Chapter Twenty Six.
Of a Home-Coming.
The kraal of the chief, Ndabakosi, was in a state of somewhat unusual excitement. Men were passing from hut to hut, but there were few women to be seen. The blue smoke reeks rose to bluer sky, and the odour of kine was in the air. Around, the veldt, dotted with feathery mimosa, lay shimmering in the afternoon heat.
The kraal was a fairly large one, but somewhat of a strain must have been put upon its capacity for accommodation, for a considerable number of people seemed to be gathered here—not all together, for they kept continually passing and re-passing from hut to hut, and hardly ever in the same groups. Quite a number of them too, carried assegais, and, not a few, shields. Clearly something was in the wind.
The horseman, pacing along the dusty track of road, was not in a good humour. We regret to have to record that more than once he swore—swore right heartily too. Nothing is more conducive to such behaviour than the discovery, in the course of a hot and tedious journey, that one’s mount has gone lame. This one had just made such a discovery—wherefore—he swore.
Dismounting, he looked again at the defaulting hoof, felt the pastern. Seen thus, he was a tall, broad shouldered young fellow, light-haired, blue-eyed, straight as a dart. He was puzzled. There was nothing to account for this sudden lameness. The steed was not of the best, but it was the best he could hire when he got off the train at Telani, at an early hour that morning, in his impatience to get home. And now it was out of the question that he should reach home that night. The horse was not very lame, certainly; but it was likely to go lamer still with every mile or so.
“It’s just possible I might borrow a horse at old Ndabakosi’s place,” he said to himself, “and that can’t be more than a mile further on. Yes there it is,” as, topping a rise, he could discern a ring of domed huts crowning a kopje a little way off the road in front. “These nigger gees are beastly screws as a rule, but ‘needs must, etc.,’ and it may get me as far as Kwabulazi to-night at any rate. He’s a decent old chap is Ndabakosi, and a long cool pull of tywala won’t come in badly just now. Gee up, you brute!”
Hyland Thornhill’s visions of home-coming were pleasant in spite of the above-detailed contretemps. It would be no end jolly to see the old man again—he and his father had always been more like chums than anything else, and the confidence between them was perfect. And little Edala—she was wrong-headed on certain points, but still—what times they would have. And the strange visitor? He wondered what she would be like. Well, the more the merrier—anyway, he was going to have a ripping time of it now he had broken loose at last. He had put up a surprise visit on them, and it would all be great fun.
But between himself and Sipazi there lay—Ndabakosi’s kraal.
The latter, for a moment had been unwontedly lively; then it was as dead. When Hyland Thornhill rode up to it, two ringed men stood watching his approach with listless curiosity.
“Saku bona ’madoda!” he cried. “And the chief—how is he?”
They returned his greeting.
The chief was asleep, they said. In fact he was getting old, and was not very well.
“Au! That is bad news,” returned Hyland. “But—we are old friends. I would like to look upon his face once more. Tell him Ugwala is here,” giving his native nickname.
The two, whose faces were strange to him, looked at each other. Then one went in the direction of the chief’s hut, while the other went in another direction. The while Hyland had not dismounted. Presently the first returned.
The chief was awake, he said, and would see Ugwala presently. Meanwhile would he not dismount?
But a very strange kind of instinct had come over Hyland Thornhill, warning him to do nothing of the kind. It happened that as he sat in the saddle waiting, he had happened to see, by a side glance, the hut which the other man had entered. The doorway, for one brief moment, had been crowded with faces, whose expression there was no mistaking. His glance had also caught the gleam of assegais. All the rumours he had heard on the way down and, especially when he had got off the train at Telani, where in fact he had been seriously warned against taking this journey all alone—came back to him. He remembered, too, that many of the more reliable chiefs were reported to be disaffected.
“I will not wait, then,” he answered. “I must reach Kwabulazi to-night. Hlala-gahle.”
