Chapter Nineteen.
Retribution.
Grenville was so obviously suffering from hunger, fatigue, and exposure, that his friends, eager as they were to question him, forebore, for his appearance was such—especially the corpse-like hue of his face—that Amaxosa might well be excused from being startled into believing him a ghost. Finishing the welcome food placed before him, Grenville went to sleep with the last morsel between his teeth, and would have fallen forward into the fire had the watchful Zulu not interposed his ready arm.
And now, with their hero amongst them, it was astonishing what a change had come over the little party. All were once again positively cheerful, in spite of the depressing effect produced by the sight of poor little Rose’s body, which had been laid by itself in one of the caves.
The mere fact that Grenville’s active and energetic personality was again present with them was such a relief that all slept peacefully, and at breakfast next morning the re-united ones were, Leigh said, even hopeful of their ultimate success.
Grenville smiled peculiarly, but merely told them that he had been in the water for the whole of one night, and had almost died of exposure; but, though weak and ill, had managed to scramble up the cliffs by a rocky path, and had eventually regained the glade, where he had found poor Rose’s body lying among the tombs. How he had ever reached the plateau in his half-dying condition, still carrying his ghastly burden, was a miracle; but it was one of the finest traits in his character, which went to prove what a combination of pluck and determination the man was.
Leigh noted, too, that his countenance was harder now, and looked older; and knowing his cousin as he did, he felt certain that he had even now conceived a fearful vengeance, which nothing short of the cold hand of death would prevent him wreaking upon the wretched Mormons.
Stern though Grenville was, he fairly broke down and sobbed when Dora brought him Rose’s packet, addressed to himself. “Ay,” he said at last, “I will accept it, for her sake; and woe to every Mormon I come across, in any part of the world, now or hereafter. Dearly shall the whole accursed brood pay me for the loss of her who loved me so devotedly and gave her life to save me.”
That day Grenville kept all employed in baking huge clay balls, which he filled with powder, balls, stones, and débris of all sorts—these being the best obtainable substitutes for hand-grenades.
“They will,” he said to Leigh, “not meddle with us just yet; the attack will, I expect, come off in three or four days’ time, the interim being employed in the manufacture of more infernal machines—but without gunpowder this time, for they haven’t a grain of it left, thanks to the success of my gunpowder plot.”
The result proved that he was right, and on the second night Grenville led Amaxosa on one side, and held a long and private conference with him—interrupted now and then, as Leigh and his betrothed could hear, by genuine bursts of astonishment from the Zulu. “Ow!” they heard him say, “ow, my father, thou art indeed a wise and cunning man, and I, Amaxosa, am thy faithful son.” But when the conference terminated, and Grenville quietly opened the breast of his shirt, and withdrew the charm he had taken from Myzukulwa’s neck, handing it to the Zulu, the chief’s delight knew no bounds, and he poured forth in fluent and sonorous Zulu the thanks of the whole people of the Undi for the preservation of this mighty token, which belonged only to the chiefs of his own most ancient house, and which established his own precedence and seniority in the nation beyond the possibility of a doubt, and had indeed “made his heart very glad.”
What, however, was the surprise of Leigh and Dora when Amaxosa, after shaking hands cordially with Grenville, gravely saluted them both, took his weapons, and disappeared down the face of the rock. Nor would our friend answer any of their eager questions, merely telling them that the Zulu had gone upon an errand which, though fraught with some little danger, should, he thought, be easily and speedily executed; and if it were so, would, he believed, result, not only in the speedy release from East Utah of the whole party, but in the most fearful vengeance upon the Mormons for the death of poor Rose, whom they had reverently buried that very day.
“Our only difficulty,” said he, in conclusion, “will be to hold the plateau long enough to let Amaxosa execute his part of my scheme perfectly; but I could not spare him before, and he will make all the haste he can—so we must do our best.”
The men kept watch by turns until dawn, and then both slept whilst Dora kept guard for a couple of hours; and after all had breakfasted, the Mormons were seen approaching in a compact mass, which, as Grenville estimated, must contain the whole nation; and at this he, to his cousin’s surprise, expressed his satisfaction.
