Kitabı oku: «The White Shield», sayfa 10
“It may not be, father,” was the answer, made now with more alarm. “Whau! it is on us the izingwenya will feed, if not on these. Stand now aside.”
“Ah! have pity! Untúswa will take my side,” he cried in a glad voice, catching sight of my face. “Stay their hands, Untúswa, if only for a while, till I bring back the King’s pardon.”
“It may not be, father,” I, too, replied. “The King’s sentence has been given. It is even as the men say. Their lives are as the lives of these if they hesitate. Would you doom to death many men where two will suffice? Let them do their work.”
Now, I know not, Nkose, how this thing would have ended; for the white isanusi still continued to stand and plead, and none dare remove him by force, remembering in what high honour he was held by the Great Great One. But just then loud shouting made itself heard upon the outskirts of the crowd, which bent low suddenly, like a forest struck by a gale. And there advancing, with his head thrown back and a light in his eyes such as none of us cared to behold, came the Great Great One himself.
He stalked straight up to where stood the white isanusi, to where lay the doomed ones and the executioners, who, having hesitated to perform their work, counted themselves already dead. He was attended by the old induna Mcumbete, to whom he now turned.
“See,” he said, in a voice which made many tremble, “I am no King. I am only the lowest of the Amaholi. For the word of a King is obeyed; yet my word, though long since uttered, is not obeyed. Hau! What sort of a King ami?”
And the terrible frown of anger upon his face took in the white man, even as it did ourselves.
“Mercy! Great Great One! Mercy for these!” cried the stranger, pointing to the doomed slaves.
We who watched trembled for the life of the speaker; those of us who did not tremble for our own – and of these there could be but few – for this was a terrible thing which had happened, such a thing as had never before been known, that any man, white or black, should dare to interfere between the King’s decrees and their execution. But still the white priest stood upon the brink of that grisly pool of death pleading forgiveness, not for himself, but for those two miserable slaves. Ha! That was a sight indeed.
“You do not know us yet, O stranger!” went on Umzilikazi, now in bitter and sneering tones; “else had you not thought to save the lives of these two by any such means. For now have you doomed many to death, even all those whose errand it was to carry out my sentence and have allowed themselves to hesitate in doing so. For they, too, are dead men.”
A gasp of horror, which was almost a sob, ran through the multitude. The izimbonga bellowed aloud in praise of the King’s justice; but even their voices were not without a quaver. But the white priest stood facing the angry countenance of the King; and upon his own was stamped a great and deep sadness, but never a trace of fear.
“Be merciful, thou ruler of a great nation!” he pleaded more earnestly. “Mercy is the quality by which a King may show himself truly great. We have been friends. Oh, slay not these men, when the fault is entirely mine.”
“Not entirely. The fault of the man who hesitates to obey my word is entirely his own, and the penalty thereof he knows,” said Umzilikazi, pitilessly. “We have been friends, white stranger; but of what sort is the friendship which teaches those who are my dogs to laugh at me? Friend as thou art, I know not how thine own life shall be left thee after such an act as this.”
Something in the words seemed to strike the white isanusi. His face lightened up.
“See now, O King!” he replied. “The fault is mine. If I am a traitor in your eyes, who were my friend, take my life instead of the lives of these. Take my life, but spare theirs.”
“Ha!”
The gasp of amazement which softly left the lips of the King was echoed by a shiver from the crouching multitude.
“Think carefully, O stranger,” he said. “Look below. See the upturned glare of the alligators’ eyes. Mark their number – their great size – their hideous shapes. This is no pleasant or easy death.”
“Nor is it for these, Great Great One,” was the reply, with a sweep of the hand over the doomed men, who, victims and executioners alike, crouched motionless in the silence of despair. “And for them such a death may be more terrible than for myself, who humbly trust that it may be the opening of the gate of a new life whose glories are beyond words.”
“I think words enough have been spoken upon this matter,” said Umzilikazi, coldly. “Take thy choice, white isanusi. Thyself to the alligators – or these.”
“My choice is made, Black Elephant.”
“Leap, then!” said the King, with a wave of the hand towards the brink.
“I may not do that,” was the reply, “for it would be to take my own life, which my teaching forbids. The slayers of the King must throw me in – that they themselves may live. But, first, I desire a few moments wherein to pray that the Great Great One above may receive my spirit.”
To this Umzilikazi gave assent, and the white priest knelt down, and, drawing out the cross, with the Figure of a Man upon it, he kissed this. And then, for the first time, some of us noticed that the sign he made upon himself with his hand more than once was in form even as that cross.
