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After some further talk Mgara withdrew, and Laurence, left alone, gave his meditations the rein once more. Never had he loathed the sinister occupation upon which he was embarked as he did now, possibly because the term of the undertaking was nearing its end. "I predict you will come back with what you want," Lilith had said, and her words had been fully verified. He had gained riches – even beyond his wildest dreams, but how he had gained them – trafficking in human flesh and blood, yea, even human life – she should never know. It seemed to him as though he were already returning with that which should place all the world at his feet.
But for once he seemed to forget that he had not yet returned – not yet. And as the drums and yelling of the barbarous orgy outside gradually sank into the silence of night, even that, strange to say, failed to remind him.
CHAPTER XVI.
AN ANGEL UNAWARES
Not much sleep did Laurence get that night – such, indeed, as he obtained being of the "with one eye open" order. Simple trust in anybody or anything was not one of his failings, as we think we have shown; wherefore having carefully scrutinized the plastered walls of his rude quarters, he took the precaution to secure the wicker door from the inside, and lay down with his Express, so covering the same that but the very slightest movement of the hand would be needed on his part in order to rake from stem to stern whosoever should be so ill-advised as to essay a stealthy ingress.
Still more would he have applauded his own foresight in taking these precautions could he have known that a large portion of the night was spent by his "entertainers" keenly debating the expediency of treacherously putting him to death. Here, it was urged, was an opportunity such as might never again come their way. Here was one of the leaders of that dreaded band of slave-hunters – one whose very name was a terror and a scourge. Here was this man actually in their hands. It was in their power to slay him without the smallest risk to themselves. Let them not miss such an opportunity of setting up his head above their gates. As for his party, now that its existence was known, they could surprise it, and slaughter every man it contained. They, the Wajalu, were numerous, and had good fire-weapons, and knew how to use them. Why should they not rid the land of this terror? It was in their power to do so.
This sounded all very plausible; many tales do, until their other side is told. And the other side was unfolded by the head man, Mgara, and others, much to this effect: The slave-hunters were more numerous than many there imagined. They had been reinforced by a large body of Wangoni – fierce and formidable fighters. To surprise and overwhelm such a force would be impossible, and in the event of failure what would their own fate be? Moreover, it was certain that the slavers were much better armed than the Wajalu. Their best policy would be to treat the man well; he had already given what was as good as an assurance of his protection. These counsels prevailed.
And soon the wisdom thereof was made manifest, for with earliest dawn one of their scouts came running in with the news that the slave-hunters were approaching; that they were in great numbers, and mostly armed with rifles; that it was too late for retreat, in that a large detachment had already gained a position which was practically such as to surround the village.
The effect of this news was to stamp with an expression of the most terror-stricken despair the countenance of every man who heard it. But Mgara, remembering the words of their white "guest," hurried to the hut where the latter was sleeping.
Yet as the head man approached the door with a quick deferential word of greeting, Laurence Stanninghame was wide awake. The talk outside, the rapid note of fear underlying the tone, had not escaped him, and even though he understood not a word of their talk among themselves he knew what these people wanted of him. And the situation looked serious, for he felt far less confident of his ability to redeem his half-implied pledge than when, moved by the first instincts of self-preservation, he had given the same.
Well, and what then? The extinction of this horde of cannibal barbarians was a mere trifle, a drop in the bucket, when looked at beside other dark and ruthless deeds which he had witnessed, and even actually aided in. But hard, pitiless, utterly impervious to human suffering as he had become, there was one point in Laurence Stanninghame's character – a weak point, he regarded it – which he had never succeeded in eradicating. He could not forget or ignore a good turn. These people, monstrous, repulsive as they were in his sight, had saved his life – twice indeed – the first time unconsciously from the Ba-gcatya, the second time from themselves. They might have slain him barbarously at almost any moment – he was but one among a number; yet they had not, but instead had treated him hospitably and well. He was resolved, at any risk, to save them.
Mgara, entering, lost no time in making known his errand.
"O stranger guest, whom we have treated as a friend," he began, "save us from the slave-yoke, and the guns and spears of your people, for they are upon us already." And rapidly he narrated the tidings brought in by the scouts.
