Chapter Fourteen.
The Long Night Through.
“Stand by, now. Here they come,” warned Jekyll. “Not too soon, and fire low.”
For the line of bush was alive with gleaming forms, as fully a hundred warriors darted out, making straight for the store; not in a compact body, but in a scattered line; not erect and in bounds and leaps, but bent low and crouching behind their shields. The while those in the background now opened a tremendous fire upon the building. Fortunately, however, most of the missiles flew high.
Those within, crouching too, with their heads just above the sills of the windows, waited a moment, then, partly rising, fired upon the advancing shields at a hundred yards’ distance. Several were seen to go down. Crash! a second volley, then a third. The magazine rifles were doing their duty right nobly. At the fourth volley the charging warriors, dividing into two sections, sheered off at a tangent, and, dropping down in the grass, crawled away with the silence and rapidity of snakes, offering no mark to draw the defenders’ fire.
“Quick! To the back!” cried Jekyll. “Not all, though.”
With instinctive unanimity the little garrison divided itself. Those told off to the back of the store arrived there in time to see their enemies swarming up among the low rocky ridge which overlooked their position from the rear.
“By George! that was real strategy, covering the advance of the storming party,” said one man, who was an ex-soldier. “Looks as if there were whites among them. Dutch perhaps.”
“No fear,” returned Jekyll. “The most English-hating Dutchman this country ever produced wouldn’t turn niggers on to white men. We’d be much more likely to do it ourselves. Hallo, Selwyn! Not hurt?”
This anxiously, as the young fellow, who had been peering forth watching his chance of a shot, staggered back from the window holding his hands to his head. Then it was seen that his face was streaming with blood.
“N-no; I don’t think so,” was the answer. “A splinter, I think it is.”
“Let’s see,” said Jekyll. “Ah yes. Here you are”—exhibiting an ugly splinter of wood, which he had simultaneously extracted from the other’s forehead. “Only a skin-wound. You’re in luck.”
“There’s some fellow who can shoot, at any rate,” remarked Tarrant, as another bullet pinged in through the window. “Oh, I say! Here, quick, some one! Lend me a rifle, for God’s sake”—almost snatching one from the hand of his neighbour, who yielded, too astonished to demur—and blazed at the point from which the last shot had come, just missing. A shout of laughter was the reply, together with a puff of smoke, and a bullet so near as to make Tarrant duck—of course, after it had passed. He again returned this, again missing, but narrowly.
“Here, try, one of you chaps; I’m no shot. For Heaven’s sake drop the young beast! It’s my infernal boy—Mafuta.”
A roar from his auditors greeted this intelligence, once its tenor was grasped.
“Your boy! But you said he was a reliable boy?” cried Jekyll.
“So he is, damn him. You may rely upon him doing for one of us yet,” answered Tarrant. “He can shoot, can Mafuta. And the infernal young scoundrel’s practising at me with my own gun and cartridges.” And they all roared louder than ever, the besieging Matabele the while deciding that Makíwa was a madder beast than even they had reckoned him.
“Now’s your chance, Dibs!” cried Moseley.
For Mafuta it was, sure enough; and now he had sprung up, and whirling and zigzagging to dodge his former master’s aim, the young rascal, brandishing the stolen rifle over his head in derision, bounded away to better cover, and gained it too.
“Drinks all round to ‘the reliable boy’s’ health!” shouted some one.
“Right. Help yourselves,” answered Jekyll. “Free drinks now, and everything else any one wants. This garrison’s in a state of siege. Only, don’t overdo it, for we’ll need plenty of straight shooting before we get out of this.”
“Good owld Jekyll!” sung out the Cockney prospector, who, to do him justice, was not deficient in pluck. “I always said ’e was one of the raht sort. ’E’s a reel owld corf-drop, ’e is—now mistike abart it.”
There had been a lull in the firing so far, but now the Matabele on the rock ridge began to open on the house from that side. The besieged were between two fires. Chary of throwing away even one shot, they forbore to reply, carefully watching their chance, however. Then it was amusing to see them stealing by twos and threes to the bar, avoiding the line of fire—laughing, as one would dodge to avoid an imaginary bullet. But as the sublime and the ridiculous invariably go hand in hand, so it was in this case. One man, incautiously exposing himself, fell. The heavy, log-like fall told its own tale even before they could spring to his aid. He was stone dead.