The other grunted a sullen reply. Hyland, as he pushed his lame horse along, did not feel at all easy in his mind. He would have felt less so still had he seen what happened a few minutes afterwards. Hardly was he out of sight of the kraal than a number of armed savages issued from it, racing over the veldt at an angle of forty-five divergent from the direction he was taking. But they knew their own plan. They knew moreover that he was riding a lame horse. And they never intended he should reach Kwabulazi that night—or ever.
As he held on his way his uneasiness took a new turn, and that on behalf of his father and sister. If things were going from bad to worse Sipazi was a lonely place. Surely his father would know better than to remain on there. Perhaps they were already in laager—he had heard that in some parts the farmers were going into laager—and again and again he cursed his luckless mount which had had the unfortunate foolishness to go dead lame just as he wanted him to put his best foot foremost.
Stung by these obtruding apprehensions, Hyland lashed his steed savagely. It sprang forward into a half-hearted canter, and again he lashed it. In front rose a long acclivity, the straight road ribanded out in red dust, in contrast to the green of the veldt. Then began a race—all unconsciously on the part of one competitor, but not so on that of others. Threescore armed savages were straining every muscle to gain the top of that acclivity the first, advancing stealthily through the mimosa bushes and long grass.
Up this the sorry horse cantered half heartedly. But Hyland Thornhill was in a bad temper now, a condition of mind begotten of growing anxiety. What was a mere quadruped to him then? And again the raw-hide lash curled round the animal’s ribs. It gave a feeble kick or two, but started off at a fairly respectable pace.
“Get on, you brute!” he growled savagely.
It may grieve the moralist, but it is hard fact that that outburst of bad temper saved the rider’s life. For by just the time saved by the enforced acceleration of the horse’s pace did he gain the top of the rise first and—became alive to what he had, by such a shave, escaped. The crawling forms were not a hundred yards distant on his right when he sighted them, and on realising that they were discovered, they bounded forward with a roar. But it was downhill work now, and Hyland sent his steed along at its best pace, soon leaving his enemies behind.
“Near thing that, damn it!” he muttered grimly, turning in his saddle to see if he was being pursued.
He was. Dark forms, strung out like a pack of hounds, were sprinting along the road in his rear. He had got a good start, but what if this confounded screw should stumble and fall? Then—good night! And Kwabulazi was not exactly near, either. He had a good, business-like revolver slung round him, concealed by his coat; but what was that against such odds? It would mean selling his life at the price of four or five of theirs, and keeping the last bullet for himself.
He had served in Matabeleland as well as in the Dutch war. He was hardened and resourceful, but among the things he had learned in the former campaign was the accepted fact that it did not do to fall into the power of hostile savages, helpless and unarmed.
But no more did he see of his pursuers, and he felt almost affectionately disposed towards his defaulting mount, as he topped the last neck, and looked down upon Kwabulazi.
What was this? The place was all alive with people. The tents of several waggons showed up white in the evening glow, and as he drew nearer he could see a number of men digging for all they were worth. They were making entrenchments. The place had gone into laager, then. His father and sister would be there, and safe. After his own experience he was filled with unutterable relief and thankfulness as he realised this.
Several of the surrounding farmers had gathered here with their families for mutual defence, and an outlying storekeeper or two, and all hands were turning to with a will to bank up an adequate breastwork. Within this the waggons, together with boxes and bales, should form an inner line of defence. There was a lull in the work as Hyland rode up.
“Dashed if it isn’t young Thornhill!” said one—an old man with a bushy grizzled beard.
“Dashed if it isn’t old Seth Curtis,” responded Hyland, coolly.
“Well that’s a damned respectful way to talk to a man old enough to be your father,” growled the other.
“Old enough to be, but thank God he isn’t. I’m quite content with the one I’ve got,” answered Hyland shortly. He was not inclined to be cordial towards the speaker, or towards anyone there. He resented the attitude the neighbours had taken up towards his father, and didn’t care how much they knew it. “Where is he, by the way?”
