Through Veld and Forest Part 17

"Nonsense, man," I retorted; "it is proof of nothing of the kind. I have no desire to be your king. All that I want is to find the daughter of my friend, rescue her from captivity, and return to my own country, taking with me, by your goodwill, as many of the shining stones as will enable me to retrieve my ruined fortunes. Therefore, permit me--" and before Anuti knew what I was about I withdrew the fateful ring from my own finger and slipped it on his.

"There!" I continued, "now you are the king, which is as it should be.

The Bandokolo will rejoice to have you as their sovereign, while, as for me, if you require any help or advice that I can give, it shall be freely yours; and when once you are firmly established upon the throne I will bid you farewell and go my way. But what about Bimbane; what will you do with her?"

"There will be neither trouble nor difficulty in disposing of her, for she has not a friend in all Bandokolo," answered Anuti. "It will but be necessary for me to display this ring and even her bodyguards will gladly transfer their allegiance to me. And perhaps you are right, Chia'gnosi, in the matter of the kingship; it is better that the Bandokolo should be governed by one of themselves than by a stranger.

But you have this day done a service to the Bandokolo which we shall not forget, for by your action in wresting this ring from the queen, and, with it, all her power and authority, you have saved the country from civil war, with all its attendant horrors and slaughter. And now it will be well that the n.o.bles and chiefs should be instantly informed of what has happened; therefore, if you will excuse me for a short time, I will dispatch the necessary messengers."

Anuti had been absent about three-quarters of an hour when a servant announced that two of my natives desired speech with me; and when they were introduced they proved to be 'Mfuni and Piet, who had encountered each other on the main road and now returned together, bringing with them the astounding news that the whole of my oxen had suddenly dropped dead while feeding, at the precise moment--so far as I was able to fix it--when Bimbane had p.r.o.nounced their death warrant! It was a very extraordinary thing, much too extraordinary, I thought, to be a mere coincidence; yet I was not so much astonished as I might otherwise have been, for I had by this time been long enough in Bandokolo to have realised that many surprising and startling things happened there which would have been regarded as impossible in more civilised countries.

But this was not the only, or even the most startling, occurrence of that eventful day; for Anuti had scarcely returned to the house, accompanied by half a dozen of the most powerful n.o.bles, whom he had been lucky enough to encounter, when a wild-eyed messenger arrived from the palace with the astounding news that the queen was dead, having taken poison! This news, if true, would of course simplify matters immensely, since, the queen being childless, her husband would, according to the laws of Bandokolo, succeed her; and accordingly we all hastened to the palace to investigate the statement.

Arrived at the royal residence, we found the place in a state of wild commotion--although the excitement was not so intense as to make the squadron of bodyguards then on duty forget to accord the royal salute to Anuti upon his entrance. We were informed that the body of the queen was in her sleeping chamber, and thither we hastened, to find the apartment in possession of about a dozen physicians, who had hurried to the palace upon the summons of the chief lady-in-waiting, and who had just completed their examination of the body. They all agreed that death was the result of poison, self-administered; and indeed there seemed to be no room for any other conclusion, for when the corpse was discovered a tiny flask was found tightly grasped in the right hand, the odour clinging to which, and to the lips of the dead woman, proclaimed beyond all question that it had contained bicari, a decoction prepared from the root of the combuti plant, and one of the most deadly toxics known to the Africans of the interior.

The fact of the queen's death being fully established, Anuti gave orders that the body should be prepared in the usual way for public cremation on the following day, after which the chamber was to be closed and sealed, and a guard of honour mounted before it. In the meantime, while these orders were being carried out, we all adjourned to the council chamber, where we were soon afterward joined by several other n.o.bles and chiefs, who had been hastily summoned; and a council was held at which it was decided that, for expediency's sake, Anuti should at once take up his abode at the palace, and that he should be proclaimed king that same evening. Mounted messengers were accordingly sent forth into the city, summoning the people to a.s.semble before the palace at an hour corresponding to ten o'clock; and at that hour the ceremony of proclamation was duly performed.

