Chapter Six.
The Ghost-Bull.
I was not dead, Nkose; or, indeed, how should I be here telling you my story? Or, if I were—well, at any rate, the magic which had been powerful enough to draw me through the abode of those who had become ghosts was powerful enough to bring me back to life and to the world again—and yet I know not. It is a terrible thing to look upon the faces of those who have long been dead; and how shall a man—being a man—do this unless he join their number? Such faces, however, had I looked upon, for, as I opened my eyes once more to the light of the sun, no dim recollection of one who has slept and dreamed was mine. No; the mysterious cave, the magic fire, the fearsome sights I had beheld—all was real—as real as the trees and rocks upon which I now looked—as real as the sky above and the sun shining from it.
Yes; I was in the outer air once more. I rose and stood up. My limbs were firm and strong as before, my hand still grasped the broad spear—the white shield lay at my feet. Before me was the smooth rock wall, there the exact spot where it had opened to receive me. But there it might remain, closed for ever, for all I cared. I had no wish to look further into its dark and evil mysteries. But now, again, the voice came back to my ears, faint and far away this time, but without the mocking mirth which had lured me before to what might have been my doom.
“Ho, Untúswa!” it cried; “wouldst thou see more of the unseen? Wouldst thou look further into the future?”
“I think not, my father,” I answered. “To those who deal in magic be the ways of magic, to warriors the ways of war—and I am a warrior.”
“And thine inkosikazi, Untúswa, what of her?”
“Help me to slay the ghost-bull who deals forth the Red Death, my father!” I pleaded eagerly.
There was no answer to this for long. Then, weary of waiting, I was about to turn away, when once more the voice spake from within the rock—faint, as before.
“Great is the House of Matyobane; great is the House of Senzangakona; Umzilikazi is ruler of the world to-day—but Dingane is greater. Yet to-morrow, where now are the many nations they have stamped flat there shall they be. Dust—all dust! Gasitye sees it.”
“Ha! And shall I see it too, my father?”
“Thou shalt see it, Untúswa. Thou, too, shalt see it.”
Now, when I heard the name of Gasitye, I knew it as the name of a great seer and prophet who dwelt alone among the mountains, and who was held in wide repute among all tribes and peoples, near and far. His own tribe nobody knew exactly, but it was supposed that his age was three times that of the oldest man known. Even Umzilikazi himself had more than once sent secretly to consult him, with gifts; for the rest, nobody cared to interfere with him, for even the most powerful of kings does not desire the enmity of a great and dreaded sorcerer, whose magic, moreover, is real, and not as that of the tribal izanusi—a cheat to encompass the death of men. And now I had encountered this world-famed wizard; had beheld him alone in the heart of the rock, whose face he had the power to open and shut at will.
“Help me to slay the ghost-bull, my father,” I entreated again.
“And when thou hast slain it—what then?”
“Then it shall be well with me and mine.”
“Well with thee and thine? Will it then—with thee and thine! Ha, ha!” repeated the voice within the cliff, in the same tone of mockery as before. “Go now and slay it, Untúswa, thou valiant one. Go!”
I waited some little time, but no further answer could I obtain, though I spoke both loud and softly. Then I turned away.
As I did so a strange feeling came over me, a feeling as of the faintness caused by starvation. The fumes of the wizard fire had worn off in the clear open air, and I felt as though I could spend the rest of my life eating, so hungry was I. So, losing no time, I started back to where I had left Jambúla.
Then upon my mind came the recollection of the death-yell I had heard when within the vault. Ha! I must proceed with care. I glanced upward. The sun was well up when I entered the rock; now it was at its highest overhead. I had not been as long in that vault of fear as it seemed.
Now there struck upon my nostrils a most horrible stench as of death and putrefaction. What did it mean? I had passed this spot this very morning and the air was pure and clear. Death might have taken place—but putrefaction?—au, there was not time for that. Yet this was a place of witchcraft, where everything was possible. And, thus thinking, I came right upon a human body.
It was in a horrible state, Nkose, in the state of one who has been dead eight or ten days. Yet here such could not have been the case, for in the swollen, half-decayed features, as well as by articles of clothing, I recognised the second of the two slaves, whom I had left alive and well that same morning, but a very few hours before. Yet, there it lay, beneath a tree, with upturned face, and across the decaying ribs the rending gash left by the horn of the ghost-bull.
