Chapter Twenty.
Too Late.
“Not even a bucket, to give the poor devils of mules a drink, Fullerton,” said Wyndham, who had been investigating around. “Really, Skrine’s beastly inconsiderate.”
“Oh, mules are like donkeys,” was the impatient answer. “They can get along on a thistle and a half. The only thing to do is to make ’em.”
“Oh, can they! Well, in this case I’m afraid they’ve got to. Come up!”
He shook up the reins and cracked his whip. The long-suffering beasts tautened to their collars, and pulled out again. They were rather fine animals, with a strong Spanish cross in them, and attaining somewhat to the Spanish dimensions. Still, by the time another three miles had been covered, it was evident that they had lost heart. Their spirits and their pace alike began to flag. It was a hot day, and Matabeleland is a thirsty country, to beast no less than to man.
Somehow, too, the spirits of the party seemed to suffer in proportion. Nothing is more depressing than driving a flagging team, and Wyndham accordingly was less given to mirth and anecdote, even with the stimulus of Clare Vidal at his side, than he had been up till now. Fullerton, characteristically, became snappish and ironical, and roundly cursed Skrine—poor Skrine—for leaving his place shut up and useless. What business had a man to keep a roadside store—and, of course, canteen—unless it were for the benefit of travellers? They ought to object to the renewal of such a fellow’s licence, by Jove they ought! Thus Fullerton.
“I don’t believe we’ll get to the Kezane before dark at this rate,” he growled, “even if we get there at all. We shall probably have to outspan in the veldt. What do you think, Wyndham?”
“Oh, we’ll get there all right.”
“Er? And what if it’s shut up too?”
“Then we’ll have to make a camp, that’s all. See now, Fullerton, the point of my loading up emergency supplies. You were inclined rather to poke fun at the idea this morning.”
“By Jove, you’re right after all,” conceded Fullerton.
“I’ve been that way before, and experience, if a hard teacher, is a jolly effective one,” said Wyndham. “We shall have to spare the mules a bit though. They’re not going at all well.”
Then Lucy Fullerton announced she had a headache. She had been looking forward to a cup of tea at Skrine’s, and missing this, combined with the heat of the day, had given her a headache. But Clare was as fresh as when they started.
The road had become very rough here, and they were going at a walking pace. Fullerton had dropped off to sleep again, and, as Wyndham put it, had taken on his timber sawing job once more. Suddenly a shot—and then another, rang out some little way behind.
“The police seem to have started a buck,” said Wyndham, looking backward round the tilt of the trap. Then, as he withdrew his head, and gathering the reins whipped up the mules to a smart trot, there was a something in the expression of his face that Clare noticed, and instinctively guessed at the reason—and the expression was one of eager anxiety. She, too, put out her head and looked back.
Half the police were dismounted, and, even as she looked, were in the act of delivering a volley among the bushes on the left side of the road. And creeping, and running, and dodging among the said bushes, she made out dark forms, the forms of armed savages; and the line these were taking would bring them straight upon the mule-waggon.
Somehow her predominating instinct was not fear but interest. She had never seen natives in their war-trappings before, and now she looked upon the shields and assegais and cow-hair adornments with vivid interest as something novel and picturesque. The fire of the police had checked them, or rather caused them to swerve, but they continued to run through the bush parallel with the waggon, though giving it a wide berth. But, as the police cantered forward so as to protect the waggon, they closed in nearer.
“What’s the row?” testily cried Fullerton, whom the sound of the volley had started wide awake.
“We can keep them back for the present, sir,” said the sergeant, riding alongside. “Luckily they don’t seem to have any guns. But there’s no harm in pushing on to the Kezane as quick as possible.”
This Wyndham had already begun to do. But the ground was rough and bad, and the mules were anything but fresh. The fleet-footed natives could easily keep pace with them, if not outstrip them. These could be seen from time to time, flitting through the bushes, their obvious intent being to get ahead if possible and rush the whole outfit at some point in the road where the conditions would be more favourable to themselves.
Lucy Fullerton had uttered a little cry of alarm and then went deadly pale. Her sister, on the other hand, was absolutely cool, and watched every movement of the foe with a deepening interest. Wyndham, his face now stern and set, was giving all his attention to his driving. Fullerton was cursing his own idiocy at having left his revolver behind.
“It was foolish of you, Dick,” said Clare tranquilly. “But—I brought it for you.”
“You? You brought it?”
“Yes,” and diving down among some bundles under the seat, as calmly as though she were looking for a mere pocket-handkerchief, she pulled up a small travelling-bag, producing thence two revolvers and two boxes of cartridges.
“Clare, you’re a jewel of a girl,” pronounced the astonished Fullerton, as he took the weapon she handed him. “But what’s the other? Wyndham’s?”
“No. It’s mine,” calmly loading it.
“Yours? That’s no lady’s toy anyhow. Why where on earth did you get it?”
“Mr Lamont gave it me—when he came to see us to say good-bye.”
“Lamont gave it you! Good Lord! But—why?”
“He knew there was going to be a rising, and said it might come in useful.”
“He knew— Well, I think he might have given some of us the benefit of his knowledge.”
“He did. He gave it to some, who hardly believed him, and to me—who did. I passed on the benefit of it to you, but you wouldn’t profit by it until too late. So here we are.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Clare, that the real reason you wanted me to take you into Buluwayo was because Lamont told you there was going to be a rising?”
Clare nodded.
“That’s right, Dick. If I had told you the real reason you’d only have pronounced it one of ‘Lamont’s scares’—just as the others did—and refused to move. As it is you’ve put off the said move too long.”
“Good Lord! You take my breath away!”
“I’ll take it away still more directly,” she said tranquilly. “What do you think of Mr Lamont having saved the whole of Gandela from being massacred on the day of the race meeting?”
