Chapter Seven.
“Just in Time.”
For quite a quarter of a mile our friends found that the road provided very rough travelling indeed. This was the more annoying, as the moon was fast going down, and it was a matter of vital importance that the little band should progress quickly and secure a strong position before daylight revealed their movements to the enemy.
Their only difficulty would be with regard to water, as the party had an abundant supply of stores and ammunition; for, having, of course, no idea as to how long the expedition might be detained in the Interior, Leigh had provisioned it most lavishly, and as game had hitherto been plentiful, the stores had been very lightly dealt with.
In an hour’s time all had, as they thought, reached level ground, for the road, after the first half-mile had been negotiated, proved fairly good, and finding a lofty cavern in the rock, Kenyon drew his whole party into it, cast anchor, and wished for the day.
The darkness had now become positively opaque, for the moon had entirely disappeared behind the mountains, and a film of mist seemed everywhere to hang over the lower lands, and had their enemies been absolutely within arm’s length, our friends would have been utterly unable to distinguish them.
Soon, however, the “darkest hour” was over, and the eastern mountains became dimly outlined through the gauze-like curtain of mist, as the glad light of another brilliant day came speeding in upon the wings of the morning, heralding the advent of the sun himself with all the attendant splendour of an equatorial African day.
Our friends at once perceived that, so far from having reached the level of the country, they were at present posted on a ridgy platform upon the mountain side, whilst far below them, the land which lay considerably lower than that on the other side of the kloof, was stretched out before them in wonderfully beautiful panorama.
On one hand a limpid stream glided peacefully along its course, making dreamland music in the sunshine, and watering mile after mile of verdant pasture land, which was dotted hero and there with moving herds of game, whilst on the other was a mighty belt of giant forest trees, backed to the eastward by the everlasting mountains, which appeared absolutely to ring-in the country in that direction, though towards the west, as far as the eye could reach, only grass land could be seen, the rolling veldt sweeping clear away to the skyline unrelieved by even a single clump of trees or bush, and broken only here and there by the silvery tracery of tiny streamlets; whilst to the south, blue in the far distance and faintly relieved against the azure setting of the sky, could be traced the dim outline of a giant mountain-peak, probably fifteen thousand feet in height, its snow-capped crest flashing back in many-coloured radiance each glorious spear of light cast by the rising sun.
Kenyon and Leigh were about to give the word to their men (all of whom were busily gazing at the inviting prospect before them) to get under weigh, when both were fairly electrified by hearing a voice raised in the cavern just behind them.
“Greeting!” it said; “greeting to ye strangers.” Then as our friends turned quickly round, and their white personality became evident to the speaker, “Greeting, white strangers, who come from the northern lands beyond the distant seas. What seek ye here in this foul place, where all things that are good live but to die, and where only evil prospers, and the arch-fiend himself bears rule? What seek ye here with Muzi Zimba the old? and ye black ones, are ye tired of life, and of that freedom which alone makes life worth living, that ye venture your heads inside the lion’s mouth? Go I go, all of ye, white and black. Go! in God’s name, while the life is yet whole in ye. Why tarry ye here? Escape for your lives, my sons, and peace go with ye.”
Our friends had been closely watching the individual who delivered this strange yet forcible appeal, and looks of commiseration passed from one to the other. The man was as white-skinned as themselves, and judging from the purity of his English must have been at one time a British subject. He was, however, extremely old, probably eighty-five or ninety, and his face, which was benign and gentle, was shrouded by his long, silvery locks, and muffled, as it were, in an immense snow-white beard, which reached down to his very waist, and gave him an altogether venerable and striking appearance; his voice was strong and resonant, his manner quiet and peaceful, but the man was obviously mad. He had evidently become so accustomed to the native metaphor that he had unconsciously adopted it as his own language, and his diction at best halted somewhat, as if he were unused, indeed, to exercising his tongue in framing speech of any kind.
