The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley Part 29

"We cubs of the Lion shed not our claws," replied the one who had spoken, a tall, straight young fellow who, panting slightly after his run, stood with his head thrown back contemplating the king's troops as though he were the king himself. "Our claws may be cut, though they tear badly first. But we do not shed them."

Again that e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of anger went up, this time mingled with contempt. A rapid movement had been executed. The two young men were surrounded--stood now in the very centre of the _impi_. Still utterly fearless, they looked around and laughed defiantly.

"As the child makes a plaything of the sleeping serpent, so now are you walking over your graves, you two children," said Sobuza, contemptuously. "Who are you?"

"Greeting, _induna_ of the king's _impi_," returned the speaker, after a steady stare at the chief. "We are sent by our father, the Lion of the Igazipuza, to warn you to return. There is _muti_ [medicine, or philtre] spread on the mountain-side leading to his kraal, which is death to twenty times the number you have here."

"Have done with such childishness," returned Sobuza, sternly. "Is your father, the Lion of the Igazipuza, as you name him"--with a sneer--"prepared to come down here and proceed to Undini to lay his neck beneath the paw of the Lion of the Zulu whose wrath he has incurred?"

The two emissaries fairly laughed.

"Not he," was the reply. "This is the word of Ingonyama: 'There is a white man named Jandosi here. When the king's hunting-dogs first behold the home of the Igazipuza, they shall view many things. They shall see the white man, Jandosi, writhing upon the point of The Tooth--he and all his following. The English will then make war in their anger upon the people of Zulu, and will set up a white king. They shall find their game, but the game of the king's hunting-dogs will be not jackals, but lions. Now--let them come!'"

The utter audacity of this speech seemed to take away everybody's breath. They stared at the foolhardy speaker as men who dream. He, before they had recovered, catching sight of Gerard among the group of chiefs, broke into a loud laugh.

"_Ha_! The other white man! The alligators have spat him up again whole. Well, _Umlungu_. New friends are better than old ones. You and your new friends shall see your 'brother' being bitten by The Tooth."

"Seize them!" said Sobuza.

There was a rush and a struggle. Lithe, quick as they were, the two emissaries were overpowered; the blows which would have let the life out of one or more were beaten down by the solid fence of the Udhloko shields. As they lay on the ground, powerless, disarmed--those holding them gazing eagerly, hungrily, at the chief, awaiting the word to bury the broad spears in their prostrate bodies--Gerard recognised, in him who had spoken, the man who had so barbarously slaughtered the unfortunate Swazi, Kazimbi.

"Ho, _Umlungu_," called out the fearless young barbarian. "With the first advance of the king's _impi_, your 'brother' shall be bitten on The Tooth. Ha, ha!"

The words, the fiendish laugh, sent Gerard nearly off his head.

Beckoning Sobuza aside, he besought the chief to delay his advance, to try and make terms with Ingonyama. But Sobuza shook his head. The thing was impossible, he explained. The king's orders were absolute.

Little or nothing was left to his own discretion, who was merely the king's "dog," and entrusted with carrying them out. Poor Gerard, with the horrible picture he had discovered that day upon the rock of death now vividly before his eyes, besought and implored. In vain. He even appealed to the recollection of the aid he had been able to render the chief--a thing that at any other time he would have died rather than have done. Still in vain. Sobuza was firm. The king's orders were imperative and had to be carried out, though one man or a thousand perished. What Jeriji asked was impossible. They had delayed enough already. Then he turned to those who were holding down the emissaries.

"These dogs of Ingonyama's! Could he not even send me a _kehla_, instead of talking to me, Sobuza, an _induna_ of the king, through the mouths of two common dog-whelps like these. Let your spears devour them both!"

Eagerly the signal was watched for, eagerly it was obeyed. Down struck the spear-points, bright and flashing, up they rose again, ruddy and gore-dimmed, then down again. The quivering bodies of the foolhardy emissaries lay pierced with a dozen great gashes.

Covered with blood, one of them half rose. It was that of the spokesman.

"_Hamba gahle_ ['Farewell;' literally, 'Go in peace.'], Sobuza, _induna_ of the king," he gasped, ironically. "_Hamba gahle, Umlungu_! The Tooth bites! The Tooth bites!" And, with a devilish chuckle, ferocious, untamable, fearless to the last, the young warrior, choked with the torrents of his own blood, sank back and died.

