Tween Snow and Fire Part 25

"But this is not his country. It belongs to Moni, the chief of the Amabomvane."

"Not his country. Ha!" echoed the listeners, wagging their heads in disdain. "Not his country! The white man's `charm' may be potent, but it has rendered him mad."

"Ho, Sarili--father!" chorused the warriors, launching out into an impromptu song in honour of the might and virtues of their chief.

"Sarili--lord! The Great, Great One! The deadly snake! The mighty buffalo bull, scattering the enemy's hosts with the thunder of his charge! The fierce tiger, lying in wait to spring! Give us thy white enemies that we may devour them alive. Ha--ah!"

The last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n was thundered out in a prolonged, unanimous roar, and inspired by the fierce rhythm of the chant, the warriors with one accord formed up into columns, and the dark serried ranks, marching through the night, swelling the wild war-song, beating time with sticks, the quivering rattle of a.s.segai hafts mingling with the thunderous tread of hundreds of feet, and the gleam of the moonlight upon weapons and rolling eyeb.a.l.l.s, went to form a picture of indescribable grandeur and awe.

Again and again surged forth the weird rhythm:

Ho, Sarili, son of Hintza!

Great Chief of the House of Gcaleka!

Great Father of the children of Xosa!

Strong lion, devourer of the whites!

Great serpent, striking dead thine enemies!

Give us thy white enemies that we may hew them into small pieces.

Ha--Ah! Great Chief! whose kraals overflow with fatness!

Great Chief! whose cornfields wave to feed a people!

Warrior of warriors, whom weapons surround like the trees of a forest!

We return to thee drunk with the blood of thine enemies.

"Ha--ha--ha!"

With each wild roar, shouted in unison at the end of each of these impromptu strophes, the barbarians immediately surrounding him would turn to Eustace and flash their blades in his face, brandishing their weapons in pantomimic representation of carving him to pieces. This to one less versed in their habits and character would have been to the last degree terrifying, bound and at their mercy as he was. But it inspired in him but little alarm. They were merely letting off steam.

Whatever his fate might eventually be, his time had not yet come, and this he knew.

After a great deal more of this sort of thing, they began to get tired of their martial display. The chanting ceased and the singers subsided once more into their normal state of free and easy jollity. They laughed and poked fun among themselves, and let off a good deal of chaff at the expense of their prisoner. And this metamorphosis was not a little curious. The fierce, ruthless expression, blazing with racial antipathy, depicted on each dark countenance during that wild and headlong chase for blood, had disappeared, giving way to one that was actually pleasing, the normal light-hearted demeanour of a keen-witted and kindly natured people. Yet the chances of the prisoner's life being eventually spared were infinitesimal.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

THE SILVER BOX.

Throughout the night their march continued. Towards dawn, however, a short halt was made, to no one more welcome than to the captive himself; the fact being that poor Eustace was deadly tired, and, but for the expediency of keeping up his character for invulnerability, would have requested the chief, as a favour, to allow him some rest before then.

As it was, however, he was glad of the opportunity; but, although he had not tasted food since the previous midday, he could not eat. He felt feverish and ill.

Day was breaking as the party resumed its way. And now the features of the country had undergone an entire change. The wide, sweeping, mimosa-dotted dales had been left behind--had given place to wild forest country, whose rugged grandeur of desolation increased with every step.

Great rocks overhung each dark ravine, and the trunks of h.o.a.ry yellow-wood trees, from whose gigantic and spreading limbs depended lichens and monkey ropes, showed through the cool semi-gloom like the ma.s.sive columns of cathedral aisles. An undergrowth of dense bush hemmed in the narrow, winding path they were pursuing, and its tangled depths were ever and anon resonant with the piping whistle of birds, and the shrill, startled chatter of monkeys swinging aloft among the tree-tops, skipping away from bough to bough with marvellous alacrity.

Once a sharp hiss was heard in front, causing the foremost of the party to halt abruptly, with a volley of excited e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns, as a _huge rinkhaals_, lying in the middle of the narrow track, slowly unwound his black coils, and, with hood inflated, raised his head in the air as if challenging his human foes. But these, by dint of shouting and beating the ground with sticks, induced him to move off--for, chiefly from motives of superst.i.tion, Kafirs will not kill a snake if they can possibly help it--and the hideous reptile was heard lazily rustling his way through the jungle in his retreat.

