Kitabı oku: «The White Hand and the Black: A Story of the Natal Rising», sayfa 15
Chapter Twenty Eight.
“Can the ‘Ethiopian’ Chance his Skin?”
“Well, we’ve managed to run our necks into a nice tight noose, Thornhill,” was Elvesdon’s first remark as he realised that they were virtually prisoners in the hands of insurrectionary savages, which meant that their position would grow more and more dangerous every day.
“The next thing is to get them out of it,” rejoined Thornhill fighting his pipe, and puffing away calmly as he walked.
“What about the ladies – will they be safe?”
“Oh yes. If they’d wanted them they’d have brought them along with us.”
“Sure?”
“Dead cert.”
Elvesdon felt immeasurably relieved. Now, more than ever; now that he was separated from her; might never even see her again; he realised what Edala had become to him. She had fascinated him from the very first, and of late had become part of his life. But it would not do to give way to depression. If Thornhill, who knew these people better than he did, had no anxiety about his daughter’s ultimate safety, why surely he himself need have none.
“You see, this hasn’t come to anything as yet,” went on Thornhill, “whatever it’s going to do. Now they know that to interfere with white women in any way would be to bring about a general bust-up, which as yet, they’re probably not ready for. But likely enough they’ve got wind that there’s an idea of arresting some of the chiefs, and are holding us as sort of hostages. Have you any notion that there’s any such idea on foot?”
“I’ve heard nothing about it officially or in any other capacity. But if such a programme is on the boards we shall get our throats cut if it’s carried out. Is that the meaning?”
The other nodded.
“Well Parry,” went on Elvesdon, cheerfully, “you wanted to see the war-dance but you didn’t bargain for this, eh? I suppose you’ve read about this sort of situation too.”
“Often, sir. But people always manage somehow to get out of it I notice.”
“And so shall we.”
Cheered by the optimistic demeanour of his official superior, and the no less calm one of his other companion in adversity the young Police trooper began to enjoy the situation. What would his people at home say if they could see him now, a prisoner in the hands of armed savages?
It was no end exciting; for of course they would manage to escape. As he had said, people always did – in books. Poor boy!
Those who custodied them, even as those forming the escort for the two girls, were not communicative. To the question as to where was Tongwana the reply was short. The chief had gone away. To that as to where they were bound for it was shorter still. They would see.
It was dark when they reached a large kraal, situated in a wide, bushy valley. The country as they journeyed had become more and more wild and broken. Thornhill declared they couldn’t be far from the Tugela Valley, which seemed to point to an intention on the part of their custodians to rush them over the Zulu border, for the sake of better concealment.
Their arrival seemed to provoke no curiosity, or, at best a languid one; certainly there were not many about to evince it. Thornhill, though not seeming to do so, was keeping a bright look-out. Two or three faces he thought he knew, but the bulk were those of strangers. They were taken to a large hut in the centre of the kraal, and ordered to enter. But when Parry would have followed the other two in he was promptly and roughly stopped. It was in vain that both Thornhill and Elvesdon pleaded that he might not be separated from them. He was only a boy, they represented, and could not talk with their tongue. Let him remain with those who could. One stalwart scoundrel who appeared to be in a position of some authority, bent down and shook a bright, wicked looking blade within the low doorway.
“Keep quiet, Abelungu! You are not masters here. If you come forth without orders, that is death.”
“Abelungu!” “White men!” That was a pretty insolent sort of way to address a Government official, together with a man of Thornhill’s standing. It bore its full significance too. But they were helpless. Two men unarmed against a large armed force! Of course they were helpless.
“Poor boy,” said Elvesdon as they were left alone. “I’m afraid he won’t find it so exciting now.”
“In a way I’m glad we’re alone together for a time at any rate,” was the answer. “We can talk things over more freely. And we’ll not have to do that too loud either, for there’s a good sprinkling of these chaps who know English – though they won’t let go that they do – thanks to the mischievous idiots who have gone in for educating them.”
