Part 19 (1/2)

Of the two, he hated Lee the most, for he could discriminate between the energy of the one and the pa.s.sive sorrow stamped on the countenance of the other. Then Doda was an object of special abhorrence; for Doda, when he could, pleaded the white man's cause. Amayeka, from her acquirements, invested her father with a power he would not otherwise have possessed; by her intelligence the wizard often found his plans forestalled, his prophecies doubted; but he had besides a deeper source of hatred against her, for a true Kafir she was not. Through her veins ran the blood of white forefathers; her ancestress was one of those unfortunates who had been stranded at the Umbeesam River when the _Grosvenor_ was wrecked.

To her lineage Amayeka owed her soft, though short, and wavy hair, her complexion of fairer hue than is usual among the Amakosa race, her delicately-chiselled outline of feature, and her falling shoulders. Her limbs I have described as exquisitely moulded, and the voice musically sweet.

But although pleased to refer to her white ancestress, whom she faintly remembered, shrunk, bronzed, withered with age, and degraded to the state of a savage, Amayeka's habits were those of the wild tribe to which she belonged; but tender-hearted, with something about her of the English attribute grat.i.tude, unknown amongst Kafirs, some of those old a.s.sociations, whose roots lie deepest in the human heart, had led her to take an interest in Lee and Gray when she first heard their voices in the midnight solitude of the Witches' Krantz. Lee's ungracious manner soon repelled her; but Gray's dependence on her good offices as guide drew her towards him; and now, kindred, tribe, allegiance, all were forgotten in her pa.s.sion for her white lover.

They sat together in silence for some moments, Amayeka resting her head on Gray's shoulder, her dusky locks mingling with his brown hair, which had grown long during his exile, and would have given to his countenance an air of effeminacy, but for the moustache shading his upper lip.

Horrible wizard! what a contrast to these youthful beings must thou have presented, leaning thy clay-painted face from its green covert!

Gall-bladders, jackals' tails, and the polished teeth of monkeys, wolves, and tigers, made the head inconceivably hideous; and the great eyes glittering in the dusk would have startled the lovers had they looked up.

But they had no thought beyond their own vague destinies. The shades of night deepened, they could hear the girls and children chanting monotonously on their way to the kraals, the stream rippled past them unheeded, the guanas plas.h.i.+ng merrily among the little pools, and the meercat nestled closer to Amayeka's feet.

”They say, Amayeka,” whispered Gray, ”that war is proclaimed in the colony, and that soldiers are marching towards the Kei.”

”Oute!” (”Hear!”) said Amayeka, who often used this Kafir prefix. ”The white man's word to kill has not yet gone forth. The red soldiers are scattered through the bush. The Amakosas sleep with an open eye, but are not yet up. Soon a voice will be heard on the mountains, and answered from the valleys, and the war-cry will fill the land.”

There was a pause.

”Amayeka,” said Gray, ”what will you do when your tribe is roused? You cannot stay here. You must fly.”

”And leave you?” asked Amayeka, in a tone indescribably mournful.

”I love you, Amayeka; you must fly with me.”

”You love me, Martin, you love me!” repeated the Kafir girl, in distinct and sweetly-toned English, as if she had just acquired a knowledge of the value attached to the language, because her lover understood her at once; and then she went on in an innocent, childish way: ”Ukutanda, diyatanda, diyatandiva, diyakutanda”--”To love, I love, I am loved, I will love;” and laughing gleefully at applying an old lesson to a purpose hitherto unthought of she forgot the war-cry--the red soldiers-- she began to teach Gray the lesson, and when he had repeated it over and over again, to her infinite satisfaction, she tried to look into his countenance by the dusky light, and laughed softly.

”But, Amayeka,” said Gray again, ”tell me, will you go with me from this wild tribe of yours?”

”Go!” said Amayeka, her low laugh turned into a sigh--”And whither?

Leave the land, and my people to sit in the ashes! Cowards only fly from a burning kraal; the brave stand by to quench the flame, and help the ruined.”

”But the red soldiers are my countrymen,” said Gray; ”you would not have me fight them!”

Amayeka tried to understand her lover's notions of treachery; but the question resolved itself into these simple words--”Ah! you must not go; you belong to us now.”

The deserter groaned.

She took his hand, bent her head upon it, and kissed it with mute tenderness.

They sat in silence till night fell, and a pale s.h.i.+mmer on the stream only served to make the darkness more palpable. But Amani's eyes still glared upon them fiercely, and he hated them with a deeper bitterness than ever.

They rose together, and walked leisurely by the waterside.

The wizard left his covert, and, gliding along the bank above, peeped over it occasionally to watch them. Sometimes they stopped on their way and whispered. He could hear Amayeka's voice falter, and he cursed her knowledge of the white man's language. Once, just where the moon's rays glinted, they stood, and Amani could see in Amayeka's hands something glittering. He recognised it as a steel chain, which he had observed round Gray's neck, with a knife of many blades suspended by it. How often he had coveted it! He heard the knife drop; Gray was unconscious of its fall. The Kafir girl picked it up, and gave it to her lover.

Little thought Amayeka of the great need in which that knife would help her within a few hours.

At the lower drift Amayeka crossed the stream. Gray watched her over; took a keen glance up and down, little dreaming that Amani was watching him from a wolf-hole ten yards off; and then a low chirrup, like the cry of the quail, announced that all was safe in the copse Amayeka had entered. Gray then traversed the stones of the ford.

Ere long, Amani could see them emerge singly from the covert, Amayeka taking one path, for it was not too dark for Kafir eyes to distinguish the outline of a woman's form, with the little meercat trotting after her; her lover went another way, and then the wizard, profiting by a cloud which overshadowed the moon's silver rim for a minute or two, stepped stealthily across; and, biding his time, sought his hut, and retiring therein, closed the matted entrance, and began to chant his demoniacal incantations, to the great awe of the people a.s.sembled round their fires at the doors of their dwellings.