Part 3 (1/2)
The old induna shrugged his shoulders, as he answered--
”Who am I that I should pry into the King's mind, Klistiaan? But his 'word' has been spoken in no uncertain voice,” he added significantly.
This there was no denying, and they took their leave. As they pa.s.sed out of the kraal, the lines of warriors glowered at them like wolves, for though the conversation had been inaudible to them, they divined that these whites had incurred the King's displeasure.
”You've got us into a pretty kettle of fish, Blachland,” said Young, rather curtly, as they rode in the direction of their camp.
”Don't see it,” was the reply. ”Now, my belief is, Lo Ben is s.h.i.+rty about our gold-prospecting. My scheme had nothing to do with it.”
”Blachland's right, Young,” cut in Pemberton. ”If it had been the other thing, we wouldn't have got off so cheaply. Eh, Sybrandt?”
”Rather not. We may thank our stars it wasn't the other. That rip Hlangulu must have been strung upon us as a spy. The old man is dead off any gold-prospecting. Afraid it'll bring a swarm of whites into the country, and he's right. Why, what's this?”
All looked back, and the same idea was in the mind of each. Had Lo Bengula thought better of it, and yielded to the bloodthirsty clamour of his warriors? For the gates of Bulawayo were pouring forth a dense black swarm, which could be none other than the impi gathered there at the time of their visit,--and this, clear of the entrance, was advancing at a run, heading straight for the four equestrians.
These looked somewhat anxious. Their servants, the two Bechuana boys, went grey with fear.
”Is it a case of leg-bail?” said Blachland, surveying the on-coming horde.
”No, we must face it anyhow,” answered Pemberton, puffing at his pipe tranquilly. ”Besides, we can't leave these poor devils of boys to be murdered. Eh, Sybrandt?”
”Never run away, except in a losing fight and there's no help for it,”
was the reply.
Accordingly they kept their horses at a walk. But the moment was a thrilling one. On swept the impi; but now it had drawn up into a walk, and from its ranks arose a song--
”Uti mayihlome, mayihlome katese njebo!
Ise nompako wayo namanyatelo ayo!
Utaho njalo. Uti mayihlome katese njebo!”
This strophe--which may be rendered roughly to mean, ”He says (i.e. the King), 'Let it (the impi) arm. Let it arm at once. Come with its food, with its sandals.' He says always. He says, 'Let it arm at once!'”-- was boomed forth from nearly two thousand throats, deafening, terrifying. But the impi swept by, and, pa.s.sing within a hundred yards, singing in mighty volume its imposing war-song, s.h.i.+elds waving, and a.s.segais brandished menacingly towards the white men, it poured up the opposite slope, taking a straight line, significantly symbolical of the unswerving purpose it had been sent to fulfil.
An involuntary feeling of relief was upon the party, upon all but one, that is. For Hilary Blachland, noting the direction taken by this army of destroyers, could not but admit a qualm of very real and soul-stirring misgiving. That he had good grounds for the same we shall see anon.
CHAPTER FOUR.
HERMIA.
”I don't care. I'll say it again. It's a beastly shame him leaving you alone like this.”
”But you are not to say it again, or to say it at all. Remember of whom you are speaking.”
”Oh, no fear of my forgetting that--of being able to forget it. All the same, he ought to be ashamed of himself.”
And the speaker tapped his foot impatiently upon the virgin soil of Mashunaland, looking very hot, and very tall, and very handsome. The remonstrant, however, received the repet.i.tion of the offence in silence, but for a half inaudible sigh, which might or might not have been meant to convey that she was not nearly so angry with the other as her words seemed to imply or their occasion to demand. Then there was silence.
An oblong house, of the type known as ”wattle and daub,” with high-pitched thatch roof, part.i.tioned within so as to form three rooms-- a house rough and ready in construction and aspect, but far more comfortable than appearances seemed to warrant. Half a dozen circular huts with conical roofs, cl.u.s.tered around, serving the purpose of kitchen and storehouse and quarters for native servants; beyond these, again, a smaller oblong structure, const.i.tuting a stable, the whole walled round by a stockade of mopani poles;--and there you have a far more imposing establishment than that usually affected by the pioneer settler. Around, the country is undulating and open, save for a not very thick growth of mimosa; but on one hand a series of great granite kopjes rise abruptly from the plain, the gigantic boulders piled one upon the other in the fantastic and arbitrary fas.h.i.+on which forms such a characteristic feature in the landscape of a large portion of Rhodesia.
”Well?”