“If we come through this all right, I’ll put in all the good word I can to get that youngster on in the force,” said Elvesdon. “He showed pluck and readiness to-day, never lost his head for a single moment.”
“More he did. Now I wonder who wrote you that letter.”
“Oh don’t refer to the beastly thing, Thornhill. If only I had opened it at first – as I ought to have done. No – it won’t bear thinking about. Wait – I’ll burn it, in case it might compromise the writer, if the worst comes to the worst.”
He twisted the letter into a screw and set it alight, kindling his pipe with it. Anyone might come in at any moment, and such a proceeding would, in that event, look less suspicious.
Someone did come in, but it was rather a welcome entry, for it was that of a couple of women, bearing food; roasted mealies and some grilled beef, which latter, however, neither looked nor smelt very tempting.
“What’s this? Water?” said Elvesdon, investigating the contents of a bowl. “The stingy swabs might have sent us some tywala while they were about it.”
Putting it to the women, who were kindling a fire in the round hollow in the middle of the floor, one of them replied that beer was scarce. There were so many men in the kraal – she supposed they must have drunk it all. Elvesdon put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a shilling.
“See if you can find some,” he said. “Here. This is for you – for the two of you. You can halve it.”
But the recipient, carefully placing the coin in her bag, replied stolidly that she could not halve a gift. Elvesdon laughed and found a similar coin for the other. It proved, however, a bad investment, for no tywala was forthcoming.
“This looks more cheerful,” he went on, when they were alone again, and were discussing the food. “It was beastly cold, too, without a fire. Wonder where they’ve put the young ’un. It rather handicaps us being apart from him in case we saw a chance of doing a bunk, for of course we can’t leave him behind.”
“No, we can’t, but we shall get no such chance just yet. Hear that.”
All round them was the sound of voices, deep voices. Some were right against the hut which was their prison. A strong odour of roast told that their custodians were enjoying themselves in the most enjoyable way known to savages – feasting, to wit. Once Elvesdon opened the door to look forth. In a moment two savages, armed with assegais, sprang before the entrance and ordered them to keep it shut.
“I’ve a notion,” said Thornhill, “that this is Nteseni’s ‘great’ place, and if so we’ve fallen into bad hands.”
“That bears out what Teliso used to say. He always maintained that Ntesini was a bad egg.”
“M-yes. I wonder where the said Teliso is now. You know I hinted to you that he might require a little watching himself.”
“He’s been away a precious long time. By the way I wonder if he wrote that letter. He could talk some English but I don’t know about his ability to write any. He may have been murdered for all we know.”
“He may, or – he may not.”
Elvesdon was impressed. A qualm of misgiving came over him that he might have trusted Teliso too much. What, by the way, if he were at the bottom of their seizure? He might be. There was no trusting anyone. Decidedly there was something suspicious about the length of time Teliso had been away on his mission, and that without sending in any communication whatever.
Poor Teliso! His cracked and whitened bones lying in the lonely ravine beneath the krantz, picked clean by the tiger-wolves and jackals, could not now rise up under the stars to testify whether or not Nteseni was – as Elvesdon had put it – “a bad egg.”
The next morning to their intense relief they were allowed some measure of liberty. They could stroll about outside the kraal, for instance, but even then only in the open, and with groups of armed men constantly on their steps. If there was any considerable body gathered at the kraal those composing it must assuredly have kept within the huts; possibly sleeping off the heaviness of the feast the night before. Decidedly it was strange to these two, accustomed as they were when visiting or passing such places to meet with deference at every turn – now to find themselves actually obliged to obey orders from those over whom one of them at any rate had partially ruled. But the ruled now aspired to be the ruling, and, certainly, into far as they themselves were concerned, had succeeded.
