The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley Part 30

"We cannot see the stake from here," he said--"the thing they call the 'point of The Tooth.' Oh, Heavens, if we are too late! Let us get forward! Quick! We may be in time--we may be in time!"

But the Zulu chief, though concerned because of the agony of mind of his young friend, was not there out of any considerations of sentiment. He was there to carry out the orders of the king in all their drastic severity, and was not going to risk failure and court ruin because one unknown white man was in danger of a barbarous death at the hands of the rebel clan. He had got to pursue the fighting force of the latter, and leave it no time to master in any position favourable to itself.

"It can't be done, Jeriji," he replied. "Afterwards, when we have eaten up all these dogs, then we will turn our attention to The Tooth."

"It will be too late then--too late!" said Gerard, angrily. "Listen, Sobuza!" he almost shouted, as an idea struck him. "Give me a few men, and I will go myself. Don't you see! That peak commands all the hollow. I know, for I have been on it. And there are people on it now who can signal to the others. Now--is it not in your interest that it should be cleared?"

"_Hau_!" cried the chief, on whom this idea came with a new light. Then he turned, and after a rapid conference with his colleagues, agreed to the plan, and as by this time the _impi_--less those who had fallen--had mustered on the ridge, the word was given to advance.

And what a different appearance did they now present. Covered with dust and sweat, many of them gashed with wounds and dripping with blood, shields hacked and weapons splintered, still panting with the exertion and excitement of the battle, there was none of that spick-and-span parade-ground appearance which had characterised them during their march upon them now. But instead there was a grim light in their eyes, a fell meaning in the low murmurs that issued now and then from their lips, as the growls of a wounded lion. Here a man might be seen pa.s.sing his fingers along the blade of a broad a.s.segai, foul and clotted with blood; there another, balancing his heavy short-handled kerrie and explaining how he had just failed to beat down his adversary's guard; another again, with a gash which had cut through his head-ring and sliced away a portion of the head beneath. Others again, had lost a finger, an ear, and Sobuza himself was wounded in three places, though not seriously.

But on every countenance there was a grim and vengeful rigidity, which showed that when the "suppression" of the Igazipuza should come to be proceeded with, the king's orders would be carried out in no half-hearted manner.

Leaving a detachment on the ridge to hold the enemy in check in case he should double back and endeavour to break through, Sobuza ordered the advance. The Igazipuza had fled towards the further end of the hollow, where the rocky jungly nature of the ground would be favourable to them making their last stand, and Gerard, who had thoroughly explored the place, was able to estimate pretty accurately the spot where this was likely to be.

"Shall we burn it, my father?" said one of the sub-chiefs, as they pa.s.sed the great silent kraal. "It would make a merry blaze."

"And a most troublesome smoke," returned Sobuza. "Burn it not. When we have done with these jackals we will warm ourselves by the flames of their straw. For the present let it be."

"We are near The Tooth now, Sobuza," said Gerard. "Send the men with me that we may clear it."

But here a fresh difficulty arose. None seemed eager to accompany him.

Although the discipline of a Zulu regiment on a war expedition is of iron rigidity, there were mutterings of discontent at the bare idea.

The warriors had not come there to take up the quarrel of an unknown white trader, but to exterminate the rebellions subjects of the king.

Having tasted its delights, they were burning once more for the mad shock of battle, and with such a foe. They were not keen on falling out of this for the sake of dislodging three or four spies from an elevated position, nor were they eager to place themselves under the command of a white man. The chief himself was but lukewarm in the matter, and it seemed in danger of being abandoned.

"If no one will go with me I will go alone!" cried Gerard, in despair.

Then, as his glance fell upon a face in the ranks, he was inspired with new hope. "Come now, Nk.u.mbi-ka-zulu," he went on. "Are you not ready to win the double gun? It is waiting for you. Are there none of your friends who will go with you? We shall be back with the _impi_ long before the fight is at an end."

The young warrior stepped forth. It was the dream of his life to possess that double gun which he had so vainly tried to jockey out of its owner. Now, by a strange turn of events, he might only hope to possess it by saving the life of that owner.

