Tween Snow and Fire Part 40

"Yes."

"But, Josane, how is it you kept your knowledge to yourself? He might have been rescued all this time. Now it may be too late."

"_Whau_, Ixeshane! Did _you_ want him rescued?" said the old fellow shrewdly. "Did the _Inkosikazi_ want him rescued?"

This was putting matters with uncomfortable plainness. Eustace reddened in the darkness.

"Whatever we `wanted,' or did not want, is nothing," he answered. "This is a matter of life and death. He must be rescued."

"As you will," was the reply in a tone which implied that in the speaker's opinion the white man was a lunatic. And from his point of view such was really the case. The old savage was, in fact, following out a thoroughly virtuous line of conduct according to his lights. All this while, in order to benefit the man he liked, he had coolly and deliberately been sacrificing the man he--well, did not like.

"Where is `The Home of the Serpents,' Josane? Do you know?"

"Yes. I know?"

Eustace started.

"Can you guide me to it?" he said, speaking quickly.

"I can. But it is a frightful place. The bravest white man would take to his heels and run like a hunted buck before he had gone far inside.

You have extraordinary nerve, Ixeshane--but--You will see."

This sounded promising. But the old man's tone was quiet and confident.

He was not given to vapouring.

"How do you know where to find this place, Josane?" said Eustace, half incredulously in spite of himself. "Xalasa told us it was unknown to everybody--everybody but the witch-doctress?"

"Xalasa was right. I know where it is, because I have seen it. _I was condemned to it_."

"By Ngcenika?"

"By Ngcenika. But my revenge is coming--my sure revenge is coming,"

muttered the old Gcaleka, crooning the words in a kind of ferocious refrain--like that of a war-song.

As this juncture they were rejoined by Hoste.

"Well, Milne," he said. "Had enough _indaba_? Because, if so, we may as well trek home again. Seems to me we've had a lot of trouble for nothing and been made mortal fools of down to the ground by that _schelm_, Xalasa's, c.o.c.k-and-bull yarns."

"You're wrong this time," replied Eustace. "Just listen here a while and you'll see that we're thoroughly on the right scent."

At the end of half an hour the Kafir and the two white men arose. Their plans were laid. The following evening--at sundown--was the time fixed on as that for starting upon their perilous and somewhat dimly mysterious mission.

"You are sure three of us will be enough, Josane?" said Hoste.

"Quite enough. There are still bands of the Gcaleka fighting men in the forest country. If we go in a strong party they will discover us and we shall have to fight--_Au_! `A fight is as the air we breathe,' you will say, _Amakosi_," parenthesised the old Kafir, whimsically--"But it will not help us to find `The Home of the Serpents.' Still, there would be no harm in having one more in the party."

"Who can we get?" mused Hoste. "There's George Payne; but he's away down in the Colony--Grahamstown, I believe. It would take him days to get here and even then he might cry off. I have it; Shelton's the man, and I think he'll go, too. Depend upon it, Milne, Shelton's the very man. He's on his farm now--living in a Kafir hut, seeing after the rebuilding of his old house. We'll look him up this very night; we can get there in a couple of hours."

This was agreed to, and having arranged where Josane was to meet them the following evening, the two men saddled up and rode off into the darkness.

CHAPTER FORTY TWO.

THE SEARCH PARTY.

Midwinter as it was, the heat in the valley of the Bashi that morning was something to remember.

Not so much the heat as an extraordinary closeness and sense of oppression in the atmosphere. As the sun rose, mounting higher and higher into the clear blue of the heavens, it seemed that all his rays were concentrated and focussed down into this broad deep valley, whose sides were broken up into a grand panorama of soaring krantzes and wild rocky gorges, which latter, as also the great terraced slopes, were covered with dense forest, where the huge and spreading yellow-wood, all dangling with monkey trailers, alternated with the wild fig and the mimosa, the _spekboem_ scrub and the _waacht-een-bietje_ thorn, the spiky aloe and the plumed euphorbia, and where, in the cool dank shade, flourished many a rare orchid, beginning to show sign of blossoming, winter as it was.

But the four men riding there, making a path for themselves through this well-nigh virgin forest, had little thought to give to the beauties of Nature. Seriousness and anxiety was absent from none of those countenances. For to-day would see the object of their quest attained.

