Kitabı oku: «The White Hand and the Black: A Story of the Natal Rising», sayfa 14
Chapter Twenty Six.
Of a Home-Coming
The kraal of the chief, Ndabakosi, was in a state of somewhat unusual excitement. Men were passing from hut to hut, but there were few women to be seen. The blue smoke reeks rose to bluer sky, and the odour of kine was in the air. Around, the veldt, dotted with feathery mimosa, lay shimmering in the afternoon heat.
The kraal was a fairly large one, but somewhat of a strain must have been put upon its capacity for accommodation, for a considerable number of people seemed to be gathered here – not all together, for they kept continually passing and re-passing from hut to hut, and hardly ever in the same groups. Quite a number of them too, carried assegais, and, not a few, shields. Clearly something was in the wind.
The horseman, pacing along the dusty track of road, was not in a good humour. We regret to have to record that more than once he swore – swore right heartily too. Nothing is more conducive to such behaviour than the discovery, in the course of a hot and tedious journey, that one’s mount has gone lame. This one had just made such a discovery – wherefore – he swore.
Dismounting, he looked again at the defaulting hoof, felt the pastern. Seen thus, he was a tall, broad shouldered young fellow, light-haired, blue-eyed, straight as a dart. He was puzzled. There was nothing to account for this sudden lameness. The steed was not of the best, but it was the best he could hire when he got off the train at Telani, at an early hour that morning, in his impatience to get home. And now it was out of the question that he should reach home that night. The horse was not very lame, certainly; but it was likely to go lamer still with every mile or so.
“It’s just possible I might borrow a horse at old Ndabakosi’s place,” he said to himself, “and that can’t be more than a mile further on. Yes there it is,” as, topping a rise, he could discern a ring of domed huts crowning a kopje a little way off the road in front. “These nigger gees are beastly screws as a rule, but ‘needs must, etc.,’ and it may get me as far as Kwabulazi to-night at any rate. He’s a decent old chap is Ndabakosi, and a long cool pull of tywala won’t come in badly just now. Gee up, you brute!”
Hyland Thornhill’s visions of home-coming were pleasant in spite of the above-detailed contretemps. It would be no end jolly to see the old man again – he and his father had always been more like chums than anything else, and the confidence between them was perfect. And little Edala – she was wrong-headed on certain points, but still – what times they would have. And the strange visitor? He wondered what she would be like. Well, the more the merrier – anyway, he was going to have a ripping time of it now he had broken loose at last. He had put up a surprise visit on them, and it would all be great fun.
But between himself and Sipazi there lay – Ndabakosi’s kraal.
The latter, for a moment had been unwontedly lively; then it was as dead. When Hyland Thornhill rode up to it, two ringed men stood watching his approach with listless curiosity.
“Saku bona ’madoda!” he cried. “And the chief – how is he?”
They returned his greeting.
The chief was asleep, they said. In fact he was getting old, and was not very well.
“Au! That is bad news,” returned Hyland. “But – we are old friends. I would like to look upon his face once more. Tell him Ugwala is here,” giving his native nickname.
The two, whose faces were strange to him, looked at each other. Then one went in the direction of the chief’s hut, while the other went in another direction. The while Hyland had not dismounted. Presently the first returned.
The chief was awake, he said, and would see Ugwala presently. Meanwhile would he not dismount?
But a very strange kind of instinct had come over Hyland Thornhill, warning him to do nothing of the kind. It happened that as he sat in the saddle waiting, he had happened to see, by a side glance, the hut which the other man had entered. The doorway, for one brief moment, had been crowded with faces, whose expression there was no mistaking. His glance had also caught the gleam of assegais. All the rumours he had heard on the way down and, especially when he had got off the train at Telani, where in fact he had been seriously warned against taking this journey all alone – came back to him. He remembered, too, that many of the more reliable chiefs were reported to be disaffected.
“I will not wait, then,” he answered. “I must reach Kwabulazi to-night. Hlala-gahle.”