"I will do what I can, Mgara," answered Laurence. "Listen. All your people must retire within the huts; not one must be seen. Further, two of your men must bear a token from me to El Khanac, my brother-chief, who leads yonder host, and that at once. Now, call those two men."
Swift of resource, Laurence picked up a flat piece of wood and, scraping it smooth with his knife, wrote upon it in pencil:
"I owe these people my life. Keep ours in hand until we meet."
"These are the messengers, Mgara?" he went on, as the head man returned accompanied by two men. "Are they reliable, and above all, fearless?"
"They are both, Sidi," answered the chief, now very deferential. "One is my son, the other my brother's son."
"Good. Let them now get a piece of white flaxen cloth, and bind it and this token to a staff. Then let them seek out El Khanac yonder."
In a moment this was done, and, bearing the impromptu white flag and the writing on the board, the two young men started off into the scrub.
"Retire now into your houses, Mgara, you and all your people. I alone will stand within the gate, and maybe it will be well with you."
The Wajalu, who had been hanging on every word, now hastened to obey; nevertheless there was terror and dejection in every face. And their thoughts were much the same as those of their would-be deliverer. Had he the power to make good his word?
The hot morning hours dragged slowly by, and still no sign of attack. The village was a deserted place, in its brooding, death-like silence, so still, so complete as to render distinctly audible the sweep of the wings of carrion birds circling aloft. The severed heads grinned hideously from the stockade, and the unearthly molten stillness of the silent noon was such as to get upon the nerves of the ordinary watcher. But he who now stood there had no nerves – not in a matter of this kind. His experiences had been such as to kill and crush them out of all being.
Ha! What was this? The crows and vultures, which, emboldened by the deathly silence, had been circling nearer and nearer to the tree tops, suddenly and with one accord shot upward, now seeming mere specks in the blue ether. Then the silence was broken in appalling fashion. Rending the air in a terrific note of savagery and blood-thirst, there burst forth the harsh, hissing war-yell of the Wangoni.
It came from the forest edge on the farther side of the village. Laurence realized, with vexation and concern, that his merciful plan would be extremely difficult to carry out. That these ferocious auxiliaries should be allowed to initiate the attack he had not reckoned upon; and now to restrain them would be a herculean task.
"Back, back!" he shouted, meeting the crowd of charging savages who, shield and spear uplifted, were bearing down in full career upon the village.
In the headlong, exciting moment of their charge they hardly recognized him. Laurence Stanninghame's life hung upon a hair. Then, with a great burst of laughter, mocking, half defiant, they surged past him. They "saw red," and no power on earth seemed able to stop those human wolves now rushing upon their helpless prey.
"Back, back!" thundered Laurence again. "The village is dead, I tell you. It is the abode of death!"
This told. Barbarians have a shrinking horror of infectious disease. Thoughts of smallpox, cholera, what not, arose in the minds of these. No other consideration on earth could have restrained that charge, yet this one did. They stopped short.
"Lo! the stillness, the silence," went on Laurence, pointing to the lifeless village. "Would you, too, travel the voiceless and weaponless path of death?"
But mutterings both loud and deep went through the Wangoni ranks. What was this? They had been ordered to charge – been signalled to charge, and now they were forbidden to enter the village. "El Afà" (the serpent) had been absent from the expedition, and now turned up here, alone. Savages are ever suspicious, and these were no exception to the rule of their kind.
"Whau, what does it mean?" half sneered their leader, scowling resentfully upon Laurence as the warriors crowded around, growling like a pack of baffled wolves. "Had we not better send some in to see if these dogs are indeed all dead?"
"Not so, Mashumbwe," was the unconcerned reply. "Tarry until the others arrive, then will we act together."
But a furious clamour arose at the words. The Wangoni did not entirely believe the explanation; and to further their doubts there now arose from the inside of the huts the puling wail of infants which the mothers had not been entirely able to stifle.
"Au, we will add those to the death number, at least," said the chief, giving the signal to his followers to advance.
"Not so!" said Laurence decisively. "Hearken, Mashumbwe, you are chief of your own people, but I am chief of all —of all! Not a man stirs until El Khanac comes up. Not a man, do you hear?"