"I am ready," he said, turning deferentially towards Sobuza for permission.

Another and another stepped forward, friends and kinsmen of his.

"Nine of you. With yourself there will be ten. You must do the best you can, Jeriji, for I can spare no more," said Sobuza impatiently. And the pursuit was resumed.

Lying back from the hollow in a lateral spur, shut in by ironstone cliffs, was a small kraal, and this place had been chosen by the Igazipuza for their last stand. Hither all their women and cattle had been sent, and here they were resolved to die--to die fighting hard.

And no better place could they have chosen than this grim _cul de sac_.

It would be impossible to surround them. Only when they had been driven back step by step--forced against the very face of the iron cliff itself, would the last man be exterminated.

Over this weird death-trap there towered a great cloud of dust, and the rocks re-echoed the lowing and trampling of the cattle and the shouts of their drivers, the shrill voices of women, and the squalling of children. And still the messengers of retribution marched on, a fell purpose in each grim countenance; eyeb.a.l.l.s rolling with a lurid fury, weapons gripped, step elastic and eager. The dawn had broken lowering and murky, and there was no sun. The wind sang mournfully through the hollow; moaning among the cliffs, as with the wail of spirit voices over the drama of carnage and ma.s.sacre which was here to be played out. As in the first instance, the Igazipuza had selected a place where their a.s.sailants would be obliged to approach them from below.

Sobuza having satisfied himself that all the fighting force of the rebel clan was before him, sent back two swift runners to order forward the detachment he had left on the outer ridge, with the exception of a few who were to remain to cut off any stray fugitives who might break through. The contingency that anything like a number might do so seemed hardly worth reckoning on. Then he ordered the immediate attack.

As the king's troops came sweeping up the slope, in perfect line of battle, regular and unbroken, there floated to their ears, rising in dull menace on the fitful puffs of the morning, the weird rhythmical chorus of a war-song.

"Cubs of the Lion we, Whose roar sounds Death; Vultures who sit on high, Whose swoop means Death; Serpents who creep below, Whose fangs deal Death-- We drink of the blood of men, We laugh at Death!

"Wizards of thunder we Whose voice rolls Death; Wizards of lightning we Who flash forth Death!

Ho! 'hunting-dogs of the king,'

Come, taste our Death!

We drink of the blood of men-- We drink _your_ Death!"

The great ironstone cliffs echoed back the weird words of the savage strophe with almost the effect of articulate repet.i.tion, and when, in its final paean of defiance, the chorus swelled to a clamourous, threatening roar, the disgust and hatred and repulsion which ran through the minds of the king's soldiers knew no bounds. For to the average Zulu nothing is more repellent than any suggestion of dark dealing, and the gruesome import of the song of the Igazipuza, who had already earned a reputation for wizardry in its foulest form, inspired in the minds of these a fell determination to rid the earth of the whole evil brood.

"Usutu!"

"Igazi--Pu--Za!"

The war-shout of the royal house and the defiant slogan of the rebel clan, mingled in booming echoes from the overhanging cliffs, as the dark crescent line swept unswervingly on; the line of white shields, and the flanking companies of parti-coloured ones, the bristling groups of bright spears. In their wild and fantastic array, the red disk, the hideous stamp of their dreaded order, freshly painted on forehead and chest, the strength of ten men in the hopeless desperation of each, the doomed clansmen stood awaiting the shock. It came.

Then again was the silence of voices, but the tramp of striving feet as the conflicting crowd surged backwards and forwards--with the hiss and heave of a dark billow split up on a half-submerged rock--the crash of shields and weapons, the stagger of falling bodies, and the gasp of the slain beneath the savage slashing blows of the infuriated slayers. The Igazipuza are fighting like a race of giants. At this rate barely half the king's force will return to Ulundi. All three of its leaders are wounded; Sobuza is streaming with blood, but still his gigantic form towers in the thick of the fray, still his battle-axe shears aloft in wavy circles of light, still his white shield shivers that of an opponent like the shock of a charging elephant.