They were threading their way among the huts when, from one of them there emerged suddenly a man – a black man – but not blacker than his coat, nor very much blacker than his dingy tie that had once been white. He had crawled through the low doorway, and stood upright before he was aware of their presence. The instant he became aware of it he brought his hand to his mouth with an ejaculation of amazement and dismay, and stood staring, surprised for the moment out of all self-possession. Both looked at him – Elvesdon especially – with an expression of aversion and contempt.
“So!” was all that Elvesdon said.
It seemed difficult to tell on which side the surprise felt was the greatest. In the fat, greasy features both the white men recognised the Rev. Job Magwegwe, the Ethiopian preacher.
“You not get my letter, sir?” said the latter, hurriedly, eagerly.
“Your letter? Oh, I see,” replied Elvesdon.
“I warned you sir; you not take my warning. It not my fault you here, sir.”
“It’s damned well your fault there’s a ‘here’ for us to be in, and the fault of those who sent you, you scoundrel,” returned Elvesdon bitterly, and perhaps a little unjustly. For again the self-reproach in not having taken the warning in time, came uppermost, and here was some one to vent it on.
“I help you sir – now if I can,” – said the Fingo, earnestly. “But – it not easy and – ”
“Whau! Jobo!” cried a great voice as two hulking Zulus came up. “Here is much white men’s talk – too much. Get back to thy preaching – that is more in thy line. Whau!”
They were Zulus from beyond the river, and cared nothing for missionaries and their methods – let alone for a greasy humbug of an inferior black man. The Rev. Job Magwegwe slunk away before their great domineering voices and manner. And the two white men felt immeasurably more drawn to these.
“So that’s the chap who sent the letter!” remarked Elvesdon. “He’s an infernal rascal all the same. ‘Help’! Fat lot of help he’ll give us – even if he could.”
“Don’t you be too cock-sure about that, Elvesdon. I’ve known queerer things in my time than even that. It’s astonishing how things can work round – not when – but where you least expect them. It’s something to know we have a friend among the enemy let me tell you. He might be of use to us yet.”
“Well if he is I’ll forgive him – or try to. These swine, though, are responsible for nearly all the mischief. I’d hang the whole ‘Ethiopian Church’ if I had despotic power, or, at any rate, give its infernal mischievous emissaries a hundred apiece with the cat and then disband the whole rotten organisation. But, Thornhill. Do you think this schelm really would help us if he could?”
“I sort of do. You see when these chaps get partly civilised, although it deteriorates them as savages it has often the effect of making them all unconsciously cling to the white man. Now this one is a Fingo, and his traditions would make all that way. He no more wants to set up a universal black Power than you or I do; he knows where he, and all his like, would come in under it. At present he’s paid to preach it but I’m perfectly certain he no more believes it possible than you or I do either. So let’s make use of him if we can; though I doubt if we can, for they don’t seem to trust him overmuch here from what we’ve just seen.”
“‘Can the Ethopian change his skin?’” quoted Elvesdon, sourly.
The day wore on. Both men – Elvesdon, especially, being the younger – were wistfully trying to glean from the talk they could overhear, what was going on outside. They tried questioning those around them but without result. They asked too, about their fellow prisoner, the young Police trooper, who had been so arbitrarily separated from them; but beyond the fact that no harm had been done him, they could get no further. The while both were sizing up every chance for effecting an escape, but even had such offered it was out of the question they should have availed themselves of it at the price of abandoning a fellow-countryman – a fellow-countryman, too, who was doubly helpless, in that, being a new comer, he was entirely unversed in the language and ways of those who held him in durance.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
A Devil-Deed
The third day of their captivity had dawned, and waned. It seemed that those around had grown rather more used to them, for they would chat at times, while dexterously evading any attempts to extract news. But it struck them that there was an atmosphere of tension, of expectation, as though events were expected on the outside. Moreover the number of armed men about the kraal seemed to have diminished by eight-tenths.