The other grunted a sullen reply. Hyland, as he pushed his lame horse along, did not feel at all easy in his mind. He would have felt less so still had he seen what happened a few minutes afterwards. Hardly was he out of sight of the kraal than a number of armed savages issued from it, racing over the veldt at an angle of forty-five divergent from the direction he was taking. But they knew their own plan. They knew moreover that he was riding a lame horse. And they never intended he should reach Kwabulazi that night – or ever.
As he held on his way his uneasiness took a new turn, and that on behalf of his father and sister. If things were going from bad to worse Sipazi was a lonely place. Surely his father would know better than to remain on there. Perhaps they were already in laager – he had heard that in some parts the farmers were going into laager – and again and again he cursed his luckless mount which had had the unfortunate foolishness to go dead lame just as he wanted him to put his best foot foremost.
Stung by these obtruding apprehensions, Hyland lashed his steed savagely. It sprang forward into a half-hearted canter, and again he lashed it. In front rose a long acclivity, the straight road ribanded out in red dust, in contrast to the green of the veldt. Then began a race – all unconsciously on the part of one competitor, but not so on that of others. Threescore armed savages were straining every muscle to gain the top of that acclivity the first, advancing stealthily through the mimosa bushes and long grass.
Up this the sorry horse cantered half heartedly. But Hyland Thornhill was in a bad temper now, a condition of mind begotten of growing anxiety. What was a mere quadruped to him then? And again the raw-hide lash curled round the animal’s ribs. It gave a feeble kick or two, but started off at a fairly respectable pace.
“Get on, you brute!” he growled savagely.
It may grieve the moralist, but it is hard fact that that outburst of bad temper saved the rider’s life. For by just the time saved by the enforced acceleration of the horse’s pace did he gain the top of the rise first and – became alive to what he had, by such a shave, escaped. The crawling forms were not a hundred yards distant on his right when he sighted them, and on realising that they were discovered, they bounded forward with a roar. But it was downhill work now, and Hyland sent his steed along at its best pace, soon leaving his enemies behind.
“Near thing that, damn it!” he muttered grimly, turning in his saddle to see if he was being pursued.
He was. Dark forms, strung out like a pack of hounds, were sprinting along the road in his rear. He had got a good start, but what if this confounded screw should stumble and fall? Then – good night! And Kwabulazi was not exactly near, either. He had a good, business-like revolver slung round him, concealed by his coat; but what was that against such odds? It would mean selling his life at the price of four or five of theirs, and keeping the last bullet for himself.
He had served in Matabeleland as well as in the Dutch war. He was hardened and resourceful, but among the things he had learned in the former campaign was the accepted fact that it did not do to fall into the power of hostile savages, helpless and unarmed.
But no more did he see of his pursuers, and he felt almost affectionately disposed towards his defaulting mount, as he topped the last neck, and looked down upon Kwabulazi.
What was this? The place was all alive with people. The tents of several waggons showed up white in the evening glow, and as he drew nearer he could see a number of men digging for all they were worth. They were making entrenchments. The place had gone into laager, then. His father and sister would be there, and safe. After his own experience he was filled with unutterable relief and thankfulness as he realised this.
Several of the surrounding farmers had gathered here with their families for mutual defence, and an outlying storekeeper or two, and all hands were turning to with a will to bank up an adequate breastwork. Within this the waggons, together with boxes and bales, should form an inner line of defence. There was a lull in the work as Hyland rode up.
“Dashed if it isn’t young Thornhill!” said one – an old man with a bushy grizzled beard.
“Dashed if it isn’t old Seth Curtis,” responded Hyland, coolly.
“Well that’s a damned respectful way to talk to a man old enough to be your father,” growled the other.
“Old enough to be, but thank God he isn’t. I’m quite content with the one I’ve got,” answered Hyland shortly. He was not inclined to be cordial towards the speaker, or towards anyone there. He resented the attitude the neighbours had taken up towards his father, and didn’t care how much they knew it. “Where is he, by the way?”
There was no answer. A sort of blankness came over the group which had gathered. Each looked at the other. Hyland felt his face growing white and cold. His fists instinctively clenched.
“Can’t some idiot answer?” he snarled savagely, glaring at the blank faces, with a murderous longing to run ‘amok’ and dash his fists in to them all. Then a girl’s voice sounded forth clear and full.