An awed silence fell upon the witnesses, broken at length by fierce aspirations for vengeance upon the barbarous foe; not so easy of fulfilment, though, for the latter was not in the least eager to take any of the open chances of war. His game was a waiting one, and he knew it. By keeping up a continuous fire upon the exposed points of the defence, he forced the besieged to remain ever on the alert.
The sun went down, and now the savages began to shout tauntingly.
“Look at it, Amakiwa! You will never see another. Look at it well. Look your last on it. You will not see it rise. There are no whites left in the land.”
“There are enough left to make jackal meat of you all,” shouted back Jekyll in Sindabele. “Au! We shall see many more suns rise, and many shadows against them—the shadows of hung Amandabele.” But a great jeering laugh was all the answer vouchsafed.
With the darkness the firing ceased, but those watching at the windows redoubled their vigilance, every sense on the alert lest the enemy should steal up under its cover and rush the position. Enraged and gloomy at so little opportunity being given them of avenging their comrade’s death, those within almost wished they would. One of the wounded men—the police trooper, to wit—was groaning piteously. Both had been made as comfortable as was practicable, but it was painful to listen to the poor fellow’s pleadings in the darkness, for, of course, they dared not strike a light. Would they not shoot him at once and put him out of his agony, he begged.
“Poor old chap! We’ll see you through all right. You’ll live to talk over all this again and again,” was the pitying reply of a comrade.
“I don’t want to; I want to be dead. Oh, it’s awful—awful!”
His kneebone had been shattered by a bullet, and he was enduring terrible agony. To listen to his pitiful writhings and groans was enough to take the heart out of the most daredevil glutton for fighting.
“Here, have a drink, old man. It’ll buck you up a bit,” said another, groping towards him with a whisky bottle.
“Yes. Give it here. Where is it?” And the sufferer’s groans were silenced in a gasping gurgle.
“Worst thing possible for him, I believe,” whispered Moseley.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” replied Tarrant also in a whisper. “Doesn’t much matter, though, the poor devil! He’s a ‘goner’ anyhow. A knock like that means mortification, and there’s no doctor here to take his leg off, nor could it be done under the circumstances if there was.”
“By the Lord, Moseley,” he resumed, a moment later, “I wonder if there’s anything in what Jekyll said the niggers were saying just now—that there are no whites left in the land. If this is a general outbreak, what of Hollingworth and his crowd?”
An exclamation of dismay escaped the other. Their own position was so essentially one of action that they had had little or no time to take thought for any but themselves. Now it came home to them. But for the timely warning brought by the police trooper, they themselves would have been treacherously set upon and massacred; how, then, should those who had not been so warned escape?
“Heavens! it won’t bear thinking about,” he replied. “Formerly, in the Cape wars; the Kafirs didn’t kill women; at least, so I’ve often heard. Perhaps these don’t either. Dibs, it’s too awful. Let’s put it to Jekyll.”
But the opinion of that worthy, and of two others with experience, was not cheering either. It was impossible to say what these might do. Most of the younger men of the Matabele nation were a mongrel lot, and a ruffianly withal One resolve, however, was arrived at—that if they succeeded in beating off their present assailants, they would hurry over to the aid of the Hollingworths.
The night wore on, and still the enemy gave no sign of his presence. Had he cleared out, they speculated? No, that was not likely, either. The odds were too great in his favour. It was far more likely that he was waiting his chance, either that they might strive to break through his cordon and get away in the darkness—and there were some who but for the fact of having wounded men to look after would have favoured this course—or that he would make a determined rush on the position with the first glimmer of dawn.
In the small hours of the morning the man with the shattered kneebone sank and died. He knew he was doomed, and declared that he welcomed a speedy release. Had he any message? asked the others, awed, now the time for action was in abeyance, at this pitiful passing away in their midst. If so, they pledged themselves solemnly to attend to his wishes. No, not he, was the answer. Anybody belonging to him would be only too glad to be rid of him, and to such the news of his death would be nothing but good news. He had never done any good for himself or anybody else, or he supposed he wouldn’t be where he was.
“Don’t say that, old chap,” said Jekyll. “Every man Jack of us who gets away from here without having his throat cut owes it to you. If that isn’t doing any good for anybody else I’d like to know what is.”
“Hear, hear!” came in emphatic chorus.
“Oh well, then perhaps a fellow has done something,” was the feeble rejoinder. And so the poor fellow passed away.
