Chapter Eleven.
The Torture.
It was in the month of December, 18—, that Lee and Martin Gray established themselves as traders at Umlala’s kraal, in Kafirland. The reader has been given to understand that Lee had no intention of domesticating himself with the savages, albeit he adapted himself at once to the customs of the tribe, persuading the chief and his councillors that he had been induced to join them from a desire to better his condition, as well as aid and advise them in their plans and operations against the colony. He was too well acquainted with the Kafir character to attempt to impose on them by professing disinterested motives, for on these he knew they would place no reliance; but by fixing himself as a trader among them, he could in the first place bide his time for carrying out his intentions of joining the Dutch; and while doing so, lay up a fund for future pecuniary wants or emergencies. To Brennard it was his interest to be a faithful agent. To do Lee justice, he had no thought of fraud in money matters, and from the traders to the eastward he easily gathered intelligence of the Dutch farmers’ movements, from the districts of Natal, and beyond the Draakberg, to an appointed spot between the branches of the Orange River, where a general gathering of emigrant Boers was to take place previous to treking in a body to Orichstad, a settlement beyond the 25th degree of south latitude, and therefore considered by them as not subject to the British Government.
With an air of good faith, he opened a correspondence in cipher with Brennard, who, at his suggestion, placed an agent on the Stormberg mountains, and thus increased his contraband traffic by disposing of arms and ammunition to the Boers, who, assisted by these traitors, grew sanguine in their hopes and determined in their preparations. So blind, indeed, was the colonial government to the real state of affairs, that wagons containing guns actually passed the outskirts of the frontier garrisons, on their way to the Modder and Bilt River settlements, while smaller arms were landed at the Umtata, and conveyed to a dépôt at the foot of the northern extremity of the Stormberg mountains.
The Dutch soon felt the influence of a master mind at work. A secret communication was set on foot between Lee and the rebel leader; but Lee was cautious in his policy, since, to be suspected by the Kafirs as anything but a trader, would be to draw down attention from the missionaries, who were, when permitted, in communication with the tribes most distant from the colony. Those within the border were becoming every day more lawless. It was said by some of these teachers, in after times, that they had had an idea of some men of suspicious character living among Umlala’s people; but having no tangible proof of their existence, having only the word of Kafir spies to depend on, they could take no steps in the matter, either by offering advice to the Kafirs, near whom the poor missionaries and their families were living in dread and peril of their lives, or by giving information to the authorities, who were too remote to act.
Lee liked the life he led; the form of government so favourable to the doctrine that “might is right,” though tempered in some measure by general opinion, in which he succeeded in gaining a voice; the total absence of all moral discipline except as regarded women, with whom Lee, as he said, had no mind to trouble himself—a life of ease, yet of excitement, the spacious and beautiful country, all conspired to render his temporary location desirable; but while he thus rested on his arms, his mind was ceaselessly at work.
With that shrewdness which stands bad men in stead of deeper knowledge, Lee had long penetrated the weaker outworks, so to speak, of Gray’s heart; keenly susceptible, of facile mind, and imbued with a vanity as natural to men as to women, he had easily yielded to the gentle influences and watchful solicitude of Amayeka. Lee at once profited by this “fancy,” as he called it, to turn it to his own account, and used every means to encourage it.
Desirous of personal conference with the Dutch agent at the station in the Stormberg, he had no mind to be attended in such expeditions by Gray; yet he knew well that without some counter-charm, the deserter, on being left to himself, would at once appeal, through the missionaries, to the mercy of the British Government. True, there was the oath which had bound the three traders together in solemn compact, but paramount to all other considerations was Gray’s horror of his own treachery and disloyalty as a soldier. However desirous he might be of keeping the compact, as regarded Brennard and Lee, inviolate, the issue of Gray’s surrender would be keen inquiry, and consequently a fatal result to the chief convict’s schemes. Like a good man’s neglected garden, the surface of the young deserter’s character presented a wilderness of weeds and briars, but below were seeds long sown, some dead, but some struggling, with every capability of fruition, when the soil should fall under the hand of the labourer. All considerations, Lee felt, would vanish before the wish to retrieve the past, to become, in Gray’s own words, “an honest man again.”