They had been toiling up the steep, rugged side of a ravine. Suddenly an exclamation of astonishment from those in front, who had already gained the ridge, brought up the rest of the party at redoubled speed.

"_Hau! Istimele_!" [The steamer] echoed several, as the cause of the prevailing astonishment met their eyes.

The ridge was of some elevation. Beyond the succession of forest-clad valleys and rock-crowned divides lay a broad expanse of blue sea, and away near the offing stretched a long line of dark smoke. Eustace could make out the masts and funnel of a large steamer, steering to the eastward.

And what a sense of contrast did the sight awaken in his mind. The vessel was probably one of the Union Company's mail steamships, coasting round to Natal. How plainly he would conjure up the scene upon her decks, the pa.s.sengers striving to while away the tediousness of their floating captivity with chess and draughts--the latter of divers kinds-- with books and tobacco, with chat and flirtation; whereas, here he was, at no very great distance either, undergoing, in this savage wilderness, a captivity which was terribly real--a prisoner of war among a tribe of sullen and partially crushed barbarians, with almost certain death, as a sacrifice to their slain compatriots, staring him in the face, and a strong probability of that death being a cruel and lingering one withal.

And the pure rays of the newly risen sun shone forth joyously upon that blue surface, and a whiff of strong salt air seemed borne in upon them from the bosom of the wide, free ocean.

For some minutes the Kafirs stood, talking, laughing like children as they gazed upon the long, low form of the distant steamship, concerning which many of their quaint remarks and conjectures would have been amusing enough at any other time. And, as if anything was wanting to keep him alive to the peril of his position, Hlangani, stepping to the prisoner's side, observed:

"The time has come to blind you, Ixeshane."

The words were grim enough in all conscience--frightful enough to more than justify the start which Eustace could not repress, as he turned to the speaker. But a glance was enough to rea.s.sure him. The chief advanced toward him, holding nothing more formidable than a folded handkerchief.

To the ordeal of being blindfolded Eustace submitted without a word. He recognised its force. They were nearing their destination. Even a captive, probably foredoomed to death, was not to be allowed to take mental notes of the approaches to the present retreat of the Paramount Chief. Besides, by insuring such ignorance, they would render any chance of his possible escape the more futile. But as he walked, steered by one of his escort, who kept a hand on his shoulder, he concentrated every faculty, short of the sight of which he was temporarily deprived, upon observations relating to the lay of the ground. One thing he knew. Wherever they might be they were at no great distance from the sea coast. That was something.

Suddenly a diversion occurred. A long, loud, peculiar cry sounded from some distance in front. It was a signal. As it was answered by the returning warriors, once more the wild war-song was raised, and being taken up all along the line, the forest echoed with the thunderous roar of the savage strophe, and the clash of weapons beating time to the weird and thrilling chant. For some minutes thus they marched; then by the sound Eustace knew that his escort was forming up in martial array around him; knew moreover, from this circ.u.mstance, that the forest had come to an end. Then the bandage was suddenly removed from his eyes.

The abrupt transition from darkness to light was bewildering. But he made out that he was standing in front of a hut, which his captors were ordering him to enter. In the momentary glance which he could obtain he saw that other huts were standing around, and beyond the crowd of armed men which encompa.s.sed him he could descry the faces of women and children gazing at him with mingled curiosity and wonder. Then, stooping, he crept through the low doorway. Two of his guards entered with him, and to his unspeakable gratification their first act was to relieve him of the _reim_ which secured his arms. This done, a woman appeared bearing a calabash of curdled milk and a little reed basket of stamped mealies.

"Here is food for you, _Umlungu_," said one of them. "And now you can rest until--until you are wanted. But do not go outside," he added, shortly, and with a significant grip of his a.s.segai. Then they went out, fastening the wicker screen that served as a door behind them, and Eustace was left alone.

The interior of the hut was cool, if a trifle grimy, and there were rather fewer c.o.c.kroaches than usual disporting themselves among the domed thatch of the roof--possibly owing to the tenement being of recent construction. But Eustace was dead tired and the shelter and solitude were more than welcome to him just then. The curdled milk and mealies were both refreshing and satisfying. Having finished his meal he lighted his pipe, for his captors had deprived him of nothing but his weapons, and proceeded to think out the situation. But nature a.s.serted herself. Before he had taken a dozen whiffs he fell fast asleep.