But they were not to be suffered to give way to the sad impressiveness of the moment, for a quick whisper from those at the back window warned that something was taking place. At the same time those watching the front of the house gave the alarm. Straining their sight in the dimness of the approaching dawn, the besiegers made out a number of dark forms crawling up from all sides. The Matabele were renewing the attack.
Those within had already laid their plans. There were two windows in front and one behindhand at each of these two men were on guard. Carefully aiming so as to rake the dark mass, they let go simultaneously, then dived below the level of the sill, and not a fraction of a moment too soon. A roar of red flame poured from the darkness, both front and rear, and several bullets came humming in, burying themselves in the opposite plaster, and filling the interior with dust. The former tactics had been repeated—the storming party advancing under cover of the fire of their supports. And immediately upon the cessation of that fire, a mass of savages rose from the earth, and, quick as lightning, hurled themselves upon the store.
Then those within had their hands full. The magazine rifles, playing upon the advancing crowd, wrought fearful havoc at point-blank quarters, and bodies, in the struggles of death or wounds, lay heaped up under the windows. But the assailants paused not, pressing on with greater intrepidity than ever, seeming to laugh at death. Now their hands were on the window-sills, but before they could effect an entrance there was the same crash, the same wild spring, the same fall backward without, and mingling with the din of firearms, the unearthly vibration of the Matabele battle-hum, uttered from the chest through the closed teeth outward, “Jjí-jjí!” rendered the scene as one of the strivings of fiends. Then the set, awful faces of those within—visible in the glare and smoke of the rifles—battling for their lives against tremendous odds!
It could not last. Very few minutes would decide one way or the other. Carbutt, helping defend one of the front windows, found the magazine of his rifle exhausted. Dropping back to fill it, he found his ammunition in like state—exhausted too; and at the same time the man who stepped forward to take his place received a blow with a heavy knobkerrie that sent him down like a bullock. A big Matabele warrior was half in the room; another, quick as thought, drove his assegai clean through the Cockney prospector. The entrance was forced. The besiegers held possession of the interior.
Not quite, though. The last man left alive, viz. Carbutt himself, stepped back through the compartment door and slammed it in their faces. But what avail? They would soon batter it in. It was only staving off the evil day.
The firing without was now renewed—renewed with a fury not hitherto manifested. Yet none of the missiles seemed to take effect. But a perfect uproar was taking place, wild cries, and rushings to and fro. Then the warriors who had entered the further compartment seemed to be crowding out as fast as ever they could. The dawn now was fairly broken. The space around the house had cleared as if by magic, save for the dead and disabled. Those within the bush were retreating, turning to fire as they did so. But—not at the store.
Then came a low rumbling sound, which the besieged ones, hearing, looked at each other for a moment, and then broke into a mighty hurrah, for in it they recognised the sound of hoofs, and of many hoofs.
Some two score horsemen rode up to the door, their uniforms and trappings those of the Matabeleland Mounted Police. That this did not constitute the whole of the force which had so effectually and in the nick of time come to their relief, a sound of brisk firing from the rock ridge at the back of the store served to show. A squad, having taken possession of the said ridge, was hastening the departure of the retreating Matabele.
As the besieged stepped forth they presented a not unimpressive spectacle. Haggard, unshorn; hands blackened and burnt from contact with the quick-firing magazine rifles; the anxious look telling of many hours of strained vigilance; the hard set of determined faces; and the light of battle not yet gone out of their eyes—they were in keeping with the background of bullet-battered wall and the foreground of dark corpses, grim and gory, lying stark and in every variety of contorted shape, at which the Police horses were snorting and shying.
“Just in time, Overton!” said Jekyll, hailing the officer in command, who was a friend of his. “Only just in the nick of time. They had already got inside the further room. Five minutes more would have done for us.”
“You stood them off well,” returned the other, dismounting. “I never thought we’d have been any good at all; thought you’d have been knocked on the head long ago.” Then gravely, “Any—er—losses?”
“Four. One of your men. The one who warned us.”
“Robinson, wasn’t it?”—turning to a trooper, who answered in the affirmative.
“Poor chap! Hallo, Carbutt. You in it, eh?”
“Glad to be out of it, too. Have a drink, Overton. I think we all deserve one.”
Now the residue of the relieving force arrived. These were all dismounted men, prospectors mostly, who had either been warned in time or had fallen in with the Police during their flight. Nearly all were known to some one or other of the defenders of the store, and there was a great interchange of greeting, and more than one story of hairbreadth escapes, told by some, who, like these, had been succoured only in the nick of time.
