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Chapter Three.
Shiminya the Sorcerer
Shiminya the sorcerer was seated within his “múti” kraal on the banks of the Umgwane river.
This kraal was situated in the heart of a vast thicket of “wait-a-bit” thorns. It was enclosed by a closely woven fence of the same redoubtable growth, whose height and bristling solidity laughed to scorn the efforts of man or beast. The main approach consisted of a narrow labyrinthine passage; other approaches there were, but known only to its weird occupant, who had mechanical but secret means of his own of being warned of any advance, even by the recognised way, some time before the visitor or visitors should arrive at the gate.
This formidable stockade enclosed a space in which stood three huts, circular, with low conical roofs of thatch, and in front of these Shiminya was squatting. He had a large bowl in his hands, which he kept turning from side to side, narrowly scrutinising its contents, which smelt abominably, half muttering, half singing to himself the while. In front, its head couched between its paws, dog-like, blinking its yellow eyes, lay an animal. Yet it was not a dog, but represented the smaller species of hyaena – the South African “wolf.”
This brute looked grim and uncanny enough, but not more so than his master. The latter was a native of small stature and very black hue, with features of an aquiline, almost Semitic cast. But the glance of his eye was baleful, cruel as that of a serpent, keen, rapacious as that of a hawk; and while the muscular development of his frame was slight almost to puniness, his sinister features showed that which must ever dominate over mere brutal sinew and brawn, viz. Mind. Craft, guile, cunning, illimitable patience, and dauntless courage all fought for the mastery in the thin cruel features of the sorcerer.
His whole aspect differed as widely as possible from the pure-blood Matabele, which is scarcely surprising, seeing that he could boast no strain of that warrior race. He was, in fact, of the Amaholi, or slave caste; but as among other and more powerful nations of both new and old civilisation, Mind is bound to tell Shiminya – at the time we make his acquaintance and for some years previously – was one of the highest in the ranks of the mysterious hierarchy known to the natives as “Children of the Umlimo.”
The origin of the cultus of this sinister abstraction has never been located with certainty. Its hierarchy was protected, if not encouraged, by Lo Bengula and his warrior sire, probably out of three parts political motive to a fourth superstitious; and now, at the period of our story, when the dynasty and despotism of the Matabele kings had gone down before the Maxims of the Chartered Company, the shadowy-sayings of the Umlimo began to be sought out eagerly by the conquered race, and a rosy time seemed likely to set in for the myrmidons of the abstraction.
These, with the astuteness of their craft all the world over, saw their time. The conquered race, strange to say, was not satisfied. It had signally failed to appreciate the blessings of civilisation. If life was a trifle less secure under the rule of the King, why, that was all in accordance with national custom. In the good old days there was plenty of fun and fighting, of raids far and near; of the mustering of regiments at the King’s kraal, and cattle-killing and feasting and dancing. Yes, life was life in those days, when looked at from the point, of view of a warrior nation. But now, all this had given place to a state of things which from that point of view was utterly nauseous. The great circle of Bulawayo proudly dominating the land was razed to the ground, its place occupied by a solitary house, whence the white man governed a nation of conquered slaves. Below, in the valley, which formerly shook to the hum and thunder of marching impis, the white man was dumping down his iron houses and calling it his town. Throughout the land even the oldest and most powerful indunas were under white officials, to whom they were obliged to give deferential greeting, and all the little phases of excitement incidental to former days were sternly forbidden. Moreover, the conquerors had seized all the cattle of the nation, and now the land was flooded with arrogant, masterful whites, to whom no spot was sacred if only it was thought to contain a little gold. Outwardly patient, but with black rage and inexhaustible hostility gnawing at their hearts, chiefs and people alike sullenly brooded; and on such dry tinder the sparks, artfully kindled by the “Abantwana ’Mlimo,” fell as on well-prepared ground.
Seated there upon the ground, Shiminya continued to shake his bowl of hell-broth. Save for a few birds’ claws and a bladder or two fastened in his thick wool – for he was not ringed – he was destitute of the revolting gewgaws of his profession. Suddenly the wolf emitted a low snarl, simultaneously with an inarticulate wail which proceeded from the hut behind.
“Ha – my Lupiswana! Ha – ha, my good little beast!” chuckled Shiminya, apostrophising the creature. “Tea – lick thy jaws, for I think it is time for more blood – only a little – only a taste. Hau!”
