear he has resigned his appointment” – again that provoking smile, “Once for all, Nidia; do you intend to marry him?”
“Marry who? John Ames?”
“Yes,” with a snap.
“He hasn’t asked me.”
The innocent artlessness of the tone, the look of absolute and childlike simplicity in the blue eyes as the answer came tranquilly forth, would have sent a bystander into convulsions. It sent Mrs Bateman out of the room in a whirlwind of wrath. After her went the offender.
“Don’t get mad, Susie. I can’t help being a tease, can I? I was built that way. Come along out, and we’ll drop in on some other frightened and beleaguered female, and swap camp and laager gossip.”
But the other refused. She was seriously put out, she said, and never felt less like going anywhere. So Nidia, who understood her – at times, somewhat crusty – friend thoroughly, and managed her accordingly, put on her hat and went alone.
To do her justice, Mrs Bateman, from her point of view, was not without cause for concern. Nidia’s father – she had lost her mother – was the senior partner of an exceedingly wealthy firm of shipowners, and had certainly a more brilliant future planned for his only and idolised daughter than an alliance with a penniless nobody; for so, with a certain spiteful emphasis, Mrs Bateman delighted to designate the object of her abhorrence. The girl had been allowed to accompany her only after long and much-expressed opposition on the paternal side, and now she felt simply weighted down with responsibility. And this was the way in which she had fulfilled her trust!
But fortune seemed inclined to favour her to-day. Scarcely had Nidia been gone ten minutes, than there came a knock at the door of their diminutive abode. John Ames himself! Susie Bateman snorted like the metaphoric warhorse, for she scented battle. She was about to indulge this obnoxious person with a very considerable fragment of her mind. Nevertheless she welcomed him pleasantly – almost too pleasantly, thus overdoing the part. But she had no intention of sending him off at a tangent, as she knew full well would be the result of letting him know that Nidia was not in.
Observing him keenly, she noted the quick shade of disappointment as he became alive to the fact that the room was empty save for herself. She knew exactly what was passing in his mind, and found a cruel enjoyment in observing every sign of expectation evoked by this or that sound outside, for she had not told him that Nidia was out, and knew that he was still hoping she might only be in another room. At length he enquired.
“Miss Commerell has gone out,” she replied. “She went round to see some people; I didn’t even hear who they were. She won’t be back till lunch-time, if then; and perhaps it is just as well, Mr Ames, for I have been wanting to have a little quiet conversation with you. Now we can have it.”
“Yes?” he said enquiringly. But tranquil as the tone was, she had not failed to note the scarcely perceptible start of conscious dismay evoked by the announcement. Yet now it had come to the point, she for her part hardly knew how to begin, and he was not going to help her. Besides, his tranquil self-possession was somewhat disconcerting. However, she started in at it, characteristically, headlong.
“Now, you must not be angry with me, Mr Ames; but I want to talk to you as a woman of the world to a man of the world. In short, about Miss Commerell.”
“Such a subject cannot but be interesting, Mrs Bateman.”
“She is under my charge, you know.”
“Yes. You are to be congratulated on the delightful nature of such a charge.”
“But you admit that it is one which entails a grave responsibility?”
“The gravest responsibility,” he replied.
“Well, then, the gravity of that responsibility must be my excuse for what I am about to say. Don’t you think you come here rather often?”
She was exasperated by his imperturbability. She could see he meant fencing, wherefore she clubbed him without further preliminary.
“Do I?” he answered, in the same even tone.
She could hardly restrain her wrath, and her voice took a higher pitch.
“Do you?” she echoed somewhat stupidly, because fast losing her temper. “Well, when I tell you people are beginning to talk about it?”
“Yes; they would be sure to do that. You see, they have so little to talk about, all crowded up together here.”
She was taken wildly aback. The unparalleled impudence of the man, taking everything for granted in this way!
“Well, I can’t have Miss Commerell talked about, and I won’t. And that’s all about it.”
“Oh, it’s about Miss Commerell they are talking? I understood you to mean it was about my coming here.”
Then Mrs Bateman lost her temper, and, as women of her stamp usually do under such circumstances, she became rude.
“Bless the man, is he quite a fool?” she broke forth, fairly quivering with rage. “Don’t you, or won’t you, understand that you are the cause of getting Nidia talked about? You! And I won’t have it. Indeed, under the circumstances, your acquaintance with Miss Commerell had better cease. She is in my charge, remember.”
“Yes. But she is not a child. I should first like to hear Miss Commerell’s own views in the matter; indeed, shall do so before deciding on whether to fall in with yours or not, and so I tell you frankly, Mrs Bateman. Of course this is your house, and I need hardly say I shall visit it no more.”