Now I heard a voice in salute, behind me—a voice I knew. Looking up, I beheld my slave, Jambúla.
He was looking strangely at me. Then he broke forth into extravagant words of welcome, and it seemed to me he had been badly frightened, and was glad enough to behold me once more. That was it, of course; so giving no further thought to the matter at all, I bade him find food. He had a number of speckled pigeons, which he had knocked over with his kerries; and having kindled a fire on the flat top of a high rock for safety’s sake—whau, Nkose!—there was soon nothing left of those birds. The while Jambúla eyed me strangely.
Now this Jambúla—although my slave—was a man I held in great favour. He was not of any of the races we had conquered, but came of a tribe further to the southward than even the Zulu arms had ever reached. Him I had captured while storming the fortress of a mountain tribe, and the King had allotted him to me: He was a tall, strong man, and knew not fear, and was faithful and devoted to me as any dog. Now he said:
“I think this night must this thing of tagati be slain, my father.”
“We think the same, Jambúla,” I answered. “But what I cannot quite think out is how. But that will come.”
“Nevertheless, let it be this night, father. I have a plan.”
This plan he then unfolded to me, and by the time we had talked it out and around it was nearly dark—nearly time to set it working.
Never had any spot struck upon my mind as more ghostly and even terrifying than that haunted valley when night drew fairly down; and, Nkose, what I had seen and gone through in the wizard cave that morning seemed to have sapped my former fearlessness. A low-lying mist wreathed around the tree-stems and bushes, thick to near the height of a man, then thinning out dimly just enough to show out the twinkle of a star or two. But there was light enough for our purpose.
Hard by the place where Suru, the first slave, had been killed was an open space, thickly studded with rocks embedded in the earth, and one side of this open was overhung with mimosas of a good height and strength. Clambering up one of these, I lay out upon the spreading branches. Jambúla remained below.
The night watch wore on—even the night side of life seemed hushed in this abode of wizardry and fear. Suddenly all the blood within me tingled and burned. Something was moving. And then above the ghostly wreathings of the white mist I could see the gigantic head—the huge horns curving upwards—of the ghost-beast.
Only the head was visible as, tilted upwards, nose in air, it moved above the sea of vapour, to and fro, as though seeking for something or somebody—for a fresh victim, perhaps—and I thought it might indeed soon find one. And as I looked the mist suddenly rolled away, revealing the dark form of Jambúla, standing upright against a small rock.
For the moment the beast did not see him. It continued to run hither and thither in the moonlight, and as I marked its gigantic proportions, my heart sank, for I knew that to kill such a thing as this single-handed was very nearly the hardest task ever entrusted to me.
It was huge in the dim light—black as night, and as large as an elephant almost. There was that in the very size of the thing no less than in the glaring ferocity of its eyes—which was enough to turn a man’s heart to water—for it could not be a thing of this earth. How, then, could it be slain?
Now it began to mutter, like the growlings of a heavy thunderstorm, as it ran to and fro, shaking its horrible head, and its dark, shaggy frontlet of hair. Whau! That was a fearful sight as the thing drew nearer. What of Jambúla! He had not moved, beyond half turning his head to get a better view of the horror. Would his heart fail him? I almost expected it would.
Ha! It had seen him. It dropped into a sort of stealthy crouch, more like that of a leopard or a lion than the movement of any horned animal; and thus it came up swiftly behind him.
But Jambúla was not asleep—oh no! There was no lack of wakefulness in him. In a moment he whirled behind a rock, as the ghost-bull, uttering a roar that shook the world, came at him with the swiftness of a lightning flash.
Then began a scene indeed. Jambúla, watching his opportunity, flitted from rock to rock, but not less swiftly did the monster come after him—seeming to fly through the air as it leaped over some of the lower rocks which were in its way. Hau! Could this last? Would not Jambúla, out of breath, falter for one instant? Would not his foot stumble in the tortuous rapidity of his flight? Au! Did that happen he were lost—we both were lost.