As though understanding these words the brute rose, and sneaked over to the wicker door of the hut, sniffing at the fastenings, sullenly growling. Rising, the wizard followed, and, pushing back the animal, crept into the hut, and slapped the door to in its jaws. At his appearance the low moaning rose again, and in its note was the very extremity of pain and fear.
It proceeded from a long dark form lying on the ground, which the eyes, becoming accustomed to the semi-light of the interior, would have no hesitation in pronouncing as human. Further investigation would reveal it a female form, securely bound and lashed to a pole; a female form too, dowered with no small share of symmetry and comeliness. The face, when undistorted by pain and terror, must have been a pleasing one in the extreme.
“Ah – ah, Nompiza!” chuckled the wizard, rubbing his hands together. “The children of Umlimo have pretty houses, do they not – pretty houses?” And he glanced gleefully around his horrible den.
For this is just what it was. Human skulls and bones decked the plastered wall, but the most dreadful object of all was the whole skin of the head and face of a man – of a white man too, with a long heavy beard. This awful object glowered down in the semi-gloom, a gruesome expression of pain in the pucker of the parchment-like hide. Great snake-skins depended from the roof – the heads artfully stuffed, and the attitudes arranged to simulate life; and many a horrid object, suggestive of torture and death, was disposed around.
“A pretty house, Nompiza – ah – ah – a pretty house, is it not?” chuckled Shiminya, leering down into the young woman’s face. “And thou hast only to speak one word to be taken out of it. Yet I wonder not at thy refusal.”
“I will not speak it, Shiminya,” she replied, with some fire of spirit. “The rattle of these old bones has no terror for me. And if thou harmest me further, there are those who will avenge me, child of the Umlimo or not.”
For all answer the wizard laughed softly but disdainfully. Then reaching to the door, he opened it. The wolf leaped in, snarling.
“See now, thou obstinate Nompiza,” he went on, restraining the brute with a flourish of a large stick painted red, before which it cowered back. “This is Lupiswana – no ordinary wolf. Whoever this one bites becomes tagati, and will be hunted through the night by him after death, until they can escape only by riding on him as the white men ride their horses. Then, if they fall off, they are hunted again night after night – for ever and ever. Ha!”
At the enunciation of this grim superstition the unfortunate prisoner tugged at her bonds, uttering a shriek of terror. She recognised here not the dog she had at first expected to see, but the horrid mongrel beast held in abhorrence by the superstitious. The growlings of the brute redoubled.
“Now, tell quickly,” went on the wizard. “The news of the meeting thou didst make known to two people only. Their names? Hesitate not, or – ”
“Shall I be allowed to depart from here if I tell, child of the Umlimo?” she gasped eagerly.
“Thou shalt be taken hence. Oh yes, thou shalt be taken hence.”
“Swear it. Swear it,” she cried.
“Umzilikazi!” rejoined the wizard, thus ratifying his assertion by the sacred name of the great king, founder of the nation.
But now, seeing its master’s vigilance relaxed, the wolf sprang forward, and, with a horrid mumbling snarl, buried its fangs in the helpless prisoner’s thigh. A wild, piteous, despairing shriek rent the interior of this fiend’s den.
“Take it off! Take it off! Oh, I am devoured! Quick! I will tell!”
Seizing a pair of iron tongs, Shiminya compelled the now infuriated brute to loose its hold, and following it with a tremendous blow on the head, it retreated yelling to the further side of the hut.
“The names – quick – ere it seizes thee again,” urged the wizard.
“Pukele,” she howled, frantic with agony and terror.
“The son of thy father, who is servant to Jonemi?”
“The same. The other is Ntatu.”
The words seemed squeezed from the sufferer. Her thigh, horribly lacerated by the jaws of the savage beast, streaming with blood, was quivering in every nerve.
“Thy sister, formerly wife of Makani?”
“The same. Now, child of the Umlimo, suffer me to depart.”
“Thy thigh is not well enough, sister,” replied the wizard, in a soft purring voice, putting his head on one side, and surveying her through half closed eyes. “Tarry till evening, then shalt thou be taken hence. Au! It is not good to be seen quitting the abode of Shiminya. There is tagati in it.”
Having first kicked the wolf out of the hut, the sorcerer set to work to tend the wound of his helpless victim. She, for her part, lay and moaned feebly. She had purchased her life, but at what a cost. Still, even the magnificent physical organisation of a fine savage was not proof against all she had undergone, for this was not her first taste of the torture since being forcibly seized by the satellites of Shiminya and brought hither.