“One moment. I have not quite done,” she went on, for he had risen to go. “Again you must forgive me for plain-speaking; but let me advise you, as a friend, to entertain no hopes that can only end in disappointment. You are probably aware that Miss Commerell’s father is a very wealthy man, and therefore you will not be surprised to learn that he has mapped out a brilliant future for his only daughter.”
The speaker was alive to the slight stirring of dismay that passed like a ripple over the countenance of her hearer. She knew him well enough to be sure that the bolt had gone home, and at heart secretly respected him. In making this statement she had thrown her king of trumps.
“It is very painful for me to be obliged to speak like this, Mr Ames,” she went on, deftly infusing a little less acerbity into her tone, “especially when I think of all you have done for Miss Commerell throughout a time of terrible danger. But as to this, you will certainly not find her people ungrateful; you may take my assurance as to that. Let me see. You have resigned your appointment, have you not? At least, so I have been told.”
She paused. She had thrown her ace.
John Ames, his face white to the lips with this culminating outrage, replied —
“Pardon me if I decline to discuss my own private affairs with anybody, Mrs Bateman. For the rest, there is a pitch of perfection in everything, even in the art of plain-speaking, and perfection in that art I must congratulate you on having attained. Good morning!”
He bowed and left the house, with, at any rate, all the honours of war on his side; and this she could not but recognise, feeling rather small and uncomfortable as she looked after his retreating figure. But she had thrown her ace of trumps, anyway.
“How will you face the parting of the ways?”
The Umlimo’s question came back to his mind as he walked away from the house in a very fury of turmoil. The Umlimo’s predictions seemed to fulfil themselves to the letter in every particular. In his then frame of mind John Ames found his thoughts reverting to that strange personality with a kind of fascination, of deepened sympathy. He himself began to feel the same hatred of his kind, the same intuition that even as the hand of everybody was against him, so should his hand be against everybody. It was significant that Nidia should have been out of the way. Could it be that she had deputed this cursed, parrot-faced, interfering woman to take up her part and so clear the ground for her? His part was played. He had been Nidia’s Providence during that perilous flight, but now his part was played. She had no longer any use for him. The “brilliant future mapped out for her” – the words seemed burnt into his brain – what part or lot had he in such, he a mere penniless nobody? And then all the outrageous insult conveyed by the woman’s words – a sort of patronising assurance that he would be compensated, yes, compensated – paid – why did she not call it? Faugh! It was sickening. Well, again, as the Umlimo had pronounced, it was the way of life. Black and bitter were his thoughts. All was dark – blankly dark. He knew not which way to turn. And at this juncture “The Major,” otherwise Shackleton, his ankle now restored sufficiently to enable its owner to hobble about, barred his material way with a pressing invitation to come round and lunch. Lunch, indeed! Mentally he consigned that estimable American to the devil, and, leaving him astonished, went on to his own quarters, like a wounded animal, to hide his pain and heartbreak alone. Besides, he was sick of the story of his own “heroism.” Damn such “heroism”! He thought of the luckless trooper who had been with them in their peril, probably conjured up by the sight of Shackleton, and envied him. Why had he not been the one to end his hopes and fears then in that swift and easy manner? That poor devil probably had plenty of life’s sweets in front of him. He had none. That was all over and done with.
He gained his quarters. The post had come in, and on his table lay a pile of official-looking letters, most of them addressed to him by his late official style. He glanced through them listlessly, one after another, and then – What was it that caused his hand to shake and the colour to leave his face, and started him bolt upright? He stared at the sheet again and again. Yes, there it was. He was not dreaming. The sheet of paper was material, substantial; the words on it, written in a somewhat flourishing, clerkly hand, were plain enough, and they were to the effect that there had been placed to his credit, and lay at his disposal, in the Standard Bank in Cape Town, the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds.
Twenty-five thousand pounds! At his disposal! Heavens, what did it mean? Some hoax? Some practical joke? Of course. But with the bank communication was an enclosure. This he opened with trembling fingers, and thus it ran —
“In carrying out my instructions, John Ames, as you have done to the very letter, you have rendered me a service beyond any money value. Go now and be happy with her whom you love, and this end the accompanying communication will materially further. Do not spoil your happiness by any cursed foolish pride, or insane ideas of being under an obligation, for this sum is less to me than a five-pound note would be to you probably at this moment” – again that well-nigh superhuman gift of forecast – “and take no more risks, but go in peace while you, or rather while ye, may —the road is still open– and by your lifelong happiness continue to justify the forecasts of: —
“Umlimo.”
This, then, was what meant the opening of the packet marked “B.”
