Chapter Thirty Three.
The Chief’s Plan.
They had entered a narrow chamber, into which the light streamed through numerous cracks, in volume sufficient to bring every object into dim relief. For several minutes the little band, snatched from certain death at the last moment, stood anxiously listening for the movements of their enemies, scarcely daring to hope that their hiding-place would not be immediately detected; then, with a sigh of relief, they grasped each other’s hands and peered about them.
At one corner of the room was the old woman who had first visited them, mixing something in a stone dish; near her crouched the witch-doctor, with his head bent in a state of utter dejection, while, with his back to the wall and his eyes fixed upon the woman, leant the warrior whose prompt action had so timely released the captives. Sirayo was seated on the floor, with the Gaika endeavouring to stanch the blood that still trickled down his arm. Hume stood with his hands to his eyes, having torn off the bandage, which, in its sun-dried state, had increased his torture, his face looking haggard and white. As her eyes, growing accustomed to the darkness, dwelt upon his pathetic action, and noticed the signs of suffering in his face, Laura realised what he must have endured through the long hours of darkness. She moved to his side, and gently took his arm, the tears gathering in her eyes.
The old woman rose up, washed away the blood from the wounds of the warrior of her own race, then anointed them with the preparation on which she had been engaged, and over the wounds so treated laid a thin leaf peeled from a large bulbous root. The man turned away, and took a deep draught of water from a calabash, the gurgling noise breaking strangely on the silence.
Sirayo stood up, and thrust his arm before the old woman, and she, without a word, busied herself with it, probing it with her skinny fingers to feel if the bones were broken, and giving a satisfied grunt when she found it was sound. Moving the limb under a stream of sunlight, and bidding Klaas support it, she washed out the wound, then brought the gaping ends together, and stitched them with a dried thorn of mimosa and sinews. She spread ointment on the wound, and bound the arm up with a curious fragment cut from a long strip stretched along the wall. With the same material she made a sling for his arm, then, with a dry chuckle, dismissed him, and cast a questioning gaze at the others.
Seeing, from the expression of Hume’s face, that he was the only other needing her attention, she stepped to his side, drew his hand away, and with glittering eyes peered into his mutilated face. Then, roughly pushing Laura aside, she drew him to the light and again scrutinised him, while the others looked on in silence, subdued by the confidence in her own power of this old and withered savage.
She whispered to the crouching witch-doctor, and he submissively brought her first a calabash of water, with which she moistened the blackened and inflamed lids, then some vegetable, which she began to chew with her almost toothless gums, making awful grimaces. Then, taking the masticated pulp, she spread it over the lids, stretched on them leaves from the bulb, and with the handkerchief made a bandage.
Hume had submitted with a strange patience, and, now that the operation was over, stood with his face in the light.
Laura stole to his side again. “Do you feel any relief?” she murmured.
“Hush,” whispered Webster.
They listened, and heard a sharp exclamation outside. Those who stood near the wall peeped through the crack, and saw a Zulu standing in the centre of the vacated chamber, looking around him curiously at the signs of the struggle.
There was a fierce hiss, and the Zulu, with a cry of alarm, darted off, while the old woman opened wide her mouth in a silent laugh, and cracked her fingers. She it was who had made this noise.
They heard a noise of men leaping to the ground, and a distant shouting, gradually sinking to a confused murmur.
“They have gone,” said Sirayo. “Old mother, have you any food?”
The old dame responded not very amiably, but at an authoritative order from her own chief she disappeared through a narrow opening, hitherto—hidden in the gloom, into another apartment, while, at the prospect of food, the men brightened up. A man may soon become indifferent to danger, but peril never deadens the edge of hunger, so that many a man condemned to death has breakfasted heartily a few minutes before the hour set for his execution. The fare laid before them was not tempting, but they ate the food ravenously and felt the better for it. Laura retired into the other compartment, after somewhat timidly eyeing the old woman, and the strange crone followed her, mumbling and smiling, as well as her toothless gums would permit, at this new type of feminine beauty. The natives prepared to sleep, that appearing to them the most natural alternative, but the developed nerves of the civilised white rebelled against such indulgence at such a time. Hume leant against the wall with his arms folded, putting a few whispered questions to Webster, who restlessly moved up and down, as though pacing the bridge.