Whilst Kenyon hesitated what to do, Leigh went frankly forward and held but his hand to the old fellow, who shook it heartily; then, humouring him, Leigh spoke, and as the full, rich voice struck upon his ear, the old man bent his head and seemed as if the familiar accents had brought back to him some signs or memories of the long-forgotten past.
“Greeting, my father, greeting,” answered Leigh. “Thy sons have wandered hither on a long and very weary path, seeking for a lost one who left them many moons ago. In face he was even as I am, and in form was somewhat less, and spoke to his people with an English tongue. Tell me, hast thou seen such an one, my father?”
The old man gazed steadily at Leigh for some moments, then, changing his wrapt manner, he spoke sadly, “My son, I have, indeed, met with him, and thy living image he was; but never, alas! wilt thou see him in the flesh, for to-day he dies—ay! dies a dog’s death, and does it for his faith, like a gallant Christian man.”
“Dies?” thundered Leigh; “he shall not die, he must not die—oh! Dick, Dick, have I come right across the world to arrive one day too late?”
Eagerly the pair tried to question the old man, but he at once grew confused and his weak mind evidently failed to realise their anxiety or to grasp the drift of their questions, and at last he turned upon them with quiet dignity. “Leave me now, my sons,” he said, “for I go to offer prayers for him who dies when yonder sun reaches the zenith. Return whence ye came, so shall ye live and not die—go, and God go with ye—farewell!” and this strange individual moved slowly away down the cavern and disappeared in the inner gloom.
Hastily directing their men to lie hidden in the cave until their return, Leigh and Kenyon armed themselves to the teeth, and quickly slipping down the rocky path, were soon speeding across the open, and directing their hurried steps towards the forest.
Each was equipped with a repeating-rifle, four Smith and Wesson’s revolver-pistols, and as much ammunition as he could well carry, so that the pace, in spite of the best endeavours of the pair, was somewhat slow, and when, after two hours of continued effort, they entered the belt of wood, both judged it expedient to sit down and eat some food whilst enjoying a short rest. Soon, however, getting on their legs again, our friends struck into a forest path, which they followed as fast as they could travel, instinct, or else the promptings of despair leading them in the right direction.
For another hour the pair ascended gradually through the forest, the path leading steadily upwards, and ultimately terminating in a sharp climb; but, just as they were about to negotiate this piece of wooded rock, they heard a burst of music (sic) evidently proceeding from tom-toms, horns, and other instruments of abomination, dear to the heart of the aboriginal African.
Cautiously ascending the rock, our friends concealed themselves in a bush, and then a curious sight met their eyes. Some thirty feet below them lay a sort of hollow in the mountains, which looked as if it had at one time formed the base of a vast quarry, being perhaps a thousand yards across its widest part, and shaped somewhat in the form of a horseshoe, but now carpeted everywhere with short, smooth turf. At the farther side of this mighty enclosure was a narrow gap or pass in the mountains, which clearly gave access to the spot, and through this striking natural gateway some thousands of ebony-skinned Africans were now pouring, accompanying their march with all sorts of horrible and ear-splitting native music.
Quickly the black fellows filed in, to the number of, probably, three thousand, and squatted themselves down on the rocks, which, as on the side occupied by Leigh and his comrade, formed a solid barrier some thirty feet high round the ring of level turf.
Following upon the heels of this riff-raff appeared a mixed mob of some three to four hundred white men and women, escorting a native who was evidently a King, or, at least, a “Big Chief,” judging from the attentions they lavished upon him, and from his striking “get up.” This last consisted of a stove-pipe hat, a scarlet coat adorned with gold braid, and a pair of bright yellow stockings of unusual length, reaching well up the thigh; round his waist was buckled an enormously long cavalry sword, which trailed upon the ground as he walked, and in his hand he carried a “gun” considerably taller than himself; it was, in fact, one of those fearfully and wonderfully made specimens of the genus gas-pipe with which England and Germany delight to arm the whole of Africa at about eight shillings per head.
