Harley Greenoak's Charge Part 30

"Kulondeka is _my_ brother," returned Matanzima. "Or, I should say, my father, for what am I but a boy beside him? Yet no blood for blood shall it be here. If you meet in battle--well and good, the best warrior is he who wins. Now we have talked long enough. _I_ think--too long."

And linking his arm within that of Greenoak, he drew him towards the hut from which he himself had just emerged, at the same time making a sign to one of his own immediate attendants to take charge of the horse, which, its first uneasiness over, was placidly cropping the gra.s.s, its bridle trailing on the ground.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

THE "PULSE OF THE PEOPLE."

Harley Greenoak was not sorry to exchange the riot and racket outside for the cool interior of the young chief's hut. The latter was by no means as neat and clean as he had been wont to find in similar dwellings among the Zulus; because the Xosa has a sort of pa.s.sion for grease--and dogs. Two of the latter got up growling as he entered, but slunk out of the doorway with astonishing celerity at a peremptory word from their master. Then two of Matanzima's wives appeared, bearing food, in the shape of stamped mealies and curdled milk, also a large calabash of native beer, and here again there was a suggestion of but half-washed vessels, and a flavour of grease and red-ochre seemed to permeate the stuff itself. But to Greenoak little matters of this sort were the merest trifles.

"It is good to see you again, Kulondeka," said the young chief, when breakfast was well under way. "Now--what is the news?"

"News? Why as for that, son of Sandili, the news is great."

"Great?"

"It is. And such as it is I bring it from--no further distance from here than I could shoot with this gun."

"Ha!"

The e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, quick and eager; a sudden intensity wherewith the answer had been received was not lost on Harley Greenoak. As we heard him tell the Commandant, he was here to feel the pulse of the people.

Already he had got his finger upon it.

"The people are mad, son of the Great Chief," he went on. "Mad--quite mad. The people here."

Matanzima laughed--and it struck his hearer there was a note of great relief in the tone.

"Why, as to that, Kulondeka," he said, "they are only a little excited.

They are all young men, those out yonder. They have been dancing all night, and have not worn it off. But--mad? _Au_!"

"And Mafutana, and Sikonile, and others who gave me speech on the way hither--are they young men, and have they been dancing all night?" said Greenoak, innocently, and with his head on one side. "They talked 'dark' as they followed on behind me, but--not dark enough, son of Sandili. Ah--ah--not dark enough. They are mad. Shall I say why?"

The young chief nodded and uttered a murmur of a.s.sent.

"Then why are the children of the House of Gaika preparing for war?"

This was putting things straightly. Matanzima brought his hand to his mouth with a quick exclamation. Then, laughing softly, he shook his head.

"Now, nay, Kulondeka," he said. "You are my father, but your dreams have been bad. The war was not with us, and it is over now. And I would ask--If we sat still then, if we did not rise in our might to aid our brethren over yonder, would it not be the act of fools and madmen to rise now, when there is no one to aid, and the whites are all armed and prepared? Now, would it not?"

"It would. It would be the act of just such as these. That is why I say that the news I bring is that your people are all mad, Matanzima."

The latter did not immediately answer, and Greenoak sat and watched him.

Such words, uttered by any other man, would have been equivalent to the signing of his death-warrant. But Greenoak knew his ground. He had saved the life of the young chief once, and he knew that the latter would never forget it as long as he lived. Moreover, between the two there was a very genuine liking, and a longing to save this fine young fool from the ruinous consequences of the mad, impracticable scheme on which he was already embarking had borne a full part in moving him to start upon his perilous undertaking.

"_Whau_! Kulondeka. Are you sent by Iruvumente?" [The Government.]

"Not so, Matanzima. Yet the answers I am getting might well make it appear as though I were. For they are just the answers that might be got ready for a Government commissioner."

The other laughed again, but just a trifle shamefacedly. He knew, only too well, the utter futility of trying to hoodwink this one man of all others. The latter went on--

"Where are all the cattle belonging to the people? The land here is green and the gra.s.s soft and fresh. Who would have thought the pasture in the Gombazana Forest could be better?"

Here again was food for fresh discomfiture. For how should Kulondeka have known so accurately that the tribe had been steadily sending away all its women and children to the wooded fastnesses he had mentioned, in order to have its hands free entirely? Yet what did not Eulondeka know?

"For that," answered Matanzima, "there may be some reason. The Ama Gcaleka might come over and seize some of our cattle to make up for all your people took from them, what time we did not aid them. Ah--ah!

What time we did not aid them," he added significantly.

"If you feared that, why did you not send word to Bokelo?" said Greenoak, using the name by which the Commandant was known among the tribes. "He would have sent sufficient _Amapolise_ to patrol the border, so that such a thing could not have befallen."

The look on Matanzima's face at the mention of such a contingency would have escaped pretty nearly any other man than Harley Greenoak. Him it did not escape. Yes. He was getting his finger more and more tightly on "the pulse."

"When there is lightning in the air, does a man go about flourishing steel," was the reply, with another amused laugh. "_Whau_! some of our people are hotheaded, and not always clear-sighted--as you yourself have just seen," he added whimsically. "There has been lightning in the air, and Bokelo's _Amapolise_ might be just the steel which should draw down the crash."

