Tween Snow and Fire Part 4

The speaker ceased. A dead silence fell upon his hearers--a weird silence upon that tumultuous crowd crouching in eager expectancy in the red firelight. Suddenly, upon the black gloom of the night, far away to the eastward, there gleamed forth a streak of flame. Then another and another. A subdued roar ran around the circle. Then, as by magic, a crimson glare fell upon the serried ranks of expectant listeners, lighting up their fantastic war panoply as with the light of day. From the hill top above the kraal there shot up a great tongue of red flame.

It leaped high into the velvety blackness of the heavens. Splitting up into many a forking flash it roared in the air--the gleaming rays licking up into a cloud of lurid smoke which blotted out the stars in its reddening folds. The distant war signal of the Gcaleka chieftain was answered.

"Ha!" cried Hlangani, in a voice of thunder. "Ha! Now will the heart of your father, Sarili, be glad. Now have ye proved yourselves his children indeed, oh, sons of Ngqika! Now have you proved yourselves men, for the trumpet tongues of your war-flames are crying aloud--tongue roaring to tongue upon the wings of the night."

With the quickness of lightning the warriors had again thrown themselves into formation, and now worked up to a pitch of uncontrollable excitement, the unearthly cadence of the war-song rose into a fiendish roar, and the thunder of the demon dance rolled and reverberated among the hills, while lighting up the fierce array of grim, frenzied figures in its brooding glare, the huge beacon, high above on the hilltop, blazed forth sullenly upon the night in all its menacing and destructive significance.

Suddenly, as if by magic, the mad orgy of the savages was suspended.

For advancing into their very midst--fearlessly, boldly, contemptuously, even--rode a solitary horseman--a white man, an Englishman.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

IN THE LION'S DEN.

Every eye was bent upon the new arrival. With a quick, instinctive movement the savages closed around the foolhardy Englishman. There was a scowl of deadly import upon each grim face. Hundreds of a.s.segais were poised with a quiver of suppressed eagerness. The man's life seemed not worth a moment's purchase.

"Out of my way, you _schepsels_!" he cried roughly, urging his horse through the sullen and threatening crowd, as though so many hundreds of armed and excited barbarians worked up to the highest pitch of blood-thirstiness were just that number of cowering and subservient slaves. "Out of my way, do you hear? Where is Nteya? I want Nteya, the chief. Where is he?"

"Here I am, _umlungu_ [White man]. What do you want with me?" answered Nteya--making a rapid and peremptory signal to restrain the imminent resentment of his followers. "Am I not always here, that you should break in upon me in this violent manner? Do _I_ go to _your_ house, and ride up to the door and shout for you as though you were stricken with sudden deafness?"

The chief's rebuke, quiet and dignified, might have carried some tinge of humiliation to any man less overbearing and hot-headed than Tom Carhayes, even as the low growl of hardly contained exasperation which arose from the throng might have conveyed an ominous warning. But upon this man both were alike thrown away. Yet it may be that the very insanity of his fool-hardiness const.i.tuted his safety. Had he quailed but a moment his doom was sealed.

"I didn't come here to hold an _indaba_," [Talk--palaver] he shouted.

"I want my sheep. Look here, Nteya. You have put me off very cleverly time after time with one excuse or another. But this time you are _pagadi_ [Cornered]. I've run you to earth--or rather some of those _schepsels_ of yours. That young villain Goniwe has driven off thirty-seven of my sheep, and two of your fellows have helped him. I've spoored them right into your location as straight as a line. Now?"

"When was this, Umlilwane?" said Nteya, imperturbably.

"When? When? To-night, man. This very night, do you hear?" roared the other.

"_Hau_! The white man has the eyes of twenty vultures that he can see to follow the spoor of thirty-seven sheep on a dark night," cried a mocking voice--and a great shout of derisive laughter went up from the whole savage crowd. The old chief, however, preserved his dignified and calm demeanour.

"You are excited, Umlilwane," he said--a faint smile lurking round the corners of his mouth. "Had you not better go home and return in the morning and talk things over quietly? Surely you would not forget yourself like a boy or a quarrelsome old woman."

If a soft answer turneth away wrath, a.s.suredly an injunction to keep cool to an angry man conduceth to a precisely opposite result. If Carhayes had been enraged before, his fury now rose to white heat.