“I want to get out of this place,” he growled. “It isn’t natural—it’s cramped, dark, uncanny, with the dried skin of a snake on the wall, and in its evil-smelling corners the lurking superstition of a mysterious and bloody past. If we stay here we’ll deserve the worst kind of ill-luck.”
“How large are these ruins?” asked Hume.
“About fifty yards across, but with a multitude of passages coiling round the centre chamber, from which we escaped into this hole, which, I take it, lies between the first curve of the passage and the inner chamber.”
“Then, if the Zulus, knowing we are concealed somewhere in the pile, made a systematic search, they must find us?”
“Certainly; and knowing we were in the inner chamber they will begin their search from that point, and discover our hiding-place at once.”
“Would it not be best, then, to find out what the Zulus are about?”
“Good; anything to get out of this place. I’d better get out the way I squeezed in. Where’s the port-hole—the loose stone?”
“Stop; Jim, you must not go; you’re too clumsy for this work. Klaas!”
“Sieur!”
“We are in great danger here. To get free we need the help of a brave man, a man who can move softly, and use his eyes and ears well. You are he.”
“Eweh, Inkose, I am that man.”
“You will get out of this place, and, keeping yourself concealed, see where the Zulus are and what they do.”
“I will do it,” and he fixed the point of his assegai in a crack in the wall where the movable stone was fixed.
“Stay,” said Hume; “I have been thinking. There must be another outlet. The woman was here when we entered; I heard her voice. She must have crept in by another way after bringing us water when we were bound.”
“I never thought of that,” muttered Webster.
Klaas spoke a word to the witch-doctor, and, at the sullen reply, removed a strip of hide in a corner, slipped through a hole, and disappeared.
There was an exclamation from Laura, and she came swiftly in, holding one of the rifles. “Look,” she said, “I have found all our guns and belongings.”
Webster caught the rifle and opened the breech. “Loaded! Ah, now we’re all right.”
Hume sighed heavily.
“Do your eyes pain you still?” she asked gently.
“No; I was thinking of my rifle. If I could only see a little—a very little.”
She looked into his face, and, with a curious thrill, saw that the tears were streaming down his cheeks. She took his hand and patted it.
“I am not weeping,” he said, with a ghost of a smile, “but the treatment of the old woman makes my eyes water.”
“Thank God,” said Webster fervently; and he grasped Hume’s disengaged hand in a warm pressure.
“What do you mean?” asked Frank hoarsely, while his hand tightened in a convulsive grasp on Laura’s fingers.
“I mean that your eyesight will be restored. I saw a similar recovery on the Barracouta, and I remember the surgeon’s joy when he saw the water run from the powder-burnt eyes of the patient.”
“I cannot see yet,” muttered Hume, as he raised his fingers to the bandage.
“Nay, man, wait a little longer; you are in the hands of the old woman, and must trust the cure to her. But, believe me, Frank, you will see the sight on your rifle when the Zulus come again.”
“And the sunlight and the trees,” he whispered.
“Which,” Laura said, “would you like to see first?”
“Well,” he said, “I would like very much to see my feet, for they appear now not to belong to me, and then one look round the horizon. But the idea frightens me,” and he leant against the wall again with folded arms, while Webster paced to and fro, and Laura stood looking at the quiet figure and the three natives, dimly outlined on the floor.
Suddenly the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the lower cracks were cut off, and the black line of shadow crept steadily up the wall, until the narrow cell was faintly illumined by one broad stream only, and this they watched slowly fade away, leaving them in impenetrable gloom.
“It is very still,” muttered Hume.
“Yes,” said Webster; “it is oppressive. I suppose the night is upon us, but the light has been turned off as though it had been under command. We must not stay here; it would be folly—madness.”
There came a sound of shuffling, and the voice of Klaas, sounding hollow, called out:
“Are you there?”
“What have you seen?”
“Ah, it was so still I thought you had been swallowed up. The Zulus are in three parties; one has marched up the valley, another is by the river, and the rest stay near here, where they were encamped before.”
