A Secret of the Lebombo Part 17

Yet at that moment Bully Rawson, unscrupulous ruffian and general cut-throat, was repeating over and over again Warren's emphatic, if laconic, instructions, "Take care of him. Do you hear? _Take care of him_," and was promising himself that he would.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

MNYAMANA'S CATTLE.

High up among the crags they crouched, like eagles looking forth from an eyrie, sweeping indeed with eagle-like gaze the vast expanse of plain which lay in many an undulating roll, outspread beneath.

Three dark forms, long and lithe, dest.i.tute of clothing save for the _mutya_ and a few war adornments in the way of cow-hair tufts, or feathers. Beside each were several bright, broad-bladed a.s.segais, and medium-sized shields, just where they had been deposited. Far away in the distance rose a cloud of dust--a moving cloud of dust.

"_Ou_! the hand of the spoiler sweeps. The dust which it raises floats away, that which causes it moves on."

A hum of a.s.sent greeted this murmured remark, and the eager attention of the look-out was redoubled. The face of the mountain fell grandly away in terraced slopes, rows of great krantzes intervening. There was a glorious feeling of air, and height, and domination from this lofty post of outlook. Far above, a number of white specks soared and floated against the blue empyrean. The instinct of the vulture is unerring, and that instinct had been kept well in practice as regarded this disturbed region for some time past.

The dust cloud moved onward, drawing nearer, yet still a great way off.

The faces of the watching three were rigid in their eagerness, the eyes dilated, the nostrils distended like those of a stag snuffing the wind.

Then the one who had spoken, taking a broad a.s.segai from the bundle which lay beside him, slid, with a serpentine writhe, down from his coign of vantage, then when the ridge of this was well between him and the expanse over which he had been watching, he drew himself up in a sitting posture, and holding the spear so that it pointed vertically upwards, took one glance at the sun, then twirled the bright blade slowly, facing down upon the valley beneath. This was done several times, until an answering gleam appeared far below. The signaller, satisfied, wormed himself back into his former position on the very crest of the mountain. They renewed their watch, those human eagles, their tense, self-contained excitement deepening as the moments fled by, and it preluded a swoop.

Looking back, to whence had come the answering signal gleam, a maze of broken valley, interseamed with dongas, lay outspread. Opposite and beyond this, a further rocky range towered in a crescent wall. A rugged wilderness, silent, deserted, given over to savage solitude. Yet--was it?

Rank upon rank they crouched, those dark rows of armed warriors, their variegated shields and broad a.s.segais lying upon the ground in front of them. Row upon row of eager, expectant faces; set, intense; the roll of eyeb.a.l.l.s alone giving sign of mobile life, a constrained hum pa.s.sing down the gathering as they drank in the impa.s.sioned and burning words of the speaker.

He was a largely-built, thick-set Zulu of a rich copper colour, which threw out in unwonted blackness the jetty shine of his head-ring. He held himself with the erect, haughty ease of a king addressing his subjects, of a despot speaking to those who owned their very lives only at his will. Yet, he was not the King.

He had begun addressing them in the sitting posture, but as he warmed to his subject had risen to his feet, and now strode up and down as he spoke.

"I am n.o.body. I am a boy. I am a child among the sons of Senzangakona, the Root of the Tree that overshadows the land, the rise of the sun that sheds light on the people. It is not I who should be talking here to-day, Amazulu. _Hau_! even as that Great One foretold, he who died by 'the stroke of Sopuza' the land is splintered and rent. He, Senzangakona's great son, he whom the whites have taken from us, the shine of whose head-ring is dulled in his prison--what of him? Not little by little, but in large cuts his 'life' is being rent from him.

Where are they whom he left--they who were as his life? Ha! are they not given over as a prey to a traitor; the spoiler of his father's house, the son of Mapita. Who is he? The dog of him who is gone. Who is Sibepu?"

"_Whau_! Sibepu!" broke from the listeners. "The spoiler of his father's house!"

"_Eh-he_! The spoiler of his father's house!" echoed the group of chiefs, squatted behind the speaker.

"From the meanest of the nation," went on the speaker, "the _Abelungu_ have chosen those who should be kings over us. Umfanawendhlela, he who now sits at the royal kraals on the Mahlabatini. Who is he? Who is Umfanawendhlela?"

"_Whau_! Umfanawendhlela!" broke forth again the contemptuous roar.

"Yet such as these are the _Abelungu_ now using as their dogs, setting them on to hunt those before whom they formerly cringed and crawled.

Those of the House of Senzangakona are already hungry. All their cattle is being taken by these dogs of the _Abelungu_, and with the women of the Royal House they can do what they will, for have they not already done so? But behind these sits another dog and laughs. U' Jandone!

Who is Jandone?"

"_Hau_! U' Jandone!"

This time the roar was indescribable in its volume of execration. It seemed to split the surrounding rocks with the concentrated vengefulness of its echo. For a few moments the speaker could not continue, so irrepressible were the murmurs of wrath and hate which seethed through the ranks of his listeners.