“Solomon in all his glory, by Jove,” whispered Leigh to the observant and attentive Kenyon. All disposition to laugh was, however, quickly stifled by the appearance of a man carrying a flag, which was promptly planted in the very centre of the open space, and welcomed by the assembled thousands with a positive frenzy of enthusiasm, but was greeted by Leigh with a groan of horror and dismay, for upon a dead black ground it bore a white circle, and in the centre of this ring were three horrible basilisk-looking eyes.
Kenyon on his part whistled quietly. “So!” he said, “Zero and the Mormon Trinity—birds of a feather, by all that’s holy! Well, we must watch and wait, and somehow I don’t think our patience will be tried for very much longer.”
Just then a hammock was borne in, and from this there alighted a white woman, a Spaniard or an Italian by her looks; this female being instantly accommodated with a seat, and approached with much deference by the white men in the crowd.
Leigh thought he had never seen a more wicked, yet withal a more handsome, face. Her complexion was beautifully clear, her hair black and glossy as the raven’s wing, and her figure simply superb; but the eyes looked like coals of living fire, and the mouth, as Kenyon—who was busy sketching her in his notebook—remarked, was more like a spring rat-trap than anything else.
A wait of half an hour next ensued, during which the native band discoursed sweet (?) music, and then there went up a mighty shout from the motley throng which thickly lined the farther side of the great enclosure, as a small crowd of men, white and black, were driven in at the spear’s point; all had their hands tied behind them, but had their legs left perfectly free to enable them to run at will, the slavers knowing well, that deprived as the captives were of the use of their hands and arms, they could not escape by climbing up the rocks.
A moment later the friends, to their utter horror, beheld a barrier lifted, and through the opening thus made there immediately charged a colossal-looking bull-elephant. For a full minute the great brute gazed wickedly about him, as if debating the possibility of getting at the block fellows who were rapidly angering him with their infernal tom-toms; next he trumpeted until the welkin rang again, and then all of a sudden threw up his trunk, and hurled his vast bulk blindly at the wretched band of captives, who fled incontinently in every direction, whilst the air resounded with yells of laughter from the spectators, black and white, across the wide enclosure. These wretches were evidently enjoying to the full this intensely Roman spectacle, and Leigh felt his blood boil at the thought that the lives of human beings—white men, moreover—were to be deliberately sacrificed in this truly diabolical manner to provide an hour’s amusement for an ignorant savage and his greasy, yelping retinue of semi-monkeyfied followers. By and by, however, a great black man fleeted—with the speed of light—past the rock where our friends lay hid, the enraged elephant following close upon his heels; and brief though the glimpse was, in an instant Leigh knew his man, and blew a peculiar little reed whistle which Kenyon had often noticed attached to his friend’s watch-chain.
Once! twice! thrice! he sounded the signal, and then, lo! and behold, every captive on the ground, both white and black, was seen to turn short in his tracks and speed madly across the wide stretch of open, in a wild endeavour to reach the distant rock; close behind the crowd thundered the giant mammal, screaming with rage, and gaining upon the luckless wights at every step, the tip of his snake-like trunk almost seeming to touch the hindmost runner. It was an altogether extraordinary, yet at the same time a very dreadful, sight; and as Leigh’s rifle leaped to his shoulder, he seemed, by one of those curious tricks which fancy sometimes plays us, to see the Colosseum spread out before him, its benches packed to suffocation with the pleasure-seekers of an ancient Roman holiday, and its arena peopled by the noble martyrs falling beneath the claws of Nero’s ravening beasts.
History ever repeats itself, and at this very instant, whilst the easy-going people of the nineteenth Christian century were sitting quietly in their peaceful homes, thanking God that such acts and deeds were for ever at an end, here was the horrid self-same spectacle being re-enacted in darkest Africa, without any of the added refinements of modern cruelty, upon the living bodies of their own fellow-men, both white and black.