Now, moaning in her pain, Nompiza lay and reflected. She had betrayed two of her father’s children, had marked them out for the vengeance of not only the Abantwana ’Mlimo, but of the disaffected chiefs. This, however, might be remedied. Once out of this she would go straight to Jonemi – which was the name by which John Ames was known to the natives, being a corruption of his own – and claim protection for herself and them, perhaps even procure the arrest of Shiminya. This thought came as a ray of light to the savage girl as she lay there. The white men would protect and avenge her. Yet – poor simpleton!
“Of what art thou thinking, Nompiza?” said the wizard, softly, as he refrained from his seeming work of mercy. “Au! Shall I tell thee? It is that thou wilt reveal to Jonemi all thou knowest of the gathering at the Home of the Umlimo when the moon was full. So shalt thou save thyself and Pukele and Ntatu, the children of thy father.”
A cry of terror escaped the sufferer. How should she have forgotten that this dreadful sorcerer could read the thoughts of men?
“Not so, my father, not so,” she prayed. “I ask for nothing but to be allowed to go home.”
“To go home? But how would that avail one who has been bitten by Lupiswana? There is no escape from that. Lupiswana will come for thee after death. Thou wilt be hunted round for ever, with Lupiswana biting – biting – at thee even as now, and thou wilt spring wildly forward to avoid his bites, and his teeth will close in thy flesh, even as now. Thou wilt run wailing round the kraals of thy people, hunted ever by Lupiswana, but they will not admit thee. They will cover their heads in terror lest the same doom overtake them. Hau! Even this night will that doom begin.”
“This night?” echoed the victim, feeling well-nigh dead with an awful fear. “This night? Now, my father, thou hast promised – hast sworn – I shall be allowed to depart.”
“I did but mean the night of death,” replied the other, his head on one side, his eyes glittering with satanic mirth. “That may be when thou art old and tottering, Nompiza, or it may mean this night, for what is time but a flash, even as that of the summer lightning? The night of death will surely come.”
No relief came into the face of the sufferer. The awful fate predicted for her by Shiminya seemed to her just as certain as though it had already befallen her, and the recollection of the horrid animal tearing at her flesh was too recent. It was a form of superstition, too, not unknown among her people, and here everything seemed to bring it home – time, place, surroundings, and the horror of this gruesome being’s presence. But before she would utter further prayer or protest, a strange hollow, humming noise was heard, at sound of which Shiminya arose suddenly, with an eager look on his repulsive countenance, and crept out of the hut, taking care to secure the door behind him.
Chapter Four.
A Human Spider
Shiminya resumed his seat upon the ground, with the múti bowl in his hands. The wolf he had already secured in one of the huts. The grim beast was in truth his familiar spirit, and as such not to be gazed upon by profane eyes, and in broad daylight. And now footsteps were heard approaching the scherm, together with the rattle of assegai hafts. Three men entered by the narrow gateway. Shiminya looked up.
“Greeting, Izinduna,” he said.
“Greeting to thee, Umtwana ’Mlimo,” came the reply in a deep-voiced hum, as the newcomers deposited their assegais just within the gate, and advanced a few steps nearer in. With two of these we are already acquainted, they being, in fact, Madúla and his brother Samvu. The third was another influential chief by name Zazwe.
Shiminya seemed to take no further notice of their presence, continuing to sway the múti bowl from side to side, muttering the while. The faces of the three indunas wore an expression of scarcely to be concealed disgust; that of Zazwe in addition showed unutterable contempt. He was an unprepossessing looking man, lean, and of middle height, with a cold, cruel countenance. At bottom he loathed and despised the whole Umlimo hierarchy as a pack of rank impostors, but it suited him now to cultivate them, for he was an arrant schemer, and would fain see every white man in the country cut to pieces.
“There are three goats in thy kraal beyond the river, Shiminya,” he began presently, tired of the silence.
“That is good, my father,” the sorcerer condescended to reply. “They are for Umlimo?”
“Nay; for his child.”
“And – for Umlimo?”
“There is a young heifer.”
“Au! Of such there will soon be no more,” replied Shiminya.
“No more?” echoed the trio.
“No more. The whites are bewitching all the cattle in the land. Soon you will see great things. The land will stink with their rotting carcases.”
A murmur went up from the three listeners. They all bent eagerly forward. Shiminya, who knew his dupes, was in no hurry. He continued to shake his bowl of abomination and mutter; then he went on:
“The last time you heard the Great Voice, what did it say? Were not the words thereof as mine are now – I, its child? Whau! I fear there were some who heard that voice and laughed, Izinduna – who heard that voice and did not believe.”
