Kitabı oku: «The Triumph of Hilary Blachland», sayfa 13

“Lo, the spirit of the Great Great One who founded this nation is still alive. His serpent still watches over those whom he made great in the art of war. Shall you shame his name, his memory? Of a truth, no.

“Yonder comes the white army – nearer, nearer day by day. Soon it will be here. But first it will have to pass over the bodies of the lions of Matyobane. Shall it do so? Of a truth, no!”

The King ceased. And upon the silence arose mighty shouts. To the death they would oppose this invasion. The King, their father, might sit safe, since his children, his fighting dogs were at large. They would eat up these whites – ha – ha! a mere mouthful, and the race of Matyobane should be greater than ever among the great nations of the world.

Then again a silence fell suddenly, and immediately from a score of points along the lines, voices began to lead off the war-song:

 
“Woz’ubone!
Woz’ubone, kiti kwazulu!
Woz’ubone! Nantz’indaba.
Indaba yemkonto.
Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!
 
 
“Nantz’indaba? Indaba yezizwe?
Akwasimuntu.
Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!
 
 
“Woz’ubone! Nantz’indaba.
Indaba ka Matyobane.”⁴
 

Louder and louder, in its full-throated cadence, the national war-song rolled forth, thundrous in its wild weird strophes, to the accompaniment of stamping feet and clashing of shields – the effect of the deep humming hiss of the death chorus alone appalling in its fiendlike intensity. The vast crescent of bedizened warriors swayed and waved in its uncontrollable excitement, and the dust clouds streamed overhead as an earnest of the smoke of burning and pillage, which was wont to mark the fiery path of this terrible race in its conquering progress. Louder, louder, the song roared forth, and then, when excitement had reached its highest pitch, silence fell with a suddenness as startling as the mighty outburst which had preceded it.

For the King had advanced from where he had been standing. Facing eastward he now stood. Poising the long, slender, casting assegai in his hand with a nervous quiver, he hurled it far out over the stockade.

“Go now, children of Matyobane!” he cried in tones of thunder.

It was the signal. Rank upon rank the armed legions filed forth from the gates of the great kraal. In perfect silence now they marched, their faces set eastward – a fell, vast, unsparing host upon destruction bent. Woe to the invading force if it should fail to repel the might of these!

Chapter Two.
“The Tale of the Spear.”

“Whau!” ejaculated Ziboza, one of the fighting indunas of the Ingubu Regiment. “These two first.”

The two men constituting the picket are seated under a bush in blissful unconsciousness; their horses, saddled and bridled, grazing close at hand. Away over the veldt, nearly half a mile distant, the column is laagered.

In obedience to their leader’s mandate a line of dark savages darts forth, like a tongue, from the main body. Worming noiselessly through the bush and grass, yet moving with incredible rapidity, these are advancing swiftly and surely upon the two white men, their objective the point where they can get between the latter and their horses.

These men are there to watch over the safety of the column laagered up yonder, but who shall watch over their own safety? Nearer – nearer! and now the muscles start from each bronze frame, and the fell, murderous assegai is grasped in sinewy grip. Straining eyeballs stare forth in bloodthirsty exultation. The prey is secure.

No. Not quite. The horses, whose keener faculties can discern the approach of a crowd of musky-smelling barbarians, while the denser perceptions of the two obtuse humans cannot, now cease grazing and throw up their heads and snort. Even the men can hardly close their eyes to such a danger signal as this. Starting to their feet they gaze eagerly forth, and – make for the horses as fast as they can.

Too late, however, in the case of one of them. The enemy is upon them, and one of the horses, scared by the terrible Matabele battle-hiss, and the waving of shields and the leaping of dark, fantastically arrayed forms, refuses to be caught. The owner starts to run, but what chance has he against these? He is soon overtaken, and blades rise and fall, and the ferocity of the exultant death-hiss of the barbarians mingles with the dropping rifle. Are they are keeping up on his fleeing companion, and the sputter and roll of volleys from the laager. For this is what has been happening there.

Steadily, ever with the most perfect discipline and organisation, the column had advanced, and now after upwards of a month of care and vigilance, and difficulties met and surmounted, was drawing very near its goal.

The enemy had hovered, upon its flanks since the last pitched battle, now nearly a week ago, as though making up his mind to do something towards redeeming his defeat upon that occasion; but unremitting vigilance together with a few timely and long range shells had seemed to damp his aspirations that way.