Thought, however, is swift, and Leigh’s thought delayed him never an instant, and even as he pressed the trigger and saw the deadly bullet go homo, and the mighty elephant pitch forward upon his knees, he sprang upright upon the ledge of rock, to show the captives where their friends lay hid; then, as his rifle thundered out again, backed up by the echo of Kenyon’s heavy piece, and the discomfited elephant wallowed on the ground with three shell bullets in his ugly carcass, Leigh was conscious that Kenyon was slipping down the rock, and quickly following his friend, both were in an instant busy with their hunting-knives upon the thongs which held the prisoners, who, twenty-five in number, six white and the rest black, were all at liberty and eagerly scrambling up the rock before the mixed assemblage beyond the great enclosure had thoroughly realised what was going on, less than a thousand yards away, under cover of the smoke and the rapid discharges of strange rifles.
Just as a crowd of white men came streaming across the ground, and as Leigh was about to raise his rifle with the view of checking their advance, a voice behind him said, “Give me a turn at that, Alf; I long to get even with yonder blasphemous slaving hound. He tarred and feathered me one day.”
Leigh knew the voice, and turning quickly, confronted his long-lost Cousin Dick. One warm hand-grasp was all, then the tears started to his eyes, as he relinquished his gun and strode away.
Dick Grenville! But alas! how changed—feeble, emaciated, and hollow-eyed, covered with filth, and clad in the skin of a leopard. Leigh had actually taken his own cousin for a very ordinary-looking black man, but the old spirit, unbroken by Mormons or slavers, was still there—the eye as true, and the hand firm as a grip of steel. Springing forward, he shook the weapon over his head, and his voice went ringing across the rock-bound stretch of veldt, as he called to the leader of the advancing crowd, “Crewdson Walworth, I promised you this a year ago, and here it is—a Grenville ever keeps his word.” The rifle vomited its deadly contents, and the man, who was none other than Kenyon’s quondam acquaintance, the “Swell” of Durban, went down, with a bullet through his heart, and pitched head over heels like a shot rabbit.
Kenyon coolly followed up the shot, and the repeaters fairly opened a lane in the approaching crowd, who fired wildly into the bush without doing any serious damage, and in another moment, to the number of about twenty, were busy scrambling up the rock, whilst Leigh, Grenville and Kenyon emptied rifle and revolver into their ranks at point-blank range. Suddenly Leigh heard another well-remembered voice. “Let my father,” it said, “give Amaxosa a little space, that the child of the Undi may revenge himself, and slay these evil-minded men;” and moving to one side, Leigh saw his oft-tried comrade-in-arms, the proud young Zulu chief, walk coolly to the very verge of the platform, with a mighty mass of rock poised in his powerful arms. For one brief instant he stood thus, while his keen eye played over the hated forms of his late masters; then with a wild, earth-shaking shout he plunged the enormous missile right into the midst of the enemy where they were most closely massed together, bearing them backwards to the ground a bleeding, senseless pulp of human flesh and bones.
The revolvers quickly accounted for the few men who were left alive, and a minute later the re-united cousins, led by Kenyon, and followed by their triumphant “Impi,” were descending the rock on its outer side, and making for the friendly cover of the forest, their only loss being one Zulu, who was shot through the body, and whom necessity compelled them to leave behind at the point of dissolution.
A hasty consultation ensued when the whole party had reached the forest, and both Leigh and Kenyon heard, with unmixed satisfaction, that the enemy would be under the necessity of following directly upon their trail, there being absolutely no path by which he could get round or cut off the retreat of the fugitives. Grenville also added that his friends had come in a fortunate hour, for had Zero himself been present, or had Crewdson Walworth not fallen so early in the fray, all would have had their work cut out to get away from the enclosure with whole skins. So weak were the late captives, that travelling was of necessity very slow indeed, or at least it seemed so to men fleeing with the knowledge that re-capture meant prompt and certain death.
Owing to the villainous treatment he had received, poor Grenville was in a pitiable state, but after a twenty minutes’ rest, during which his cousin fed him with biscuits steeped in brandy, he made another effort, and Kenyon having speeded on ahead, and chased down their bearers with a hammock, the party soon had Grenville safely and comfortably housed in their temporary lodging on the mountain side.