“Are they keeping watch over the ruins?”
“Neh, sieur, I think they fear the stones and the things in them at night.”
“Then let us get out of this,” said Webster.
“Wait awhile,” said Hume, for an animated discussion had sprung up between the natives, and he was listening intently. The strange chief was evidently emphasising some point with great earnestness, and the smack of his fingers into the open palm marked off each point.
“Does he think the Zulus are determined to find us?” asked Hume.
“Oh, ay,” said Sirayo; “yoh, I have no more snuff. They will attack to-morrow, and if they do not succeed the others will come to their help. But they do not seek us!”
“They do not seek us?”
“So the chief says. They came here in search of riches stored below,” and the thud of his assegai was heard as it struck the floor. “They find us here. It is the worse for us—but they do not seek us. So says the chief.”
“Is there such a treasure?”
“No chief would tell where the grain pit is dug in the kraal, or if it were full of grain. But the Zulus do not hunt on a cold spoor. If they come after riches, who will say they are not here?”
“But who told the Zulus of the store? They were encamped here before, and did not enter the ruins.”
Sirayo repeated this, and the chief, with an angry exclamation, poured out a volume of excited words.
“He says the secret must have been told them by one of the witch-doctors who lived here, and who alone knew of it with the chiefs.”
There was a noise in the room of someone moving. Laura cried out that something had brushed against her, and there was a scraping, followed by a rush of cold wind.
Each grasped a weapon, and deep silence ensued as they listened; then Webster struck a match, and, as the feeble light spread, they followed its path through the blackness.
“Yoh!” exclaimed Klaas, whose eyes gleamed as they rolled, “the umtagati (witch-doctor) has gone,” and he thrust his assegai through an opening in the wall opposite to the gap through which they had entered.
The match went out, and the stranger chief gave a sharp exclamation.
“What the devil is in the wind now?” demanded Webster impatiently.
“Treachery,” said Hume. “Was that the informer?” he asked in Zulu.
“Eweh,” said Sirayo fiercely; “my fingers itched to grasp him by the throat as he sat there like an evil toad through the afternoon. He is one of those who knew the secret, so says Umkomaas, the chief, and he must have given the word to the Zulus last night.”
“And now he will go straight to them, tell them where we are, and that half of us are wounded.”
“Eweh, he will do that.”
“For Heaven’s sake,” said Webster, “give me the bearings of this matter.”
Hume explained.
Webster laughed fiercely.
“We’ve missed port again, but I’m hanged if I weigh anchor now.”
“A few minutes ago you were anxious to get away from here.”
“Look here, Frank, we are after a treasure. There’s no doubt we’ve been mad to push on; but if there is a treasure here we would be mad to give it up. What do you think yourself?”
“Leave me out of the question; let Laura decide.”
Sirayo’s deep voice interposed.
“The chief Umkomaas has a plan.”
“Wait awhile, Laura. What is this plan?”
“He says it would be no good to leave this place unless you take the backward path up the mountain, for on the plain you would be seen and attacked in the open. This is a strong place, and the only place that a few men can hold. The Zulus will attack in the morning after they have eaten. You will hold them off till the sun is high. To-night one of us will leave, cross the river, and gather the people to fall on the Zulus. He cannot go, for his hurts are deep; neither a white man, for the people would not follow him; neither the Gaika, for he is not of their race. It is I who will go. Soh! That is the plan, and it is good.”
Hume interpreted, and Webster banged his clenched hand into the open palm.
“Splendid!” he cried.
“Now, Laura, the decision remains with you.”
“I am tired,” she said in low tones. “I could not climb the mountain if we retreated. Let us stay.”
Hume sighed, and laid his hand upon hers.
“What we decide to do must be done quickly,” said Sirayo.
“If you find your way to the people, Sirayo, will they not turn upon you?”
“The chief has given me the word and a sign. They will follow Sirayo,” said the chief proudly.
“Then let it be as you wish.”
“I will go,” said the chief, rising; “I must swim the river, and though the way is not far, it will be longer than if I had both arms. But when the shadow is small at your feet you will hear Sirayo’s war-cry.”
Without another word he passed from the room by the way Klaas had taken.