“I wonder if they’ll try conclusions with us once more, before we get there,” observed the commanding officer, scanning the country, front and flank, with his field glasses. “What do you think, Blachland?”

“I think they will, Major,” was the confident reply.

“No such luck,” growled one of the group. “After the hammering we gave them at Shangani. I tell you what it is, Blachland. These wonderful Matabele of yours are miserable devils after all. I don’t believe they’ve another kick in them,” added this cocksure Briton.

Hard, weather-beaten men these – tough as nails from the life they have been leading since the beginning of the campaign. They have been tested again and again, and have passed the ordeal well: not only under fire, but the more nerve-straining duties of scouting and reconnoitring and nocturnal guard. Hilary Blachland is attached to the scouting section, and is somewhat of an important personality in the command, by reason of his complete knowledge of the country to be traversed, and his acquaintance with its inhabitants, now the enemy.

“No more bad country you say?” went on the commanding officer, making some notes in a pocket-book.

“No. It’s all pretty much as we see it, open, undulating and moderately bushed. Yonder is the Intaba-’Zinduna, and we hold to the left of its further end by about a couple of miles. We are certain to be attacked between this and Bulawayo, and that’s barely twenty miles, why any minute may settle it.”

“Why what’s this?” muttered the commanding officer hurriedly, bringing his glass to his eyes.

“Ah, I thought so,” said Blachland with a smile. “We shall get it here, Major.”

Dark masses of the enemy were now appearing, away in front – still about a mile off. No sooner had the shells begun to drop among these than the alarm was raised much nearer home, and, as with the celerity of perfect discipline every man was at his place within the laager, the battle line of the savages could be seen sweeping forward through the thorns on the northern side. Then the rattle of volleys, and the knock-like thud of the machine guns playing upon them, mingles for a time with the deep, humming war-hiss of the Matabele and the defiant whoops of individual excited warriors, leaping in bravado as though challenging the marksmanship of the defenders.

The line of battle soon wavers, halts, then drops down, only to glide on again. More and more press on from behind, and soon the line is seen to be extending, as though for a surround. There are firearms too, within the savage host, and the bullets begin to whizz and “ping” around the ears of the defenders.

“They have got another kick in them after all, eh, Grantham?” remarks Blachland to the officer who had uttered the above disparaging remark. For a piece of sharp splinter, chipped from the side of a waggon, had struck the latter, causing his ear to bleed profusely, while the speaker himself gives an involuntary duck, as another Martini bullet hums right over his head, and near enough for him to feel its draught.

“Oh damn them, yes!” answers the man apostrophised, grinding his teeth with the sharp pain, and discharging his rifle – aiming low – into the enemy’s line.

For a while matters are lively. Massing at this and that point the swarming Matabele will essay a charge, but the deadly machine guns are turned on with telling precision, breaking up every attempt at organised movement, and the veldt is strewn with dark bodies, dead, motionless, or writhing in death – and shields flung around in all directions, for which their owners will never more have use. But within the laager the organisation is complete. Every man has his own duty to do and does it, and has no time or attention to spare for what is going on elsewhere.

“Come along, Blachland!” shouted another member of the scouting section, in a state of the wildest excitement. “Jump on your gee, man! We’ve got to go and turn back those horses, or we’ll lose every hoof of them.”

He addressed, looked round and took in the situation at a glance, and a thrilling one it was. A large troop of horses, which had been grazing outside, by some blundering on the part of the herders, had been headed off while being driven into the laager, and now were making straight in the direction of the enemy’s lines.

There was little organisation among the handful of mounted men who dashed forth to turn them back, but there was plenty of coolness, commonsense, and unflinching courage. Away streamed the panic-stricken horses, but soon at a hard hand gallop, and keeping well off them, the pursuers were forging up even with the leaders of the stampede.

“Hold to the right! More to the right!” cried Blachland, edging further in the direction indicated, even though it took him perilously near the swarming lines of the Matabele, whom he could now make out, pouring down in a black torrent to cut off himself and his comrades as well as the runaway steeds. But an intense wild exhilaration was upon him now, during this mad gallop: buoyant, devil-may-care, utterly scorning the slightest suspicion of fear. On, on! The sharp “crack – crack” of the rifles of the advancing savages, the “whigge” and hum of missiles overhead – in front – around – all was as nothing. Then he realised that they had headed the wild stampede, had turned it away from the enemy’s line. And then —

“Help, help! For God’s sake, don’t leave me!”