Hither and thither he sped, the horrible beast ever behind him, roaring in a fashion to turn a man’s heart to water—the foam flying from its mouth, the points of its huge horns tossing wildly, its savage eyes seeming indeed to flash flame. Would they never come beneath the tree where I—the great assegai gripped and ready—lay out along the bough waiting my chance?
This came. Jambúla, who had been drawing the thing nearer and nearer to my side of the ground, now broke from his shelter, and ran with all the swiftness of which he was capable beneath my place of ambush. After him came the ghost-beast, right under me.
This was my chance, Nkose, and my only one. Swift as the movements of the horror itself, I dropped down upon the thing’s back, and clinging fast with the one hand, with the other I drove the point of my great assegai into the joint of the spinal bone behind the skull.
Whau, Nkose! That was a moment. I know not quite what I expected to happen. I felt the point of the great horn, thrown backward, narrowly graze my side; then I was hurled through the air, as the huge body, arrested in mid course, turned right over, falling with its head twisted under its own enormous weight.
I was on my feet in a moment—not daring to think I had slain the monster—although I had felt the blade of my noble spear bite deep into the marrow. But there it lay, a huge black mass in the moonlight. While I stood contemplating it, still panting after my exertions and the fall, I heard the voice of Jambúla:
“That was well done, my father. Those horns will deal out the Red Death no more.”
“I know not whether a headless ghost may come to life again, Jambúla,” I said, “but anyhow we will cut off the head of this one. But, first of all, this”—and I buried the blade of my great spear in the thing’s heart.
We were both strong men, Jambúla and I, yet it was with a vast deal of labour we at last succeeded in cutting off the head, which was twisted under the huge body.
“Whau!” exclaimed Jambúla, gazing upon the great deluge of blood which poured forth upon the ground. “It is as though the blood of all those slain by the Red Death were flowing there. But now, father, suffer me to ran to Maqandi’s kraal and fetch slaves to carry this, and indeed, the skin and hoofs, to lay before the King, for we have no time to lose.”
“No time to lose!” I repeated. “What mean you?”
He pointed upward with his blood-smeared assegai.
“The moon,” he said.
Then, indeed, Nkose, amazement was my lot—amazement and dismay. And well it might be. For last night the moon had not quite passed its first quarter. To-night it was nearly full.
Like one in a dream I gazed. Anything might be possible in this abode of tagati, but that the moon should change in one day from half to nearly full—au! that was too much.
“What does it mean, Jambúla?” I said at length. “Last night the moon was less than half, and now—?”
“Au!” muttered Jambúla, bringing his hand to his mouth with a strange sort of laugh. “Who am I that I should contradict you, my father? But last night the moon was nearly as it is now. But the night you left us it was but at half.”
“And was not that last night, O fool? In truth the wizardry of this place has eaten into thy brain. And yet—!”
There was the moon, Nkose, within a day or two of full. It could not lie, even though Jambúla could. Stupidly I gazed at it, then at him.
“And how long ago is it that I left you, Jambúla?”
“Six days, father.”
Ha! Now I saw. Now everything was clear. The wizard, and the múti fire—the green, choking vapour that had filled my lungs and brain, causing me to see strange and fearful things—had kept me in a state of slumber. For six days I had lain within the heart of the rock, and I had thought it but the short part of one day. My hunger on my recovery—the state of putrefaction of the body of the slave whom I had supposed to have been slain only that morning—the change of the moon—all, indeed, stood clear enough now.
But whatever Jambúla may have imagined, it was not in my mind to tell him, or anybody, what had really happened, for it is not good among us for a man to have a name for dealings with abatagati. So I sent him off there and then to Maqandi’s kraal, with orders to bring back a number of men immediately to flay the great ghost-bull and carry the hide, with the head and hoofs, before the King, without loss of time.
After he had gone, and while I sat alone in the haunted place, I watched by the great black mass lying so still and quiet; and, Nkose, I believe I should have felt little surprise had the thing come to life again, head and all, so great was the awe it had set up among us. I am not even sure that I did not once or twice hear the voice of old Gasitye, and behold his spidery old form shambling among the trees. The dawn came at last, however, but before it came Jambúla, with a number of the iron-working slaves. These were in great delight over the slain monster who had destroyed so many of them, yet no time did I allow them to give way to their joy over dancing and such. It behoved us to return to the Great Great One with all speed, for on the next night the moon would be at full.