“Why – it’s Hyland.”
“Edala – where is he?” was the first question in the midst of a hurried embrace. “Not killed?”
“No – not that.”
“What then? Wounded?”
“No. But – they’ve got him.”
“Good God!”
“Come with me and I’ll tell you all about it quietly,” and she led him to Elvesdon’s house where she and Evelyn had taken up their quarters. The latter’s presence he hardly noticed as he acknowledged their introduction mechanically. Then Edala gave him all particulars of the semi-tragic termination to Tongwana’s war-dance.
“Why the people have known him all their lives,” said Hyland. “What can be their object? I could understand if they had killed him – them – but to keep them prisoners – Oh Lord! Edala, can nothing be done to rescue them? We can’t sit down and let things slide.”
And he began to pace about the room. Edala shook her head, dejectedly.
“Mr Prior has been doing what he can. He has sent out two of his native detectives to try and find out where they are, and bribe the chiefs to release them. He does not believe that Tongwana had any hand in it. Nteseni might have, or Babatyana. He, by the way, has broken out, and there are rumours that old Zavula has been murdered by him.”
“Well, it’s quite likely. Yet that paying dodge is about the only chance at present that I can see,” said Hyland, gloomily. “We must first find out where they are, and if they’re alive I’ll get ’em out, or go under myself – even if I have to do it alone, for I don’t suppose any of these white livered curs round here would risk their skins to lend me a hand. They’re first-rate at snapping at a man’s heels though,” he ended savagely.
Edala knew to what he was referring, and secretly writhed. The lash was stinging her too.
“Hy, darling – it’s a perfect godsend that you have come. Oh, we must do something,” she said, her eyes filling. Edala the light-hearted, the careless, the somewhat hard – had softened marvellously since that experience.
Then Prior came in, and Hyland greeted him cordially, for they had been great friends; in fact the magistrate’s clerk was one of the very few in the neighbourhood with whom he would exchange much more than a word, for the reasons given above. Now he gave him his experiences at Ndabakosi’s kraal, and subsequently.
“If I’d got off that horse I should have been a dead man,” he concluded. “So I should be if I hadn’t got my shirt out, and quilted that poor lame old crock rather sinfully. Well, you see – you can trust none of these chaps after all. If there’s one nigger in all Natal I should have sworn was straight it’s old Ndabakosi.”
So they talked on. Prior, by reason of his official position, and as the deputy of his absent chief, found himself in a sort of post of command – the detachment of Mounted Police, too, being under his orders, and it looked as if Hyland Thornhill by reason of a masterful force of will was going to share it with him, in the active line at any rate, if they came to blows with the rebels. Than this Prior asked nothing better and said so with unfeigned satisfaction.
We last saw Edala and her companion poised on the dizzy altitude of what the former called her ‘aerial throne,’ surrounded by peril. Moreover they had just been discovered. Manamandhla had seen them, as to that there could be no doubt. Every moment they had sat there expecting the return of those they had heard above – then death; and every such moment was bitter with the bitterness of death. Yet, when they climbed up nearly an hour later and stood, cramped and shivering, the summit of Sipazi was clear. Sorely was Edala puzzled. Clearly the Zulu had not betrayed their presence. What strange unfathomable motive could he have had in sparing their lives – hers especially, thought Edala, whose father had deliberately attempted to take his? Yet he had done so.
And in the result Prior was astounded to see at about mid-day, instead of his chief returning – for he had taken for granted the latter was spending the night at Thornhill’s – two tired and haggard-eyed girls walking up to the place; and more astounded still when he recognised their identity, and learned the strange doings they had to tell of.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
The Defence of Kwabulazi
All round the earthwork men were posted, many for the air was keen and biting. The stars, not yet faded, shone frostily, but there was no mist; and for this they were thankful. Each man had a gun of some sort, from an up-to-date Mauser or Lee-Metford, down to a double-barrelled shot-gun.