A rumble and a heavy fall immediately behind him. Even before he turned his head, he realised what had happened. As he did so he saw it all, the sprawling horse, the rider dragging himself up from the ground. He saw, too, that the fallen man and himself were the last on the outside of the chase, and that the others were receding fast, as, closing further and further in, they were turning the runaway horses back to the camp. He saw, too, that the Matabele had noted their brief success, and were rushing forward with redoubled energy and shouts of exultation to secure at any rate this one victim.

“For God’s sake, don’t leave me!” again yelled the unfortunate man, the terror of certain death in his voice, and stamped upon his countenance. And that countenance, in the quick resourceful glance, taking in every chance, every possibility, Hilary recognised as that of Justin Spence.

To return was almost certain death. The momentum of the speed of his own horse had carried him some distance onward, even while the agonised cry of the despairing man was sounding in his ears. Why should he help him, why throw his own life away for the sake of this cur who had so grossly abused his friendship, requiting it in such mean and despicable fashion? Anybody else – but this one – no, he would not.

Yet what was it that rose before his mental light in that crucial moment. Not the face of her for whom yonder man now about to meet a bloody death had betrayed him – but another and a purer vision swept his brain, and it was as the face of an angel from Heaven, for it was that of Lyn. Hilary Blachland triumphed.

Turning his steed with a mighty wrench, he rode straight back to the unhorsed trooper. From the ranks of the charging savages, now near enough to recognise him, there arose a mighty roar.

“Isipau! Ha! Isipau!”

“Quick, Spence! Get up behind me. Quick!”

The other needed no second bidding. As the horse with its double burden – either of these, singly, would have been a sufficient one for the poor brute, blown as he was – started once more, the foremost line of the savages was barely two hundred yards distant. Leaping, bounding, uttering their blood-curdling war-hiss, they reckoned their prey secure. The horse, weighted like that could never distance them. They would overtake it long before camp should be reached. Already they gripped their assegais.

“Sit tight, Spence, or you’ll pull us both to the ground,” said Hilary, with a sardonic suspicion that if the other saw a chance of throwing him off without risking a similar fate himself, he was quite mean enough to seize it. “Sit light too, if you can, and spare the horse as much as possible.”

Down into a hollow, and here, in the bed of a dry watercourse, the game steed stumbled heavily, but just saved his footing, and thereby the lives of his two riders. Bullets flew humming past now, but it seemed that the din of their pursuers was further behind, and indeed such was the case, for they arrived at the laager at the same time as the rescued troop horses.

“Good God! Blachland! You are a splendid fellow, and I owe you my life,” gasped the rescued man. “But what must you think of me?” he added shamefacedly.

“No more no less than I did before,” was the curt reply. “Get off now. You’re quite safe.”

“You ought to get the V.C. for this,” went on Spence.

But the other replied by coupling that ardently coveted decoration with a word of a condemnatory character. “I believe I’ve nearly killed my horse,” he added crustily.

There were those in the laager who witnessed this, and to whom the circumstances of the former acquaintanceship between the two men were known – but they tactfully refrained from making any comment. Percival West, however, was not so reticent.

“Why, Hilary, you splendid old chap, what have you done?” he cried, fairly dancing with delight. “Why didn’t you take me with you though – ”

“Oh go away, Percy. You are such a silly young ass,” was the very ill-humoured reception wherewith his transports were greeted by his kinsman.

The fight was over now and the enemy in retreat. Yet not routed, for he still hung about at a safe distance, in sufficient force to make things warm for any pursuing troop who should venture after him into the thicker bush, until a few deftly planted shells taught him that he had not yet achieved a safe distance. Then he drew off altogether.

Chapter Three.
A Flaming Throne

“Too late, boys, I guess the Southern Column got there first.” And the utterer of this remark lowered his field glasses and turned to the remainder of the little band of scouts with an air of profound conviction.

Away in the distance dense columns of smoke were rising heavenward. For some time this group of men had been eagerly intent upon watching the phenomenon through their glasses, and there was reason for their eagerness, for they were looking upon the goal of the expedition, and what should practically represent the close of the campaign – Bulawayo to wit, but – Bulawayo in flames. Who had fired it?

Considerable disappointment was felt and expressed. Their prompt march, their hard and victorious fighting had not brought them first to the goal. The Southern Column had distanced them and was there already. Such was the conclusion arrived at on all sides.