Whau, Nkose! that was a strange sight – stranger, I think, I never beheld. The sun was near his rest now, and his fading beams fell upon the surface of the hideous pool beneath, painting it and the numerous snouts of the hungry monsters lurking there as it were blood-red. And above the crouching, awe-stricken multitude – the only movement among which was the rolling of distended eyeballs, the grovelling figures of the doomed ones, grey with fear, and not knowing yet if their lives would indeed be spared – the stern, upright figure of Umzilikazi, terrible in the offended majesty of his disobeyed commands, and the subdued, shrinking countenance of the old induna. And, in the midst of all, the kneeling priest, in his black, flowing robe, the tones of whose voice, rising and falling quickly in prayer, being the only sounds breaking in upon this dead and awesome silence. And to us who gazed it seemed as though a strange light rested upon the face of the white isanusi, imparting to it a look which had nothing in common with the set, motionless expression to be seen upon the face of a brave man doomed to die; but this might have been caused by the long rays of the setting sun darting upon it. At length he arose.
The King made a sign to the slayers. Not this time was any hesitation to be found among them. Leaping eagerly to their feet, they sprang forward and laid hands upon the white priest.
“A moment!” said this one, signing them back. “Bid me now farewell, son of Matyobane! for I wish thee no harm on account of my death, and for it I forgive thee freely. Nay, more, I thank thee for it! since, through it, thou sparest the lives of these, who number more than half a score.”
He stretched forth his open hand. Umzilikazi grasped it, yet let it not go; and thus for a moment they stood, gazing into each other’s faces. And that of the white man expressed the truth of his words; for in it was no evil look, no sign of fear, or of a desire for revenge. Still they stood thus, uttering no sound. The strain was becoming terrible. In crushed, breathless silence the multitude hung upon what was to follow. Was the King bewitched? Could he not relax his grasp? A dull splash was heard beneath, as one of the alligators turned on the water. And now the sun rested on the western heights, like a wheel of red flame. Then Umzilikazi spoke:
“The alligators may go hungry this night, for thou art a brave man, my father; too brave a man that thy life should pay for the miserable lives of such as these. Yet for thy sake I will spare them too, though I know not whether after doing so I am a King or as one of their dogs! —Hau!”
“A greater King than ever, son of Matyobane,” was the reply, uttered solemnly. “The Great One above will bless thee, my friend.”
Now the shouts of bonga which rent the air were deafening, and from one end to the other of that vast multitude rolled the praises of the mercy of the King. And, indeed, it was wonderful, for this was the only occasion upon which I ever knew Umzilikazi spare any man when his “word” had once gone forth that that man should die. And this time he had spared upwards of half a score, owing to the strange madness of a white priest who had offered to give his own life for theirs.
But some there were who murmured darkly that the King was bewitched, and among these were our own izanusi. Yet they dared not so whisper otherwise than darkly – ah, yes, very darkly indeed.
Chapter Seventeen.
The Return of the “She-Eagle.”
Now, Nkose, I am about to tell of the strange and momentous events that next befell; for upon reaching my home that night, which you will remember was at some little distance from the great kraal, I found my family and followers in a state of wild consternation and grief. The little white girl was lost!
She had not been wandering, not even playing outside with the other children. When last seen she was creeping through the door of the hut wherein she usually dwelt – that of Fumana, the youngest of my wives – and this hut she had never been seen to leave. When last seen it was shortly before the setting of the sun.
This was a matter to be turned inside-out, and that speedily, to which end I called up all those concerned, and questioned them one by one; the children who had last been with her, my wives, and the Bakoni slave-girls. But while my two younger wives were half-mad with grief – for they loved the little one – Nangeza only laughed evilly, saying that it could be but a small thing to a mighty chief like myself the loss of a wretched little whelp of the Amabuna: for thus she would often speak to anger me, knowing that I always held Kwelanga to be not of the Amabuna at all, but of a far greater race.
“So, woman!” I replied, pointing my stick at her menacingly, “it may be a small matter to myself, but it will be a weighty one for all here concerned, for did not the King give Kwelanga into our care? Ha! the alligators have been robbed of their food to-night – it may be that to-morrow they will be full.”
I could see fear upon the faces of those who heard my words; but again Nangeza laughed evilly. I was resolved now that the end of such doings had come. The morrow would show.
“Now to the search!” I cried. “The little one may have wandered abroad and have sunk down to sleep in the forest. She may not be far.”
“Perhaps yonder moves her bed,” said Nangeza, with her black laugh, as the wild howling of a hyena sounded very near. “While such are moving about it is little enough will be found of any child who has sunk down to sleep in the forest, and it has long been night.”
A murmur of approval greeted these words, for few among us liked to move about at night. And the voices of the hyenas and other beasts wailing dismally through the forest sounded as the ravenings of ghost animals scenting the blood of those who still lived as men. But for such considerations I cared little then. I gave my orders, and no man there but preferred to face the ghost animals to facing me having disobeyed them. So we set out, by twos and threes, on our search.