“Oh come, now, that’s a little too fat!” answered Fullerton, yet not so incredulously as he would have answered, say that morning.
“Well, he did.” And then she told the whole story.
“I’m hanged if it doesn’t sound probable,” said Wyndham. “Heavens! if only they’d rushed us that day. Oh, it won’t bear thinking about.”
“Sounds probable,” repeated Clare. “It’s more than probable—it’s true. I fell in with Mr Lamont up on Ehlatini the next morning, and he showed me all the tracks made by the impi. I picked up a couple of cow-tail armlets—or leglets—which they’d dropped, just like the ones these are wearing.”
“By Jove!”
There was silence after that Wyndham was anxious to get his team through a narrowing sort of point ahead, where the ground rose abruptly to an overhanging portal on either side, and where rocks and stones, shadowed by wild fig-trees, would afford dangerous cover to the enemy were he to arrive there first, even though apparently without firearms. Under the double incentive of whip and voice the mules seemed to have forgotten their fatigue and were pulling out manfully. But to her brother-in-law’s suggestion, that she should give up the front seat to him and come in at the back, Clare returned a flat refusal.
“I want to see this,” she said, “and see it well. You can put up the side sail and see it from there.”
“But that’ll expose Lucy,” he fumed.
“No, it won’t. You’ll be in front of her. And they haven’t got guns.”
There was no help for it. Wyndham pleaded, but to him too she returned a deaf ear. She sat there—calm, cool, collected, fingering her weapon, and a determined and dangerous look of battle in her eyes.
But pull the mules never so heartily the fleet-footed savages kept the pace, and kept it well. Half the police would gallop forward to check their advance with a volley, but as soon as ever they reined in their horses—lo, there was nobody in sight to fire a volley at. And then it became evident that the foe had divided, and that these human wolves were hunting their prey on both sides of the road.
“I—ji—jji! Ijji—jji! Ha! Ha!”
The vibrating, humming hiss—it must be remembered that the vowel is sounded as in every other language under the sun but the English—the deep-chested, ferocious gasp, split the air as the panting mules galloped furiously between the overhanging rocks and trees—which were now alive with swarming savages. Wyndham, cool and brave, kept all his attention centred on his team, for did that fail him—why then, good-night! Clare, with set lips, covered a huge savage who had sprung up hardly ten yards distant to launch an assegai, and pressed the trigger. The brown, bedizened body sprang heavily forward, throwing shield and weapons different ways, and sank, but the pallor of her face at the sight only served to heighten the brightness of her eyes. Fullerton, leaning out, pumped a couple of shots in a lucky moment into where three or four assailants rose together, likewise with fortunate result. Then an assegai whizzed through the upper part of the waggon tilt, while another struck one of the mules in the hinder quarters, and started the poor brute kicking and squealing in such wise as nearly to stampede the whole team and get it completely out of hand. Added to which some of the police horses were prancing and shying, and rendering it all that their riders could do to stick on, let alone use their weapons. Quick to perceive their advantage, the Matabele warriors swarmed down the rocks, or leapt upward from among the bushes, redoubling the volume of their vibrating, ferocious war-hiss—dancing, leaping, clashing their axes and shields together; in short, raising a most demoniacal and indescribable din.
Fullerton, watching his side of the vehicle, was cool enough and had his full share of pluck, but he was a lamentable revolver shot, and, after three bad misses, the assailants became alive to the fact, and began to run in closer with more confidence.
“Damn this thing!” he yelled, in his excitement and mortification. “It has a pull off you’d require a steam crane to move. Clare, give me yours.”
“No,” she answered shortly. And at the same moment two warriors sprang up behind a rock and quick as lightning hurled their casting assegais—not at their human enemies, but at the mule team. Struck in the shoulder, one poor mule stumbled and plunged wildly, and only the fact that Wyndham was a first-rate whip performed the miracle that prevented it from falling entirely. Then taking advantage of the confusion, several warriors, their shields covering them, the broad stabbing spear uplifted, charged forward to stab the leaders, and thus have the whole outfit at their mercy. But they reckoned without Clare Vidal.
Small wonder that they did. Small wonder that these unsparing savage warriors, trained all their lives in battle and bloodshed and deeds of pitiless ferocity, should have overlooked the fact that in this beautiful and winsome girl there lurked a reserve of splendid Irish courage and readiness and heroism. Cool, steady-handed as a rock, she poured in succession three of her remaining four shots into the leaders of the rush, and as those behind their falling bodies halted—checked, dismayed—no less coolly and steady-handed did she reload the chambers of her pistol. And she had saved the situation—so for.
Wyndham glanced up, and dismay was in his heart. He had hoped to find easier country beyond this point, but the road continued rough, and, moreover, for some distance on, the broken, rocky, bush-grown slopes continued, so that their pitiless foes were able to keep above them and under cover. Poor Lucy Fullerton, made of far softer stuff than her younger sister, was cowering in her corner, white as death and almost fainting, and now the savages began to laugh and shout exultantly to each other. The ground seemed to grow them. From every bush and rock they sprang forth by the score. It was for them a mere waiting game. Already the police had been cut off from the waggon, and were fighting like lions in the thick of their swarming foes; none braver than their sergeant, whose voice was everywhere, directing, encouraging—whose pistol had sent more than one of the ferocious assailants to their long home. Three of these brave fellows had already been overcome; knocked from their horses by hurled clubs, gasping out their lives, through a score of assegai stabs, on the reeking road. And now the mules, utterly blown, and only saved hitherto by Clare Vidal’s magnificent courage, dropped into a sullen and tired walk, out of which no effort, either of whip or voice, on the part of their driver could lift them. And at the sight, louder and more ferocious swelled the hideous Matabele death-hiss. The prey was theirs at last.