The scene was one of considerable barbaric splendour, chiefly by reason of the magnificent dresses worn by the various personages who took part in it. It happened that all the n.o.bles and chiefs who were really of paramount importance were dwellers in the city. It was consequently possible for every one of them to be present; and as they all held high rank either in the army or what may be called the civil service, and wore the full-dress uniform of their rank upon this occasion, the display of golden armour and weapons, richly embroidered robes and banners, and jewelled and feathered head-dresses glittering in the somewhat smoky light of thousands of blazing torches presented a spectacle which I shall never forget.

The act of proclamation was performed from the steps leading up to the main entrance to the palace, upon the top landing of which stood Anuti, clad in the resplendent uniform of a general, supported by the n.o.bles and chiefs--and also by myself, in my uniform, which I had resumed at the urgent request of the king and his supporters; while the herald and trumpeters also stood upon the steps, but halfway down. The actual ceremony was of very brief duration, and simply consisted of seven blasts upon the golden trumpets, followed by the formal statement by the herald that, it having pleased the spirits who presided over the destinies of the Bandokolo nation to summon Bimbane to her long-deferred rest, her husband, the n.o.ble and ill.u.s.trious Anuti, would take up the reins of government and henceforth rule the people. Might the king live for ever! Upon which the trumpets again sounded seven blasts, the a.s.sembled mult.i.tude expressed their approval by loud and prolonged applause, the n.o.bles and chiefs present came forward in the order of their rank and did homage to the new king, the royal bodyguard, paraded in full strength for the occasion, deployed in front of the steps and gave the royal salute, and the ceremony was at an end. At Anuti's urgent request I resumed occupation of the apartments which I had lived in during my stay in Masakisale; and as I did not wish to be further mixed up in the political situation, and was moreover somewhat fatigued, I at once retired to them and was soon sound asleep.

The following day was scarcely less strenuous than that which had preceded it, though in a different way; for it had been arranged that the obsequies of the dead queen should take place at sunset, and all day long the several Court officials concerned were busily engaged in making the necessary preparations.

The funeral pyre was erected in the centre of a s.p.a.cious basin among the hills at the head of the valley, some six miles from the palace, and early in the afternoon the inhabitants began to gather in front of the palace, to witness and take part in the spectacle. Then, about four o'clock, the royal bodyguard, with their regimental banners twisted into a knot and bound to the staves with broad white ribbons in token of mourning, paraded before the palace, and the trumpeters sounded seven blasts; whereupon the funeral cortege made its appearance, issuing from the main entrance to the palace. First stalked the royal standard-bearer, carrying the royal standard, knotted and bound to its staff with white ribbon; then came the royal bier, which consisted of a platform borne by twelve men attired wholly in white--the mourning colour--and draped with white silk, heavily fringed with gold bullion, which swept the ground. Upon this platform was placed the royal throne of ivory heavily mounted in gold; and upon the throne, and securely fastened to it, was seated the body of Bimbane, fully attired in her robes of state, and crowned with a gold coronet set with uncut diamonds and ornamented with the crimson wings of the orilu, which only a monarch might wear. Then came Anuti, alone, in his full uniform, closely followed by the n.o.bles and chiefs of the nation--among whom the new king had insisted that I should take my place. Slowly and with solemn step we descended the broad flight of stone steps until we reached the s.p.a.cious quadrangle at their foot, and here our attendants led forward our steeds and we mounted, Prince, with his glossy black coat, being conspicuous among the array of zebras which const.i.tuted the mounts of the rest.

