The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley Part 25

From his present position he could not see out, and he dared not move from it without exposing himself to the twofold danger of being seized in the water, and thus at every disadvantage, by another alligator, or by the agitation of the branches making his presence known to his enemies. So he strove to make up for it by listening with all his might.

That the savages had made a discovery of some sort was, from their conversation, inevitable. From the sound of their voices he estimated that they were about fifty yards below.

"Ha! The blood!" he heard one say. "It has taken him; picked him up under the bank. _Ou_!"

"We could not find him, but the alligator has been a good hunting-dog.

It has nosed him out." And there was a general laugh.

Then followed a volley of quick, excited e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns.

"See there!" cried one. "He still struggles! Look! Out in the middle.

_Ha_!" And Gerard, listening, with all his ears, could hear the sound of the distant splashing, and knew what had happened. The wounded alligator had risen again in the middle of the river and was struggling in its agony or perchance in the throes of death. The savages, watching from the bank, were under the impression that it was engaged in devouring him. His heart bounded with the thought. If such was their belief, a.s.suredly they would abandon the search and go away. But as against this, it occurred to him that if the alligator should die the carcase might float; he was not sure whether it would or not. If it did, why then he was in worse case than ever, for they would discover that the monster had been slain by him, instead of the other way about, and redouble their efforts at finding him.

"_Hau_!" he heard one say after a minute of silence. "What a struggle!

The white man dies hard."

"Not so," said another. "They are fighting for his carcase. _Au_!

What a number of them. They are making as much splashing as a steam-vessel I once saw at Tegwini!" [Durban.]

Again there was an interval of silence, broken only by the sound of splashing. Then a voice said--

"He is gone! They have eaten him up among them; a leg here, and an arm there--a head to another, and so on. There is nothing left of the white man. He is distributed among all the alligators in the river. But, perhaps, that is better than being bitten on the point of The Tooth."

A general laugh greeted this remark, and then a voice called out, "_Hlala gahle_! Rest easy, white man! Sleep peacefully inside all the alligators. Don't cause them bad dreams. Farewell. Rest easy!"

This witticism seemed to the listener to be the parting one, for with the roar of laughter which greeted it the sound of voices seemed to be receding. With unspeakable and heartfelt thankfulness Gerard realised that the savages had at length abandoned the search.

Even then he was not without misgivings. Their last words might have been but a blind to draw him from his concealment. He would cling to the latter as long as prudence should dictate.

Time went by. Gerard, listening with all his ears, could hear no sound which betokened the presence of his enemies, not a murmur, not a footstep. A bird alighted, twittering, on the branches just over his head, then another and another. A pair of yellow thrushes in the brake behind set up their half-grating, half-piping, duet; and he could hear the raucous croak of a white-necked crow, sailing lazily along the river-bank. Relieved of the presence of its natural enemy, man, the life of this solemn wilderness was beginning once more to come forth.

Gerard, however, delayed long to follow its example, as we have said.

His enemies might have left some of their number at a little distance to watch; or the very birds whose presence now a.s.sured him of his safety, might by their calls of alarm, attract the notice of the receding Igazipuza. So for upwards of an hour he waited there, momentarily expecting another attack from an alligator; but whether it was that the struggle and the fate of the one had scared away the others from the spot, he was spared the ordeal of a second conflict. At length, cramped and shivering, every bone and muscle in his body aching, poor Gerard hauled himself cautiously up by the overhanging branches and stood, or rather rolled, upon the bank again.

To a feeling of unspeakable elation and thankfulness succeeded one of depression. He had escaped so far--had escaped a double peril, in a manner that was little short of miraculous. But here he was, alone in a semi-hostile, if not entirely hostile country, which was completely unknown to him, without food, and not daring to fire a shot lest it should bring his enemies down upon him. Moreover, he was numbed and shivering from his long immersion, which might result in fever, ague, and such evils, not unknown in the belts of bush country. Again, he was still on the wrong side of the river, and now, bearing in mind his recent experience of its grisly denizens, the contingency of being obliged to cross it alone, and that by wading or swimming, he contemplated with shrinking and horror. But then again would come the thought of his almost miraculous escape. Surely he had been preserved for some purpose, and what purpose could be more worthy of accomplishment than that which he had in hand. No; this was not the time to despair, not it, indeed.