"You infernal old scoundrel!" he roared. "Don't I tell you I have spoored the sheep right bang into your kraal? They are here now, I tell you; here now. And you try to put me off with your usual Kafir lies and shuffling." And shaking with fury he darted forth his hand, which still held the heavy rhinoceros hide _sjambok_, as though he would have struck the chief then and there. But Nteya did not move.

"_Hau_!" cried Hlangani, who had been a silent but attentive witness to this scene. "_Hau_! Thus it is that the chiefs of the Amaxosa are trampled on by these _abelungu_ (whites). Are we men, I say? Are we men?" And the eyes of the savage flashed with terrible meaning as he waved his hand in the direction of the foolhardy Englishman.

Thus was the spark applied to the dry tinder. The crowd surged forward.

A dozen sinewy hands gripped the bridle, and in a moment Carhayes was flung violently to the earth.

Stunned, half-senseless he lay. a.s.segais flashed in the firelight. It seemed that the unfortunate settler's hours were numbered. Another moment and a score of bright blades would be buried in his body.

But a stern and peremptory mandate from the chief arrested each impending stroke.

"Stop, my children!" cried Nteya, standing over the prostrate man and extending his arms as though to ward off the deadly blows. "Stop, my children! I, your chief; I, your father, command it. Would you play into the hands of your enemies? Be wise, I say. Be wise in time."

Sullenly the crowd fell back. With weapons still uplifted, with eyes hanging hungrily upon their chief's face, like tigers balked momentarily of their prey, the warriors paused. And the dull, brooding glare of the signal fire flashing aloft upon the hilltop fell redly upon that fierce and threatening sea of figures standing over the prostrate body of their hated and now helpless enemy. But the word of a Kafir chief is law to his followers. There was no disputing that decisive mandate.

"Rise, Umlilwane," went on Nteya. "Rise, and go in peace. In the evening, when the blood is heated, it is not well to provoke strife by angry words. In the morning, when heads are cool, return here and talk.

If your sheep are here, they shall be restored to you. Now go, while it is yet safe."

Carhayes, still half-stunned by the violence of his fall, staggered to his feet.

"If they are here!" he repeated sullenly. "d.a.m.n it, they _are_ here!"

he blazed forth in a fresh access of wrath. Then catching the malevolent glance of Hlangani, and becoming alive to the very sinister and menacing expression on the countenances of the other Kafirs, even he began to realise that some degree of prudence was desirable, not to say essential. "Well, well, it's the old trick again, but I suppose our turn will come soon," he growled, as he proceeded to mount his horse.

The crowd parted to make way for him, and amid ominous mutterings and an unpleasantly suggestive shaking of weapons towards him, he rode away as he had come. None followed him. The chief's eye was upon his receding figure. The chief's "word" had been given. But even protected by that safe conduct, he would be wise to put as much s.p.a.ce as possible between himself and that sullen and warlike gathering, and that, too, with the greatest despatch.

None followed him--at the moment. But Hlangani mixed unperceived among the crowd, whispering a word here and a word there. And soon, by twos and threes, a number of armed savages stole silently forth into the night, moving swiftly upon the retreating horseman's track.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

"ON THE ROCK THEY SCORCH, LIKE A DROP OF FIRE."

"What are they really doing over there, do you suppose, Eustace?" said Eanswyth anxiously, as they regained the house. The thunder of the wild war-dance floated across the intervening miles of s.p.a.ce, and the misty glare of many fires luridly outlined the distant mountain slopes. The position was sufficiently terrifying to any woman alone there save for one male protector, with hundreds of excited and now hostile savages performing their weird and clamourous war rites but a few miles away.

"I'm afraid there's no mistake about it; they are holding a big war-dance," was the reply. "But it's nothing new. This sort of fun has been going on at the different kraals for the last month. It's only because we are, so to say, next door to Nteya's location that we hear it to-night at all."

"But Nteya is such a good old man," said Eanswyth. "Surely he wouldn't harm us. Surely he wouldn't join in any rising."

"You are correct in your first idea, in the second, not. We are rapidly making such a hash of affairs _in re_ Kreli and the Fingoes over in the Transkei, that we are simply laying the train for a war with the whole Amaxosa race. How can Nteya, or any other subordinate chief, refuse to join when called upon by Kreli, the Chief Paramount. The trouble ought to be settled before it goes any further, and my opinion is that it could be."