Our friend now descended to artifice, blackening his face and hands with burnt wood, in order to pass at a distance for one of the Zulus, as he had no wish at present to reveal his own dreaded identity to the enemy.
As soon as the masses got within a thousand yards, the repeaters opened fire, killing the Mormons at a longer range than they had ever before been treated to; still, however, the advance was steadily persevered in, and Grenville soon saw at least five hundred Mormons established within three hundred yards of his position, and almost entirely protected from his fire by immense rubber half-houses on wheels, which gradually, though continually, approached nearer and nearer to the rock. Watching these carefully, it soon appeared that the game was to get the shelter close up to the plateau and then charge up the path in an irresistible stream. The plan was well devised, but the thorn-bushes of Amaxosa ruined it, and the twenty picked Mormons who tried the first rush perished miserably to a man.
The shooting of the besieged was beautifully accurate, for, in no fear of their fire being returned, they were able to expose their persons at will, and aim with murderous precision.
Now, however, two houses were planted at one time, and as two men, even with Winchesters and posted behind a zareba, are rather short odds to cope with forty, Grenville washed his face, got ready a shell, and, as the Mormons charged, coolly stepped up to the very verge of the rock, and threw the lighted bomb amongst them. None who heard the awful yell of terror which went up from these miserable and superstitious men could ever forget it, and the whole Mormon army echoed the name of Grenville in a shout which almost drowned the thundering and deadly explosion of the first shell. For such decidedly amateur handiwork, the missile acted very well indeed and between its results and the Winchesters, which Dora and Leigh plied unceasingly, not half a dozen men survived the second charge.
A lull followed, but at three o’clock in the afternoon the foe again moved up, and fought with increased vigour and renewed cunning. A dashing charge carried three men out of ten up to the first line of thorn-bushes, into which they each slipped a lighted torch; and though all were instantly picked off by the rifles, their work was done, for in less than ten minutes the bushes were destroyed by fire, and an attempt to destroy the second line in the same way followed, but failed ignominiously, owing to the magnificent shooting of the beleaguered party.
Cunning, nevertheless, matched science, and by putting on rushes of thirty, forty, and even fifty men, the three lines of bushes were destroyed, the last charge alone costing the foe forty men, of whom more than a half were destroyed by one of Grenville’s bombs. Now, however, there was but the last line of bush which fringed the plateau, and with a terrific shout a full hundred Mormons rushed up the path and made for this, whilst the defenders rained shot and shell upon them. Still, what could two men and one woman do? Nearly forty men fell, but the bushes blazed; and now the whole Mormon army drew together at the foot of the slope, prepared to charge the moment the fire died out.
The cousins shook hands, and Grenville once again casting a longing glance down the valley, and at the now sinking sun, set his teeth, and prepared to die hard.
See, they come! Now to it, good rifles. Handsomely done, Leigh; shell after shell, brave Grenville. Ha! there goes Warden with a bullet through his brain. Well aimed, Dora Winfield! That shot has settled many an old score of thy dear father’s.
Alas! alas! all is lost. They are up—they touch the very plateau, when Grenville again drives them back with a terrific charge, crying out—“Hurrah, old man; bear up another moment—look yonder.” Leigh looks, and so do the Mormons, and with one accord they turn and fly down the rock—and why? Out yonder, under the setting sun, what do they see?—what do they hear?
Woe! woe! woe! to the Mormon host, for up the valley, at a long slinging trot, comes the crack regiment of the famous warriors of the Undi, led on to the charge by Amaxosa, the chief of their ancient house. The Saints form up in square against the rocks, heedless of their white foes above, as they try to meet the resistless charge of the Zulu impi, and stem the awful torrent which rolls up in a dark compact tide and flings itself upon them, even as the surf dashes itself against, against, up, up—ay, and right over the rocky shore. Then the awful battle-shout of the Undi is raised, and before the sun sets red in the western sky the entire Mormon army has been annihilated, and the victorious Zulu chief is grasping the hand of his “great white father,” whom he introduces to his brother-officers as the man who originated this mighty scheme of stern retribution and wholesale slaughter.