As the bier reached the quadrangle, a trumpet blast rang out, and the royal bodyguard arranged itself into three sides of a hollow square, into which the bier pa.s.sed, when, with the royal standard-bearer riding in front, the banners of the guard immediately following him, and the trumpeters between them and the mounted troops blowing long, wailing blasts at regular intervals, the cortege proceeded slowly and solemnly along the road, the bier, surrounded by the bodyguard, being followed by Anuti and the rest of us, while the inhabitants in general brought up the rear.

In this fashion the funeral cortege pa.s.sed along the main road through the city to the scene of the cremation, the march occupying just two hours. We reached the funeral pyre as the last rays of the sun were gilding the tops of the trees which hemmed in the valley, when the bodyguard formed a hollow square round the pyre, with Anuti and the n.o.bles inside it, while the inhabitants ranged themselves upon the adjacent hillside to witness, for the first time in their lives, the spectacle of a royal cremation. About a hundred priests, arrayed in long white robes, were gathered about the pyre when we reached it; and as soon as the bier, with its dead occupant, had been deposited upon the summit of the pyre, the arch-priest began the funeral service, which lasted about a quarter of an hour. By the time that this was over it was quite dark, the surrounding tree tops standing out black against the star-studded sky; and only an occasional faint, evanescent gleam here and there of starlight upon golden armour told of the presence of all that mult.i.tude.

Then, the religious service being at an end, a lighted torch was mysteriously produced from somewhere and handed to Anuti, who, approaching the pyre, thrust the burning brand into the heart of it and retired again to his former place. For a second or two the darkness continued; then here and there about the pyre small wreaths of smoke floated out, quickly followed by little tongues of flame, rapidly increasing in intensity until within a few minutes the whole of the upper part of the pyre was ablaze, and the basin, with its crowds of splendidly attired and mounted officials, was brilliantly illuminated by the ruddy glare. I think the bier, and possibly the body also, must have been treated with some highly combustible preparation, for I noticed that the moment the flames reached them they seized upon them with avidity, so that within ten minutes of the first kindling the bier and the body were both enwrapped in a roaring volume of vivid flame, in which the corpse seemed to shrink and shrivel so rapidly that when at length the top of the pyre collapsed and fell in, scarcely a vestige of bier or body was to be seen. The fire blazed so furiously--throwing out an almost unendurable heat--that within half an hour the pyre had become reduced to a heap of ruddy, dull-glowing ashes; whereupon Anuti gave a signal, the trumpeters blew seven blasts by way of final salute to the dead, the white ribbons were torn from the banners and cast upon the flickering flames, the banners were unknotted, and, forming up in military array, the mounted contingent wheeled and departed, making their way back to the palace, and leaving the pedestrians to return home at their leisure.

On the following day a golden urn, containing ashes a.s.serted to be those of the dead queen, was deposited by the priests in the funeral chamber beneath the palace, and Bimbane, with all her faults and crimes, finally disappeared for ever from among the Bandokolo.

The accession of Anuti to the throne was the cause of general rejoicing throughout the country; and in accordance with custom the new king proclaimed a grand festival in celebration of the event. But as the festival--also in accordance with custom--necessarily consisted to a great extent of fights between condemned criminals and wild animals, especially man-monkeys, I declined to remain and be present; and Anuti, knowing my views with regard to such barbarous spectacles, did not press the point. On the contrary, he fully sympathised with me, and would very gladly have abolished the custom, but public opinion was too strong even for him; the sports were so highly appreciated that to have suppressed them would have very seriously impaired his popularity, and this he dared not risk just then, at the very beginning of his reign.

Therefore he did everything he could to expedite my departure, presenting me with a beautiful team of twenty-four thoroughly broken zebras to take the place of my slain oxen, lending me a driver to instruct mine in the handling of them; also he insisted upon my retaining every one of the gifts bestowed upon me by the late queen, and added to them a second goatskin sackful of magnificent diamonds; and finally he instructed my old friend Pousa to escort me with his squadron to the frontier, more as a guard of honour than by way of protection, for by that time my fame had spread to the uttermost parts of the kingdom, and no Bandokolo would have dreamed of attempting to molest me.