Mashumbwe tossed back his ringed head, and his eyes glared. He was a tall, fine savage, with all the pride of mien inseparable from his rank and Zulu blood. Thus they stood, the savage and the white man, looking into each other's eyes; the one in a blaze of haughty anger, the other cool, resolute, and absolutely unflinching. How it would end Heaven alone knew.
But now the very thing that Laurence had been longing for happened. A hurried murmur ran through the Wangoni lines. The main body of the slave-hunters had emerged from the scrub, and had quietly surrounded the village. Laurence was satisfied. He had gained time so far, and with it his object.
"What astonishing freak is this, Stanninghame?" said Hazon, who, having taken in the situation at a glance, was promptly at his colleague's side, displaying, too, the piece of pencilled board. "What becomes of our pact when such a consideration as this comes in?" he continued, meaningly tapping the inscription on the board. "Have we obtained all we wanted on those terms up till now, or not?"
"No, we haven't; but now, having obtained almost all we wanted, we can afford to do this for once. If it had been your life instead of mine these people had saved twice, Hazon, I would willingly have spared theirs; now will you do less for me?"
"But it will breed a mutiny among our people," said Hazon doubtfully, with a half glance at the crowd of scowling Wangoni.
"Oh, a mutiny! By all means. We shall know how to deal with that, as we did before."
It seemed as though such knowledge were about to be called into requisition, for the announcement that all this "property" was to be relinquished absolutely was received by the more important section of the slave-hunters with a sullen silence more eloquent even that the wolfish growls of the Wangoni. The latter's disappointment lay in the fact that they were balked in giving vent to their instincts of sheer savagery – the delight of plunder and massacre. That of the former, however, was a more weighty factor to reckon with; for the smatter of civilization in the Arab and Swahili element had brought with it the commercial instinct of cupidity. It speaks volumes, therefore, for the ascendency which these two resolute white men had set up over their wild and lawless following, that the latter should have contented itself with mere sullen obedience.
Having gained his point Laurence returned within the village, and, calling Mgara, suggested that some of the people should carry forth food to their unwelcome visitors.
"I fear it may leave scarcity in your midst," he added; "but well-fed men are in better mood than hungry ones, Mgara, and are you not spared the slave-yoke and the spear?"
The head man, with many deferential expressions of gratitude, agreed, and soon a file of women and boys were told off, bringing goats and millet and rice for the slave-hunters. As they passed tremblingly among the ranks of the Wangoni the latter handled their great spears meaningly, and with much the same expression of countenance as a cat might wear when contemplating an inaccessible bird cage.
"Ho, dog!" cried Mashumbwe, as a youth passed before him without making obeisance. "Do you dare stand before me – before me! thou spawn of these man-eating jackals? Lo! lie prostrate forever." And with the words he half threw, half thrust his great spear into the unfortunate lad's body. The blood spurted forth in a great jet, and, staggering, the boy fell.
"Au! And am I to be defiled with the blood of such as this," growled the chief, upon whom several red drops had squirted. "Let that carrion be removed."
Several of the Wangoni sprang forward, and, as the quivering body was dragged away, these savages gave vent to their pent-up ferocity by stabbing it again and again. Having tasted blood they rolled their eyes around in search of further victims. But the remaining Wajalu had withdrawn in terror: and well for all concerned that it was so, otherwise the Wangoni, inspired by the example of their chief, would certainly have commenced a massacre which even the prestige and authority of Hazon and Laurence combined would have been powerless to quell. But there was no one outside to begin upon, and, though a truculent, unruly crowd, their interests in the long run lay in submitting to the authority of the white chiefs.
So the Wajalu rejoiced much, if tremblingly, as the last of the dreaded host disappeared. For good or for ill their village was spared – spared to continue its most revolting forms of savagery and cannibalism and parricide – spared for good or for ill in that it had entertained an angel unawares in the person of that hard, pitiless, determined slave-hunter, Laurence Stanninghame.
CHAPTER XVII.
DISSENSIONS
"Well, I'm uncommonly glad I was out of that affair yesterday, Stanninghame. But it isn't like you, letting those poor devils off, eh?"
Thus Holmes, as the two were leisurely pursuing their way, somewhat on the rear flank of the slave-party.