The day was now well advanced. Gerard, thinking hard, resolved that he had better not begin to move until dusk. It was dangerous now. He might be sighted from afar, or fall in with wandering bands, and not yet did he consider such a meeting a safe one or likely to result in the furtherance of his object. Moreover, he was deadly tired. He had slept but little of late, what with the anxiety of their position and the excitement of antic.i.p.ating his own attempt--and not at all the previous night. He would find some sequestered hiding-place and take the rest he so greatly needed; would sleep, if possible, until evening. Then he would contrive to cross the river, and travel the night through. Thanks to the repugnance of Zulus to being abroad during the hours of darkness, he stood a pretty good chance of moving unmolested, and by morning he ought to have put a wide enough s.p.a.ce between the Igazipuza and himself, to feel comparatively safe.

Acting upon this idea, he started off along the river-bank to find a snug and convenient place of concealment; and when he had gone about a mile, wending carefully and quietly so as to disturb as little as possible the very birds, keeping well under cover of the bush, he found one. It was a small hollow, in the midst of which rose a great boulder.

The heat and the exercise had dried his clothes and restored circulation to his veins, and now at the foot of this boulder where the sun struck in dry and warm, Gerard lay down.

The sense of restfulness was indescribably delicious. His mind in its dreamy half-wakeful state went off into retrospect. Could it, indeed, be barely a year since he had received the twofold welcome news that he was to leave school immediately, and proceed--scarcely less immediately--to shift for himself in a far colony; that dream of Utopia to the average English boy, that too frequently rough awakening? He saw himself again on board the _Amatikulu_, gazing with wonder and a touch of mysterious awe upon the green sh.o.r.es of his "promised land." Once more he was leading the old disillusioning monotonous and rather sordid life at Anstey's, and an uneasy longing to take that specious rascal by the throat--for he was quite asleep now--was forgotten in the more pleasant vision of May Kingsland. And then his dreams took no further shape--merging into the complete unconsciousness of the more restful form of sound slumber.

The hours followed each other, and even the live creatures of the wilderness ceased to fear the motionless sleeping form of the young adventurer, but a year ago a hearty unsophisticated English schoolboy, now the bearer of his own life and the lives of others; thrown upon his own resources, alone, in the then scarcely known wilds of northern Zululand. Birds began to flit from spray to spray, balancing themselves on swaying twig, and chirruping and twittering just over the sleeper's head. Little lizards, creeping along the face of the rocky boulder, dropped upon the sleeping form and ran tentatively over it, and a bush-buck, stepping gingerly through the hollow, turned its full bright eye upon the prostrate figure, and resumed its way as though finding no cause for alarm.

Hour followed hour, and now the sun's rays began to decline, to slant more and more horizontally upon the green sprays of the foliage. Gerard stirred uneasily in his sleep, for with the approach of the waking hour he was beginning to dream again. Once more he was in the Igazipuza kraal with Dawes, discussing the seriousness of the situation. He had made the attempt to escape, and was being brought back--had been brought back. And then into his dreams there stole a vague sense of danger, strange, indefinable, but none the less present. It was fearful. Some weight was upon him, boding, terrible. He could neither straggle nor call out. Then breaking the spell with a mighty effort, he started up from his sleep--awoke to a reality more fearsome, more formidable than the nightmarish delusion. For, as he started up into a sitting posture, he nearly brought his face into contact with a dark grim visage which was peering into it, and a cry of surprise, dismay, despair escaped him.

He was surrounded by a crowd of armed Zulus!

CHAPTER TWENTY.

AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT.

Never in the whole course of his hard, chequered, adventurous life, could John Dawes recall a day spent in such wearing, intolerable suspense, as that following the night of his young companion's escape.

That it was an escape he now entertained no doubt. The hours wore on, and still no return of a triumphant band bringing with it the recaptured fugitive. This augured well as regarded Gerard.

As regarded himself the trader knew that any hour might be his last.