Evening time in Kafirland! The sun has all day long been glowing on the river, lighting it up like burnished steel; the trees motionless, the birds on listless wing, screening themselves within the shady boughs. Now the mountain peaks are blending their purple summits with a crimson sky, and the last rays of light deck the clouds in the west as with a glory! Lo! it fades, and the heavens are veiled with a mantle of pale grey; the stream begins to murmur, responsive to the breeze that stirs its waters; the birds congregate in the balmy air before seeking their rest; the countless herds more slowly homeward, panting for the refreshment of cool water brooks; and the women, some singly, some in parties in single file, trip across the plains to draw water, as is their custom at eventide. The picture reminds one of what one reads of in the patriarchal days.
Lee and Gray sat upon a bank that sloped to the river, a tributary of the Great Kei—would you had a map, dear reader, to trace the country I would fain describe. Peals of laughter stirred the air. Beneath the over-arching boughs a crowd of dusky Nereides were taking their evening bath, swimming, diving, pulling each other in sport below the surface of the stream, swinging from branch to branch with amazing activity and grace, and tossing up fountains of spray on the elder women, who stood silently filling their calabashes at the clear pools between the stones at the drift.
“Amayeka, Amayeka, izapa, izapa (come hither),” cried two or three of the younger girls, as Amayeka, apparently unconscious of the gathering below, and with slow step, vacant air, and pitcher on her head, moved along the opposite bank, followed by her little attendant, a tiny meercat, which I have hitherto forgotten to mention.
It is the wisest-looking little thing you can imagine, is this meercat of South Africa. Its keen, restless black eye looks right into your own, and asks questions as plainly almost as speech could do. It has a way of setting itself up bolt-upright, and turning its head from one object to another with the most inquisitive air, and adapts itself to the habits of its owners in a manner perfectly marvellous. I remember one which, though not very young when taken near the Orange River, became domesticated like a dog, and was far more sociable than a cat. I think I see it now, sitting at a garden-gate facing a parade-ground, on which, at stated hours of the day, troops were wont to exercise. As the warning bugle sounded, it took up its position; when the regiment fell in, the meercat placed itself in front of the line; when the men marched, the little beast advanced in front of the column, halted with the troops, and when they were again in line, sat down before them, and watched the commanding officer with a knowing air quite indescribable. At the close of a drill it would head the band to the limits of the ground; and when all were dismissed, would return to the house. In the cold weather, if suspicious of any visitors, it would roll itself into a ball, and squeeze itself into some corner, where it could not easily be reached; but it loved best to sit before the fire, with its paws on the fender, surveying the family group, of which it was the pet, with its sharp twinkling eyes, and bending its ears knowingly to every unaccustomed sound.
Such too was the creature that trotted beside Amayeka, now and then seating itself before her, and glancing from its mistress to the nymphs in the river, as if to remind her she was called; but she went on, deaf to the cry “Izapa;” and Gray watched her till she disappeared behind a tuft of trees overhanging the upper drift. Soon afterwards Lee joined some young warriors, with whom he had been engaged all the morning in firing at a mark, and who now summoned him to their employment of casting bullets at a fire under the rocks; Gray rose also, and descended by the bank.
Amayeka was seated by the river’s brink, with the meercat at her feet; twilight lingered long, and the young moon shed its first ray of silver on the water, when a loose stone rolled past her; there was a light tread, a rustle in the branches of a long-tressed weeping willow, and Gray’s hand fell on her shoulder.
But in a copse above lay the wizard Amani, with his elements of witchcraft gathered round him—strips of skin from the golden back of the deadly puff-adder, the hood of a cobra capello, some poisonous roots steeped in gall, the forefinger of a dead Fingo herdsman, and the skull of a Hottentot, in which last he was busily mixing up these ghastly charms with a cement of blood and clay.
He had long had some notion of Amayeka’s intercourse with the younger convict, or trader, as Amani, like the rest of his tribe, supposed the deserter to be, and he now gloated at his discovery.
Of the two, he hated Lee the most, for he could discriminate between the energy of the one and the passive sorrow stamped on the countenance of the other. Then Doda was an object of special abhorrence; for Doda, when he could, pleaded the white man’s cause. Amayeka, from her acquirements, invested her father with a power he would not otherwise have possessed; by her intelligence the wizard often found his plans forestalled, his prophecies doubted; but he had besides a deeper source of hatred against her, for a true Kafir she was not. Through her veins ran the blood of white forefathers; her ancestress was one of those unfortunates who had been stranded at the Umbeesam River when the Grosvenor was wrecked.
To her lineage Amayeka owed her soft, though short, and wavy hair, her complexion of fairer hue than is usual among the Amakosa race, her delicately-chiselled outline of feature, and her falling shoulders. Her limbs I have described as exquisitely moulded, and the voice musically sweet.