"I don't know. You see they let me off, and I didn't want to be outdone in civility even by a lot of scurvy dogs who eat each other. There was no feeling about the matter."
Before the other could pursue the subject, the sound of faint groans, and pleading in an unknown tongue, was heard just ahead. With it, too, the sound of blows.
"Some devilish work going forward again," muttered Holmes, with savage disgust.
"You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs," was the indifferent reply. And then they came upon a not entirely unfamiliar scene.
On the ground crouched three human figures, wretched-looking and emaciated to the last degree. Disease and exhaustion had overpowered them, and they were begging to be left to die. Standing over them in threatening attitude was Lutali, with some half-dozen of the slavers.
"They are too far gone to feel the whip," Lutali was saying. "Clearly they are of no further use. You, Murad, shorten me the shadow of yonder dog. We shall see."
The man named, a savage-looking ruffian, stepped forward, grinning with delight. Just as he was swinging up his scimitar, Holmes burst forth:
"Hold on, Lutali! Give the poor devil another show."
Half turning his head at this interruption, there was that look upon the hawk-like features of the Arab which at times so strangely resembled Hazon. His keen eyes darted haughty reproof at Holmes, for he was a sort of supercargo of the slave department, and relished not this interference. Then, turning back, he once more gave the signal. Down flashed the great blade. There was a dull swooshing thud, and the headless trunk was deluging the earth.
The effect, however, upon the other two exhausted wretches was magical. With a despairing effort they raised themselves up and staggered on, to the accompaniment of not a few blows by way of recognition of their malingering. Lutali, who had uttered no word, and whose impassive countenance had not moved a feature, stalked gravely on.
"Why could we not have prevented this?" burst forth Holmes, whom a sort of morbid fascination seemed to root to the spot.
"Because it would have been the very acme of insanity to attempt such a thing. Lutali, in common with the rest, is in far too ugly a mood, after yesterday, to be fooled with needlessly. Besides, all that sentiment is simply thrown away. These people, remember, are atrocious brutes, who eat their own fathers and mothers. It is positively a work of charity to enslave them. Once they are off the march they are fairly well treated, – better, in fact, than they treat each other – and, of course, no more cannibalism."
"That may be. But I wish to Heaven I could blot out these two years as though they had never been. The recollection of the horrors one has been through will haunt me for life. I feel like blowing my brains out in sheer disgust. Why did I ever come?"
It was not the first time Holmes had burst forth in this fashion, as we have shown. Laurence looked keenly at him.
"There is a worse thing to haunt one's life than recollection," he said, "and that is anticipation."
"Of what?" asked Holmes shortly.
The other touched the muzzle of his rifle, then his own forehead.
"It's that – or this," he said, pointing to the ghastly trunk and the severed head which lay before them. "You don't suppose I should have adopted this sweet trade from choice, I suppose? No. Hard necessity, my dear chap. If anybody has to go under – and somebody always has to – I prefer that it shall not be me."
Holmes made no reply for a while, so they left the spot, walking in silence. Then Laurence went on:
"Now we are on the subject, I don't know that you would have come out any the better had we left you behind at Johannesburg. For you were going the wrong way. You were a precious sight too fond of hanging around bars, and that sort of thing grows. In fact, you were more than once a trifle – shall we say 'muddled.' Not to put too fine a point upon it, you were on your way to the deuce. I know it, for I've seen it so often before, and you know it too."
"I believe you're right there," assented Holmes.
"Well, then, we owe our first duty to ourselves; wherefore, my soft-hearted young friend, it is better to spend a year or two raking in a fortune and ameliorating the lot of humanity, than to die in a state of soak, and a disused shaft, on or around the Rand, even as did Pulman the day before we left."
"I don't believe that same fortune will do us any good," urged Holmes gloomily. "There is the curse of blood upon it."
"The curse of my grandmother," laughed the other.