At this juncture there came a subdued wail, inexpressibly doleful, from one of the huts. It was answered by a snarl from another. Two of the three chiefs, listening, felt perturbed, the countenance of Zazwe alone preserving its hard, sceptical expression; though, to tell the truth, even he – so rooted is the innate superstition of savages – did not feel entirely at ease in his surroundings.
“There is, further, a good milch cow for the Umlimo,” spake Madúla, “and for his child a heifer.”
“It is well. There will soon be no more,” repeated the wizard.
“And three fat-tailed sheep, and for Umlimo a young bull,” said Samvu.
“That, too, is good,” was the cold acknowledgment of Shiminya, “for there will soon be no more.”
Now, cattle constitute the very life of all the South African tribes, wherefore the three chiefs felt their hearts sink as they realised the gist of this doleful prophecy. The rinderpest had not as yet made its appearance in their midst, but was very soon destined to do so, and the sorcerers of the nation, having gained secret information that the terrible scourge was, in the ordinary course of things, bound to be upon them soon from further north, used their knowledge as a most powerful lever towards promoting the uprising they were straining every nerve to bring about. In this they found willing aid from many of the chiefs, who saw their power and influence waning day by day; themselves forced to be the subservient vassals of a few – from their point of view – upstart and arrogant whites.
“Why, then, should Makiwa (Matabele term for the white man) wish to bewitch all the cattle?” said Madúla, who at present was in the vacillating stage, though the high-handed action we have recorded, on the part of the native police, had gone far towards settling him in the wrong direction. “They will suffer equally with ourselves.”
“Our cattle are our life. Their life is in other things,” pronounced Shiminya, who never looked at his interlocutors when he spoke, thus giving his answers an oracular air, as though inspired by the magic stuff into whose black depth he was gazing. “We die. They live.”
“Hau!” cried the listeners, fully comprehending the hint.
“Not many times will the moon be at full before this death is upon us,” went on the wizard, still without looking up. “If there are no whites left in the land, then will it be averted.”
Again that hollow groan proceeded from the hut. Their feelings worked up to an artificial pitch, the superstitious savages felt something like a shudder run through their frames. But the imperturbable Shiminya went on:
“There are two who must die – Pukele, the son of Mambane.”
“He who is servant to Jonemi?” queried Madúla.
“The same.”
“Has he done wrong?” said Samvu, for the man named was one of Madúla’s people, and neither of the brothers liked this edict.
“He knows too much,” was the remorseless reply. “The other is Ntatu, formerly wife of Makani.”
A measure of relief came into the countenances of the two chiefs. A woman more or less mattered nothing, but they did not like to sacrifice one of their men.
“It is the ‘word’ of Umlimo,” pursued Shiminya, decisively. “This must be.” And for the first time he raised his eyes, and fixed them upon the two chiefs with cruel, snake-like stare.
“What is the life of a man, more or less, when Umlimo has spoken?” said Zazwe, thus throwing in the weight of his influence with the dictum of the sorcerer. “A man, too, who is faithful to one of these whites set over us! Au! Umlimo is wise.”
This carried the day; and after some more talk, mostly “dark,” and consisting of hints, the three chiefs, gathering up their assegais, withdrew.
Left alone, Shiminya still sat there, satisfied that his sanguinary edict would be carried out. A dead silence reigned over the great thorn thicket, and as though the satanic influence which seemed to brood upon the place imparted itself to wild Nature, even the very birds forbore to flutter and chirp in its immediate vicinity. The sun sank to the western horizon, shedding its arrows of golden light upon the myriad sharp points of the sea of thorns, then dipped below the rim of the world, and still the grim wizard squatted, like a crafty, cruel, bloodthirsty spider, in the midst of his vast web, though indeed the comparison is a libel on the insect, who slays to appease hunger, whereas this human spider was wont to doom his victims out of a sheer diabolical lust of cruelty and the power which he could sway through that agency. This day, indeed, he might feel content, for it had not been wasted. But the day was not over yet – oh no – not quite yet. Still, would it be possible for this satanic being to commit further deeds of atrocity and of blood? Well, is there not the wretched sufferer lying bound and helpless within the hut?
