Chapter Three.
A Flaming Throne.
“Too late, boys, I guess the Southern Column got there first.” And the utterer of this remark lowered his field glasses and turned to the remainder of the little band of scouts with an air of profound conviction.
Away in the distance dense columns of smoke were rising heavenward. For some time this group of men had been eagerly intent upon watching the phenomenon through their glasses, and there was reason for their eagerness, for they were looking upon the goal of the expedition, and what should practically represent the close of the campaign—Bulawayo to wit, but—Bulawayo in flames. Who had fired it?
Considerable disappointment was felt and expressed. Their prompt march, their hard and victorious fighting had not brought them first to the goal. The Southern Column had distanced them and was there already. Such was the conclusion arrived at on all sides.
One man, however, had let go no opinion. Lying full length, his field glass adjusted upon a convenient rock, he had been steadily scanning the burning kraal in the distance during all the foregoing discussion, ignoring the latter as though he were alone on the ground. Now he spoke.
“There’s no Southern Column thereat all. No sign or trace of a camp.”
This dictum was received with dissent, even with a little derision.
“Who’s set it on fire then, Blachland?” said one of the exponents of the latter phase, with a wink at the others. “You’re not going to tell us that Lo Bengula’s set his own shop alight?”
“That’s about what’s occurred,” was the tranquil reply. “At least I think so.”
“It’s more’n likely Blachland’s right, boys,” said one of the scouts, speaking with a pronounced American accent. “He’s been there anyway.”
With renewed eagerness every glass was once more brought to bear. There appeared to be four great columns of smoke, and these, as they watched, were merging into one, of vast volume, and now bright jets of flame were discernible, as the fire licked its way along the thatch of the grass huts. Then something strange befel. They who watched saw a fresh outburst of smoke rise suddenly like an enormous dome from the centre of that already ascending, seeming to bear aloft on its summit the fragments of roofs, fences, débris of every description, and then they were conscious of a mighty roar and a vibrating shock, as the whole mass subsided, releasing the flames, which shot up anew.
“That’s an explosion!” cried some one excitedly. “Old Lo Ben’s not only burnt his nest, but blown it up into the bargain.”
For some time further they lay there watching the distant work of destruction. Then it was decided that their number should be divided, and while some returned to the column to report the result of their observations, the remainder should push on, and get as near Bulawayo as they possibly could—an undertaking of no slight risk, and calling for the exercise of unflagging caution, for there was no telling what bands of the enemy might be hovering about in quite sufficient strength to prove dangerous to a mere handful, though the opinion was that the bulk of the nation’s forces, with the King, had fled northward.
“Well, Percy? Tired of this kind of fun yet?” said Blachland as he and his young kinsman rode side by side, the two or three more also bent on this service advancing a little further on their right flank.
“Rather not. I wish it wasn’t going to be over quite so quickly.”
The other laughed. “I’m not so sure that it is,” he said.
“Eh? But we’ve got Bulawayo.”
“But we haven’t got Lo Ben yet. My impression is that the tougher part of this campaign is going to begin now. I may be wrong of course, but that’s my impression.”
“Oh, then that settles it,” answered Percival, not ironically, but in whole-hearted good faith, for his belief in, and admiration for his relative had reached the wildest pitch of enthusiasm. There was no greater authority in the world, in his estimation, on everything to do with the country they were in. He would have accepted Hilary’s opinion and acted upon it, even though it went clean contrary to those in command all put together, upon any subject to do with the work in hand, and that with the blindest confidence. And then, had he not himself witnessed Hilary’s gallant and daring deed, during the battle fought a couple of days ago?
His presence there with the scouts instead of as an ordinary trooper in the column, he owed to his relative, the latter having specially asked that he should be allowed to accompany him in such capacity. Blachland at that juncture, with his up-to-date knowledge of the country and the natives, was far too useful a man not to stretch a point for, and Percival West, although new to that part, was accustomed to sport and outdoor life at home, and brimful of pluck and energy, and now, in the short time he had been out, had thoroughly adapted himself to the life, and the vicissitudes of the campaign.
To the cause of their being up here together Hilary never alluded, but he noted with quiet satisfaction that the cure in the case of his young cousin seemed complete. Once the latter volunteered a statement to that effect.
“Ah, yes,” he had replied. “Nothing like a life of this sort for knocking any nonsense of that kind out of a fellow—” mentally adding, somewhat grimly, “When he’s young.”
For Hilary Blachland himself did not find the busy and dangerous, and at times exciting, work of the campaign by any means such an unfailing panacea as he preached it to his younger relative. With it all there was plenty of time for thought, for retrospect. What an empty and useless thing he had made of life, and now the best part of it was all behind him—now that it had been brought home to him that there was a best part, now that it was too late. He was familiar with the axiom that those who sell themselves to the devil seldom obtain their price, and had often scoffed at it: for one thing because he did not believe in the devil at all. Yet now, looking back, he had come to recognise that, in substance at least, the axiom was a true one.