So far their expedition had been in no wise unattended by danger. Four men would be a mere mouthful if discovered by any of the scattered bands of the enemy, who still roamed the country in its wildest and most rugged parts. The ferocity of these savages, stimulated by a sullen but vengeful consciousness of defeat, would render them doubly formidable.

Four men const.i.tuted a mere handful. So the party had travelled by circuitous ways, only advancing at night, and lying hidden during the daytime in the most retired and sequestered spots. Twice from such judicious hiding places had they espied considerable bodies of the enemy marching northward, and two or three times, patrols, or armed forces of their own countrymen. But these they were almost as careful to avoid as the savage Gcalekas. Four men advancing into the hostile country was an uncommon sight. They did not want their expedition talked about, even among their own countrymen, just yet. And now they were within two hours of the object of their search.

The dangers they had gone through, and those which were yet to come, were courted, be it remembered, not in search of treasure or riches, not even out of love of adventure. They were braved in order to rescue a friend and comrade from an unknown fate, whose mysteriousness was enhanced by vague hints at undefined horrors, on the part of the only man qualified to speak, viz., their guide.

For Josane had proved extraordinarily reticent as to details; and all attempts to draw him out during their journey had failed. As they drew near the dreaded spot this reticence had deepened to a remarkable degree. The old Gcaleka displayed an ominous taciturnity, a gloom even, which was in no degree calculated to raise the spirits of the three white men. Even Eustace failed to elicit from him any definite facts.

He had been "smelt out" and condemned to "the Home of the Serpents" and had escaped while being taken into it, and to do this he had almost had to fly through the air. But the place would try their nerves to the uttermost; of that he warned them. Then he would subside again into silence, regardless of any further attempt to "draw" him.

There was one of the party whose motives, judged by ordinary human standards, were little short of heroic, and that one was Eustace Milne.

He had nothing to gain by the present undertaking, nor had the others.

But then they had nothing to lose by it except their lives, whereas he had not only that but everything that made life worth living into the bargain. Again and again he found himself cursing Xalasa's "grat.i.tude,"

from the very depths of his soul. Yet never for a moment did he swerve in his resolve to save his unfortunate cousin if the thing were to be done, although there were times when he marvelled over himself as a strange and unaccountable paradox. A silence was upon them all, as they moved at a foot's pace through the dense and jungly tangle, mounting ever upwards. After an hour of this travelling they had reached a considerable height. Here in a sequestered glade Josane called a halt.

"We must leave the horses," he said. "It is impossible to take them where we are going. _Whau_!" he went on, looking upwards and snuffing the air like a stag. "There will be plenty of thunder by and by. We have no time to lose."

Taking with them a long twisted rawhide rope, of amazing strength, which might be necessary for climbing purposes, and a few smaller _reims_, together with a day's provisions, and every available cartridge, they started on foot, Josane leading the way. Each was armed with a double gun--one barrel rifled--and a revolver. The Gcaleka carried three small-bladed casting a.s.segais, and a broad headed, close-quarter one, as well as a kerrie.

They had struck into a narrow gorge in the side of the hill. It was hard work making any headway at all. The dense bush, intertwined with creepers, met them in places in an unbroken wall, but Josane would hack away manfully with his broad-bladed a.s.segai until he succeeded in forcing a way.

"It seems as if we were going to storm the devil's castle," said Shelton, sitting down to wipe his streaming brow. "It's hot enough anyway."

"Rather," a.s.sented Hoste. "Milne, old chap, how do you feel?"

"Headachy. There's a power of thunder sticking out--as Josane says-- against when we get out."

"If we ever do get out."

"That's cheerful. Well, if we mean to get in, I suppose we'd better make a move? Eh, Josane!" The Kafir emphatically agreed. He had witnessed their dilatoriness not without concern. He appeared strangely eager to get the thing over--contrary to the habits of his kind, for savages, of whatever race, are never in a hurry. A line of rocky boulders in front, thickly grown with straight stemmed euphorbia, stiff and regular like the pipes of an organ, precluded any view of the sort of formation that lay beyond. Right across their path, if path it might be called, rose another impenetrable wall of thorns and creepers. In front of this Josane halted.

CHAPTER FORTY THREE.

"KWA 'ZINYOKA."

The brooding, oppressive stillness deepened. Not a breath of air stirred the sprays of the bush, which slept motionless as though carved in stone. Even the very bird voices were hushed. Far below, the sound of the river, flowing over its long stony reaches, came upwards in plaintive monotonous murmur.