"_Au_!" growled the chief impatiently, with an angry scowl. "We have lost more than enough time over this carrion. Yet if all these dogs, who call themselves 'blood-drinkers,' care as little for their lives as you two, by the head-ring of the Great Great One we shall have a merry fight before we 'eat up' Ingonyama's house." Then aloud "Forward, children of the king!"

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE WORK OF "SUPPRESSION."

The chiefs and Gerard were unanimous in the opinion that it would be too much luck to expect to find the Igazipuza unprepared, and the appearance of Ingonyama's emissaries had set at rest all doubt upon that head; and what with the desperate fearlessness of the outlaw clan--fighting, so to say, with its neck in the halter--and the advantage of fighting on its own ground, the battle that day, as Sobuza had said, was likely to prove a right merry one.

All further necessity for concealment being now at an end, the _impi_ advanced swiftly and in silence, moving at a brisk ran, and now the gleam of battle was in every eye, as gripping their formidable broad-bladed a.s.segais, the warriors pressed forward, in their own expressive idiom beginning to "see red." Bounding the spar pointed out by Gerard, they surged up the last slope.

Here they formed up into line of battle. Each flank consisted of a company of the Ngobamakosi, and these were to const.i.tute the "horns"

when the surrounding had to be done. That on the right had Gcopo for leader, that on the left, another sub-chief, named Matela, while the centre, which was composed of the Udhloko, was led by Sobuza, who, as commander of the expedition, directed the movements generally. Beside him, Gerard had resolved for the present to remain, in order, if called upon, to give a.s.sistance by his knowledge of the place.

But for the incident of the two emissaries the king's _impi_ might have supposed it was going to take the doomed Igazipuza completely by surprise, according to the original plan, for as it advanced swiftly up the slope not an enemy showed himself, not a sign of life was there.

Had the Igazipuza elected to choose their own fighting-ground, and retired to some spot strategically more favourable for resisting the invaders? Or was there some secret way out of the hollow, known only to a few, and kept for an emergency such as this? It almost began to look like it. Sobuza and his captains, however, were not the men to trust to appearances or to leave anything to chance, and well indeed for them that such was the case.

They had reached the critical point. A hundred yards further and they would stand upon the ridge overlooking the hollow. Suddenly the stillness was broken--broken in a startling manner. There was a crash of firearms, and from the slope there arose a ma.s.s of warriors springing up as though out of the very earth. Covered by their great war-shields, the broad spear gripped in the right hand, they charged like lightning upon the right flank of the king's force, and the roar of their ferocious blood-shout went up as the roar of a legion of tigers.

Prepared as they were, the surprise, the terrible impetuosity of the charge, momentarily staggered the untried and youthful warriors of the Ngobamakosi. It almost seemed as though they must give way. But Gcopo, their leader, was the right man in the right place.

"Strike, children of the king! Death to the _abatagati_!" he thundered, waving his great shield as he sprang to meet the onrushing horde, "_Usutu_! _'Su-tu_!"

"Igazi--pu--za!" roared the latter, answering the king's war-cry with their own wild slogan. And then as the rival forces met in jarring shock there fell a silence, save for the flutter and crash of shields, the scuffle of feet, the gasp of deep-drawn breaths, the shiver of spears, and the thud of falling bodies. It was all done in a moment.

By hurling his whole force upon that of the daring foe, Sobuza could have crushed it in a very few minutes. But that astute leader knew better. He saw at a glance that the attacking Igazipuza, though better men, hardly equalled in numbers the company of the Ngobamakosi with which they were engaged. So he pa.s.sed a peremptory word to the remainder of his force to hold itself in reserve, and his strategy was justified, for almost immediately another band of the enemy arose with equally startling suddenness, and fell furiously upon his left flank.

In obedience to a mysterious signal, the king's _impi_ divided. Half the Udhloko hurled themselves to the support of the wing first attacked, while the remainder sprang forward in the wake of their chief.

"Ho! hunting-dogs of the king, here is your game! _Usu-tu_!" roared Sobuza, whirling his battle-axe aloft as he leaped to meet these new a.s.sailants. The latter were led by a chief of gigantic stature and hideous aspect, beneath whose wildly fantastic adornments of flowing cowhair and long trailing crane's feathers, Gerard, keeping at the side of Sobuza, had no difficulty in recognising Vunawayo.

"Hah!" growled the latter, as the ringed leader came at him. "Now we have _men_ to deal with!"

Gerard, recognising his old enemy, had covered him with his revolver, and drew the trigger. But with incredible quickness Vunawayo bounded aside, and the ball found its billet in the body of a warrior behind him. Before he could fire again, Sobuza had met the leader of the Igazipuza in full shock.

