Part 34 (1/2)
”No. Go ye now away and leave me. Peace is not far distant and many good words will I speak for you because of this day.”
A jeering roar, now of rage, now of disappointment, greeted his words.
At the same time Blachland sighted one of them kneeling down with his piece levelled, and taking deliberate aim at him. An instinct moved him to drop down behind the stone, and the instinct was a true one, for as he did so a bullet sang through the spot where his head and shoulders had been but a fraction of a second before. Two others hummed over him, but high.
He put his hat up above the stone, holding it by the brim. ”Whigge!”-- another bullet hummed by, almost grazing it.
”Some devil there can shoot, anyway,” he growled to himself. ”If only I could get a glint of him. Ah!”
A stratagem had occurred to him. He managed to fix the hat just so that the top of it should project, then creeping to the edge of the boulder, he peered round, his piece sighted and ready. Just as he thought. The head and shoulders of a savage, taking aim at the hat--and then with the crash of his own rifle that savage was spinning round and turning a convulsive somersault, shot fair and square through the head. His slayer set his teeth, with a growl that was half exulting, half a curse.
His foes were going to find that they had cornered a lion indeed--so much he could promise them.
The mutterings of wrath and dismay which arose among them over this neat shot, were drowned in a furious volley. Every man who possessed a firearm seemed animated with a kind of frenzied desire to discharge it as quickly and as often as possible at and around the rock behind which he lay. For a few moments the position was very sultry indeed. It might have been worse but that the moral of that deadly shot rendered his a.s.sailants exceedingly unwilling to leave their cover or expose themselves in any way.
On his right the river bank was but a couple of hundred yards, and running up from this was a bush-fringed donga, which might be any or no depth, but which ended at about half that distance. Upon this Blachland had got his eye and was puzzling out as to how he might turn it to account. Now he discovered that the same idea was occurring to his a.s.sailants, for although the intervening s.p.a.ce was almost devoid of bush, the gra.s.s was long and tangled from the bush line to the chasm, and it was shaking and quivering in a very suspicious manner.
”Great minds jump together,” he muttered grimly, all his attention centred on this point, and entirely disregarding a terrific fire which was suddenly opened upon him, with the object, he suspected, of diverting it. ”Just as I thought.”
One glimpse only, of the naked, crawling savage, flattened to the earth, but even that was sufficient. The thud of the bullet ploughing through ribs and vitals, was music to his ears as that savage flattened out more completely, beating the earth in his death throes; and a very shout of exultant snarling laughter escaped him--mingling with the roar of rage that went up from his enemies. He was growing terrible now--ferocious, bloodthirsty, as his ruthless foes, yet cool and firm as the rock behind which he lay.
”Two shots, two birds!” he exclaimed. ”If I can keep on at this rate it's good enough.”
The a.s.sailants were now mad with rage. They howled out taunts and jeers, and blood-curdling promises of the vengeance they would wreak upon him when they got him into their power. At this he laughed-- laughed long and loud.
”That will be never!” he cried. ”Ho, Ziboza, thou valiant fighting induna. How many of the King's hunting dogs does it take to pull down one lion? Are the Ingubu all killed or have they driven thee from their midst to follow a new leader? But I tell thee, Ziboza, thou art a dead man this day. I may be, but thou art surely.”
”Ah--ah--'Sipau!” snarled the chief. ”It is easy to boast, but thou art cornered. We have thee now.”
”Not yet. And a cornered animal is a dangerous one. Come and take me.”
To this interchange of amenities succeeded a lull. Clearly they were planning some fresh surprise. And then Blachland started, with a pang of sharp pain. His left hand was streaming blood. Then his spirits rose again. It was only a cut. A splinter of stone, chipped by one of their bullets, had struck him, but the wound was a trivial one. With the discovery, however, came another, and one which was by no means trivial. The bullet had been fired at a different angle from those hitherto. The ground on the left front rose slightly. His enemies were getting round him on that side. Soon he would be exposed to a complete flanking fire.
The worst of it was that in that direction he could see n.o.body. The cover was too good. He wondered they had not occupied this before, unless it were that they deemed it of the highest importance to cut off all chance of his escape by the river. Yet what chance had he there? A mere choice of deaths, for it was rolling down in flood, and between this and their fire from the bank, why, there was none at all.
And now the sun, which had been s.h.i.+ning warm and glowing above this scene of stern and deadly strife, upon the beleaguered man, desperate, fighting to the last, beset by a swarm of persistent and ruthless foes-- suddenly grew dark. A shadow had curtained its face, black and lowering. Blachland sent a hasty glance upward. One of those storms, almost of daily occurrence now in the rainy season, would shortly break over them. Would it bring him any advantage, however trifling--was his eager thought? At any rate it could not alter his position for the worse. And the hoa.r.s.e and sullen boom of thunder mingled with the vengeful spit of the rifles of his enemies, now more frequent and more deadly because taking him from a new and almost unprotected quarter.
Ha! What was this? Under cover of this last diversion his enemies had been stealing up. They were coming on in dozens, in scores, from the first point of attack. Selecting two of the foremost, one behind the other, he fired--and his aim was true, but at the same time his rifle fell from his grasp, and his arm and shoulder felt as though crushed beneath a waggon wheel. With fiendish yells, drowning the gasping cry of the stricken warriors, the whole body of them poured forward. At the same time, those on the rise behind, left their cover, and charged down upon him, rending the air with their ear-splitting whistles.
He saw what had happened. The rifle had been struck by a bullet, and the concussion had for the moment paralysed him. Only for the moment though. Quick as the vivid flash which flamed down upon him from the now darkened heavens, his mind was made up. With a suddenness and a fleetness which took even his enemies by surprise, he had broken from his cover, and was racing headlong for the point of the donga which led down to the river.
In a second he will gain it. They cannot fire, every nerve is strained to overtake him, to head him off. He sees their foremost line. Now it is in front of him. No, not quite! His revolver is out, and the heavy bullet crashes almost point blank through the foremost. Another springs up in front of him, a gigantic warrior, his broad spear upraised.
Before it can descend the fugitive is upon him, and the momentum is too great. Grappled together they topple over the edge, and go cras.h.i.+ng down, the white man and the savage, into unknown depths.
The bushes close over their heads and they are in almost total darkness.
There is a mighty splash of water and both are engulfed--yet, still grappled, they rise to the surface again, and the blue glare of the lightning, darting down, reveals the slanting earth walls of the chasm, reveals to each the face of the other as they rise above the turgid water, gasping and sputtering. The savage has lost his a.s.segai in the fall, and the white man is groping hungrily, eagerly, for his sheath knife.
”Ah, ah! Ziboza! Did I not tell thee thou wert dead?”
”Not yet, dog Makiwa!” growls the other, in the ferocity of desperation striving to bury his great teeth in his adversary's face. But Blachland is in condition as hard as steel, and far more at home in the water than the Matabele chief, so while gripping the latter by the wrists, he ducks his head beneath the surface, endeavouring to drown him if possible. He dare not let go his hold lest he should be the one grasped, and those above dare not fire down for fear of shooting their chief--even if they could see the contending parties--which they cannot. But the awful reverberations of the thunder-peal boom and s.h.i.+ver within that pit as of h.e.l.l, and the lightnings gleam upon the brown turgid surface, and the straining faces of the combatants are even as those of striving fiends.