The Zulus respectfully take Grenville’s hand in turn, and gathering round our hero—whose magnificent exploits their chief has related to them, and whom they worship in consideration of the hundreds of bodies piled up on the slopes of the plateau—they give a tremendous shout, and announce that he has been elected their brother and a perpetual chief of the Sons of the Undi, and that his name henceforth amongst them will be “T’chaka, the great white father of his faithful people.”
As the little party of friends sat over their fire at the plateau that night, whilst their sable allies kept watch below, Grenville told the whole thrilling story of his plunge into the River of Death.
Being a practised diver and swimmer, he had gone into the gulf feet foremost; but dropping from such a fearful height, and knowing that the water was low, owing to its being the very end of the dry season, he had expected to be killed by being dashed against the rocks below the surface; fortunately for him, however, that portion of the chasm which he had selected for his awful leap, chanced to overhang a deep still pool, into which Grenville had dropped, and from which he had emerged almost unharmed; but, being immediately carried away by the river, he had, in the darkness, received several nasty knocks which almost deprived him of his senses. When he had been in the water for upwards of an hour, silently floating along with the stream, as he could nowhere find foothold upon the slippery sides of the cliff, our hero detected the current quickening; soon the stream grew faster and noisier, and all at once he noticed that he was no longer able to see the sky above, but was drifting along underground. In the awful horror of that moment Grenville almost went mad. He commenced a mighty and useless struggle against the resistless current, but found himself borne along like a feather.
Just, however, as he was losing hope, he struck first his foot, and then his knee, against something hard, and dropping into an upright posture found that he had been, all the time, attempting to swim in less than three feet of water, which just here ran like a mill-race.
Groping about, our friend at last succeeded in getting on a rock half out of the water, and hung there for hours, with his person benumbed from head to foot, and his senses paralysed. “He had,” he said, “come to the conclusion that nothing could be worse than his present position, and that he might as well drift wherever the stream chose to take him,” when all at once he noticed the dark, swift waters changing colour, and with a cry of joy recognised the fact that instead of being absolutely underground, he was only shut in by immense cliffs, thickly wooded to their very summits, and which all but entirely excluded the glad light of day; and day it was, the sun was up, and soon sent his welcome shafts of light streaming through the interlaced branches overhead, lighting the gloomy chasm in dim and ghostly fashion.
Pulling himself together, Grenville slipped back into the water, and, plucky fellow that he was, waded down the stream for about two hours, “having,” he said, “a hazy notion that he was doing the right thing by instinct.”
At the end of this time he entered a tunnel, and having groped his way along it for about a mile, had almost decided to turn back, when he suddenly passed an angle, and again saw daylight glimmering in the distance. All this time the water kept a uniform depth of about twelve inches only, and was thick with a curious kind of subaqueous weed, which gave him the impression that he was walking on soft damp moss.
Finally he reached the end of the tunnel, and was about to emergo into open daylight, when his hurried footsteps were arrested by the sound of a human voice speaking in the Zulu tongue.
Creeping cautiously nearer to the entrance, Grenville found that the sound proceeded from two men, whom he at once recognised by their general “get-up” as warriors of the Undi; and listening to the conversation which ensued, he learned that a large portion of the tribe was outlying in that district, and had decided to camp for some days in their present position and prosecute hunting operations before the wet season set in.
For another hour Grenville waited, not daring to introduce himself to the Zulus, and, as soon as the pair moved away, stole out and found himself in a lovely valley, which, as he had anticipated, sprang almost directly from the mountain-range, and along which the River of Death, now glimmering bright and lovely in the sunshine, flowed on towards the sea. He had escaped from East Utah, and was on the outer side of the mountains.
Picking some wild gourds, he filled his empty stomach with these, and then quickly retraced his steps through the tunnel, feeling certain now that in some way he could ascend the cliffs and regain East Utah, as it was clear the herds of game were able to do so. The event proved that he was right, for less than a mile up the glen he discovered a steep, narrow, but well-trodden pathway to the higher inside lands, and finally reached the plateau as we have seen, bringing with him the body of poor little Rose.