“There’s going to be the devil to pay,” the police captain was saying. “The rebellion’s a general one, or precious nearly so; at any rate, in this part of the country. Zazwe’s people and Umlugula’s have risen, and Bulawayo was being laagered up for all it was worth when we left. We can’t get any news from Sikumbutana, but Madúla’s a very shaky customer, and if he joins in, then I’m afraid Inglefield and Ames will be in a bad way.”
“Roll up, boys! Roll up!” sang out Jekyll, who had gone outside. “There’s free drinks all round this morning. ‘Skoff,’ too. Help get down some of these tins.”
There was no lack of response to this appeal, and the sun rose upon a busy scene. Glasses and beakers clinked, and men sat or stood around, devouring “bully” beef or canned tongues and other provisions, some of the rougher sort now and then shying the empty tins in scornful hate at the dead bodies of the fallen savages—for, after all, the corpses of four of their countrymen still lay unburied within.
“You’ve done for thirty-one all told, Jekyll,” presently remarked Overton, who had set some of his men to count the dead immediately around the place. “Not a bad bag for seven guns. What?”
“No; but we’ve lost four,” was the grave reply.
Then, having taken in a great deal of much needed refreshment, and effected the burial of their slain comrades—the latter, by the exigencies of the circumstances, somewhat hurriedly performed—the force divided, the Police moving on to warn Hollingworth. With them went Moseley and Tarrant, while the remainder elected to stay at Jekyll’s until they saw how things were likely to turn.
“I don’t know that you’re altogether wise, all of you,” were the Police captain’s parting words. “You’ve held your own against tremendous odds so far; but when it’s a case of the whole country being up against you, I’m afraid you’ll have no show.”
But to this the reply was there were plenty of them now, and they could hold their own against every carmine-tinted nigger in Matabeleland.
It was late in the afternoon when the mounted force arrived at Hollingworth’s farm. There was a silence about the place, an absence of life that struck upon them at once.
“I expect they’ve cleared,” said Moseley. “In fact, they must have, or we’d have heard the kids’ voices in some shape or form.”
“Let’s hope so,” replied the Police captain. Then a startled gasp escaped him. For exactly what had attracted Nidia’s glance on her return attracted his—the broad trail in the dust and the blood-patches, now dry and black.
With sinking hearts they dismounted at the door, and Overton knocked. No answer.
Somehow several of the faces of those who stood looking at each other had gone white. A moment of silence, then, turning the handle, the Police captain entered. He was followed by Moseley and Tarrant.
Almost instinctively they made a movement as though to back out again, then with set faces advanced into the room. Those horrible remains—battered, mutilated—told their own tale. They were too late—too late by twenty-four hours.
Then Tarrant’s behaviour astonished the other two. Pushing past them he entered the other rooms, casting quick searching glances into every corner or recess. When he returned there was a look almost of relief upon his face.
“Miss Commerell is not here,” he said.
“Miss who?” asked Overton, quickly.
“Miss Commerell. A visitor. Moseley, can she have escaped?”
“I hope to Heaven she has,” was the reply. “Wait. We haven’t examined the huts or the stable.”
Quickly they went round to the back, and with sinking hearts began their search. In one of the huts the body of poor little Jimmie came to light; then the lock of the store-hut was battered off—the stable—everywhere. Still, no trace of the missing girl.
“She may have escaped into the bush,” suggested Tarrant, whose suppressed excitement, even at that moment, did not escape the others. “Quick, Overton! Send some of your men to scour it in every direction.”
“Not so fast,” said the Police captain. “Things can’t be done that way. We must go to work systematically.”
He called up two of his men who were born colonists and versed in the mysteries of spoor. They, however, did not look hopeful. The ground around the homestead was so tramped and withal so dry, it would be difficult to do anything in that line. But they immediately set to work.
Meanwhile Overton, with the aid of his sergeant, was drawing up an official report, and making general examination. It was clear that the whole family had been set upon and treacherously massacred.
And those who looked upon these pitiful remains—a black lust of vengeance was set up in their hearts which was destined to burn there for many a long day. Woe to the savage who should meet these men in battle, or who, vanquished, should expect mercy. Such mercy they might expect as they had shown; and what that mercy was let the mutilated remains of father, mother, and little children treacherously slaughtered beneath their own roof-tree speak for themselves. “Remember the Hollingworths,” would henceforth be a sufficient rallying cry to those who had stood here, when the savage foe should stand before them.