Again that low, vibrating hum sounded forth. It seemed to come from the thick of the thorn palisade. The deeply plotting brain of the wizard was again on the alert, but its owner evinced no eagerness, not even looking up from what he was doing. Some person or persons had unawares touched the hidden communication wire which, situated at the entrance of the narrow labyrinthine passage leading to the kraal, signalled such approach.
Shiminya’s discernment was consummate in every sense he possessed; indeed, this faculty had not a little to do with the ascendency he had gained. In the very footsteps of the new comer, shod with the amanyatelo– a kind of raw-hide sandal used as protection in thorny country – his keen ear could gather a whole volume of information. They were, in fact, to him an open index of the new comer’s mind. While distant they indicated a mind made up, yet not altogether removed from, the verge of wavering; the possession of a purpose, yet not altogether a whole-heartedness in its carrying out. Nearer they revealed the vulgar trepidation attendant upon the mere fact of approaching a place so sinister and redoubtable as the múti den of a renowned sorcerer, and that in the dim hours of night.
For the brief twilight had long since passed, and now a golden moon, in its third quarter, hung lamplike in the sky, and, save in the shadows, its soft brilliance revealed every detail almost as clear as in the day. It fell on the form of a tall, powerfully built savage, standing there in the gateway, naked save for the mútya, unarmed save for a short, heavy knobstick. This he laid down as he drew near the wizard.
“Greeting, my father,” he uttered.
“Greeting, Nanzicele,” replied the sorcerer, without looking up.
Divested of his civilised and official trappings, the ex-sergeant of police looked what he was – a barbarian pure and simple, no whit less of a one, in fact, than those over whom he was vested with a little brief authority. Whether this visit was made in the interests of loyalty to his superiors or not may hereinafter appear.
“Hast thou brought what I desired of thee, Nanzicele?” said the wizard, coming direct to the point.
Nanzicele, who had squatted himself on the ground opposite the other, now fumbled in a skin bag which was hung around him, and produced a packet. It was small, but solid and heavy.
“What is this?” said Shiminya, counting out ten Martini-Henry cartridges. “Ten? Only ten! Au! When I promised thee vengeance it was not for such poor reward as this.”
“They are not easily obtained, my father. The men from whom I got these will be punished to-morrow for not having them; but I care not. Be content with a few, for few are better than none. And – this vengeance?”
“Thou knowest Pukele – the servant of Jonemi?”
“The son of Mambane?”
“The son of Mambane, who helped hoot thee out of his kraal when thou wouldst not offer enough lobola for Nompiza. He is to die.”
Nanzicele leaped with delight. “When? How?” he cried. “Now will my eyes have a feast indeed.”
“At thy hand. The manner and the time are of thine own choosing. To thee has Umlimo left it.”
Nanzicele’s glee was dashed. His jaw fell.
“Au! I have no wish to dance in the air at the end of a long rope,” he growled; “and such would assuredly be my fate if I slew Pukele, even as it was that of Fondosa, the son of Mbai, who was an innyanga even as thyself, my father. Whau! I saw it with these eyes. All Fondosa’s múti did not save him there, my father, and the whites hanged him dead the same as any rotten Maholi.”
“Didst thou glance over one shoulder on the way hither, Nanzicele? Didst thou see Lupiswana following thee, yea, even running at thy side? I traced thy course from here. I saw thee from the time of leaving Jonemi’s. He was waiting for thee was Lupiswana. It is not good for a man when such is the case,” said Shiminya, whose esprit de corps resented the sneering, contemptuous tone which the other had used in speaking of a member of his “cloth.”
For the event referred to was the execution of a Mashuna witch-doctor for the murder of a whole family, whose death he had ordered.
The snake-like stare of Shiminya, the appeal to his superstitions, the sinister associations of the place he was in, a stealthy, mysterious sound even then becoming audible – all told, Nanzicele looked somewhat cowed, remembering, too, how his return journey had to be effected alone and by night.
Having, in vulgar and civilised parlance, taken down his man a peg or two, Shiminya could afford to let the matter of Pukele stand over. Now he said softly —
“And the other ten cartridges, those in thy bag, Nanzicele? Give them to me, for I have a better revenge, here, ready at thy hand, and a safer one.”
“Au! They were to have been thine, my father; I was but keeping them to the last,” replied the ex-police sergeant, shamefacedly and utterly mendaciously, as he placed the packet in the wizard’s outstretched hand. “And now, what is this vengeance?”
Shiminya rose, and, beckoning the other to follow, opened and crept through the door of the hut behind him. A hollow groan rose from the inside. Nanzicele, halfway in, made an instinctive move to draw back. Then he recovered himself. “It is not a good omen to draw back when half through a doorway,” said Shiminya, as they both stood upright in the darkness. “Yet – look.”