One man, however, had let go no opinion. Lying full length, his field glass adjusted upon a convenient rock, he had been steadily scanning the burning kraal in the distance during all the foregoing discussion, ignoring the latter as though he were alone on the ground. Now he spoke.

“There’s no Southern Column thereat all. No sign or trace of a camp.”

This dictum was received with dissent, even with a little derision.

“Who’s set it on fire then, Blachland?” said one of the exponents of the latter phase, with a wink at the others. “You’re not going to tell us that Lo Bengula’s set his own shop alight?”

“That’s about what’s occurred,” was the tranquil reply. “At least I think so.”

“It’s more’n likely Blachland’s right, boys,” said one of the scouts, speaking with a pronounced American accent. “He’s been there anyway.”

With renewed eagerness every glass was once more brought to bear. There appeared to be four great columns of smoke, and these, as they watched, were merging into one, of vast volume, and now bright jets of flame were discernible, as the fire licked its way along the thatch of the grass huts. Then something strange befel. They who watched saw a fresh outburst of smoke rise suddenly like an enormous dome from the centre of that already ascending, seeming to bear aloft on its summit the fragments of roofs, fences, débris of every description, and then they were conscious of a mighty roar and a vibrating shock, as the whole mass subsided, releasing the flames, which shot up anew.

“That’s an explosion!” cried some one excitedly. “Old Lo Ben’s not only burnt his nest, but blown it up into the bargain.”

For some time further they lay there watching the distant work of destruction. Then it was decided that their number should be divided, and while some returned to the column to report the result of their observations, the remainder should push on, and get as near Bulawayo as they possibly could – an undertaking of no slight risk, and calling for the exercise of unflagging caution, for there was no telling what bands of the enemy might be hovering about in quite sufficient strength to prove dangerous to a mere handful, though the opinion was that the bulk of the nation’s forces, with the King, had fled northward.

“Well, Percy? Tired of this kind of fun yet?” said Blachland as he and his young kinsman rode side by side, the two or three more also bent on this service advancing a little further on their right flank.

“Rather not. I wish it wasn’t going to be over quite so quickly.”

The other laughed. “I’m not so sure that it is,” he said.

“Eh? But we’ve got Bulawayo.”

“But we haven’t got Lo Ben yet. My impression is that the tougher part of this campaign is going to begin now. I may be wrong of course, but that’s my impression.”

“Oh, then that settles it,” answered Percival, not ironically, but in whole-hearted good faith, for his belief in, and admiration for his relative had reached the wildest pitch of enthusiasm. There was no greater authority in the world, in his estimation, on everything to do with the country they were in. He would have accepted Hilary’s opinion and acted upon it, even though it went clean contrary to those in command all put together, upon any subject to do with the work in hand, and that with the blindest confidence. And then, had he not himself witnessed Hilary’s gallant and daring deed, during the battle fought a couple of days ago?

His presence there with the scouts instead of as an ordinary trooper in the column, he owed to his relative, the latter having specially asked that he should be allowed to accompany him in such capacity. Blachland at that juncture, with his up-to-date knowledge of the country and the natives, was far too useful a man not to stretch a point for, and Percival West, although new to that part, was accustomed to sport and outdoor life at home, and brimful of pluck and energy, and now, in the short time he had been out, had thoroughly adapted himself to the life, and the vicissitudes of the campaign.

To the cause of their being up here together Hilary never alluded, but he noted with quiet satisfaction that the cure in the case of his young cousin seemed complete. Once the latter volunteered a statement to that effect.

“Ah, yes,” he had replied. “Nothing like a life of this sort for knocking any nonsense of that kind out of a fellow – ” mentally adding, somewhat grimly, “When he’s young.”

For Hilary Blachland himself did not find the busy and dangerous, and at times exciting, work of the campaign by any means such an unfailing panacea as he preached it to his younger relative. With it all there was plenty of time for thought, for retrospect. What an empty and useless thing he had made of life, and now the best part of it was all behind him – now that it had been brought home to him that there was a best part, now that it was too late. He was familiar with the axiom that those who sell themselves to the devil seldom obtain their price, and had often scoffed at it: for one thing because he did not believe in the devil at all. Yet now, looking back, he had come to recognise that, in substance at least, the axiom was a true one.