There was an ominous stillness brooding over the Igazipuza kraal following on the night of furious revelry. None of its denizens came near him; but for all that he knew that every one of his movements was intently watched. Try as he would he could not altogether conceal his anxiety from his own people. The Swazis cowered beneath the waggons in terror, and even the st.u.r.dier Natal natives, with their strong admixture of Zulu blood, sat together in gloomy silence. Every one of them, however, had a short stabbing a.s.segai concealed beneath his blanket, ready to sell his life as dearly as possible, and these preparations they hardly took the trouble to dissemble from the chief's councillor, Sonkwana, who still remained at the waggons, squatting on the ground tranquilly taking snuff from time to time, a very model of taciturnity.

Thus the day wore on, and still no sign of the returning pursuit. With great good luck Gerard would have reached the king's kraal by that time to-morrow. Then from speculating as to how his brave young companion had fared, Dawes's mind went back to the scene of the previous night.

His shaft had told. The threat to appeal to Cetywayo had not been without its effect upon Ingonyama, and that effect a considerable one.

Still, with morning no message of emanc.i.p.ation had come from the chief, and Dawes did not think it advisable once more to trust himself within the kraal; and not being the man to ask another to go where he preferred not to venture himself, he refrained from sending one of his servants upon this errand. Still he was very uneasy.

Still more uneasy would he have been, could he have overheard the conference then proceeding in the chief's hut. Seated around in a half circle, Ingonyama, Vunawayo, and some three or four councillors were engaged in earnest discussion, the subject nothing less than the advisability of putting him and his to the a.s.segai forthwith. The chief could hardly contain his chagrin and impatience.

"If they return and fail to kill or bring back the boy," he was saying, "six of their leaders shall die. The Tooth shall bite them. They deserve that for allowing him to slip through them."

"We have kept this white man and his Kafula dogs too long," said Vunawayo, darkly. "Why not begin with him, now, this very day?"

"Ha! He is no fool, this Jandosi," said Ingonyama, with a ferocious scowl. "What if his dog already barks in the ear of the king?"

"Even then, is not the bark of one dog, less than that of two--of several?" urged Vunawayo. "The king might not listen to one where he might to many. Besides, he has less and less reason to love the English; who, men whisper, are trying to pick a quarrel with him about one thing after another. Such is not the time for whispering into his ear tales against his own chiefs--against the best of his fighting men.

Is the king a fool that he would exchange the hundreds of the Igazipuza spears for the lives of two miserable white dogs? No. Let Jandosi's 'tongue' go prate at Undini--if it can reach there. It is as likely to be cut there as here."

"What, then, would you counsel, my brethren?" said Ingonyama, looking round.

The _indunas_ shrugged their shoulders, and all glanced tentatively at Vunawayo. He, evidently, was the Mephistopheles of the group.

"We think Vunawayo speaks clearly," said one of them at length. "This white man and they that are with him should die."

"I have long thought so," said the chief, scowling ferociously at the recollection of the indignity he had suffered the previous night, held at the muzzle of the trader's pistol. "And now--the manner of it.

Shall they die by the bite of The Tooth?"

"That must depend," replied Vunawayo. "This white dog has teeth of his own, and he will show them. They, too, can bite. He will die; but it will be biting hard. He will not leave his waggons, and he is well armed and brave. Now my counsel is this. He cannot always live without sleep, no man can. Wherefore towards dawn, when sleep is heaviest, let a company be told off to rush in upon and surprise him. They will be on him before he can wake, and thus will take him alive."

"I doubt them finding any such easy capture," muttered the chief, with a dissentient head-shake. "Is there no better plan?"

"Only this, father," said Vunawayo, with a grin of ferocious exultation.

"Have you not said that they who let the boy slip through them and escape should supply meat for The Tooth? Now, therefore, let us spare them their lives on condition that they find such meat for The Tooth instead of themselves. Thus will they dare and do all to secure Jandosi alive."

"So be it, then," said Ingonyama, after a moment's reflection. "This night shall he be taken."

Meanwhile the object of these amiable intentions was meditating a bold stroke. Seated at his waggons, carefully thinking out the situation, he decided that once more a bold line might better serve his purpose; in pursuance of which plan he hailed a boy who was pa.s.sing.

The latter stopped, stared, hesitated; then rea.s.sured by a signal from the _induna_ Sonkwana, he drew near wonderingly.

"I have a fancy to see my oxen here," said John Dawes. "What is your name, boy?"