"Who made him a Zulu," he went on, "since he came into the country white? Who made him rich--rich in cattle, and wives, and power? Who but him who is gone? But when the storm gathered and the _Abelungu_ invented childish grievances and said 'the might of Zulu must be crushed'--did this one who had come here white to be made black; who had come here poor to be made rich--did he stand by that Great One's side and say 'This is my father who has made me great. This is my friend, by whom I am what I am. I hold his hand. His fall is my fall. Did he?'

_Hau_! Jandone!"

"_Hau_! Jandone!" repeated the audience once more in deep-toned wrath and disgust.

Gloomy lightning seemed to shine from the chief's eyes, as with head thrown back and a sneer on his lips, he contemplated the humour of the gathering. He proceeded:

"Our father, Mnyamana, is not here to-day. He is old, and it were better for him to die hungry at home than in the white man's prison.

But upon him, heavily have the dogs of the white man fallen, upon him, the valued adviser of two kings. Even now they are eating him up.

But--shall they? Behold," and he threw out a hand.

The a.s.sembly, following the gesture, turned. High up on the hillside something gleamed--gleamed and glittered again and again. It was the answering signal to those who watched on the mountain crest, and--it was the second answer.

With a deep, fierce murmur the warriors, gripping their shields and weapons, sprang to their feet as one man. Again Dabulamanzi waved his hand.

"In silence," he said. "In silence. So shall we fall upon them the easier."

In silence, accordingly, the great impi moved forth, no shouting, no war-song--but all the more terrible for that. It differed from the state of things prior to, and at the time of the war, in that here were no regiments--head-ringed men and youngsters marching side by side. But upon every face was the grim dark look of hate, not merely the eager antic.i.p.ation of impending battle, but worse. The fraternal feud is proverbially the most envenomed. Against no white invader--English or Dutch--were these going forth but against those of their own kindred and colour, towards whom they felt exactly as Royalist did towards Roundhead in a different quarter of the globe three centuries earlier.

Through a long, narrow defile, running round the base of the mountain on which the outlook was posted, streamed the dark human torrent. On over each roll of plain it poured. At length it halted on a ridge. Grey whirling clouds of dust close at hand drew nearer and nearer, and through them the hides and horns of driven cattle. At the sight a fierce gasp went up from the impi, and the warriors looked for the word of their leaders to fall on.

The beasts were driven by a large armed force, though smaller numerically than this which had come to recapture them.

Those in charge, taken by surprise, halted their men. They had walked into a wasp's nest, yet were not disposed to climb down without an effort. So they stood waiting.

They had not long to wait. The impi headed straight for the cattle, and with a decision of purpose that left nothing to be desired, wedged between them and their drivers, and headed them off in another direction. The animals, panic-stricken, began to run wildly; cows with their calves racing one way, staid oxen, caught with the fever of the scare, now and then charging their new drivers, but these were seasoned to that sort of thing, and would skip nimbly out of the way, or roll on the ground, just in time to avoid the head thrust, while to all, each and every incident risky or laughable, was a source of infinite sport.

One bull--chocolate-hided, sharp-horned--grew more than a danger, for with that shrill growling bellow emitted by his kind when partly scared and wholly angered, he drove his horns clean through a young warrior, flinging the rent carcase furiously in the air. But this in nowise detracted from the fun in general. Him however they incontinently a.s.segaied.

The while a hubbub of voices rose loud through the trampling and bellowing of the cattle, whose drivers were inclined to show fight.

This was in a measure stilled as the leader of the impi strode to the fore. As a brother of the exiled king he was too big a man for even the opposition party to treat otherwise than with a sulky respect.

"_Whou_, Qapela!" spoke Dabulamanzi, confronting the leader of the band that was driving the cattle. "What is this we see? A fighting leader of the Nokenke regiment, who slew three whites with his own a.s.segai at Isandhlwana, now turned white man's dog, now snapping at his absent king. _Whou_, Qapela!"

"_Whou_! Qapela!" echoed the warriors, in roaring derision, as more and more came crowding up.

He, thus held up to scorn, a ringed man of middle age, scowled savagely.

It was one thing to be derided by a branch of the Royal Tree, quite another to be savagely hooted by a pack of unringed boys. It needed but a spark to set the train alight, to bring on a savage and b.l.o.o.d.y fight between the two rival factions.

"No dog of any white man am I, _Ndabezita_," [Note 1] he answered, gloomily defiant. "I am but fulfilling the 'word' of my chief."

"And thy chief? Who is he?" went on Dabulamanzi, his head thrown back, in the pride of his royal rank as he confronted the man. "U' Jandone?"

"_Whou_! Jandone!" roared the warriors in scathing derision.

"Not so, _Ndabezita_," replied the other, in a cool sneering voice, as that of one who is about to score. "My chief is a branch of the Royal Tree; a long branch of the Royal Tree--ah-ah--a long branch. What of U'

Hamu?"

The point was that he had named another brother of the King, an older one than Dabulamanzi; one of the chiefs under the Wolseley settlement, who with John Dunn and Sibepu, and one or two more, was actively opposed to Cetywayo's return.

"Ha! A long branch!" sneered Dabulamanzi. "A branch _cut-off_ from the Royal Tree. How is that, Qapela?"

"_Whou_! Qapela!" roared the warriors again, pointing their a.s.segais at him in derision.