He had struck a match, and lighted a piece of candle. Nanzicele looked down, and a start of surprise leapt through his frame.
“Whau!” he cried. “It is Nompiza!”
“And – thy vengeance,” murmured the wizard at his side.
But the sufferer heard it, and began to wail aloud —
“Thy promise, Great Innyanga! Thy promise. Give me not over to this man, for I fear him. Thou didst swear I should be allowed to depart hence; on the head of Umzilikazi thou didst swear it. Thy promise, O Great Innyanga!”
“It shall be kept, sister,” said Shiminya, softly, his eyes fairly scintillating with devilish glee. “I swore to thee that thou shouldst be taken hence, and thou shalt, for this man and I will take thee.”
The wretched creature broke into fresh outcries, which were partly drowned, for already they were dragging her, still lashed to the pole, outside.
“Ha, Nompiza!” jeered Nanzicele, bending down and peering into her face as she lay in the moonlight. “Dost remember how I was driven from thy father’s kraal with jeers? Ha! Whose jeers were the loudest? Whose mockeries the most biting? Thine. And now Kulúla will have to buy another wife. Thou hadst better have been the wife of Nanzicele than of death. Of death, is it not, my father?” turning to Shiminya, who glared a mirthless smile.
Wrought up to a pitch of frenzy by the recollection of the insults he had then received, the vindictive savage continued to taunt and terrify the wretched creature as she lay. Then he went over to pick up his great knobstick.
“Not thus, blunderer; not thus,” said Shiminya, arresting his arm. “See now. Take that end of the pole while I take the other. Go thou first.”
Lifting the pole with its helpless human burden, these bloodthirsty miscreants passed out of the kraal. Down the narrow way they hurried, for Shiminya though small was surprisingly wiry, and the powerful frame of the other felt it not, although their burden was no light one. Down through a steep winding path, and soon the thorns thinned out, giving way to forest trees.
“Well, sister, I predicted that Lupiswana would come for thee to-night,” said Shiminya, as they set their burden down to rest themselves. “And – there he is already.”
A stealthy shape, which had been following close upon their steps, glided into view for a moment and disappeared. The wretched victim saw it too, and uttered such a wild ringing shriek of despair that Nanzicele fairly shuddered.
“Au! I like not this,” he growled. “It is a deed of tagati.”
“Yet thou must do it, brother, or worse will befall thyself,” said Shiminya, quietly. Then they resumed their burden.
Through the trees now came a glint of silver light, then a broad shimmer. It was the glint of the moon upon water. The Umgwane River, in the dry season, consists of a series of holes. One of these they had reached.
“And now, sister,” began the wizard, as they set down their burden upon its brink, “thou seest what is the result of an unquiet tongue. But for that thou wouldst not now be here, and thy brother Pukele and thy sister Ntatu would have yet longer to live. But you all know too much, the three of you. Look! Yonder is Lupiswana waiting for thee, even as I predicted,” said this human devil, who could not refrain from adding acute mental torture to the dying moments of his victim. And as he spoke a low whine rose upon the night air, where a dark sinister shape lay silhouetted against the white stones of the broad river-bed some little distance away.
The victim heard it and wailed, in a manner that resembled the whine of the gruesome beast. Shiminya laughed triumphantly.
“Even the voice she has already,” he exclaimed. “She will howl bravely when Lupiswana hunts her.”
“Have done,” growled Nanzicele. Brutal barbarian as he was, even his savagery stopped short at this; besides, his superstitious nature was riven to the core. “Get it over; get it over!”
They raised the pole once more, and, by a concerted movement, swung it and its human burden over the brink, where the pool was deepest. One wild, appalling shriek, then a splash, and a turmoil of eddies and bubbles rolling and scintillating on the surface, and the cold remorseless face of the brilliant moon looked down, impassive, upon a human creature thus horribly done to death.
“Hlala-gahle!” cried Shiminya, with a fiend-like laugh, watching the uprising of the stream of bubbles. Then, turning to his fellow miscreant, “And now, Nanzicele, whom Makiwa made a chief, and then unmade, the people at Madúla’s can hardly speak for laughing at thee, remembering thy last appearance there, bragging that thou wert a chief. Makiwa has done this, but soon there may not be any Makiwa, for so I read the fates. Go now. When I want thee I will send for thee again.”