Then it was as a battle of the giants to behold these two. Their shields clashed together, and remained held at arm's length, pressing against each other as the heads and interlocked horns of two fighting bulls, each striving to beat down the other's guard, to draw the other's stroke by a deft and clever feint; and a false stroke would mean the death of whichever should make it. The warriors on either side had rallied around their respective chiefs and champions, to neither of whom could they render any aid by reason of the desperate fierceness wherewith they were themselves pressing each other. Gerard, carried away by the indescribable savagery and excitement of the combat, began himself to "see red," was hardly, in fact, conscious of his acts. A sharp sting in the ear, as of a red-hot iron, brought him to himself.

Grinding his teeth in fury he emptied his rifle point-blank into the body of a warrior whose a.s.segai stroke had so narrowly missed him, then he was knocked down by the violent contact of a great shield. The bearer of it had raised his spear to strike when he himself was felled by a blow of a battle-axe, and at the same time Gerard was seized by friendly hands and set upon his feet again. Half dazed he continued to load and fire. He saw men stagger beneath their death wound and sink to the earth, now foul and slippery with gore. He saw others almost hacked to pieces as they stood, and then fall to their knees, still thrusting and stabbing as long as there was life in them; but ever the deafening roar of the opposing war-cries, the tossing of weapons and shields, the blows and the gasping, and the spouting blood. It could not last--it could not last.

Even the desperate valour of the Igazipuza, together with the fact that they were on higher ground, for they had charged down upon the king's _impi_, could not avail for long against the superior numbers of the latter. Vunawayo, finding his efforts against Sobuza unavailing, and noting that more and more of the latter's warriors were free to come to their chief's a.s.sistance, sprang suddenly back, and waving his shield, gave out in thunder tones the order to retreat.

But if the king's troops imagined that victory was theirs they were destined to be undeceived. All this while the Igazipuza had been pressed farther and farther back until they had nearly reached the top of the ridge, and now as they poured over this in their retreat, through the point where the slopes narrowed to a kind of gateway, the pursuers thundering on their rear were met by a small but fresh force which had been placed there to cover the retreat of the bulk.

"By the head-ring of the Great Great One, but these are _abatagati_ indeed!" growled Sobuza at this fresh evidence of the desperate pertinacity of the enemy. "At them, my children! Hew them down!"

And shouting the king's war-cry he leaped upon the opposing Igazipuza.

If the fighting had been fierce before, it was doubly so now. This band of heroes in their way, savage, bloodthirsty freebooters as they were, had been placed there in this latter-day Thermopylae, to die--to die in order that the rest might renew the combat under more favourable conditions, and what more formidable foe can there be than a cornered combatant? They went down at last before the Udhloko spears, but the struggle was a fearful one, the result almost man for man. When the victors, panting, bleeding, maddened with bloodshed and fury, stood on the ridge looking down into the hollow upon the Igazipuza kraal, those who had originally withstood them, and of whom they were in pursuit, had disappeared. This would mean hunting them down--hunting down a cornered and desperate foe who had not hesitated to a.s.sume the offensive and attack a force twice as strong as itself, and who still mustered in sufficient numbers to be of formidable menace; hunting down such as these, at bay among the bush and rocks of their own stronghold. A redoubtable undertaking indeed.

There lay the great kraal, apparently deserted, for it and its surroundings showed no sign of life. Eagerly Gerard's glance sought the waggons, and then his heart turned sick. They were still there, but around them also was no sign of life. What had happened? But the next glance was destined to sicken him yet more.

"Look--look!" he gasped, gripping Sobuza by the arm. "That is The Tooth. Oh, good G.o.d!"

The last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n escaped him in his grief. There rose the great pyramid, clear and distinct in the light of early dawn. Something was moving on its apex, and against the cliff-face several dark objects were plainly discernible. To the sharp eyes of the Zulus, and, indeed, to Gerard himself, the nature of them was unmistakable. They were human forms, and they were hanging from the brow of the cliff.

Sobuza, to whom Gerard had imparted this novel and hideous form of torture practised by the savage freebooters, gave a grunt of interest and surprise as he beheld with his own eyes the actual process; for to hang a man up by his dislocated arms wrenched round in the sockets was unique and a novelty to him--barbarian as he was.

"We are too late--we are too late!" groaned Gerard.

"Not so, Jeriji," said the chief, sending another look at the grisly cliff and the dangling bodies. "There are three of them. But not one of them is a white man."

The rush of hope that rose in Gerard's heart was dashed.