With the chief, Nteseni, they could get no speech, although they repeatedly asked to see him. Moreover, did either or both of them catch sight of a face they knew, that face was promptly turned away, and the owner of it never risked the chance of their seeing it again. So far this was a good augury they agreed, for had their deaths been already decided upon it would not matter whose faces they recognised or whose they did not. By this time they had almost got used to the strangeness of the feeling that they were captives in their own land; that where they were accustomed to lord it they were now obliged to obey. Many times, too, and oft, they speculated as to what course would have been adopted by those who had not been required to share their captivity.
“Edala has got her head screwed on the right way,” Thornhill had said, on one of these early occasions. “Depend upon it she will have warned everybody within hail. What d’you think, Elvesdon? Will Prior have had the sense to wire sharp to Police headquarters and laager up your place?”
“Of course he will. We’ve often discussed contingencies, though not such an unlooked-for one as this. Oh, he’ll have made that all right.”
That evening a surprise awaited. There was a sound of voices outside. The wicker-slab that constituted the door of their hut was pushed, and an English voice called out.
“It’s me. Can I come in?”
“Why Parry, of course you can,” cried Elvesdon, promptly undoing the fastenings. “How are you? Glad to have you back again. We’ve been trying all we knew to make them let you come back to us, but for some reason they wouldn’t. Have some skoff. We’re half through ours. Well, it’ll be an invaluable experience to you afterwards.”
“Thanks, Mr Elvesdon. You’re awfully good,” answered the young fellow. “I don’t know. I thought I was afraid of nothing – but somehow these black devils with their beastly spears, threatening to stick you for a couple of days and nights, rather saps your nerves, especially when you’re all alone, and can’t talk to them either. I’ve been in the roughest scrimmages at football and never knew what it was to funk, but somehow now – I don’t know – I’ve expected to be stuck ever since they lugged me away two nights ago.”
“Oh, they won’t do that or they’d have done it before,” answered Elvesdon cheerily, though his cheerfulness was more than half-affected. “Fact is you’ve been reading too much William Charles Scully, and Ernest Glanville, and these other Johnnies who write up the noble savage within an inch of his life. You’ve taken an overdose of them and of him. Here – have some of this tywala: I’ve managed to raise some at last: the stingy devils began with us on water. That’s right. Now fall to.”
The boy did so, nothing loath, and soon his spirits revived: he was not more than twenty-one, and accustomed to a gregarious life, wherefore the solitary confinement had told upon him.
“Light your pipe,” said Elvesdon, when they had done. “We needn’t stand on etiquette now. We’re all fellow-prisoners. By George, I’ve sent a good many into that condition in course of duty, but never thought to become a prisoner myself. Funny, isn’t it?”
The boy laughed. Elvesdon could see that his first estimate was correct, that he was a ‘gentleman ranker’ and was not long in drawing from him, with his usual tact and acumen, all his simple family history. He was the son of a country vicar, and had had a great ambition towards the army, but lack of means, as usual, stepped in, and he had turned to a colonial Mounted Police force as many and many another likewise circumstanced had done.
“Well Parry, I shall make it my business to see that you don’t lose anything by your behaviour the other day,” said Elvesdon, “if my word is good for anything. You carried out your orders to the letter, and that as sharp as sharp could be.”
The boy flushed up with pleasure.
“Thanks awfully, Mr Elvesdon,” he said. “I’d like to get on in the force. The dear old dad was always rather against my coming out to join: said it was like enlisting as a private in the Army, and so on – and that I’d much better try for a clerkship – a lot of good I’d have been at quill driving! No, I didn’t want that sort of life, but I was going to do for myself so here I am.”
“That’s quite right,” cut in Thornhill. “You’re the sort of chap we want out here, Parry. And even if you don’t stick to the force a few years’ training in it’ll do you all the good in the world.”
