Chapter Fifteen.
“Hope.”
On the following night, therefore, as soon as darkness fell, Kenyon, disguised to represent the old hermit, again entered the slavers’ town, whilst Leigh, Grenville, Amaxosa, and a score of picked men lay in wait below the well, from which, in the event of hearing a given signal whistle, they were to sally out and assist our adventurous friend.
The detective went about his accustomed work with the greatest nonchalance; and, on reaching the building which had been pointed out to him the previous night, simply and plainly told the guard that he wished to have speech of the condemned woman. Without a word of reply, one of the men on duty signed to Kenyon to follow him, and well might our adventurer, under the loose folds of his cloak, clench his fingers over the butt of a friendly revolver when he found himself ushered directly into the well-known and hated presence of Zero the Slaver. For a moment the impulse was almost unconquerable in Kenyon to slip out his six-shooter and make an end of this inhuman monster without further palaver; but, recognising how much hung upon the result of his actions that night, he wisely restrained his passions.
The slaver was sitting in a handsomely got-up room carpeted with furs, and thick with weapons and with trophies of the chase, and opposite to him—fortunately, perhaps, for Kenyon—sat the native king already spoken of, and who immediately did our adventurer reverence, in his capacity of Muzi Zimba the Ancient.
As the guard detailed his errand. Zero rose with a sneering laugh. “Ay! let him go to her,” he said, “and look ’ee here, old man, if this captive escapes me as did the last ones, thine own life shall pay the forfeit. Now go, nay, by all the Gods, I will go too!” and, passing on in front of the supposed hermit, he provided Kenyon with another almost overpowering temptation to use his weapons.
Unbarring the door of another room, Zero let the hermit in and closed the portal behind them both, and Kenyon found himself face to face with an imperially beautiful woman, still quite young, but whose lovely face was worn with sorrow and anguish, and furrowed with her bitter tears. A tall, well-knit figure, a wealth of lustrous golden hair, and glorious deep blue eyes, formed a tout ensemble which might have won pity from a stone, but had no effect whatever upon this scoundrel who battened on human misery.
“Well, madam,” said the slaver, in cutting tones, “you have your own obstinacy to thank for your death, which takes place to-morrow. Here’s a priest for you, so be quick and say your patter, or whatever it is. You’d be surprised to see how fast your precious boy is picking up the tenets of our Holy Mormon Faith,” and the demon laughed a jeering, taunting laugh, which made Kenyon’s blood boil, and he could have kissed the feet of the defenceless woman before him for the gesture of ineffable contempt with which she turned her back on the wretched hound. “Pray, begone,” she said in a firm but musical voice; “your hated presence comes between me and my God.”
“Ha! ha!” laughed the sardonic ruffian; “one for you, Sir Priest, one for you, I reckon. Well, come along with you, I’ve no time to fool away here.” But Kenyon, mindful of the part he had to play, took not the slightest notice of the slaver, but kneeled reverently down by himself for a few brief moments, then rose and left the room obedient to an impatient signal from the fierce and wicked man, whom his fingers fairly itched to throttle then and there.
Had Zero looked behind him he would have been greatly astonished to see the captive woman bend simply down and gaze wildly at the floor beneath her feet; and then, in a mighty revulsion of feeling, give way to a perfect paroxysm of tears and sobs. What, you ask, gentle reader, was the cause of this sudden and subtle change from strength to weakness? What? Simply Stanforth Kenyon’s message written with the point of his finger on a dusty boarded floor, and that message was:
“Hope.”
Only four precious letters; yet this man had written them at the peril of his life. It must, it did, mean something, and all her woman’s wit was instantly on the alert to lay hold of the earliest clue to the whereabouts of these her secret friends.
Hope! Oh pity her, gentle reader, a lovely woman in the zenith of her beauty and the pride of motherhood, condemned to die a frightful death before another day had run its course, and die merely to satisfy the insensate malice of a ruffian Mormon hound.
Turning away from Zero, Kenyon would have left the building in silence; but the slaver laid upon his shoulder a firm, detaining hand. “Softly, my good old man! ‘Softly! softly! catch monkey,’ as these infernal niggers say. You live on the mountain, and I reckon you can see a long way. Now have you seen naught of this cursed Grenville and the pack of fools who follow him? Speak out, man, or I guess I’ll soon find means to open your wretched old jaws.”
Like a flash of light, an inspiration came to Kenyon; and, drawing himself up proudly, he shook off the slaver’s hand. “The men ye name are even now within my cave upon the hill,” he said. “Go seek them if ye dare, monster of evil, but beware the end thereof; beware, for Muzi Zimba warns thee!”
The effect was precisely what Kenyon had calculated upon. Flinging the old man from him with a fearful oath, the slaver sent his powerful voice echoing through the house and out along the streets, calling up guards and officers in every direction, whilst our adventurous friend soon after took his departure, entirely unnoticed during the tumult which followed the communication of the news which he had given, regarding the position of his friends.
Hanging about for a few moments, however, Kenyon learned all he wished to know, as he heard Zero, with a volley of oaths, exclaim: “Put off her execution? No, by all the Gods—no, tie the slut to the faggots at noon to-morrow, and let her roast, and mind you have her whelp of a son to watch her die, whilst I eat up these cursed fools who think to change my vengeance and to spoil my trade.”
This was all that Kenyon required to know, and an hour later he was deep in consultation with his friends in the hermit’s cave, amongst the northern hills.
It was agreed on all hands that Kenyon had acted for the best, as the plan he had formed, though simple in the extreme, had every promise of a grand success.
Briefly, the scheme stood thus:—Whilst Zero was moving up to the attack, as he evidently meant to do next morning, a party of their own was, by way of the secret passage and the well, to enter Equatoria, fall upon the few guards left there, carry off the captive woman, and generally do as much damage to the slavers’ town as they found it in their power to accomplish. It was calculated that the rifles of Leigh, Umbulanzi, and Ewan, supported by the Atagbondo marksmen, would be quite sufficient to check Zero in his ascent up the steep and difficult path to the cavern; and, even if he forced his way so far, he would have to reckon with about two hundred of the Atagbondo, and would find their warriors uncommonly hard nuts to crack; whilst Kenyon and Grenville, who were to assail the town, would take with them Amaxosa and his men, together with a hundred of the “People of the Stick,” quite sufficient, they thought, to do irreparable damage to the slavers’ home in the two hours which they promised themselves to spend in Equatoria.
And so, after looking carefully over their arms and their defences, the little band lay down to sleep that night with perfect confidence in their leaders, and in the issues of the morrow; only Leigh sat up the whole night cleaning his weapons, with murder in his heart, and a wealth of determined resolve upon his handsome face.