And, thus magnificently rewarded for services that, after all, I at least regarded as utterly insignificant, I took my departure from Masakisale on my homeward journey, exactly a week after the celebration of the funeral obsequies of Queen Bimbane, much to the regret, I was a.s.sured, of all whose acquaintance I had made.

My departure from Masakisale was a very different affair from that of my entrance into it. For, although I was not permitted to suspect it at the time, there can be no doubt that I entered the capital of Bandokolo virtually as a prisoner, and was an object of curiosity and suspicion to everybody who set eyes upon me; while now I went forth accompanied by expressions of regard and regret from the entire inhabitants of the city, who seemed to have turned out _en ma.s.se_ to witness my departure and to bid me farewell. Also, excluding what remained of my ammunition and provisions, my wagon was loaded to its utmost capacity with gold and precious stones; and it no longer crawled over the ground at a bare three miles an hour, but proceeded at quite double that speed behind the st.u.r.dy, sprightly, high-spirited team of twenty-four zebras, which would have travelled half as fast again had I not determined to work them very lightly, in view of the long, toilsome journey that lay before me.

And here, for the gratification of the curious, I may as well describe the manner in which these animals were attached to the wagon. I suppose everybody by this time knows, either from pictures or from having seen the thing itself, what a South African wagon is like; and also knows that it is drawn by a team of from twelve to eighteen oxen yoked together in pairs, the cleverest pair being yoked next the wagon to the disselboom--which answers to the ordinary carriage pole where a pair of horses are driven abreast--while the remainder of the team are yoked, also in pairs, to the trek chain, which is attached to the extremity of the disselboom. Now, oxen pull upon a yoke which rests upon their necks and is attached thereto by a strip of rein pa.s.sing under their throats, and this const.i.tutes the whole of their very primitive harness. But it was obvious that such an arrangement would be quite unsuited to my new team of zebras: consequently harness had to be especially made for them, consisting of a breast and shoulder strap, the former being made long enough to form a pair of traces attachable to a splinter bar; there was also added a headstall with a single rein, which was fastened to the trek chain. This arrangement served for all but the leading pair of zebras, the off animal of which was fitted with a saddle upon which the driver sat postilion fashion, guiding the leaders and regulating the pace of the whole team.

During the first two days a Bandokolo drove the team, while 'Ngulubi, my Bantu voorlouper, rode beside him on one of my horses, watching the process and receiving instruction; but after that 'Ngulubi himself undertook the driving, while the Bandokolo rode alongside and continued his instruction. Thus, by the time that we reached the frontier, 'Ngulubi was quite qualified to act as driver, while he, Jan, and Piet had also learned to look after the zebras when they were outspanned.

With such a spanking team to draw the wagon, we took only eight and a half days to cover the distance between Masakisale and the frontier, instead of seventeen days, as on the outward journey; and here Pousa and his squadron regretfully bade me farewell, the captain's regrets at parting from me being mitigated to a great extent by the gift of a shaving mirror and a burning-gla.s.s, the latter being esteemed by him at about the value that I attached to my two sacks of diamonds.

Our farewells were spoken at the precise spot where we had met on my outward journey, but I did not pause there, pushing some twenty miles into the defile where we had seen the man-monkeys before we outspanned for the night. Two days later we pa.s.sed the grave of the unhappy Siluce, and I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing that, thus far, it had not been disturbed by wild animals. And on the following day we arrived at the spot where, according to the vision in which Bimbane had revealed to me the route I must follow in order to find Nell Lestrange, it became necessary for us to forsake our former trail and enter upon the new one. I took up this new trail without hesitation, the conviction being strong upon me that I should be right in so doing; and the event justified me, for on the evening of the sixty-second day after my departure from Masakisale I arrived upon the north bank of the Pongola River, and was informed by an astonished Kafir whom I encountered that Zululand, the country of the redoubtable Dingaan, lay upon the opposite sh.o.r.e of the stream. Of course I did not accomplish this journey of two months' duration through a savage country without meeting with a few adventures, yet they were surprisingly few, all things considered, for I hunted now only for food for myself and my followers; moreover, they were of a very similar character to those of my outward journey, with a few unimportant variations in details. They may, therefore, be pa.s.sed over with merely this brief reference to them, since to record them in detail would only render my story of altogether too unwieldy dimensions, without adding very greatly to its interest.