Yes, the better part of his life was now behind him, with its ideals, its possibilities, its finer impulses. Carrying his bitter introspect within the physical domain, had he not become rough and weather-beaten and lined and seamed and puckered? It did not strike him as odd that he should be indulging in such analysis at all – yet had he let anybody else, say any of his present comrades, into the fact that he was doing so, they would have deemed him mad, for if there was a man with that expedition who was envied by most of his said comrades as the embodiment of cool, sound daring, combined with astute judgment, of rare physical vigour and striking exterior, assuredly that man was Hilary Blachland. Yet as it was, he regarded himself with entire dissatisfaction and disgust, and the medium through which he so regarded himself was named Lyn Bayfield.

Her memory was ever before him; more, her presence. Asleep or awake, in the thick of the hardest toil and privation of the campaign, even in the midst of the discharge of his most important and responsible duties yet never to their detriment, the sweet, pure, lovely fairness of her face was there. He had come to worship it with a kind of superstitious adoration as though in truth the presence of it constituted a kind of guardian angel.

Was he, after all, in love with Lyn? He supposed that not a man or woman alive, knowing the symptoms, but would pronounce such to be the case, even as one woman had done. But he knew better, knew himself better. The association of anything so gross, so earthly, here, he recoiled from as from an outrage. It was the unalloyed adoration of a strange, a holy and a purifying influence.

In love with her? He, Hilary Blachland, at his time of life, and with his experience of life, in love! Why, the idea was preposterous, grotesque. He recalled the time he had spent beneath the same roof with her, and the daily association. It would be treasured, revered to the utmost limit of his life, as a sacred and an elevating period, but – as an influence, not a passion.

He had exchanged correspondence with Bayfield more than once since leaving, and had received two or three letters from Lyn – expressing – well, simply Lyn. He had answered them, and treasured them secretly as the most priceless of his possessions. From Bayfield he had learned that the disturbing element had refrained from further molestation, and had moreover, taken her own departure from the neighbourhood almost immediately, a piece of intelligence which afforded him indeed the liveliest gratification.

As they drew near to their objective, other kraals near and around Bulawayo itself, were seen to be on fire. But no sign of their recent occupants. For all trace remaining of the latter, the whole Matabele nation might have vanished into thin air.

“That’s extraordinary,” remarked Blachland, taking a long steady look through his glasses. “That’s Sybrandt’s house down there and they haven’t burnt it,” pointing out a collection of buildings about a mile from the site of the great kraal.

“So it is. Wonder if it means a trap though,” said another of the scouts. “By Jingo! There’s some one signalling up there. I’ll bet my bottom dollar it’s a white man by the look of him. And – there are two of ’em.”

Such was in fact the case – and the biggest surprise of all came off when a couple of white traders, well known to most of them, came forward to welcome them to the conquered and now razed capital. There these two had dwelt throughout the campaign, often in peril, but protected by the word of the King. Lo Bengula had burnt his capital and fled, taking with him the bulk of the nation. He, the dreaded and haughty potentate of the North, whose rule had been synonymous with a terror and a scourge, had gone down before a mere handful of whites, he, the dusky barbarian, the cruel despot, according to popular report revelling in bloodshed and suffering, had taken his revenge. He had protected these two white men alone in his power – had left them, safe and sound in person, unharmed even in their possessions, to welcome the invading conquerors, their countrymen, to the blazing ruins of his once proud home. Such the revenge of this savage.

The Southern Column did not arrive till some days after the first occupation of Bulawayo, and some little time elapsed, resting and waiting for necessary supplies, before the new expedition should start northward, to effect if possible, the capture of the fugitive King. Several up-country going men were here foregathered.

“I say, Blachland,” said old Pemberton, with a jerk of the thumb to the southward, “We didn’t reckon to meet again like this last time when we broke camp yonder on the Matya’mhlope, and old Lo Ben fired you out of the country? Eh?”

“Not much, did we? You going on this new trot, Sybrandt?”

“I believe so. What do you think about this part of the world, West?”

“Here, let’s have another tot all round,” interrupted Pemberton who, by the way, had had just as many as were good for him. “You ain’t going to nobble Lo Ben, Sybrandt, so don’t you think it.”

“Who says so, Pemberton?”

“I say so. Didn’t I say Blachland ’ud never get to Umzilikazi’s grave? Didn’t I? Well, he never did.”

Possibly because the old trader was too far on in his cups the quizzical glance which passed between Blachland and Sybrandt – who was in the know – at this allusion, went unnoticed. Pemberton continued, albeit rather thickly:

“Didn’t I say he’d never get there? Didn’t I? Well, I say the same now. You’ll never get there. You’ll never nobble Lo Ben. See if I ain’t right.”