Chapter Eighteen.
More Dark Days.
We must now return perforce to the little party at the plateau, and observe the actions of its members which led up to the awful dénouement portrayed in the preceding chapter. After the departure of the Zulus, Leigh had spent a dreadful night of it, the suspense and anxiety of these long silent hours almost driving him mad.
It was the last cast of the dice, and he well knew that if his beloved cousin was not rescued now, he never would be, for the failure of one such audacious attempt as this would put the Mormons strictly on their guard, and any further trials would simply lead to battle and murder and sudden death for all his party.
His state, therefore, may be better imagined than described, when Amaxosa returned alone in the grey dawn with lagging steps and dejected mien, and without even raising his head to look Leigh in the face, quietly said, “All is lost, Inkoos.” Then with an exceeding bitter cry, “Alas! my father, why did I leave thee? Alas! my brother, the people of the Undi has lost its leader, the oak-tree has lost its strongest branch, and I, Amaxosa, am the last surviving chief of the ancient race. Ow, my brother, why didst thou leave me? Thou, Myzukulwa, the chief of the Undi, wast a man after my own heart; thou wast swifter than an eagle, and stronger than a lion. Pride of the Undi, why hast thou left us? Thou art gone, my brother, though thy glory has been even as the sun in his noonday brightness; who that saw thee yesternight would have believed that thou couldst thus have died? Yet hast thou fallen like a warrior, and thrice one hundred foes of the evil men, the witch-finders, have gone before to do thee service and to clear thy path to the shades. The face of the sun is hidden by storm clouds, and the heart of Amaxosa is very heavy. Pride of the Undi, how art thou fallen!”
The Zulu then sat himself down, with his face between his knees, and never moved until the girls, who had been awakened by his arrival, put in their hurried appearance and tearfully begged him to tell them all.
Pulling himself together, the Zulu related the events of the night, adding his own account of his arrival at the glade with the quagga, only to find Myzukulwa lying in a great lake of gore, surrounded by the Mormons he had killed.
Leaving the animal tied to a tree, he had hurried after the party, but could not overtake it; he had, however, seen Grenville’s returning footprints on the grass, and knew he had been retaken and carried off to the Mormon stronghold, whence it would be hopeless to again try and rescue him.
Amaxosa had then returned and buried his brother, taking good care to leave the Mormons lying where they had fallen; and having performed the last kind offices to his dead, he had at once returned to the plateau with the news.
“Did my cousin not foresee the possibility of his recapture?” asked Leigh.
“Ay, Inkoos, that did he, and I now see that he even feared it; he told me to say to you that, if need be, you would do well to try and make more lightning-boxes (bomb-shells), as he thought another attempt would be made on this strong place when he was dead. Much more, therefore, will it be made now that the cunning men, the witch-finders, know of the death of the chief, my brother. Let the Inkoos, then, follow my father’s advice, for it is very good.”
“But what of him?” asked Leigh angrily; “are we to desert him and leave him to die like a dog?”
“Inkoos,” was the ominous answer, “do thou but say the word, and Amaxosa goes willingly to die with his father; but if he leaves the rock, then will the Rose and the Lily fall into the hands of these evil men, and thou Inkoos wilt be but as we are, even amongst the dark and misty shadows of the long-forgotten past.”
Rose listened to all this, and more, with flashing eyes, and heard the Zulu say that at sundown that night the man she loved would die, and die without knowing that she loved him; and she stole away to her little cave again, and sat down to cudgel her poor little brains for a way to save him.
That day had been indeed a day of utter prostration and misery to those at the plateau, but early in the afternoon Leigh had resolved at all hazards to go into ambush near the Mormon town, taking Amaxosa with him, in the hope that they might cause confusion amongst the executioners by a well-directed and unexpected attack, and thus give his cousin one more chance for life and liberty.
Of course this plan necessitated leaving the plateau to the females; but Dora Winfield, armed with a Winchester repeater rifle, was considerably more formidable than she looked, and it was the reverse of likely that any attack would be made until Grenville had been finally disposed of.
Leigh and his faithful friend had accordingly lain in wait all evening, a quarter of a mile from the town, at the unusual quiet of which they wondered, and had of course seen nothing, and returned to the plateau broken-hearted, late at night, only to find Miss Winfield nearly distracted, and to receive the dreadful news that Rose was missing.
The girl had stolen quietly away, leaving behind her the package of valuables, on which was written in pencil, in a school-girl’s hand, “For dear Dick, with Rose’s last and dearest wishes.”
The poor girl’s infatuation for his cousin was already known to Leigh, through the medium of his betrothed, and he now quite broke down; his sorrow, however, was nothing to the lamentations of the warlike Zulu at this fresh and overpowering calamity. “Ow! my little sister,” he cried, “why host thou left thy brother? Thou wast to me the chiefest among ten thousand friends? Alas, alas, for the lovely flower of Utah!”
Slipping down the rock, Amaxosa quickly followed the young girl’s tracks, and soon ran out of sight, only to return shortly after with the news that she had evidently taken the quagga, and ridden off at speed towards the far west.
The perceptions of this sweet little woman had been keener than the affectionate cousin’s, keener than the crafty Zulu warrior’s; all her faculties had been sharpened by intense and self-denying love, and instinctively guessing that the Mormon burial-ground would also form the place of execution, thither she had driven her strange mount as fast as she could ride him, arriving, as we have seen, just in the nick of time to save Grenville’s life for the moment, at the cost of her own.
Quite at a loss to understand what object Rose could have had in taking the direction she had done, the party prepared to spend a wretched night, and just before midnight Amaxosa pointed out to Grenville that the Mormon city, which had lain in utter darkness all evening, was brilliantly lighted up, and very shortly a merry peal of bells came floating like music across the veldt, carrying woe and weeping to our friends, for they realised that this was a paean of triumph over their own departed comrade, and probably also over the capture of poor little Rose.
Early in the morning—in fact, by grey dawn—the Zulu was down the rock, building an enormously thick zareba of thorn-bushes, to be fixed on top of the plateau to constitute an additional, and by no means despicable, defence.
The day passed in anxious watching, and in attempts to make shells as suggested by Grenville, and that night Amaxosa actually again entered the Mormon town, and, keeping practically under water all the time, learned the whole crushing story of the disaster to both the friends he loved.
There was now nothing left, he said, but to revenge them, and on regaining the plateau, he was, along with Leigh and Dora Winfield, discussing what best to do next, when suddenly casting his eyes into the darkness by his side, the courageous Zulu, to Leigh’s utter astonishment and consternation, uttered a frightful yell and rushed away to hide in the sleeping cave, whilst at that instant his beloved and lamented cousin Grenville calmly strode into the firelight, with the body of Rose in his arms, and, placing his precious burden tenderly on the rock, turned and offered Leigh his hand; but the other, with a stifled exclamation of joy, threw himself on Grenville’s neck, whilst Miss Winfield sobbed on his shoulder, and Amaxosa, who had recovered his equanimity, timidly grasped the outstretched hand of “his father,” and finding, as he said, that it was indeed the great white chief himself, and no spook—for he had a great objection to spooks (ghosts)—he fairly danced a war-dance, only moderating his exuberance to utter further laments over the body of poor Rose.