Arrived upon the Zululand border, I lost no time in dispatching a message to the formidable and somewhat unscrupulous king of the country, requesting his permission to pa.s.s through his territory on my way to Cape Colony from the north; and four days later 'Mfuni, who was my messenger for the occasion, returned with a reply to the effect that Dingaan granted my request, with the proviso that I did not linger unduly upon my journey, and that I should call upon him at his Place, Umgungundhlovu, on my way, to pay my respects--and also, as I fully understood, tribute, in the shape of a handsome present, for the privilege. This, of course, suited me admirably, as I intended to call upon the king in any case; and on the morning following the return of 'Mfuni we forded the river and entered upon the somewhat risky journey across Zululand, taking things fairly easy, as I wished to keep my team of zebras in good condition, in case it should be necessary to hurry, later on, after my interview with the king.

Two days later, about mid-afternoon, we arrived at Umgungundhlovu (or the Mult.i.tude of Houses), and before we reached it the leading features of the landscape began to a.s.sume an appearance of familiarity, until finally I beheld with my bodily eyes the entire scene, complete down to the smallest detail, which Mafuta, the Basuto nyanga, had revealed to me in a vision some six months before. There was the great "town"-- containing, I suppose, quite two thousand huts--built upon the crest of a gently rising hill, and completely surrounded by a stout, high palisade with an open gateway in it through which pa.s.sed a number of people going about their business, and merely pausing for a minute or two to gaze in wonder at my handsome team of zebras; and there, too, close at hand, was the singular-looking hog-backed kopje, with its straggling bushes and its tumbled ma.s.ses of dark rock, upon which were perched some fifty or sixty vultures that seemed to be quite at home there. Little did I dream of the ghastly tragedy of which that weird kopje had been the scene a few months earlier, when, on the preceding sixth of February, the treacherous and ruthless king had caused the ma.s.sacre upon it of the ill-fated Boer general, Pieter Retief, and some sixty of his followers; otherwise I should have been a good deal more uneasy in my mind than I actually was when I gave the order to outspan.

Yet, although I had no knowledge of it, the memory of that tragedy, and the fear lest the whites should eventually determine to avenge it, proved of the utmost service to me in my negotiations with the savage monarch; for when, adopting my usual tactics of "bluffing" boldly in my dealings with savages, I informed Dingaan bluntly that my object in visiting him was to demand the surrender of the white 'ntombozaan whom he held in captivity, I saw at once that, for some reason which I could not then guess, he was very greatly perturbed. But, like the savage he was, he also attempted to "bluff", so that the matter soon resolved itself into a "bluffing match" between us, in which, although I did not know it, I held the advantage. First the king indignantly denied all knowledge of the girl for whom I was then seeking; then, when I not only insisted that she was in his power, but also minutely described her and her two girl companions, just as I had seen them in my vision, he retorted by declaring that it was in his mind to kill me and my followers, destroy my wagon, and turn my zebras loose, so that no trace should be left of any of us. Upon this I countered by asking him whether he really believed me such a fool as to venture into his country without sending a messenger to my countrymen by another way, informing them where I had gone, and asking them to investigate my fate if I did not arrive at home in due course. This retort proved to be my winning card, for he gave in at once, acknowledging Nell's presence in the place; but insinuating that, since he had kept her alive and treated her well ever since the Tembu had sent her to him as a present, I ought to buy her of him. Of course, after this, the remainder of our negotiation was merely a matter of bargaining, and as I was not at all disposed to prolong the agony by being over particular in the matter of price, another half-hour saw the dear child sobbing happily in my arms, in exchange for practically the whole of the "truck" that still remained to me.