Yes, the better part of his life was now behind him, with its ideals, its possibilities, its finer impulses. Carrying his bitter introspect within the physical domain, had he not become rough and weather-beaten and lined and seamed and puckered? It did not strike him as odd that he should be indulging in such analysis at all—yet had he let anybody else, say any of his present comrades, into the fact that he was doing so, they would have deemed him mad, for if there was a man with that expedition who was envied by most of his said comrades as the embodiment of cool, sound daring, combined with astute judgment, of rare physical vigour and striking exterior, assuredly that man was Hilary Blachland. Yet as it was, he regarded himself with entire dissatisfaction and disgust, and the medium through which he so regarded himself was named Lyn Bayfield.
Her memory was ever before him; more, her presence. Asleep or awake, in the thick of the hardest toil and privation of the campaign, even in the midst of the discharge of his most important and responsible duties yet never to their detriment, the sweet, pure, lovely fairness of her face was there. He had come to worship it with a kind of superstitious adoration as though in truth the presence of it constituted a kind of guardian angel.
Was he, after all, in love with Lyn? He supposed that not a man or woman alive, knowing the symptoms, but would pronounce such to be the case, even as one woman had done. But he knew better, knew himself better. The association of anything so gross, so earthly, here, he recoiled from as from an outrage. It was the unalloyed adoration of a strange, a holy and a purifying influence.
In love with her? He, Hilary Blachland, at his time of life, and with his experience of life, in love! Why, the idea was preposterous, grotesque. He recalled the time he had spent beneath the same roof with her, and the daily association. It would be treasured, revered to the utmost limit of his life, as a sacred and an elevating period, but—as an influence, not a passion.
He had exchanged correspondence with Bayfield more than once since leaving, and had received two or three letters from Lyn—expressing—well, simply Lyn. He had answered them, and treasured them secretly as the most priceless of his possessions. From Bayfield he had learned that the disturbing element had refrained from further molestation, and had moreover, taken her own departure from the neighbourhood almost immediately, a piece of intelligence which afforded him indeed the liveliest gratification.
As they drew near to their objective, other kraals near and around Bulawayo itself, were seen to be on fire. But no sign of their recent occupants. For all trace remaining of the latter, the whole Matabele nation might have vanished into thin air.
“That’s extraordinary,” remarked Blachland, taking a long steady look through his glasses. “That’s Sybrandt’s house down there and they haven’t burnt it,” pointing out a collection of buildings about a mile from the site of the great kraal.
“So it is. Wonder if it means a trap though,” said another of the scouts. “By Jingo! There’s some one signalling up there. I’ll bet my bottom dollar it’s a white man by the look of him. And—there are two of ’em.”
Such was in fact the case—and the biggest surprise of all came off when a couple of white traders, well known to most of them, came forward to welcome them to the conquered and now razed capital. There these two had dwelt throughout the campaign, often in peril, but protected by the word of the King. Lo Bengula had burnt his capital and fled, taking with him the bulk of the nation. He, the dreaded and haughty potentate of the North, whose rule had been synonymous with a terror and a scourge, had gone down before a mere handful of whites, he, the dusky barbarian, the cruel despot, according to popular report revelling in bloodshed and suffering, had taken his revenge. He had protected these two white men alone in his power—had left them, safe and sound in person, unharmed even in their possessions, to welcome the invading conquerors, their countrymen, to the blazing ruins of his once proud home. Such the revenge of this savage.
The Southern Column did not arrive till some days after the first occupation of Bulawayo, and some little time elapsed, resting and waiting for necessary supplies, before the new expedition should start northward, to effect if possible, the capture of the fugitive King. Several up-country going men were here foregathered.
“I say, Blachland,” said old Pemberton, with a jerk of the thumb to the southward, “We didn’t reckon to meet again like this last time when we broke camp yonder on the Matya’mhlope, and old Lo Ben fired you out of the country? Eh?”
“Not much, did we? You going on this new trot, Sybrandt?”
“I believe so. What do you think about this part of the world, West?”
“Here, let’s have another tot all round,” interrupted Pemberton who, by the way, had had just as many as were good for him. “You ain’t going to nobble Lo Ben, Sybrandt, so don’t you think it.”
“Who says so, Pemberton?”
“I say so. Didn’t I say Blachland ’ud never get to Umzilikazi’s grave? Didn’t I? Well, he never did.”
Possibly because the old trader was too far on in his cups the quizzical glance which passed between Blachland and Sybrandt—who was in the know—at this allusion, went unnoticed. Pemberton continued, albeit rather thickly:
“Didn’t I say he’d never get there? Didn’t I? Well, I say the same now. You’ll never get there. You’ll never nobble Lo Ben. See if I ain’t right.”
[a/]