"Now, listen to me, Matanzima, and we will talk 'dark' no longer," said Greenoak, becoming impressive. "You have referred to me as your 'father,' and that is just what I want to be to you. I want to see you great and powerful, and at the head of your nation. I do not want to see you--with others--spend the rest of your life in the white man's prison. The Great Chief Sandili, is old and infirm, and are you not his 'great' son? It cannot be long before you yourself are Chief of the House of Gaika! _Whau_! look around. Is it not a splendid land which is given you wherein to dwell? Are not the people prosperous and happy, with cattle grazing by their tens of thousands in valley and on hill?

Why, then, fling all this away with both hands? Why exchange it all-- for what? Ask those of your people who have pa.s.sed years of their lives in the white man's prison, for any offence against the white man's laws.

Ask such what it feels like--day after day--moon after moon--toiling at road-making, dragging heavy carts loaded with heavy stones, watched and guarded every moment by, it may be, some miserable Hottentot, ready to shoot you down at any attempt to escape, sometimes in chains it may be.

_Whau_! What a fate for the chiefs of the House of Gaika. Come heat, come cold--ever the same weary round of toil. Then again--no home, no comfortable huts, no wives, no tobacco--nothing to look forward to but the most miserable and grinding slavery. That is the fate you are rushing upon headlong. The fate that will as surely be yours as that the sun is shining above at this moment. You and your people are not as the Ama Gcaleka. They are Kreli's men, and you and the Ama Ngqika are the Queen's men. This is the way the laws of the white men punish those who rise in rebellion against the Queen. Now say. Is it good enough?

Is it?"

Greenoak paused, and sat gazing fixedly at his listener. The young chief's face had grown troubled and moody.

"_Whau_! Such words are even as the words of Tyala," he said, as though half to himself.

"The words of Tyala," echoed Greenoak, eager to push his advantage.

"Ha! And Tyala is wise--no man wiser. Now, Matanzima. You have the ear of the Great Chief. Go now and speak into it, word for word, all I have been saying. Lose no time, do it at once. So shall you save not only yourself, but your people. To delay is death. Where is Sandili?"

"Near Tembani. But I cannot go to him now, Kulondeka," he explained gloomily. "Do you not see? The people here. I alone can hold them."

Yes, that "pulse" was beating now, that pulse of the people which Harley Greenoak was there to feel. There was no chance of making a wrong diagnosis here. But a great sinking came into his heart. More and more, while reasoning with this young leader of the seething war-party, his mind had been impregnated with a growing pity for him, and the dreary intolerable doom he was so surely preparing for himself and many more. For, reading the other, more and more easily he realised that it was too late for the young chief to draw back. The plot had about reached its head. The incursion from beyond the river was all arranged, and its fulfilment imminent. Yet--was it too late?

"Then--hold them," he answered emphatically. "Hold them. Have you no men? Send and recall the cattle and women that have been sent away.

Send out another 'word'--that the time is not ripe. Think, son of Sandili, the last chief of the House of Gaika; for no other will be chief after him when the whole nation is broken up. There is yet time.

It is not too late. Now, I have ridden the night through, and I am growing old. While I sleep--for I am tired--think again upon my words; and--act upon them, and that at once."

Greenoak rose, and going to the side of the hut, stretched himself upon the ground. In less than five minutes he slept, slept hard and dreamlessly. Slept--one man, alone--in the midst of teeming enemies, who but a short while before had been clamouring for his life, and even now, it might be, were plotting how they might take it when he should be once clear of the protecting presence of their chief. The sanctuary of the latter's house they dared not violate. But blood had been shed, and blood cried for blood. It would be hard if they could not, by way of wily ambuscade, obtain their just vengeance when this man should be beyond the protecting influence. The prestige of his personality was great; still he was but one, and they were many. Vast events were maturing; the making an end, then, of this man, with the semi-supernatural reputation for invulnerability, would be a fitting precursor of them.

But Harley Greenoak was still Harley Greenoak, and meanwhile he slumbered on, peacefully and unafraid, in their midst. Would he have slept on so soundly had he known what was going on in another part of the location? Who knows?

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

MAFUTANA'S PLAN.

Sikonile's hut was full. Sikonile's hut, being full, was exceedingly close and stuffy. Moreover, it was thick with tobacco smoke; for, unlike the Zulus, both men and women of the Xosa tribes were great smokers, and so thick was the cloud, having no egress but by percolating through the thatch roof, that none but Kafir eyes could have remained open in it for two consecutive minutes. This, with the foetid, musky, human odour combined with that of more or less rancid grease, would have sent the ordinary white man promptly outside, feeling very sea-sick indeed. No white man, however, was there; incidentally a very lucky thing for the white man, and that for other reasons than the one just given.

Sikonile was an elderly Kafir, and the expression of his ma.s.sive, bearded countenance was scowling and vindictive as he sat gloomily puffing at his long-stemmed angular pipe. And this was scarcely wonderful, seeing that he was the father of Nzinto, the man whom Harley Greenoak had just shot dead. The fact that the deceased had brought his fate upon his own head did not count for much towards mending matters.