Nell sat up quite late that night talking with me and telling her adventures, beginning with that awful time when she awoke to find her room full of armed Tembu warriors, who forced her to rise from her bed, dress, and go with them; but although her tale was interesting enough to me, I have no s.p.a.ce in which to record it here.

One incident, however, struck me as being sufficiently peculiar to be worthy of mention, and it was this. She told me how, when she had been at Dingaan's Place nearly a year, she left the town one morning, accompanied by two young Zulu girls, to go down to a favourite haunt of hers near the river; "and," said she, "when we were pa.s.sing just about here, where this wagon is outspanned, a very strange thing happened.

For, although I was not thinking of you at all just then, I suddenly believed for an instant that I saw you standing two or three yards away, with your hands outstretched and your lips moving as though you wanted to speak to me. I seemed to see you so distinctly that for a moment I was quite startled--indeed I believe I actually stopped under the impression that you were really there; but, as I did so, you vanished, and although I remember looking back I did not see you again." Now, the most remarkable thing about this occurrence is that, by carefully questioning the child, I was at length forced to the conclusion that it had happened at the precise moment when I was beholding the vision conjured up for me by Mafuta, the Basuto nyanga.

We inspanned with the arrival of the dawn on the following morning, and, pushing the zebras to their utmost capacity, swept down through Zululand into Natal, and thence more leisurely through Kaffraria to Cape Colony, arriving in Somerset East on the seventeenth day after our departure from Umgungundhlovu, to the amazement and delight of Henderson and a host of other friends who had long given me up as "wiped out". I told them as much of my story as I deemed fit, though not all of it by any means; neither did I ask anybody's advice, for my wanderings in the wilds had given me so much self-reliance that I felt quite able to depend upon my own judgment. In the first place I negotiated with the manager of the local bank for the exchange of five hundred pounds' worth of gold for coin, and then, learning that there were ships loading for England at Algoa Bay, I installed 'Mfuni, Piet, Jan, and 'Ngulubi on my estate, leaving the horses and zebras with them to be looked after during my absence, packed up my belongings, and transferred Nell and myself to Port Elizabeth, where I engaged pa.s.sages for us both on a ship which was on the point of sailing for home, leaving us just time to procure our outfit prior to our departure.

A pleasant voyage of a little under three months ended in our finding ourselves in London in the early part of February, 1839, and although we found the climate of England exceedingly cold and unpleasant after the brilliant sunshine and warmth of South Africa, we managed to enjoy ourselves thoroughly during the ensuing two months. Then, with Nell's cordial approval, I put her to a first-rate school at Bath, where she remained until her eighteenth birthday, emerging therefrom a very beautiful, accomplished, and lovable young woman.

Meanwhile, having disposed of Nell for the time being, I next turned my attention to the disposal of my treasure. The Bank of England took all my gold from me at its current value, thus placing me in immediate possession of abundant funds; and eventually, before returning to South Africa, I succeeded in finding a firm of jewellers who were prepared, for a consideration, to undertake the task of disposing of my diamonds, a small parcel at a time, so as not to flood the market. The reader may gather some idea of the number of those diamonds when I say that now, at the time of writing, this process is still going on, yet I have nearly half of the original number left. The arrangement, although no doubt exceedingly profitable to the firm of jewellers in question, has provided me with a princely annual income, much of which has been spent in restoring and extending Bella Vista, which is now one of the finest and best-stocked estates in the whole of South Africa.

Need I add that she who was once known as Nell Lestrange has been for many years the beloved and cherished mistress of the beautiful house that replaced the one in which the tragedy of more than fifty years ago occurred?