The first dull red streaks had begun to appear in the eastern sky, and at the sight a thrill of excitement ran along the circle, for such is almost invariably the time chosen by the wily savage for making his murderous rush. These were all prepared to give him a most unhealthy reception.
“Don’t light that silly pipe, Jenkins,” growled Hyland to his next door neighbour. “D’you hear? What are you doing, man? D’you think we want ’em to know we’re anxiously waiting to welcome them?”
The man addressed snarled.
“Who the ’ell are you?” he grunted. “I’m not taking orders from anyone.” Still he hardly dared disobey. Hyland Thornhill had a reputation for being a terror with his fists, and he was as strong as an elephant.
“I’ll knock it out of your silly jaws if you attempt to light it,” was the uncompromising answer. “Hallo!” as he became aware of another presence just behind him. “What are you doing here, Edala? Go in at once.”
“I’m going to take a hand in this game,” she answered, showing her revolver – her brother had impounded her gun, having none of his own.
“Not if I know it. Clear back in again at once, d’you hear.” Then in a tender undertone, “Be sensible, little girl. Go inside, and keep all those women from yelling themselves to death with funk directly. You can do it.”
She obeyed, with no further demur.
“‘The Lord is King,’” quoted with a sneer, the man just taken to task, to his neighbour on the other side. “But it seems to me that old Thornhill’s pup is king over Him.”
“Meaning yourself?”
“Oh, you’re so damn funny, Bridson. You’ll bust yourself if you don’t watch it,” rejoined the other resentfully.
Hyland, the while, was occupying himself by drawing a cross-nick with a pocket-knife on the apex of each of his Lee-Metford bullets. The gun was a rifle and smooth bore, and with a heavy charge of Treble A in the shot barrel, was calculated, as he put it, to stop the devil himself at no distance; anyhow many black devils would probably undergo the experiment before the day was an hour older. He had just finished on the last bullet when something caused him to throw up his head, rigid and motionless, listening intently. He had caught the faintest possible suspicion of that unique sound – the quiver of assegai hafts.
“Pass the word round ‘Stand by’,” he whispered to each of his neighbours. One ignored it – he recently rated, to wit. Who the devil was young Thornhill, to come here skippering the whole ship? he wanted to know – to himself.
Hyland was sighting his piece. In the fast lightening dawn his keen vision had detected a tongue of dark figures flitting stealthily out of the mimosa bushes some couple of hundred yards away – and striking out a line which should bring them round to the back of the entrenchment. This was the encircling manoeuvre, he decided. And then he let go.
But the detonation, and the wild yell of more than one stricken savage – for he had fired into them bunched up – was drowned by an appalling roar, as a dense mass sprang up among the low bushes on that front, and, waving shield and assegai, charged straight for the earthwork.
“Aim low – aim low,” was each man’s injunction to his neighbour as the firearms crashed: in the semi-light making a circle of jetting flame. With effect too, for the front rows went down like mown corn.
“Ho-ho-ho! Haw-haw! Hooray!” were the varying forms of hoarse guffaw that went up, and the joke was this. Those immediately behind the fallen ones, pressed on over the bodies of the latter, intending to rush the earthwork before the defenders should have time to reload. But they, too, went down in sheaves, and that before another shot had been fired. They had got into an entanglement of barbed wire, which had been stealthily and quickly fixed round the defences the night before, but after dark, lest the watchful eyes of scouts should perceive it and so prepare their countrymen, for this surprise. And now the surprise was complete.
“Give it ’em again!” shouted Hyland, setting the example. This time the fire was not directed upon those who had fallen among the wire entanglement, but on those immediately behind them. The effect was awful. The whole roaring, struggling mass fell back upon itself – then, dropping to the ground, glided away like snakes among the long grass, and many were picked off while doing so. Then, those especially who had shot-guns, played upon those who were trying to extricate themselves from the wires. They could not take prisoners, and they had their families to defend. The odds were tremendous against them: it was necessary to read the enemy a severe lesson, to inflict upon him a stunning loss. Hyland Thornhill for one, the probable fate of his father clouding his brain as with lurid flame, raked the struggling bodies again and again with charges of heavy buckshot. The carnage was ghastly, sickening, but – necessary. The alternative was the massacre of themselves and of their women and children.
