Chapter Fifteen.
In Durance Vile.
As Leigh and his betrothed sat talking by the fire that night, and keeping watch until Amaxosa’s return, they were surprised to see the sky suddenly lighten in the distance, and finally to observe great sheets of flame springing up in the direction of East Utah. These, however, soon died out, for, as it happened, the Mormon prophet’s house stood entirely apart from the other buildings in the town, and so burnt itself out harmlessly in a very short space of time.
In due course the Zulu arrived, and gave them in detail the events of the night, cheering the heavy hearts of Grenville’s friends by a full account of his every word and action, and delighting poor little Rose, who had joined the party, by his recital of the scene in the Trinitarian room, where the man she secretly adored, had so courageously insisted upon her own hereditary rights, and then, though heavily ironed, had slain her pet abomination in the shape of Ishmael Warden.
A greater surprise was, however, in store for the young girl when Amaxosa coolly handed over to her the bundle of papers, telling how he had disposed of “the ancient and cunning man of the witch-finders,” and brought away the property which he knew belonged to his “little sister, the Flower of East Utah.”
The papers in question, which Rose perfectly recollected as having been her father’s, consisted of a memorandum of contents, in which was folded what proved to be an immense bundle of paper money of almost all nations, the bulk, however, being Bank of England notes; and if the statement of account which enveloped these was correct, the entire value amounted to something like 150,000 pounds sterling.
The young girl received the congratulations of her friends very indifferently, being of course wholly ignorant of the value of money, only saying that if she thought the Mormons would give Grenville up in exchange for the papers, she would send them back at once, but that she knew that with the exception of the Holy Three, no one in East Utah ever appeared to attach the slightest importance to the valuable documents.
After Leigh had consigned Rose’s fortune to a safe place all retired to rest, with the exception of Myzukulwa, who kept guard until daybreak. When breakfast had been disposed of, a council was called, into which the girls were, for once, admitted, and Amaxosa submitted a plan which he had formed, and which had for its object the release of Grenville that very night.
Dangerous it certainly was, and superbly audacious, but, nevertheless, extremely simple. All the Zulu proposed to do was to obtain access to the town in the usual way—by the river-bed, that is—and leaving Myzukulwa to watch outside the walls, he himself would steal in and kill the guard, unlock his friend’s prison, and spirit him away, and so by a forced march to the plateau. With regard to arms, he declined to take any except his own and his brother’s; the risk of their falling into Mormon hands was too great; but it was agreed that the pair should carry half a dozen of the Mormons’ guns ready loaded, and hide these in the bush on their way down, so as to be handy at about half distance if required. It was, of course, very desirable that Grenville should be provided with his own weapons; but still, should these fall into the hands of the enemy, the destruction of the little band on the rock would become a mere question of time, and Leigh well knew that his cousin would be the very last to counsel him to run such a fearful risk on his account.
The plan, which seemed feasible enough, was discussed in every detail, and all, with apparently one exception, felt sanguine of its success. That exception was the Zulu Myzukulwa. Not that he had anything to urge against the scheme, but he seemed dull, distrait, and cautious, and would only express his hope that it might succeed, and that “the sight of the great chief, his father, might make his heart glad before he died.”
In the afternoon the brothers lay down to sleep, and as Leigh sat and watched them, and smoked his pipe, he could not help thinking that any of the miserable Mormons who got in their way that night would have a rough time of it. At sunset he awoke the pair, and after they had indulged in a hearty meal, hands were shaken all round, and the Zulus, slipping down from the plateau, were instantly swallowed up in the eerie shadows of the veldt and mountain, and proceeded on their way to East Utah, followed by the prayers and good wishes of their friends upon the rock.
We must now return to poor Grenville, who had spent the day, as usual, surrounded by his guards, and occupied with the all-absorbing topic provided by the death of two members of their Trinity. Our friend learned that the Mormons would have been very awkwardly placed had the prophet before he died not given instructions to issue the necessary proclamation of the death of his colleague Warden, and the consequent need for the appointment of some member of the community in his place. Had this not happened, it was more than probable that the last surviving representative of the Trinity would have arrogated supreme power to himself, and declined to co-operate with anyone else, and he being as universally despised, as his father had been respected and as Ishmael Warden had been hated, a revolution would in all probability have resulted, by which the remnant of the latter day Saints would have suffered more severely than ever. To his friend the officer Grenville could not help remarking that he was surprised to find a people so intelligent as the Saints allowing themselves to be guided and led by the nose by their false prophets through the medium of their superstitious fancies.
