Part 4 (1/2)

Wrought up to a pitch of frenzy by the recollection of the insults he had then received, the vindictive savage continued to taunt and terrify the wretched creature as she lay. Then he went over to pick up his great k.n.o.bstick.

”Not thus, blunderer; not thus,” said s.h.i.+minya, arresting his arm. ”See now. Take that end of the pole while I take the other. Go thou first.”

Lifting the pole with its helpless human burden, these bloodthirsty miscreants pa.s.sed out of the kraal. Down the narrow way they hurried, for s.h.i.+minya though small was surprisingly wiry, and the powerful frame of the other felt it not, although their burden was no light one. Down through a steep winding path, and soon the thorns thinned out, giving way to forest trees.

”Well, sister, I predicted that Lupiswana would come for thee to-night,”

said s.h.i.+minya, as they set their burden down to rest themselves. ”And-- there he is already.”

A stealthy shape, which had been following close upon their steps, glided into view for a moment and disappeared. The wretched victim saw it too, and uttered such a wild ringing shriek of despair that Nanzicele fairly shuddered.

”_Au_! I like not this,” he growled. ”It is a deed of _tagati_.”

”Yet thou must do it, brother, or worse will befall thyself,” said s.h.i.+minya, quietly. Then they resumed their burden.

Through the trees now came a glint of silver light, then a broad s.h.i.+mmer. It was the glint of the moon upon water. The Umgwane River, in the dry season, consists of a series of holes. One of these they had reached.

”And now, sister,” began the wizard, as they set down their burden upon its brink, ”thou seest what is the result of an unquiet tongue. But for that thou wouldst not now be here, and thy brother Pukele and thy sister Ntatu would have yet longer to live. But you all know too much, the three of you. Look! Yonder is Lupiswana waiting for thee, even as I predicted,” said this human devil, who could not refrain from adding acute mental torture to the dying moments of his victim. And as he spoke a low whine rose upon the night air, where a dark sinister shape lay silhouetted against the white stones of the broad river-bed some little distance away.

The victim heard it and wailed, in a manner that resembled the whine of the gruesome beast. s.h.i.+minya laughed triumphantly.

”Even the voice she has already,” he exclaimed. ”She will howl bravely when Lupiswana hunts her.”

”Have done,” growled Nanzicele. Brutal barbarian as he was, even his savagery stopped short at this; besides, his superst.i.tious nature was riven to the core. ”Get it over; get it over!”

They raised the pole once more, and, by a concerted movement, swung it and its human burden over the brink, where the pool was deepest. One wild, appalling shriek, then a splash, and a turmoil of eddies and bubbles rolling and scintillating on the surface, and the cold remorseless face of the brilliant moon looked down, impa.s.sive, upon a human creature thus horribly done to death.

”_Hlala-gahle_!” cried s.h.i.+minya, with a fiend-like laugh, watching the uprising of the stream of bubbles. Then, turning to his fellow miscreant, ”And now, Nanzicele, whom Makiwa made a chief, and then unmade, the people at Madula's can hardly speak for laughing at thee, remembering thy last appearance there, bragging that thou wert a chief.

Makiwa has done this, but soon there may not be any Makiwa, for so I read the fates. Go now. When I want thee I will send for thee again.”

And the two murderers separated--Nanzicele, dejected and feeling as though his freedom had gone from him for ever; s.h.i.+minya, chuckling and elate, for the day had been a red letter one, and the human spider was gorged full of human prey.

CHAPTER FIVE.

THE MEETING OF THE WAYS.

The mail-steamer from England had been docked early in Cape Town, and the tables at lunch-time, in the dining room of Cogill's Hotel at Wynberg, were quite full. There is something unmistakable about the newly landed pa.s.senger, male or female, especially when taken gregariously; and this comes out mainly in a wholly abnormal vivacity, begotten presumably of a sense of emanc.i.p.ation from the cooped monotony of s.h.i.+pboard, and a conversational tendency to hark back to the incidents of the voyage, and the idiosyncrasies of the populace of the recent floating prison. Add to this a display of brand new ribbons on the hats of certain of the ornamental s.e.x, bearing the name of the floating prison aforesaid, and a sort of huddled up clannishness as of a hanging together for mutual protection in a strange land.

With this phase of humanity were most of the tables filled. One, however, was an exception, containing a square party of four, not of the exuberantly lively order. To be perfectly accurate, though, only three of these const.i.tuted a ”party;” the fourth, a silent stranger, wearing more the aspect of a man from up-country than one of the newly landed, was unknown to the residue.

”What an abominable noise those people are making,” remarked one of the trio, a tall, thin, high-nosed person of about thirty, with a glance at a table over the way, where several newly landed females were screaming over the witticisms of a brace of downy lipped youths, who were under the impression the whole room was hanging upon their words. ”I only hope they don't represent the sort of people we shall have to put up with if we stay here.”

”Don't you be alarmed about that, Mrs Bateman,” said the man on her right. ”That stamp of Britisher doesn't stay here. It melts off into boarding-houses and situations in Cape Town or Johannesburg. Just rolls up here because it's the thing to run out to Cogill's and have tiffin first thing on landing; at least, so it thinks. It'll all have disappeared by to-night.”

”That's a comfort, anyway, if we do stay. What do you think of this place, Nidia?”

”I think it'll do. Those views of the mountain we got coming along in the train were perfectly lovely. And then it seems so leafy and cool.

You can get about from here, too, can't you, Mr Moseley?”

”Oh yes, anywhere. Any amount of trains and trams. And I expect you'll wear out the roads with that bike of yours, Miss Commerell.”