The latter had been stowed within the Court house for safety, and now with the lull in the attack the frightened screeches of some of the former, and the unanimous howling of most of the latter were dismally audible. Edala had carried out her brother’s injunction and was trying to reassure and pacify them. Evelyn too was ably seconding her, and soon with some effect. The sight of these two, calm and unconcerned, carried immense weight.
“What’s that you’re saying, Prior?” said Hyland Thornhill, turning his head, for he had not moved from his post. “Not come on again? Won’t they? You’ll see. I’m only wondering what devil’s move they’re up to this time. They’re too many, and we’re too few for them to give up in any such hurry. Pity that infernal wire has been cut or we’d soon have them between two stools.”
This was in allusion to the telegraph, which early in the previous afternoon had been discovered to be not working. The magistrate’s clerk, and some of the older farmers had been holding a hurried council of war.
“Let’s get in one of these shamming cusses and question him,” went on Hyland. “He’s sure to be, but it’ll help pass time. Hey – you!” he called out in the vernacular. “You with the scratched toes. Get up and come over here at once, or I’ll blow twenty holes into your carcase with a very heavy charge of shot. You know me. I’m Ugwala.”
The name was magical. The man addressed, a sturdy muscular fellow who had been shamming death, raised his head and asked to be reassured on the word of Ugwala that his life should be spared. This was done, and he clambered over the earthwork.
“Whose people are these?” began Hyland, who had risen and joined the rest. “Those of Ndabakosi?”
“All people, Nkose,” was the reply. “Some of Babatyana, some of Nteseni, some from over the river.”
“Do they expect to take this place?”
“Au Nkose! They knew not that Ugwala had come into it,” answered the man, with a somewhat whimsical smile, the inference being intended that had they known of his presence they would not have attempted such a forlorn hope.
“Are you from beyond the river?”
“E-hé, Nkose.”
“Who are leading these?”
The man looked at him, and shook his head. But he made no reply. Hyland repeated the question.
“I cannot betray my chiefs,” was the answer.
“Oh then you’ll have your brains blown out,” came the savage rejoinder. But it was not uttered by Hyland. It came from the man whom he had prevented from lighting a pipe. He had drawn a revolver and was pointing it right into the face of the Zulu. But in a moment Hyland’s arm flew up, and the pistol, jerked from the other’s grasp, spun away into the air.
“I have the promise of Ugwala,” said the savage, calmly, showing no sign whatever of trepidation.
“That’s quite right,” said Prior emphatically. “Damn it. The fellow’s quite right not to give away his chiefs. Hallo – what’s up now? Here, sergeant, shove him into the lock-up with leg-irons on. We can’t have him escaping just now, anyway.”
All possibility of any pursuance of the quarrel on the part of the aggrieved Jenkins was at an end – for the present at any rate. All hands saw that which told that their work was by no means done. They would need all their coolness and energy for the next half hour – after that, things wouldn’t much matter either way. The horses were picketed inside, and outside the defences a large enclosure had been hastily constructed of thorn bushes, and into this the trek oxen were driven at night, making quite a respectable herd. Three sides of this kraal were well covered by the fire of the defenders, but the fourth, of course, was not. Losing no time after their first repulse the assailants had, with incredible rapidity, breached this fence and were driving out the whole herd. But not as spoil – no not yet. For them they had another purpose, and grasping its import the defenders realised what new peril threatened.
Away up the valley the oxen had been driven by a number told off for the purpose, and now they were returning. By this time the animals were becoming uneasy and excited – tossing their heads and throwing up their tails, and bellowing wildly as they ran.
“Here, Prior. Is there any paraffin about, or kerosene?” asked Hyland eagerly. “Because I have an idea. Only – sharp’s the word.”
“Yes. Come along.”
They went into the store and in a second Hyland had got off the head of a paraffin tin. There were some old sacks in the corner. Seizing one of these he quickly deluged it with the liquid. He rolled his eyes around impatiently.
“A pole – Prior, damn it! I must have a pole of some sort.”