"You are quite a politician," said Eanswyth, with a smile. "You ought to put up for the Secretaryship for Native Affairs."

"Let us sit out here," he said, drawing up a couple of cane chairs which were always on the _stoep_. "Here is a very out-of-the-way phenomenon-- one the like of which we might not witness again in a lifetime. We may as well see it out."

If Eanswyth had been rather alarmed heretofore, the other's perfect unconcern went far to rea.s.sure her. The wild, unearthly chorus echoing through the darkness--the glare of the fires, the distant, but thundrous clamour of the savage orgy, conveyed no terrors to this strong-nerved and philosophical companion of hers. He only saw in them a strange and deeply interesting experience. Seated there in the starlight, some of that unconcern communicated itself to her. A restful calm came upon her. This man beside her was as a very tower of strength. And then came over her a consciousness--not for the first time, but stronger than she had ever felt it--of how necessary his presence was to her. His calm, strong judgment had kept matters straight for a long time past.

He had been the one to pour oil on the troubled waters; to allay or avert the evils which her husband's ungovernable temper and ill-judged violence had thickly gathered around them. Now, as he sat there beside her calmly contemplating the sufficiently appalling manifestations of that night--manifestations that would otherwise have driven her wild with terror--she was conscious of feeling hardly any fear.

And what of Eustace himself? Lucky, indeed, that his judgment was strong, his brain habitually clear and unclouded. For at that moment his mind could only be compared to the seething, misty rush of a whirlpool. He could see her face in the starlight--even the l.u.s.trous glow of the great eyes--could mark the clear outline or the delicate profile turned half away from him. He was alone with her in the sweet, soft African night--alone with her--her sole protector, amid the brooding peril that threatened. A silence had fallen between them. His love--his concealed and hopeless love for her overcame him. He could not command words--not even voice, for the molten, raging fires of pa.s.sion which consumed him as he sat there. His hand clenched the arm of his cane chair--a jagged nail, which protruded, lacerating it nearly to the bone--still he felt nothing of physical pain--mind triumphed.

Yes, the anguish of his mind was so intense as to be akin to physical pain. Why could they not be thus together always? They could, but for one life. One life only, between him and such bliss that the whole world should be a bright and golden paradise! One life! A legion of fiends seemed to wrestle within the man's raging soul. "One life!" they echoed in jibbering, gnashing chorus. "One life!" they seemed to shriek aloud in his brain. "What more easily snapped than the cord of a life?"

The tumultuous thunder of the fierce war-dance sounded louder and louder upon the night--the glare of the distant fires reddened, and then glowed forth afresh. What if Tom Carhayes had come upon the spoor of his missing sheep--and in his blind rage had followed it right into Nteya's location? Might he not as well walk straight into a den of lions? The savage Gaikas, wound up to the highest pitch of bloodthirsty excitement, would at such a time be hardly less dangerous than so many beasts of prey. Even at that very moment the cord of that one life might be snapped.

Suddenly a great tongue of flame shot up into the night, then another and another. From a hilltop the red and threatening beacons flashed forth their message of hate and defiance. The distant tumult of the savage orgy had ceased. A weird and brooding silence lay upon the surrounding country.

"Oh, what does it mean? What does it all mean?" cried Eanswyth starting up from her chair. Her face was white with fear--her dilated eyes, gazing forth upon the gushing fires, were wild and horror-stricken.

Eustace, standing there at her side, could hardly restrain himself from throwing his arms around her and pouring out a pa.s.sionate storm of comforting, loving words. Yet she belonged to another man--was bound to him until death should them part. But what if death had already parted them? What if she were so bound no longer? he thought with a fierce, wild yearning that had in it something of the murderer's fell purpose, as he strained his gaze upon the wild signals of savage hostility.

"Don't be frightened, Eanswyth," he said rea.s.suringly, but in a voice from which even he could not banish every trace of emotion. "You shall come to no harm to-night, dear, take my word for it. To-morrow, though, we must take you to some safer place than this is likely to prove for the next few days."

She made no answer. He had drawn his arm through hers and the strong, rea.s.suring touch seemed to dispel her fears. It seemed to him that she leaned upon him, as though for physical support no less than for mental.