Chapter Twenty Seven.
The Fight Outside.
MacFurdon’s troop, about two hundred strong, was sweeping up the long slope which ran northward from the township of Bulawayo, and the line it was taking would bring it out a little to the right of Government House and the site of the old kraal.
It was bitterly cold, for the dawn had not yet risen. The insurgents had waxed bolder and yet more bold. They were holding the ridge, and were in calm possession of Government House itself, and now the idea was to teach them that the time had come when they could no longer have everything their own way. To this end it had been decided to get well within striking distance of them at break of day.
MacFurdon’s troop was rather a scratch concern, got together in a hurry, but consisting of good material. With it went many volunteers. It was, however, in this instance, as much a reconnoitring party as one for fighting purposes. On its right flank moved a contingent of the Cape Boy corps, feeling the ground towards the Umguza. This, too, was rather a scratch force, composed of every conceivable kind of South African native, but, like the other, of excellent fighting material.
“Say, Ames—what sort of show you think we got?” whispered one of the volunteers aforesaid, as they drew near the crest of the rise. “Now, if they was Indians, I guess we’d boost them out of yon White House of yours in no time, striking them in the dark so.”
The speaker was an American, by name Shackleton, commonly called “The Major,” by virtue of his having claimed to hold that rank in Uncle Sam’s regular army. He likewise claimed to have seen service in the Indian wars on the Plains. In more peaceful times he was a prospector by occupation.
“Show? Oh, the usual thing,” answered John Ames. “We shall get in touch with each other, and there’ll be a big swap in bullets, and a general hooroosh. They’ll all sneak away in the grass, and we shall get back into camp feeling as if our clothes all wanted letting out. If there are more of them than we can take care of all at once, why, we shan’t be feeling so vast.”
“That so? You ever fight Matabele before?”
“Yes. I was up here with the column in ’93. That used to be the programme then.”
The wind was singing in frosty puffs through the grass, bitterly cold. Riding along in the darkness, the numbed feet of most there advancing could hardly feel the stirrups. Then upon the raw air arose a sound—a strange, long-drawn wailing sound, not devoid of rhythm, and interspersed every now and then with a kind of humming hiss.
“They are holding a war-dance, so there must be plenty of them there,” whispered John Ames. “Listen! I can hear the words now.”
It was even as he said. They were near enough for that. Louder and louder the war-song of Lobengula swelled forth upon the darkness, coming from just beyond the rise—
“Woz ’ubone! Woz ’ubone, kiti kwazula! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba yemkonto—Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!
“Nants ’indaba. Indaba yezizwe. Akwazimúntu. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba kwa Matyobane. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!”
(“Jjí-jjí” is the cry on striking a foe.)
A translation of the war-song:
“Come behold, come behold, at the High Place!
Come behold. That is the tale - the tale of the spear.
That is the tale - the tale of the nation. Nobody knows.
Come behold. That is the tale - the tale of Matyobane.”
The barbaric strophes rolled in a wave of sound, rising higher with each repetition, and to the measured accompaniment of the dull thunder of stamping feet, the effect was weirdly grand in the darkness.
“It makes something very like nonsense if turned into English,” whispered John Ames, in reply to his comrade’s query, “but it contains allusions well understood by themselves. There isn’t anything particularly bloodthirsty about it, either. That sort of hiss, every now and then, is what we shall hear if we get to close quarters.”
“Their kind of war-whoop, maybe. I recollect at Wounded Knee Creek, when Big Foot’s band made believe to come in—”
But what the speaker recollected at Wounded Knee Creek was destined never to be imparted to John Ames, for at that juncture a peremptory word was passed for silence in the ranks.
Now the dawn was beginning to show, revealing eager faces, set and grim, and rifles were grasped anew. Then what happened nobody seemed to know individually. A straggling volley was poured into the advancing troop from the crest of the rise, and the bugle rang out the order to charge. As John Ames had described it, there followed a sort of “hooroosh” in which each man was acting very much to his own hand, as, the troop having whirled over the ridge, the order was given to dismount, and the men stood pouring volley upon volley after the loose masses of flying savages.
This, however, was not destined to last. The first shock over of surprise and dismay, the Matabele dropped down into cover and began to return the fire with considerable spirit. They were in some force, too, and it behoved the attacking whites to seize what shelter they could, each man taking advantage of whatever lay to his hand, whether stone or bush or ant heap, or even a depression in the ground.
Then, for a space, things grew very lively. The sharp spit of rifles was never silent, with the singing of missiles overhead. The enemy had the advantage in the matter of cover, and now and then a dark form, gliding like a snake among the grass and thorns, would be seen to make a convulsive spring and fall over kicking. One trooper was shot dead, and more than one wounded, and meanwhile masses of the enemy could be descried working up to the south-west. Reinforcements? It looked like it, remembering that the force at first engaged was not inconsiderable. The word went forth to retreat.
This was done in good order—at first. But now appeared a great outflanking mass, pouring up from the northern side, and its object was clear. A long wire fence ran down from the apex of the rise. It was necessary to retreat round the upper end of this. Did this outflanking mass reach it first, the white force would probably be destroyed, for they could not get their horses through the wire, and would have crushing odds to overwhelm them. It became a race for the end of the fence, which, however, the cool intrepidity and sound judgment of the leaders prevented from being a helter-skelter one.