How long he slept he could not tell, but it must have been some hours.

He awoke with a start of bewilderment, for his slumber had been a heavy and dreamless one: the slumber of exhaustion. Opening his eyes to the subdued gloom of the hut he hardly knew where he was. The atmosphere of that primitive and ill-ventilated tenement was stuffy and oppressive with an effluvium of grease and smoke, and the c.o.c.kroaches were running over his face and hands. Then the situation came back to him with a rush. He was a prisoner.

There was not much doing outside, to judge by the tranquillity that reigned. He could hear the deep inflections of voices carrying on a languid conversation, and occasionally the shrill squall of an infant.

His watch had stopped, but he guessed it to be about the middle of the afternoon.

He was about to make an attempt at undoing the door, but remembering the parting injunction of his guard, he judged it better not. At the same time it occurred to him that he had not yet investigated the cause of the saving of his life. Here was a grand opportunity.

Cautiously, and with one ear on the alert for interruption, he took the silver box from the inside pocket in which it was kept. Removing the chamois leather covering, which showed a clean cut an inch long, he gazed with astonishment upon, the box itself. The a.s.segai had struck it fair, and there in the centre of the lid its point, broken off flush, remained firmly embedded. He turned the box over. The point had just indented the other side but not sufficiently to show through.

For some minutes he sat gazing upon it, with a strange mixture of feeling, and well he might. This last gift of Eanswyth's had been the means of saving his life--it and it alone. It had lain over his heart, and but for its intervention that sure and powerfully directed stroke would have cleft his heart in twain. That was absolutely a fact, and one established beyond any sort of doubt.

Her hand had averted the death-stroke--the shield of her love had stood between him and certain destruction. Surely--surely that love could not be so unlawful--so accursed a thing. It had availed to save him--to save him for itself. Eustace was not a superst.i.tious man, but even he might, to a certain extent, feel justified in drawing a highly favourable augury from the circ.u.mstance. Yet he was not out of his difficulties--his perils--yet. They had, in fact, only just begun; and this he knew.

So far his captors had not ill-treated him, rather the reverse. But this augured next to nothing either way. The Gcalekas had suffered severe losses. Even now they were in hiding. They were not likely to be in a very merciful mood in dealing with a white prisoner, one of the hated race which had shot down their righting men, driven them from their country, and carried off most of their cattle. The people would clamour for his blood, the chiefs would hardly care to run counter to their wish--he would probably be handed over to the witch-doctors and put to some hideous and lingering death.

It was a frightful thought, coming upon him alone and helpless. Better that the former blow had gone home. He would have met with a swift and merciful death in the excitement of battle--whereas now? And then it crossed his mind that the interposition of the silver box might not have been a blessing after all, but quite the reverse. What if it had only availed to preserve him for a death amid lingering torments? But no, he would not think that. If her love had been the means of preserving him thus far, it had preserved him for itself. Yet it was difficult to feel sanguine with the odds so terribly against him.

What would she do when she heard that Tom had been killed and himself captured by the savages? "Were anything to befall you, my heart would be broken," had been almost her last words, and the recollection of them tortured him like a red-hot iron, for he had only his own fool-hardiness to thank that he was in this critical position at all. Fortunately it did not occur to him that he might be reported dead, instead of merely missing.

His reflections were interrupted. A great noise arose without--voices-- then the steady tramp of feet--the clash of weapons--and over and above all, the weird, thrilling rhythmical chant of the war-song. He had just time to restore the silver box to its place, when the door of the hut was flung open and there entered three Kafirs fully armed. They ordered him to rise immediately and pa.s.s outside.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

THE PARAMOUNT CHIEF.

The spectacle which met Eustace's eyes, on emerging from the dark and stuffy hut, struck him as grand and stirring in the extreme.

He saw around him an open clearing, a large natural amphitheatre, surrounded by dense forest on three sides, the fourth being const.i.tuted by a line of jagged rocks more or less bush-grown. Groups of hastily constructed huts, in shape and material resembling huge beehives, stood around in an irregular circle, leaving a large open s.p.a.ce in the centre.

And into this s.p.a.ce was defiling a great ma.s.s of armed warriors.