There was a half-moon low down in the heavens, and by its light we searched – ah, yes, how we searched! We hunted hither and thither like wild dogs questing a scent, beneath the dark shades of the forest trees, where the beasts would howl dismally across our path, and the rustle of huge serpents fleeing away in the brake would make our hearts leap – not knowing what evil beings of the night were abroad. We searched over the openness of the plain, and among the rugged rocks where we had found the white isanusi. We searched indeed far out beyond any distance such a little child could travel. But we searched in vain.
Not only through the night did we search, but well on into the next day. Sometimes our hearts would chill as we saw something white, like a skull or bones, lying away from us, but on drawing near it would prove to be a stone, or perchance the skull of a kid or a buck, devoured by wild animals. I sent runners to all the outlying kraals around us but these returned bearing no news, and at last so thoroughly had we searched that I was constrained to believe that it was as Nangeza had so evilly suggested – the little one had wandered away from the kraal, and, having lost herself, had been carried off or devoured by wild animals.
Now my own heart was sad and sore, for, Nkose, I loved this little creature, with the eyes of heaven and hair like the sun, whom I had saved from the spears of our young men, and who had come to look upon me as her father; and, indeed, she would sometimes place her tiny white hand upon my great dark one and laugh, and ask whether hers would grow black, too, when she became old. And now I should see her no more; hear her rippling, joyous laughter never again – ah, Nkose, my heart was very sore. But my younger wives, Nxope and Fumana, they made terrible moan, far more so than they would have made over child of their own blood.
It came about, however, that some there might have even greater reason to make moan, and that on behalf of themselves; for at day-dawn on the third morning after the disappearance of Kwelanga an armed force stood at the gate of my kraal, and in a loud voice summoned those within the huts to come forth in the King’s name.
Now, many of these, looking upon the armed men, felt themselves already dead, deeming that Umzilikazi had sent to “eat up” my kraal, by reason of the manner in which its trust had been fulfilled; nor was I myself for the moment at ease.
“Greeting, Ngubu!” I said. “What is the will of the Great Great One?”
“This, son of Ntelani,” answered the leader of the armed band, that same Ngubu who had headed the party in pursuit of me that time I had fled with Nangeza, and who was present when I slew Njalo-njalo; “this – that thou betakest thyself at all speed to the Black Elephant, who would confer with thee. That for thee. For these, they must go with us, every one, to the last man, woman, and child.”
“Whither, Ngubu?” I asked, troubled. “Into the Dark Unknown?”
“Not so, Untúswa. Into the presence of the King.”
They looked relieved at this I thought, though it might be but the lengthening out of their agony, for the assegais of the “eaters-up” are swifter than the teeth of the alligators. And so they started, hemmed in by the spears of the warriors, while I alone strode on in advance, by no means easy in my mind because of what was to befall, for some, assuredly, would look into darkness long before that night.
A little way outside the great kraal Kwa’zingwenya was a grassy mound, crested by two large and spreading trees, and from this the plain sloped away, smooth and open, to the brink of the cliff overhanging the Pool of the Alligators. Beneath the shade of these trees Umzilikazi was wont to sit sometimes throughout the whole day, hearing and settling disputes, talking over the affairs of the nation, or it might be reviewing one or two of the young regiments practising drill upon the open plain before him. Here now I found him.
“Well, Untúswa? And so there have been tagati doings at your kraal?” he said, when I had saluted. “Where is Kwelanga?”
“Now are all our hearts sore, Black Elephant,” I answered, “for search has been diligently made, but in vain.
“Yet I gave her into your keeping, son of Ntelani. There has been tagati herein, and some shall die.”
“The will of the Great Great One is the delight of his children,” I replied. “Lo – now here are they who must answer for this business.”
Now there came in sight across the plain the whole company of my people, surrounded by the spears of the warriors who custodied them. All, as they drew near, bent low before the King, shouting aloud the Bayéte, and on every face was stamped varying stages of fear and dread.
“Here has been tagati at work,” said the King, after eyeing them in silence for a few moments. “I think, Untúswa, the women it was who had the care of Kwelanga?”
“That is so, Black Elephant,” I answered.
“There are thy three wives and two Bakoni slave-girls – five in all,” went on the King. “Five women, and they are not able to custody one little child! Ha! If a woman is unable to do this, of what use is she? Not to give us the aid of her counsels in war,” with a frown at Nangeza. “Clearly these are of no use at all. Away with them! The alligators are hungry!”
But before the slayers could spring forward, my two younger wives flung themselves on the ground at the King’s feet.
“Spare us, father!” they wailed.
“She who is gone was more to me than my own children,” howled Fumana.
“Our own children will die of grief for loss of her,” groaned Nxope.