And then the boy, all ideas of the difference between a Police trooper and the Resident Magistrate forgotten for the time, opened his heart, and got back to his home in the pleasant English country, and his schooldays, only, comparatively speaking, a matter of yesterday. He had not been coddled either, but had had to take the rough with the smooth – and more rough than smooth – therein. And eagerly and enthusiastically did he let himself go to his older listeners, his fellow-captives, here, in the night-gloom of this savage hut, lighted only by the dimness of the dying fire: forgetting everything, forgetting that he might never see that English home again; might never see the setting of another sun; and causing them almost to forget it too. Poor boy! Poor boy!
He was eloquent on the big trout he had taken out of the mill-pool in the rippling moonlight in the sweet early summer, with a white moth; the big two-and-a-half pounder he had tried for so often; on the sparrow-hawk’s nest in the straight, slippery stemmed Scotch fir on the border of the most carefully watched covert of the countryside, also in the moonlight, and the hanging on by one hand – for an awful half minute to a greasy, slippery bough, with sixty feet of clear drop beneath him – on his brothers and sisters, and the first pipe which he and two of the former had smoked, with doubtful satisfaction, in the depths of a clay-sided ditch overhung with brambles, a little way below the vicarage garden – on the splendid old copper-beech beneath which they used to take tea on sultry summer afternoons. Elvesdon, listening sympathetically, encouraged him to talk on – Thornhill was already snoring. At last the boy himself grew drowsy.
“Well, Mr Elvesdon, I’m keeping you awake,” he said. “But I can’t tell you how kind you have been to me. I hope, if we get out of this, and you are ever in England you will go and see my people, and I hope still more that I shall, by some chance or other, be there too to welcome you. I’m so thankful we’re together again; it was awfully lonely stuck away there all by myself among these brutes.”
“Why Parry, that’s a first-rate after-dinner speech,” laughed Elvesdon, dropping a kindly hand on the lad’s shoulder. “I hope all that you say, too. And now – go to sleep.”
The other obeyed. Elvesdon however, sitting there, did not feel in the least inclined to follow suit. He felt uncomfortably wakeful, and unwontedly depressed. He groped around for some fresh twigs to throw on the fire, and found a scanty remnant. As the flame flared up, making a shimmer on the shining backs of innumerable cockroaches studding the domed roof, he got out his pouch, and as he filled his pipe he thought how there was about enough to stand him in for another day’s smoke, and that only. He also thought of Edala.
It was nothing new. He had been flunking of her all the time. Now, however, he thought of her with a vividity of concentration that almost seemed to bring her presence here within this squalid hut. Would she miss him, or would her anxiety be all on account of her father? He did not know what to think – he could only hope.
His companions were slumbering peacefully. Hour followed hour and still he sat. The fire burned low, then went out altogether. The keen breaths of the night air chilled him to the bone. Rolling his blanket around him – they had been allowed the use of a blanket apiece by their captors – he lay down and suddenly sleep came to him.
But not for long. Hardly five minutes seemed to have passed before he was awake again – in reality it was as many hours. Daylight was streaming into the hut through the wicker-door, but what had really awakened him, and the other two as well, was a hubbub of voices outside.
“What the devil is that infernal racket?” he growled – a man awakened in the soundness of a much needed sleep is apt to growl.
“Don’t know. I’m listening,” returned Thornhill. And the purport of the said listening made the listener grow rather grave. Then the door was violently banged against, and excited voices ordered those within to come forth.
“What is it?” exclaimed Parry, springing up eager and alert. “Are we rescued?”
But to his two elder companions an idea suggested itself. Had a white force suddenly appeared and was threatening the kraal? If so the more excuse they could find for delaying to come forth from the hut the better.
“What is it?” called back Thornhill. “Wait now. Gahle, gahle! we must dress ourselves.”
They had lain down in their clothes, of course, but anything for an excuse to gain time. But those without did not see things in the same light. The uproar redoubled.
“Come forth! Come forth! Au! Dress yourselves? You shall be dressed – in red.”
Thornhill and Elvesdon looked at each other, and the look was that of men who knew that their last hour had come. The third, of course, did not understand what was being said, or rather howled, outside.