Here the rescued one assured them that the whole band might safely lie hidden for a day or two during Zero’s absence, as both white and black slavers held the spot in superstitious veneration on account of the presence of the old hermit—for some such thing Grenville declared their mad friend of the morning to be. Half priest he was, half doctor, and partly recluse. Grenville knew naught of him beyond the fact that he had occupied his present location, and been looked up to by the natives as a species of god, long years before ever Zero and his following of scoundrels overran the country side. For his simple necessities he received weekly supplies at the hands of the surrounding negro chiefs, who held him to be the greatest fetish in the land, and believed that he could kill or cure them, ruin their crops, or give them rain and fruitful seasons at his will; not that he, poor old man, had ever attempted to inoculate them with any such belief, having, on the contrary, always treated them as kindly as if they were his own children. To Grenville he had been extremely good, and had seemed much impressed with him, because our friend hod once again refused to buy his life at the prohibitive price of an introduction into the Mormon brotherhood.
Kenyon had tried to give Grenville in few words the history of his cousin’s bereavement, fearing that a natural, yet abrupt, inquiry after Lady Drelincourt would greatly distress poor Leigh. The detective found, however, to his astonishment, that Grenville was in possession of full particulars of the cowardly double murder, Zero having boasted to him of the commission of the deed as a meritorious action, performed in revenge for the doings of their own party in East Utah. The slaver-chieftain had, it appeared, possessed himself of the persons of Grenville and of Amaxosa and some thirty of his warriors, by a skilfully-executed night attack, in which he was supported by upwards of three hundred armed whites and a horde of natives.
The story of the captives after this date was written in letters of torture and of blood, and when his cousin, to try him, asked Grenville how soon he would be in condition to turn his face homewards, the old spirit blazed out once more, as he vowed by all he held sacred that he would never leave the locality until Zero and his villainous following were completely wiped out and stamped flat, even did he know that his own life would in consequence be forfeited.
Needless to say, both Leigh and Kenyon heard these determined expressions with undisguised satisfaction, for these two had already come secretly to a like unanimous decision, and being now assisted by Grenville, with his perfect local knowledge, and backed by several white men, in addition to the redoubtable Amaxosa and a score of his picked warriors, who only required a few days of rest and good food to fit them for anything at all in the fighting line, both men felt much more sanguine of accomplishing the end they had in view, and of meting out stern retributive justice to the villainous slavers, and the double-dyed murderer who acted as their chief.
Asked to relate how he had executed the hieroglyphic upon the face of the rock within the kloof, Grenville explained that he had been bound at the “tail-end” of a line of half-a-dozen Zulus, and thrown upon the ground at the very edge of the cliff, whilst the slavers were bringing up the rest of their wretched captives by moonlight, and getting a sharp stone in his fettered hands, he had hung, head-downwards, suspended over the gulf in perfect safety, knowing that the weight of the men above would be a sheet-anchor for him. To Grenville’s dismay, however, he found, when his work was done, that he could not regain his position on the rock, and just as he was losing consciousness with the rush of blood to his head, he was rescued by the slavers, who flogged him soundly for what they took to be a deliberate attempt to rob them of his valued person by the committal of cold-blooded suicide.
Cautious as ever, Grenville could not be persuaded to rest or sleep until he had seen Leigh and Amaxosa on guard, and had warned Kenyon to relieve the Zulu chief in two or three hours, as the poor fellow had had, he said, an uncommonly rough time of it lately, and the diabolical and senseless ill-usage to which he had been subjected, must have told its tale upon even his iron constitution.
The rest of the white men and Zulus, all of whom Leigh had been able to arm out of his ample stores of weapons, were already sleeping such a sleep as they had not enjoyed for a full year. To Grenville’s delight, he found that his cousin had got a spare Winchester rifle for him, and with this and a pair of his favourite revolvers, he felt fit and ready for anything once again.