But although pleased to refer to her white ancestress, whom she faintly remembered, shrunk, bronzed, withered with age, and degraded to the state of a savage, Amayeka’s habits were those of the wild tribe to which she belonged; but tender-hearted, with something about her of the English attribute gratitude, unknown amongst Kafirs, some of those old associations, whose roots lie deepest in the human heart, had led her to take an interest in Lee and Gray when she first heard their voices in the midnight solitude of the Witches’ Krantz. Lee’s ungracious manner soon repelled her; but Gray’s dependence on her good offices as guide drew her towards him; and now, kindred, tribe, allegiance, all were forgotten in her passion for her white lover.
They sat together in silence for some moments, Amayeka resting her head on Gray’s shoulder, her dusky locks mingling with his brown hair, which had grown long during his exile, and would have given to his countenance an air of effeminacy, but for the moustache shading his upper lip.
Horrible wizard! what a contrast to these youthful beings must thou have presented, leaning thy clay-painted face from its green covert! Gall-bladders, jackals’ tails, and the polished teeth of monkeys, wolves, and tigers, made the head inconceivably hideous; and the great eyes glittering in the dusk would have startled the lovers had they looked up.
But they had no thought beyond their own vague destinies. The shades of night deepened, they could hear the girls and children chanting monotonously on their way to the kraals, the stream rippled past them unheeded, the guanas plashing merrily among the little pools, and the meercat nestled closer to Amayeka’s feet.
“They say, Amayeka,” whispered Gray, “that war is proclaimed in the colony, and that soldiers are marching towards the Kei.”
“Oute!” (“Hear!”) said Amayeka, who often used this Kafir prefix. “The white man’s word to kill has not yet gone forth. The red soldiers are scattered through the bush. The Amakosas sleep with an open eye, but are not yet up. Soon a voice will be heard on the mountains, and answered from the valleys, and the war-cry will fill the land.”
There was a pause.
“Amayeka,” said Gray, “what will you do when your tribe is roused? You cannot stay here. You must fly.”
“And leave you?” asked Amayeka, in a tone indescribably mournful.
“I love you, Amayeka; you must fly with me.”
“You love me, Martin, you love me!” repeated the Kafir girl, in distinct and sweetly-toned English, as if she had just acquired a knowledge of the value attached to the language, because her lover understood her at once; and then she went on in an innocent, childish way: “Ukutanda, diyatanda, diyatandiva, diyakutanda”—“To love, I love, I am loved, I will love;” and laughing gleefully at applying an old lesson to a purpose hitherto unthought of she forgot the war-cry—the red soldiers—she began to teach Gray the lesson, and when he had repeated it over and over again, to her infinite satisfaction, she tried to look into his countenance by the dusky light, and laughed softly.
“But, Amayeka,” said Gray again, “tell me, will you go with me from this wild tribe of yours?”
“Go!” said Amayeka, her low laugh turned into a sigh—“And whither? Leave the land, and my people to sit in the ashes! Cowards only fly from a burning kraal; the brave stand by to quench the flame, and help the ruined.”
“But the red soldiers are my countrymen,” said Gray; “you would not have me fight them!”
Amayeka tried to understand her lover’s notions of treachery; but the question resolved itself into these simple words—“Ah! you must not go; you belong to us now.”
The deserter groaned.
She took his hand, bent her head upon it, and kissed it with mute tenderness.
They sat in silence till night fell, and a pale shimmer on the stream only served to make the darkness more palpable. But Amani’s eyes still glared upon them fiercely, and he hated them with a deeper bitterness than ever.
They rose together, and walked leisurely by the waterside.
The wizard left his covert, and, gliding along the bank above, peeped over it occasionally to watch them. Sometimes they stopped on their way and whispered. He could hear Amayeka’s voice falter, and he cursed her knowledge of the white man’s language. Once, just where the moon’s rays glinted, they stood, and Amani could see in Amayeka’s hands something glittering. He recognised it as a steel chain, which he had observed round Gray’s neck, with a knife of many blades suspended by it. How often he had coveted it! He heard the knife drop; Gray was unconscious of its fall. The Kafir girl picked it up, and gave it to her lover. Little thought Amayeka of the great need in which that knife would help her within a few hours.
At the lower drift Amayeka crossed the stream. Gray watched her over; took a keen glance up and down, little dreaming that Amani was watching him from a wolf-hole ten yards off; and then a low chirrup, like the cry of the quail, announced that all was safe in the copse Amayeka had entered. Gray then traversed the stones of the ford.