“Well, you can wait,” called back Elvesdon. “I am an official of the Government – of the most powerful Government the world has ever seen. I am not accustomed to be hurried, and I will not be. When we are ready we will come forth.”
It was the boldness of desperation. If an attacking force was advancing it might be here at any moment. They were not going forth to hold out their throats to be cut.
There was silence at this answer, save that a few deep voices were vehemently debating in a wholly indistinct undertone. Elvesdon and Thornhill looked around for a weapon, even a stick. There was nothing of the sort within the hut. They even put up their hands and groped among the thatch in the hope of finding concealed assegais – anything for a weapon! Same result. There was nothing.
“The chief would see you, Abelungu,” now called out a voice in more conciliatory tones. “The chief —Au! he would speak with you.”
“Well, I suppose we must chance it,” said Thornhill. Elvesdon nodded. The other, of course, had no say in the matter. The trio passed through the low doorway, and stood upright. What was this? They were in the midst of hundreds of armed warriors. The latter looked dusty and travel soiled. Some, even, had wounds bound up, the blood which had filtered through the filthy rags, browned and hardened upon them.
“Where is the chief?” cried Elvesdon. “As a Government official I talk to no common man.”
A growl arose, and assegai hafts rattled ominously. But the policy of boldness answered here. No aggressive move was made.
“There he is, Abelungu,” said one or two.
They passed between the armed ranks, to where a tall man was standing. He was a sullen, heavy-faced savage, black-bearded, and holding his shining head-ring as proudly thrown back as though he were the Zulu king, at least.
“Greeting Nteseni,” said Thornhill. “It is not long since we met, and now we meet again. I am glad to look upon your face, and having done so, I think now we will go home.”
The chief returned no answer, save for a sullen grunt. The armed men however made up for his silence, for they crowded up, in a kind of war-dancing step, and their clamour was for blood, to make up for the blood that had been shed, to make the múti which should put into those who tasted it the strength that should enable them to avenge that blood. So they howled, and stamped, and clamoured, crying again and again that these should be given over to them. Here was a curious contrast. Little less than half of them had been quiet, civil, peaceable storeboys or rickshaw drawers in the towns until a few months ago – some, even, still wore the decorative horns affected by those pursuing the latter useful calling – ready to greet their present prisoners with smiles and civility; to exchange chaff with them, and to receive the reward of their labours with whole-hearted geniality. Now, as by the wave of a magic wand, they had reverted to their original barbarism. Every vestige of civilised clothing had been discarded, and they now stood forth, naked, bloodthirsty savages, rattling shields and assegais, and thirsting for all the cruelty of barbarian vengeance.
Nteseni made a hardly perceptible sign. There was a sudden, overwhelming rush forward. The young Police trooper was swept away from the other two. There was a confusion of leaping, howling forms. It was in vain that both Thornhill and Elvesdon strove to make themselves heard. The tumult was too deafening. They were borne back, assegais flashing zig-zag lightning before their eyes. They went through a hundred deaths. But of their comrade in adversity they saw no more.
He the while, was dragged to the feet of the chief and barbarously butchered. Then into his poor bleeding, mutilated body these fiends drove their assegais, again and again, anointing themselves with the blood, in some instances even licking it. And the roar of their devilish blood-song reached these other two, sitting within the hut into which they had been forced back, looking into each other’s faces with stony horror, with a glance that seemed to say: “What could we have done?” And the answer could only be: “Nothing.”
But their turn would come next. And there was no escape.
In gloomy horror thus they sat, listening to the dreadful clamour of many voices outside like ravening beasts all howling for their blood. For upwards of an hour this continued, and the strain became so great that it was all they could do not to go forth, and say, “Here, work your will.” Then, suddenly, the hubbub ceased and an authoritative voice was heard addressing the multitude. And then indeed did Thornhill, at any rate, know the very depths of all hope abandoned, for the voice was that of Manamandhla – of Manamandhla, for every reason under the sun, his own particular enemy.