There was no answer. A sort of blankness came over the group which had gathered. Each looked at the other. Hyland felt his face growing white and cold. His fists instinctively clenched.
“Can’t some idiot answer?” he snarled savagely, glaring at the blank faces, with a murderous longing to run ‘amok’ and dash his fists in to them all. Then a girl’s voice sounded forth clear and full.
“Why—it’s Hyland.”
“Edala—where is he?” was the first question in the midst of a hurried embrace. “Not killed?”
“No—not that.”
“What then? Wounded?”
“No. But—they’ve got him.”
“Good God!”
“Come with me and I’ll tell you all about it quietly,” and she led him to Elvesdon’s house where she and Evelyn had taken up their quarters. The latter’s presence he hardly noticed as he acknowledged their introduction mechanically. Then Edala gave him all particulars of the semi-tragic termination to Tongwana’s war-dance.
“Why the people have known him all their lives,” said Hyland. “What can be their object? I could understand if they had killed him—them—but to keep them prisoners—Oh Lord! Edala, can nothing be done to rescue them? We can’t sit down and let things slide.”
And he began to pace about the room. Edala shook her head, dejectedly.
“Mr Prior has been doing what he can. He has sent out two of his native detectives to try and find out where they are, and bribe the chiefs to release them. He does not believe that Tongwana had any hand in it. Nteseni might have, or Babatyana. He, by the way, has broken out, and there are rumours that old Zavula has been murdered by him.”
“Well, it’s quite likely. Yet that paying dodge is about the only chance at present that I can see,” said Hyland, gloomily. “We must first find out where they are, and if they’re alive I’ll get ’em out, or go under myself—even if I have to do it alone, for I don’t suppose any of these white livered curs round here would risk their skins to lend me a hand. They’re first-rate at snapping at a man’s heels though,” he ended savagely.
Edala knew to what he was referring, and secretly writhed. The lash was stinging her too.
“Hy, darling—it’s a perfect godsend that you have come. Oh, we must do something,” she said, her eyes filling. Edala the light-hearted, the careless, the somewhat hard—had softened marvellously since that experience.
Then Prior came in, and Hyland greeted him cordially, for they had been great friends; in fact the magistrate’s clerk was one of the very few in the neighbourhood with whom he would exchange much more than a word, for the reasons given above. Now he gave him his experiences at Ndabakosi’s kraal, and subsequently.
“If I’d got off that horse I should have been a dead man,” he concluded. “So I should be if I hadn’t got my shirt out, and quilted that poor lame old crock rather sinfully. Well, you see—you can trust none of these chaps after all. If there’s one nigger in all Natal I should have sworn was straight it’s old Ndabakosi.”
So they talked on. Prior, by reason of his official position, and as the deputy of his absent chief, found himself in a sort of post of command—the detachment of Mounted Police, too, being under his orders, and it looked as if Hyland Thornhill by reason of a masterful force of will was going to share it with him, in the active line at any rate, if they came to blows with the rebels. Than this Prior asked nothing better and said so with unfeigned satisfaction.
We last saw Edala and her companion poised on the dizzy altitude of what the former called her ‘aerial throne,’ surrounded by peril. Moreover they had just been discovered. Manamandhla had seen them, as to that there could be no doubt. Every moment they had sat there expecting the return of those they had heard above—then death; and every such moment was bitter with the bitterness of death. Yet, when they climbed up nearly an hour later and stood, cramped and shivering, the summit of Sipazi was clear. Sorely was Edala puzzled. Clearly the Zulu had not betrayed their presence. What strange unfathomable motive could he have had in sparing their lives—hers especially, thought Edala, whose father had deliberately attempted to take his? Yet he had done so.
And in the result Prior was astounded to see at about mid-day, instead of his chief returning—for he had taken for granted the latter was spending the night at Thornhill’s—two tired and haggard-eyed girls walking up to the place; and more astounded still when he recognised their identity, and learned the strange doings they had to tell of.