Part 89 (2/2)
”Where are they?” he repeated. ”Ah, they have hidden themselves, and well they may. But I appeal to the Great Chief. Let him order my traducers to stand before my face. I claim my rights. The Great Chief cannot refuse,” and in his eagerness he made two steps towards where Sandili was sitting.
Now it happened that Nxabahlana held in his hand a kerrie--just such an ordinary stick as the Kafirs always carry. He had better have dropped it before approaching his chief; but at the moment he forgot everything in his excitement. Not that the difference would have been great either way, for they were determined to get rid of him.
”I claim my rights! The Great Chief cannot refuse!” he repeated, standing with outstretched arm, and looking Sandili straight in the eyes.
The old chief started slightly. A dark expression came into his countenance as he gazed upon his audacious subject for a few moments in silence.
”What!” he exclaimed, in tones of indignation, ”What is this? Who is this that dares to command his chief? Who is this that approaches me with threats? Who is this that dares to threaten his chief? _Have I no men_?” and he looked around with a volume of meaning in his fierce eyes.
Like a spark applied to an explosive the glance told. There was a rash forward on the part of the crowd, a swift flash or two, and a gleam as of the sunlight upon steel. The throng separated, and upon the ground lay the huge frame of Nxabahlana, the hot life-blood welling from half-a-dozen a.s.segai wounds in his chest and sides.
It was a dastardly act, and, although he knew that the victim had richly deserved his fate, yet Claverton felt that the weight of evidence was in his favour, and he should, at any rate, have been allowed to meet his accusers face to face. But little time had he to indulge in regrets on another's behalf, for now all eyes were turned upon him with a bloodthirsty glare, and voices began to clamour that the white prisoner should be given over to them.
And as he looked upon the wild scene it seemed hardly credible to Claverton that scarcely forty-eight hours had gone since he had left Lilian and set his face eastward to carry out his plan of revenge. He glanced down the line of stern, relentless countenances, where sat the chief and his councillors, the late victim of their tyrannous vengeance bleeding at their very feet; but in the shrewd, rugged features he could detect no hope of mercy. Around, hemming him in, crowded the clamouring savages, their fierce eyes burning with a l.u.s.t for blood. Behind them he caught a glimpse of a large fire, wherein a group of women and boys were heating bits of iron red-hot, and he had small doubt as to the use to which that fire would be put. The only man who might have befriended him was lying dead at his feet, and the weapons that had done the deed had slain his own hopes. His time had come.
”Give me a drink of water,” said the prisoner.
They brought him some in a bowl. His arms were bound to his sides at the elbows, but his hands were free, and he took a long, deep drink.
This attention conveyed to him no false hopes; he had no doubt as to his ultimate fate. He looked around. The sun, which was nearing its western bed, had sunk behind a heavy bank of cloud which loomed upon the horizon, and a roll of thunder stirred the still, hot afternoon. The storm which had been threatening all day was drawing near.
And now the wizard, decked in all his hideous paraphernalia, bounded into the midst.
”Hear, now, Sandili, Great Chief, of the house of Gaika! Hear, ye _amapakati_! Hear, all ye warriors of the race of Gaika!” he cried.
”For two moons we have been fighting the English. For two moons we have shed our blood and given our best lives in the endeavour to drive the English into the sea. Have we been successful? We and our brethren, the Ama Gcaleka, who can show twenty warriors for every one of the English, have spent our strength in vain. Whenever we met them the English have driven us back. Even when we met them--a mere handful that we ought to have eaten up--we have been driven back before their charmed bullets. They have charmed bullets and charmed guns which they keep on firing without loading. Why can we do nothing against these English?
Listen, and I will tell you. You see the man before you? _He_ is their sorcerer. _He_ it is who causes our bullets to fly off them without harming them. He is in every fight. Who can mention a battle that this man was not present in? Now we have this sorcerer in our midst. What shall we do with him, I say? Shall we let him go? My magic is stronger than his; I have delivered him into your hands. Will you, then, suffer him to escape again? Cut his bonds and let him free, and you will all be destroyed.”
A roar of execration was the answer to this appeal. Weapons were brandished, and the crowd pressed closer around.
”Give him to us!” they yelled. ”See, there is a fire; we will burn him, one limb at a time.”
”Old men, where are your sons?” went on the wizard. ”Young men, where are your brothers? Where are they? Ask the vulture of the rocks, the wolf and the wild dog of the forest, even the skulking jackal who burrows in the earth. Ask the breezes of the air, which blow over their whitening bones where they lie by thousands, slain by the charmed bullets of the English. Hark; I hear their voices in the wind--the voices of their spirits crying for vengeance. I hear it in the trees, in the rocks, in yon thundercloud which is drawing nearer and nearer,”
and at his words a heavy boom was heard, followed by a spasmodic rustling gust violently agitating the surrounding bush, and stirring up the air around. With awe-stricken looks, his superst.i.tious listeners bent their heads. ”Yes,” roared the ferocious demon, working himself into a state of frenzy. ”Do you not hear them? They are crying--'Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!' And we, who are left--are we not hunted like wild beasts? Are we not driven from bush to bush by these white men--who have not a tenth of our number--by them and our dogs the Fingoes? Soon shall we follow our brethren, and the name of Gaika will exist no more. Here is a white man! Here is the destroyer of our race. Shall we not make him weep out in tears of blood the woe which has come upon us? Shall we not make him writhe in torment for many days, to appease the spirits of our slaughtered sons? We await the word of the Great Chief!”
Every eye was fixed upon the semicircle of grey-bearded councillors seated round the chief--dark, stern, and immovable. With bodies bent forward, and a wolfish, bloodthirsty grin, the warriors stood scanning the expression of the impa.s.sive countenances before them, eagerly awaiting the word, which they doubted not would be given. Again reverberated that thunder-roll--nearer still--as half the sky was hidden beneath an inky shroud, and the dull red flash gleamed from its depths.
One of those storms which, in the hot weather, break with such fearful violence over the wilds of Southern Africa, would shortly be upon them.
But ”the word” remained still unspoken. Sandili--whose pliant, vacillating nature ever ready to yield to the pressure of circ.u.mstances or to the advice of whoever had his ear last, was so powerfully appealed to--would have spoken it, and ended the difficulty; but it was evident that the councillors were not unanimous on the point. On the one hand, the nation was clamouring for the captive's life; on the other, some of the councillors were clearly opposed to the expediency of sacrificing it, and even the Great Chief dared not fly dead in the teeth of their advice without some show of debate. So he gave orders that the prisoner should be removed out of hearing while they talked, but that he should not be harmed.
”We have heard what Nomadudwana, the seer, has told us,” said the chief, looking inquiringly around. ”Shall we then allow the prisoner to go free?”
Now the wizard was hated and despised by the older men of the tribe, though among the younger he was in the zenith of his popularity as a fierce and unswerving preacher of a crusade among the whites.
Consequently the mention of his name struck a chord calculated to tune the whole instrument in Claverton's favour. The mutterings of Matanzima and a few of the younger men, to the effect that a prisoner ought to be treated in the accustomed way--_i.e._ handed over to the people without all this _indaba_--were stifled by the decided and dissenting head-shakes of many of their seniors.
Then one of the _amapakati_ spoke. He was a very old man; and an expectant murmur greeted his appearance.
”It is Tyala!” murmured the group. ”Hear Tyala--he is wise!”
<script>