“Spare us, Great Great One, that we may never rest until she is found,” cried Fumana.
“No tagati is there among us two, Father – among us two,” screamed Nxope.
“What mean you – witch? Ha, Nangeza, inkosikazi of Untúswa! Hast thou nothing to say, no tears for Kwelanga – for thine own life?”
While the others had thus been bemoaning and praying for mercy, Nangeza was watching them with contempt in her eyes, which latter would flash into the most intense hate and menace as she met my glance. Now she answered:
“I have much to say, if the King will hear it – ah, much to say;” and her glittering eyes sought my face in the triumph of their hate.
“I think we have heard enough of this babble,” said Umzilikazi, with a bitter sneer; for he loved not women, deeming them, though in some ways necessary, yet of no account whatever, and only producing mischief if allowed to raise their voices at all. But even the Great Great One had reckoned without the length of Nangeza’s tongue. Hardily she went on:
“There has been tagati indeed; but not among us wives of Untúswa must such be sought. Ho, Untúswa! Where is the witch thou didst save alive from the slaughter of the Bakoni? Ha, ha, Untúswa, where is she?”
Now, Nkose, my heart turned to water within me; for such a suspicion, once implanted in the King’s mind, would surely bear fruit sooner or later. And the offence was among the most deadly I could commit. But at the words, I laughed; threw back my head and laughed softly, while murmurs of amazement went up from those who heard.
“Hear you the words of this woman, Untúswa?” said the King.
“I hear them, Black Elephant.”
“They are strange words, son of Ntelani. Hast thou no answer to make to them?”
“Now, my Father, who am I that I should weary the ears of the Great Great One by crossing answers with a woman in his presence?” I cried.
“That is well said,” muttered Umzilikazi. Then aloud, “So, woman, where doth she dwell, this witch whom Untúswa saved alive from the slaughter of the Bakoni?”
“Upon the Mountain of Death, the mountain whereon her people were slain,” said Nangeza.
“And how is she named?”
“That I know not, O Elephant; but if Untúswa ever whispers her name in his sleep, it is Fumana or Nxope you should ask, O Calf of a Black Bull,” she said, in a tone full of meaning and of malice.
Now I thought and thought how Nangeza could have obtained even that amount of knowledge of my secret. Could she have followed me, stealthily, the last journey I made to the Mountain of Death? It almost seemed so. Or had she set others on to watch me? Anyhow, I felt not over-certain of seeing many more suns set.
“And is that all thou hast to say, wife of Untúswa?” said the King, softly, and putting his head on one side, as his manner was.
“This, too, Father. For many nights past I have heard, as it were, a woman’s voice singing around our kraal. I doubt not it was the voice of this witch, and that she hath lured the little one into the forest, to devour her, as the way is with such evildoers. But it is Untúswa who has brought her about our ears to blight us with a curse.”
“In truth, thou art an excellent wife – a very milch-cow of price,” said the King, mocking her. “In truth, it is worth a man’s while to throw away his life for such as thee. Thou art, indeed, worthy to be the chief wife of one of my best fighting-captains. Thou who wouldst seek to throw on to his shoulders the consequences of thine own neglect, and fill up our ears with such childish tales of witches singing around the gates! And thou, Untúswa, thou art happy, indeed, in the possession of such! Well, woman, such babble is of no avail. The alligators are hungry.”
The izimbonga raised a chorus of praise, and the frightened company of my people, seeing that only five of their number were to suffer, joined in. And now, bending low before the King, I craved a boon.
“The wisdom of the King is great, and his justice is terrible,” I said. “But these, it is for these I would speak,” pointing to my younger wives.
“Say on, Untúswa,” said the King.
“Not for me is it to question the will of the Great Great One. But I would ask, Father, that these might be spared, at any rate, for a few days longer. It may yet be that Kwelanga is found, and then, my Father, what will she do, finding that those who took care of her are no more?”
“Strange care have they taken of her, Untúswa,” replied Umzilikazi. “Hold! Whom have we here?”
For over the plain a great multitude was advancing. As it drew nearer, we could make out that at some paces in front of it walked a woman. That she was tall and straight, and beautiful of build, we could see even from there. Nearer – nearer, she drew; advancing direct to where was seated the Great Great One. In silence the people parted to make way for her, and, not hesitating a moment, she paced up to the King, her head thrown slightly back, proud, stately of bearing, as though she were a queen. Then, halting, she bent down, yet not very low, and cried, “Bayéte!” And we who looked thought we had never beheld so fair and gracious a type of womanhood; while I, for my part —Whau Nkose! it seemed as though the end of all things was at hand, for she upon whom I now gazed – upon whom we all gazed – standing there before the King, was none other than Lalusini, the beautiful sorceress who had bewitched me with her love.