Ere long, Amani could see them emerge singly from the covert, Amayeka taking one path, for it was not too dark for Kafir eyes to distinguish the outline of a woman’s form, with the little meercat trotting after her; her lover went another way, and then the wizard, profiting by a cloud which overshadowed the moon’s silver rim for a minute or two, stepped stealthily across; and, biding his time, sought his hut, and retiring therein, closed the matted entrance, and began to chant his demoniacal incantations, to the great awe of the people assembled round their fires at the doors of their dwellings.
Gray found Lee supping on broiled meat, and one of poor Amayeka’s coarse, sweet cakes; and Lee, after rallying the deserter on his passion, informed him that he proposed next day to start for the foot of the mountains with Doda, who had got leave from Umlala to guide the “White Brother” to the trading station.
Gray was passive in the strong man’s hand. If he ever attempted remonstrance with his master—for such he felt the elder convict to be—the latter invariably denounced him as too weak to be vicious, swearing he would be a knave if he dared. As to escape from such thraldom, he could see none; and on the other side of the picture was Amayeka, the only creature on earth whom he loved, or who loved him. Honourable servitude was beyond his reach at present, and in the mean time he was pledged to Amayeka—vaguely—but still pledged. To her he owed all the comforts of his present sad existence, and she had many ways and means of ministering to them; he was bound to her by the ties of gratitude as well as of affection; he pitied her, and he believed, moreover, that if he left her, she must die—die perhaps by torture!
He sat down in the hut among the ashes of the dying fire. Lee could not see his comrade’s face, for it was buried in his hands, bowed upon his knees; but the young man’s frame shook like an aspen-tree; and oh! the bitter agony of the voice that cried aloud, “God have mercy on me!”
Surely the good angels then shedding their influence on the desolate being dictated that solemn and heart-rending appeal, and then heralded the cry to heaven!
Lee looked at the deserter with some contempt, but uttered no harsh word. He contented himself with sketching out a plan for Gray’s guidance on the arrival of trading messengers between the Umzimvooboo and the Witches’ Krantz; delivered to his charge a letter in cipher, to be forwarded to Brennard, explaining the necessity of his visit to the Stormberg, on trading “thoughts intent,” and transmitting a receipt connected with certain monetary transactions. He also mentioned his intention of returning to Umlala’s kraal within a given time, and then, in serio-comic phraseology, proceeded to inform Gray that, on rejoining him, he should make a barter with the chief for “a few Kafir wives.”
“Don’t be frightened, my lad,” continued the reckless convict; “I assure you I have no intention of interfering with you, though I must own to a little regard for your girl on account of her white blood. Not that I owe the country I came from anything but a curse; but she is a deuced deal better-looking for her straight nose and smooth hair. The girl has good points, and I have shared the luck if I have not the love, for she makes good cakes, and can wash and mend my clothes as well as any Englishwoman. I should think, too, she was not to be had cheap; but you can afford to give a good lot of cattle for her, eh!” and Lee went on jeering, and puffing dagha (the wild hemp, the seeds of which possess much of the stupefying powers of opium) out of a long wooden pipe, till Gray was too stupified with the vapour to resent the brutality of his companion, who having, at the opening of the conversation, drawn from the deserter all that he could touching his position with Amayeka, suggested finally, with apparent good faith, that in the event of any great crisis suddenly taking place among Umlala’s people, the lovers should make their way to a spot, to be selected by Doda, in the road to the Stormberg. Doda, however, was to imagine the rendezvous was only for Lee and Gray, and under no circumstances to be enlightened as to the part Amayeka was to take in this episode of the young deserter’s life.
Gray was awoke the next morning by the light streaming in through the hut door, which was ajar. He had been late in falling asleep, and was heavy, and disinclined to rise for the day; but he looked out,—the huts were yet closed, the cattle still in the kraals; there was profound silence on the plain,—the sun had just gilded the eastern heights.
Gray closed the door, which had not been carefully drawn to by Lee, who had evidently, without rousing his comrade, departed on his journey; for the “traps” he had set in order to take with him had disappeared. Gray cast himself down in a sort of sullen despair, and weary thoughts of past and future disturbed his aching brain.