“Here you are,” dragging one out from under some rubbish. It was an old pole which had been used for hoisting a flag on occasions of national festivity. Hyland seized a chopper, and having split the thinner end of the pole, inserted the paraffin-soaked sacking in such wise that it should be held gripped within the cleft. Then they went out.
“Now you fellows,” he cried. “They’re going to drive the oxen bang over us and rush us under cover of them, and I’m going to split the herd. Cover me well when I skip back, but don’t shoot wild.”
A hurried murmur of applause. It was a feat whose daring was about equalled by the quickness of resource which had devised the plan.
The oxen were coming on now at a canter, about a hundred all told. The impi had thrown out ‘horns’ so that the terrified animals, beset by a leaping, yelling crowd on either side, had no option other than to rush blindly ahead.
Hyland Thornhill leaped over the breastwork, armed with his impromptu torch. Carefully avoiding the wires, he advanced about fifty yards and lighted it. The oxen were about twice that distance from him – rendered frantic by the yells and whistling of the savages urging them on behind. The flame roared up the soaked sacking, and as he waved this about, on a level with the eyes of the animals, Hyland fired off a series of appalling yells worthy of the savages themselves. Would his plan succeed? Those watching it seemed turned to stone. The oxen were almost upon him – they could not stop. Then, as he charged them with the flaming ball, they were suddenly seen to split off into two sections, and in wild mad career to dash through those who would have turned them back, galloping away into distance. Almost before the enemy, coming on behind, could take in this feat its daring perpetrator was back within the defences again. A ringing cheer broke forth. It was answered from the other side.
Usútu! ’Sútu!
The roar of the terrible black wave as it rolled forward. It was full daylight now, and the tossing shields, and broad blades gripped in each right hand were clearly discernible. The war-shout of the late King told that these were largely made up of those from beyond the river. The defenders had to meet the dreaded Zulu charge.
Would it never be turned? The guns of the defenders grew hot, with the rapidity of the fire. Assegais came whizzing over the breastwork – one, striking a man between the shoulders as he lay at his post, literally pinned him to the earth – but no one had time to notice this. That awful raking of the front ranks, combined with a wholesome dread of the barbed wire, whose disastrous effects they had witnessed, had brought the savages to a halt. Assegais, however were hurled in showers, killing another man and wounding several. For a moment the fate of the day hung by a hair, but the terrible incessant fire, and that from guns that seemed to need no reloading, was too much. The line wavered, then dropping to the ground, the assailants crawled away among the grass and bushes as before.
A sigh of relief that was almost a murmur, escaped the defenders. Grim, haggard-eyed, they looked furtively at each other, and each, in the face of his fellow, saw the reflection of his own. Each and all had been within the Valley of the Shadow. It had seemed not within their power to turn that last charge, but – they had done it. An odd shot or two was fired at long range after the retreating army, and then men found speech, but even then that speech was apt to be a little unsteady.
“I say, Prior!” cried one devil-may-care fellow, who had borne a tiger’s share in the fight. “How about ‘The Governor of North Carolina’? We must drink Thornhill’s health. He saved this blooming camp.”
“Ja-ja, he did,” was the response on all sides.
“Oh damn all that for bosh!” was the half savage, half weary, comment on the part of him named.
There was a laugh – a somewhat nervous laugh – the effect of the strain.
“All right,” said Prior. “Elvesdon has some stuff, but we mustn’t clean him out of it all, you know. Ugh! These dead devils look rather disgusting,” for he was not used to the sight of bloodshed. “We must keep the women from seeing them.”
“Master,” said a timid voice, on the outskirts of the crowd. “I make good dinner now for all gentlemen?”
There was a roar of laughter and a cheer. The voice had proceeded from Ramasam, Thornhill’s Indian cook, who had spent the time of the fight in the kitchen of Elvesdon’s house, green with scare.
“Well done, Ramsammy. So you shall,” cried Prior.
“Zulu nigger all run away now, masters?” queried the Indian. Whereat the roar redoubled – the point of the joke being that the speaker was a very black specimen of a Madrassi, some shades darker than the darkest of those he had defined as “Zulu nigger.”