There was no affectation about Laurence Stanninghame's indifference. It was perfectly genuine. Strong-nerved constitutionally, callous, hard-hearted through stress of circumstances, such sights as that just witnessed told not one atom upon him. In the sufferings of the miserable wretches he saw only a lurid alternative – his own. In them, toiling along, wearily, dejectedly, beneath the chain or yoke, he saw himself, toiling, grinding, at some sordid and utterly repellent form of labour, for a miserable pittance; no ray of light, no redeeming rest or enjoyment to sweeten life until that life should end. In them, cowering, writhing, beneath the driver's brutal lash, he saw himself, ever lashed and stung by the torturing consciousness of what might have been, by the recollection of what had been. Or did they fall exhausted, fainting, to die, or to undergo decapitation to insure that such exhaustion should not open even a feeble possibility of escape, there too, he saw himself sinking, borne down by the sheer blank hopelessness of fate, taking refuge in the Dark Unknown, his end the grave of the suicide. It was himself or them, and he preferred that it should be them. Preyer or preyed upon – such was the iron immutable law of life, from man in his highest development to the minutest of insects; and with this law he was but complying, not in wanton cruelty, but in cold, passive ruthlessness.
Further, the sufferings of these people were only transitory. They would be much better off when the journey was ended and they were disposed of – better off indeed than many a free person in civilized and Christian lands. Besides, such races as these, low down as they were in the scale of humanity, suffered but little. It needs imagination, refinement, to accentuate suffering. To anything approaching such attributes, these were utter strangers. They were mere animals. Men dealt in sheep and cattle, in order to live, in horses and other beasts of burden, why not in these, who were even lower than the higher animals?
This theory of their sinister occupation Hazon thoroughly indorsed.
"Depend upon it, Stanninghame," he said, "ours is the right view to take of it – the only view. This is 'a world of plunder and prey,' as Tennyson puts it, and we have got to prey or be preyed upon. You, for instance, seem to have fulfilled the latter rôle, hitherto, and it seems only right you should have your turn now. To cite the latest instance, all this rotten scrip and market-rigging finished you off, and what was that but rascality?"
"Of course, I've been plundered, swindled, all along the line, ever since I can remember. I'm tired of that d – d respectability, Hazon. It doesn't pay. It never has paid. This, however, does."
The other smiled significantly at the word.
"Respectability – yes," he said. "Look at your type of success, your self-made man, swelling out of his white waistcoat in snug self-complacency, your pattern British merchant, your millionaire financier, what is he but a slave-dealer, a slave-driver, a blood-sucker. What has become of your little all, swamped in those precious Rand companies, Stanninghame? Gone to bloat more unimpeachable white waistcoats; gone to add yet more pillars to the temple of pattern respectability."
"That's so," assented Laurence, with something between a sneer and a laugh, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "Yet that same crowd of respectable swindlers would yelp in horror at us and our enterprise. 'Piratical,' they'd call it, eh? A hanging matter!"
"Swindlers – no. Swindler is English for a convicted person. Yet the percentage of the props and pillars of financial success and mercantile respectability who, in the self-candour and secrecy of their sleepless hours, are honestly unable to recall to mind one or more occasions when Portland, or Dartmoor, or Simonstown, or the Kowie loomed more than near, cannot be a vast one; which, for present purposes, may be taken to mean that if you have got to make money you must make it anyhow, or not at all – 'anyhow' covering such methods as are involved in the conventional term 'rascality.' If you have got it you can run as straight as you like. We haven't got it – at least not enough of it yet – and so we are making it, and, like the rest of the world, making it anyhow. There's the whole case in a nutshell, Stanninghame."
"Why, of course. But, if only we could bring Holmes round to that pre-eminently sensible standpoint! I never could have believed the fellow would turn out such an ass. I am more than sorry, Hazon, that I should have influenced you to bring him along."
"Oh, Holmes is young, and hardly knows the meaning of the term 'hard experience,' as we know it. Still, in his way, he's useful enough, and first-rate in a fight; and when he comes to bank his share he'll forget to feel over particular as to how he acquired it. That's mere ordinary human nature, and Holmes is far from being an abnormal unit."
"No, but he still affects a conscience. What if he goes back and takes on that blue-eyed girl he was smitten with, and, turning soft, incontinently gives us away?"
"Are you on the croak, Stanninghame? That's odd. Here, how's your pulse? Let's time it." And Hazon reached out his hand.