Ere long the whole hamlet woke up; the cattle came lowing from the folds, the dogs were giving tongue, the women and girls were astir, preparing for the hard labours of the day, building huts, hewing wood, and tilling the ground. Several youths were assembled on the plain, some to start on a hunting expedition, some on marauding parties, for much fine cattle had been brought in the preceding evening by a foraging band, and was being paraded before Umlala, that he might feast his eyes on the prize. The sight was a strong temptation to the young men to try their luck in an adjoining kloof, where it was expected some colonial cattle had been driven by a neighbouring tribe, ready to swear to the British authorities that they were alike guiltless and ignorant in the matter, though in treaty with Umlala to share the stolen property with him if he would shelter it.
But all these preparations were brought to a standstill by the unexpected appearance of the wizard Amani, whose great clay-painted face first emerged from the low entrance of his hut; he crawled out of it, and stood upright, waving an assegai with his brawny arm. The people stood still at sight of this awful apparition, for he was arrayed in the hideous costume peculiar to these wretches when it is their will and pleasure to call a solemn assembly of the tribe for the purpose of publicly denouncing some unhappy creature, whom it is their interest, or their inclination, to bring to a fearful punishment, by death or torture.
The cattle-drivers went on leisurely with their herds towards the pasture-grounds, but sat down on a near hill-side, to see what would follow. They were mostly boys, and were not of sufficient importance to have incurred the wizard’s displeasure. The women laid their implements of labour at their feet, and their children clung to them with vague dread; the old men trembled as Amani stalked past them, and the youths parted right and left to let him go by. Amayeka, who had been up and out before the rest, and had half-crossed the plain with a bundle of sticks on her head, dropped her burden in great terror, and stood paralysed, for she had her misgivings. The meercat seated himself beside her, and glanced his keen black eyes rapidly to and fro; hers were fixed on Amani, who, advancing to Umlala’s hut, the largest in the Kraal (Note 1), drew the chief’s attention to him by a frightful yell.
I have already given you some notion of his aspect, with its savage head-gear. A kaross of lion’s skin was slung about his short but powerful frame, the mane forming a ruff round his huge bull-neck. The kaross was fastened on the right shoulder, leaving the arm free. With this he continued to wave the assegai, its tip of highly-polished iron, and the brazen bangles on the wrist, glinting in the morning sunshine, so brilliant in the Kafir summer-time. The drapery was short enough to display the legs, which, unlike the limbs of a Kafir, were thick and unshapely, and ornamented, like the arms, with bangles of burnished brass; strings of beads, of various colours, and mingled with necklaces of animals’ teeth, garnished his throat, and round his waist, where the kaross opened, was discernible an elastic brazen belt, from which dangled a catskin pouch, a small tortoise-shell and spoon appended for taking snuff, a pipe of tambootie wood, hard almost as iron, and a variety of other articles, an English coin, an old buckle, etc.
To the head-dress I have before described, were now added two long feathers of the beautiful Kafir crane; these being drawn upward by the breeze, resembled horns, and gave the wizard an appearance more demoniacal than can be conceived.
He had doubtless been smoking dagha all the night. His eyes glared with unnatural light, his lips were parted, his white teeth gleaming between when he uttered his unearthly cry; and as he advanced, his movements became more excited; and finally, with a tremendous leap in the air, he dropped as from a height before Umlala, and writhed and gibbered like some wretch possessed of a devil.
The chief councillors gathered the people of the Kraal in a great circle fronting Umlala’s dwelling, which was distinguished from the rest by its size. Most of the principal members of the tribe had gone towards the colony as plunderers or spies, or were scattered through the hills and valleys as scouts and messengers; the circle, therefore, was less extensive than usual,—still there was a gathering of some three hundred human beings.
There were none among these startled creatures who would not willingly have fled had they dared, but they knew flight or resistance were alike useless, and they maintained an impressive silence, while Umlala took his seat on the ground in the space within the circle, Amani on his right hand, though slightly in the rear, and a chief councillor on his left, preserving the same respectful distance.
This dread silence of the crowd was only broken by an occasional bitter laugh or wrathful exclamation from the wizard, who, having some days before been summoned by Umlala to prescribe for some trifling ailment, had taken care that the medicine given, a preparation of herbs, should not remedy the disease, but increase it. Umlala, however, had almost forgotten his ailment in his exultation over the cattle brought him by his foraging party. The wizard was determined on reminding him of it, and came to tell him now who had bewitched him, first as regarded his health, and secondly his judgment, which Amani pronounced at fault, from Umlala having permitted Doda to attend the white man on a journey. “Whither was the white man going? Did Umlala know his purpose? The white man’s face was white, but his heart was black, and what but a spy could be the boy left behind?”