Suddenly a sharp shrill warning cry rings forth. Even above the din of the strife there rises a doll, rambling sound which shakes the ground.

Nearer, nearer it draws. Thunder? No. Even the combatants pause. A dense cloud of dust is rolling down the kloof, and through it can be seen a forest of bristling horns, a sea of rolling eyes. Even the combatants take up the warning shout, "_Xwaya--xwaya! 'Zinkomo_!"

["Look out--look out! The cattle!"]

Like a whirlwind the frantic herd sweeps down the narrow gorge.

Bellowing, leaping, throwing up their horns, the maddened beasts plunge onward, hundreds and hundreds of them, shaking the earth with the thunder of their hoofs, smothering and blinding all with the cyclone of their dust, heading for the outlet. There is no staying the headlong course of the stampeded beasts. The whole _impi_ will be crashed to pulp by the horned terror. In dismay the combatants spring helter-skelter up the rocks, and it goes roaring and thundering by, crushing many as it does so.

Whether the move was a spontaneous one, and that the animals, frantic with the shouting and the reek of blood, and all penned up moreover in such small compa.s.s, had stampeded of their own accord, or whether it was a last desperate resource on the part of the Igazipuza to crush and destroy the king's _impi_, could not at the time be determined. Both parties, for the moment dazed, now rushed at each other with renewed access of fury--but it could not last. The numbers of the Igazipuza had dwindled frightfully; all cohesion among them was at an end. They were now broken up into groups, still fighting desperately.

"Yield, wizards!" roared Sobuza. "To fight on is death."

"Ha, ha! We laugh at death, leader of the king's hunting-dogs!" came the jeering reply.

"Taste it, then!" thundered the chief, springing at the largest of these groups, and, whirling a heavy k.n.o.bkerrie aloft, for his battle-axe was broken, he smashed in the skull of the speaker like an eggsh.e.l.l. With a roar and a rush the king's _impi_ surged forward, overwhelming the now scattered groups by sheer weight of numbers. The battle was at an end.

In ghastly staring heaps, their splintered weapons still gripped in their dying throes, still half covered by their hacked shields, the corpses of the Igazipuza warriors lay, gashed and streaming with blood.

Grimly, sullenly, to the death had they fought, and now there were none left to fight. The king's troops, too, had suffered severely. Gcopo, the leader of the Ngobamakosi, had been killed, and Matela, the sub-chief, was badly wounded with a.s.segai thrusts, and many a staunch fighting man of that regiment and of the Udhloko had fallen.

"On, on!" cried Sobuza, waving his arm. "The king's work is not yet done. Where is Ingonyama? Where is Vunawayo?"

A shout of dismay, of baffled fury, answered him. Rolling their eyes over the groups of slain, the warriors sought the now familiar features of the fighting leader. In vain. Vunawayo was not among them. Had he succeeded in breaking through the lines during the confusion caused by the rush of the cattle? It began to look like it.

Again, roaring out the king's war-cry, the whole force charged eagerly forward. There stood the small kraal. In a moment it was entirely surrounded.

"Come forth! come forth!" thundered Sobuza, his voice almost drowned by the dismal clamour of shrieks and terrified howling kept up by the women and children hiding away in their huts in terror of their lives. "Come forth, ere the torch is put in! To linger is death!"

Screaming, grovelling in abject fear, the miserable herd crept forth.

"Spare us, father! Crush us not, Foot of the Elephant! Bend us not, Paw of the Lion!" they howled, rolling on the ground before the chief, beside themselves with fear as they looked upon the blood-stained weapons and threatening scowls of the king's warriors. The old hags, especially, kept up their dismal, quavering screech. The younger women were for the most part less scared or stonily resigned. All, however, expected immediate ma.s.sacre.

"Peace, witches--night cats!" thundered Sobuza. "Say, while ye may.

Where is Ingonyama?"

Whether in the bewilderment of her terror, or out of sheer force of habit, the foremost of the women, a hideous wrinkled hag, to whom the question seemed in particular addressed, replied--