"Well, yes; it is unusual. But it's d – d hot, and the steaminess of it depresses me at times," returned Laurence, with a queer, reckless laugh.
"He won't give us away, never fear," said Hazon carelessly. "He won't take on that girl, because she'll have forgotten him long ago; that, too, being ordinary human nature. And – nobody ever did give me away yet. I don't somehow think anybody is ever likely to."
Both sides of this remark struck a chord within Laurence's mind; the first, a jarring one, since it voiced a misgiving which had at times assailed himself, specially at such periods of depression as this under which he was now suffering. For the second, the tone was characteristic of the speaker and the subject. It seemed to flash forth more than a menace, in its stern, unrelenting ruthlessness of purpose, while the words seemed to recall the warning so darkly let fall by Rainsford and others regarding his present confederate. "Other men have gone up country with Hazon, but —not one of them has ever returned." To himself the words contained no menace. He trusted Hazon, felt thoroughly able to take care of himself, and, moreover, was as little likely to violate the secrecy of their enterprise as Hazon himself. But what of Holmes? With all his hard, callous unscrupulousness, Laurence had no desire that harm should befall Holmes. In a measure, he felt responsible for him.
"Don't you worry about Holmes," said Hazon, as though reading his thoughts. "We can put him to all the show part of the business, reserving the more serious line for our own immediate supervision. And the time may come when we can do very well with Holmes, in short, when three white men may be better than two. We are very near the Ba-gcatya country, and an impi of them on the raid will give us as much trouble as we can do with; and I've seen signs of late which seem to point that way."
"Isn't it a crowded-on business this Ba-gcatya terror, eh?" said Laurence, lazily puffing out rings of blue smoke, which hung upon the hot, still atmosphere as though they never meant to disperse. "I expect their strength is as exaggerated as their dash. Why, this part is not altogether unexplored, yet there is no record of an exceptionally strong tribe hereabouts."
Hazon smiled pityingly.
"That great god, the African explorer, don't know everything," he said – "no, not quite everything, although he thinks he does. Anyway, he frequently manages to get a pretty muddled-up idea of things and places hereabout – a muddle which the natives of this land would rather thicken than dispel. For instance, he will ask the name of a river or a mountain, and when the other party to the talk repeats his question, as natives invariably do to gain time for answering, he takes this for the answer, and forthwith the thing is dubbed by a word that simply means 'river' or 'mountain,' in one or other of the hundred and fifty tongues which prevail hereabout. No, the existence of the Ba-gcatya is not chronicled, simply because the explorer was fortunate enough not to fall in with them. Had he done so, he would probably never have returned to chronicle anything. But, get one or two of our Wangoni to talk, and he may, or may not, tell you something about them; for the Ba-gcatya are, like the Wangoni themselves, a Zulu offshoot, only far more conservative in the old Zulu traditions, and of purer blood. They are a much finer race, indeed I believe them to be as powerful and well disciplined as the Zulus themselves were under Cetywayo. I was all through the war of '79, you know, and that pretty scar I carry about as an ornament represents the expiring effort of an awful tough customer, who had lost too much blood to be able to strike altogether home. I call it my Isandhlwana medal."
"That where you captured it, eh?" said Laurence, with interest, for the story was new to him. He remembered first noticing the great scar upon Hazon's chest the day he visited him when ill in bed at Johannesburg, but he had never asked its history; indeed, it was characteristic of the strange relations in which these two men stood to each other that, notwithstanding all this time of close comradeship, neither should ever have asked the other any question of a personal nature. Characteristic, too, was it of Hazon's method that this piece of information should have been vouchsafed as it was. Many an experience, strange and startling, had he narrated from time to time, but never for the sake of narrating it. If anything occurred to bring it forth, out it would come, carrying, perhaps, others in its train, but ever in due sequence. Even Holmes, the impulsive, who, being young, was the 'natural man' of the trio, had long since learned that to ask Hazon for a yarn was the direct way not to get one out of him.
"Yes," went on Hazon, "that's where I captured it. Speaking with some experience, Isandhlwana is the toughest thing that has ever travelled my way, and I don't hanker after any repetition of it with 'The people of the Spider – ' Why, what does this mean?"