The officer, however, grew quite stern, and ordered him not to blaspheme; then unbending again, “Come,” said he, “you are to die, so I don’t mind convincing you before you go of the genuineness of the power conferred upon our Holy Three;” and leading Grenville along, still in chains, he brought him to the top of the hill overlooking the city, and upon which stood the signal of the Fiery Cross, fixed above a curious pepper-box-shaped wooden house.
Entering the door, the Mormon signed to Grenville to follow him, which our hero did, wondering to find himself in a darkened room containing a tables surrounded by wooden seats, upon one of which last his guide, whispering in awe-struck tones, instructed him to place himself.
This done, the Mormon gave muttered utterance to a doggerel rhyme of some kind, the words of which Grenville could not catch, but which was evidently supposed to act the part of a spell or incantation; he then pressed a knob in the woodwork, which admitted a dim religious sort of light through some aperture apparently in the roof, and reverently withdrawing a cloth from the table, motioned to Grenville to look thereon. This he did, and had much ado to restrain his laughter at the utter simplicity of the fraud thus foisted—as a holy revelation—upon grown and intelligent men.
The place our friend sat in was neither more nor less than a very poorly contrived “camera obscura,” such as can be seen in so many seaside and other places of holiday resort any day of the week.
Here it was that the Mormon rulers sat, carefully watching and noting all that went on in East Utah during the day, returning to the town at night-time and oracularly relating to their superstitious subjects all that had taken place in their absence. This, however, was not quite sufficient to satisfy some of the more inquiring spirits among the saints, and the Mormons found themselves obliged to resort to prophecy concerning men and things in general; and however awful these predictions were—and awful they certainly became when Ishmael Warden was elected a member of the triumvirate—they never failed to prove correct, the prophets took good care of that.
The guard soon withdrew his “holy wonders” from the unhallowed gaze of the Gentile before him, and when outside again heaved a breath of relief, asking our friend in solemn yet triumphant tones what he thought of that. This was really too much for Grenville, and he burst out laughing in his companion’s face.
The Mormon eyed him with evident doubt as to his sanity, but Grenville noticed that he was careful to drink in every word of the explanation of the “mystery” subsequently given to him by this strange and well-informed prisoner.
Our friend really began to like the man, and could not refrain from looking sadly at him, knowing but too well that the Mormon was so closely involved in his own fate that he would be the first to fall when the attempt, which he felt certain his own friends would make to release him, came off.
The officer, noticing these looks of his prisoner, asked him if he were thinking of the near approach of his death.
“No,” replied he in a melancholy tone, “I was but regretting the certainty that you yourself would die before I should.”
“What,” said the other mockingly, “are you too a false prophet?”
“Would to God I might be in this case,” said Grenville, holding out his hand to his jailer; “but I fear it is truth I speak. Never mind; you are a brave man—and what is written, is written for you and for me; so don’t let us trouble our heads about it till the time comes.”
The pair soon gained the town, and Grenville heard his friend the guard call a number of his companions together and detail all the prisoner had said with respect to their “holy wonder;” and after that first one and then another would ask him, himself, leading questions on the government of his own country, England, and so forth; and it struck our hero forcibly that had he but a week or two before him he might, in spite of the old prophet’s precaution, get up a very pretty little insurrection against the mystic Holy Three.
He did go so far as to say that if the Mormons were men they had only one course open to them, and that was to dethrone the wretched impostor who was now at their head, and re-instate their beautiful queen, the “Rose of Sharon,” the Flower of East Utah, in her hereditary rights; and he noticed that these words seemed to find favour among the guards, though no reply was made to the remark.
Grenville next endeavoured to find out if the community had some concealed way out of their secret territory. This end he attained by chaffing them about knocking down with their own hands their only ladder of communication with the outside world. The men, however, were perfectly frank, and at once admitted that they had done so, giving him likewise details of the work of reconstructing the stairway, which was to be commenced as soon as the invaders were satisfactorily disposed of.
Asked how they accounted for the continued supply of game, the Mormons said they could not account for it at all; but their prophets had told them that the good gifts of Heaven should be thankfully accepted, and not refused simply because the eyes of blinded mortals could not detect the precise manner of their arrival. A very strict inquiry had nevertheless been made into the matter, and a body of men appointed to scour the country in every direction, with the view of ascertaining if there were any other way of ingress into the territory; but after two months of careful searching the band had returned with the news that they were absolutely walled in on every side by impenetrable and inaccessible rocks and mountains.
Grenville was, however, by no means satisfied with this statement, as, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, his common-sense told him that the herds of game must have some way of getting in at certain seasons of the year or the animals would long ago have been exterminated. Still, cudgel his brains as he would, no solution of the difficulty presented itself to him.