John Ames and “The Major” and a trooper were on the extreme left flank, now become the right one, all intent on a knot of savages, who were keeping them busily employed from a thick bit of thorn bush, and did not at once become alive to the retreat. When they did, they became alive to something else, and that was that by nothing short of a miracle could they gain the upper end of that fence in time.
“Your horse jump, Ames?” said the American.
“Don’t know. Never tried.”
“You got to try now, then, by God! Our only chance. Look!”
John Ames did look, and so did the other man. At the upper end of the fence a mass of savages were in possession, pouring a volley after the retreating troop. Below on their right the three men saw the other outflanking “horn” now closing in upon them, and a line of warriors coming through the grass and thorns in front at a trot. It was a strong impi, and a large one.
In that brief flash of time, John Ames was curiously alive to detail. He could see the ostrich-feather mútyas worn by the warriors, the parti-coloured shields and the gleam of spears, and decided this was a crack regiment. He could see, too, the township of Bulawayo lying in its basin below, and the retreating horsemen now already far away. He noted the look of fear on the face of the trooper, and that of desperate resolve in the keen eyes of the American.
“Now for it!” he cried. “Put your horses at it here. I’ll give you a lead.”
A wire fence is a trying thing to jump, with an uncertain steed. To his surprise, John Ames lighted in safety on the other side. Not so Shackleton. His horse’s hoofs caught the top wire, and turning a complete somersault, threw its rider heavily, but on the right side of the fence, while that of the trooper refused point-blank and trotted off, snorting idiotically, right down the fence into the very teeth of the advancing enemy.
John Ames turned, then rode back.
“Get up, Major, for Heaven’s sake!”
Shackleton had already been on his feet, but subsided again with a groan.
“Can’t. Ankle gone. Guess my time’s here—right here,” he panted. “You go on.”
“We don’t do things that way, damn it!” John Ames answered, in his strong excitement. “Here, get up on my horse.”
He had dismounted. Shackleton’s fool of an animal had already recovered itself and made itself scarce. The advancing impi was barely three hundred yards distant, pouring onward, shivering the air with its deep vibrating “Jjí-jjí!”
“You go on!” repeated the American. “I won’t be taken alive.”
John Ames said no more. He did. Shackleton, fortunately, was rather a small man, and light. The other seized him under the shoulders, and by dint of half lifting, half pushing, got him bodily into the saddle.
“Now go!” he shouted. “I’ll hold on the stirrup.”
All this had taken something under a minute.
They went. The impi was now pouring through the fence, whose momentary obstruction almost made a difference of life or death to the fugitives. How they escaped John Ames never knew. Sky, earth, the distant township beneath, all whirled round and round before him. Twice he nearly lost hold of the stirrup-leather and would have fallen; then at last became aware of slackening pace. Turning, dizzy and exhausted, he saw that the enemy had abandoned pursuit.
And what of the unfortunate trooper? Not much, and that soon over, luckily. Abandoning his mount, he made a rush for the fence, but too late. A very hail of assegais was showered upon him, and he fell, half in, half out, across the wire. With a roar of exultation the savages were around him. Assegais gleamed in the air, first bright, then red, and in a second nothing was left but a shapeless and mangled mass.
Such tragedies, however, come but under the simple word “losses,” and these, all things considered, had not been great. On the other hand, the enemy had suffered severely, and if, by sheer force of overwhelming numbers, he had succeeded in driving them back, those forming the reconnaissance were not disposed to feel it acutely. They were quite ready to go in at him another day, and thus make things even.
But Shackleton, otherwise “The Major,” was not going to let the thing down so easily. His sprained ankle kept him tied by the leg for some days, but on the subject of the fight and the retreat he became somewhat of a bore. On the subject of John Ames he became even more of one. He was never tired of extolling that worthy’s readiness and nerve, and his self-devotion in risking his life to save a comrade.
“You British have got a little iron notion,” he would say, “a thing you call a Victoria Cross, I reckon. Well, when you going to get it for John Ames? He boosted me on to his broncho like a sack right away, and run afoot himself. But for him where’d I be now? Cut into bully beef by those treacherous savages. Yes, sir.”
But as these incisive utterances were invariably accompanied by an invitation to liquor, there were some who were not above drawing. The Major upon his favourite topic. To most, however, he became a bore, but to none so much as the subject thereof. Said the latter one day—
“Do you know, Major, I begin to wish I had left you where you were. It’s a fact that you’re making a perfect fool of me, and I wish you’d drop it.”
“Shucks! Now you quit that fool-talk, John Ames, and reach down that whisky over there—if you can call such drug-store mixture as your Scotch stuff by the same name as real old Kentucky. I’m going on at it until they give you that little nickel thing you British think such a heap of.”
“But I don’t want it, can’t you understand?” he retorted angrily; “nor anything else either. I believe I’ll get out of this country mighty soon. I’m sick of the whole show.”
Shackleton looked at his friend, and shook his head gravely. John Ames petulant, meant something very wrong indeed with John Ames. Then an idea struck “The Major”—a bright idea, he reckoned—and in the result he seized an early opportunity of making a call, and during that call he retold his favourite tale to just two persons—to one of whom it was pleasant and to one of whom it was not. You see, he was a shrewd observer, was Shackleton, otherwise “The Major.”