Gray, on hearing an unusual stir, crept from his domicile, which bordered a ravine, and, plunging into a tangled copse, made his way unnoticed to a little tuft of orange-trees on the site of an old missionary station, whence he determined on reconnoitring what was going on. He had a just horror of Amani as an impostor, but he had no conception of the power he derived from his misdirected abilities, for Amani was one of the shrewdest of his race, and possessed an evil influence over his chief.
Gray could see the whole face of the plain, and every figure in the semicircle spread out at his feet. He scanned it rapidly and uneasily, and, to his infinite dismay, discovered Amayeka. The grove in which he sat was one of the lovers’ trysting-places; and, though the early morning was not a safe time for meeting, he had hoped to find her there, or within a short distance from it.
An undefinable feeling of horror stole over him; but he had sufficient presence of mind to pause and watch the proceedings. Whatever might be the result, he mourned his wretched position, not entirely for his own sake—indeed at this moment self was farthest from his thoughts. But what could this strange meeting portend? Mischief, he knew; but who was to be the victim? Naturally his alarm was connected with the unhappy girl, who had been his only friend of late. Her father was absent, her mother had years before vanished from the face of the earth, that is, perished in the bush, whither she had been carried in severe sickness, and left there to die or be devoured by the wild beasts roaming there,—it was never ascertained which. After a lapse of time, some scattered bones were found, but these were left to whiten and fall to dust.
Gray climbed the tallest orange-tree, and looked down from its clustering boughs. He could not distinguish Amayeka’s features, but her head drooped, her arms hung listlessly down, and at her side, in the begging attitude so peculiar to these tiny brutes, sat the meercat, as if beseeching pity.
She looked so friendless, so helpless, yet so far above the other girls, who, forgetting their terror in excitement, were chattering and whirling about near her, that Gray could hardly resist his impulse to descend the hill, cross the glen, and hurry to the scene of action; but he had had sufficient experience of Kafir habits to feel that he could do no good by rushing into the midst of the excited assembly.
Indistinct sounds reached him, and he could see the people were every moment becoming more earnest as they watched the wizard, who continued to rock himself to and fro, gibbering and screeching. At length Amani suddenly sprang up, and rolled his fierce orbs round the circle.
Miserable victims of a power, which owns no law, a superstition based on cruelty and vice! How many quailed before the assegai as it was again waved aloft! Unhappy wretch! who risked thy life to bring the poor settlers’ cattle to thy selfish chieftain’s kraal, dost thou think thou art discovered—doomed—because thou hast secreted in a wooded glen part of the plunder for thyself wherewith to buy thy wife? Thou boy warrior, of the strong arm and supple limbs, in form like a young Apollo, does the fearful wizard know, too, that thou hast fixed thy will upon the child of one of his foes, for he has many? Thou girl of a laughing eye and merry voice, does thy blood turn cold as thou rememberest the day when, resting from thy tillage in the meelie garden, thou didst mock the wizard, forgetting those were near thee who would seek his favour by betraying thee? Aged woman, with palsied head and shrivelled features, almost blind, too, but not deaf, art thou dreading his vengeance, because thou call’st to mind that he, by whose rude couch thou hast been watching all the night, and striving to aid in pain and sickness with thy poor herbal medicines, is one whom Amani hates? Thou mother, with a baby on thy shoulder, why are thy lips compressed, thy brow with anguish stamped? Dost thou quail at thought of thy tall son, who is betrothed to Umlala’s daughter, the child of that Gaika wife, whose feet the great chief gashed and crippled, searing the gory wounds with red-hot assegais, because Amani, the wizard, denounced her as untrue?
Such scenes as these had at times been partially detailed to Gray, but he had had no evidence of their reality.
The crowd, in their eager fear, spread out like a fan, as though each member meditated an escape; but a loud summons from the principal councillor drew them round their chief, and all doubts were soon dispelled as to the real victim of the day.
Amani, having held his incantations over the Hottentot’s skull and its contents, dipped the assegai therein, and, drawing it out dripping with the fiendish potion, began to wave it slowly before him. Tormentor that he was! he pointed it for a minute or two at the trembling girlish mimic. Did he know of her delinquency? She bore the ordeal with the insensibility of a statue, and the wizard passed her by. Some, utterly unconscious of offence, were inwardly startled when they found the sharp-bladed weapon within an inch of their breasts; but their dignity never forsook them. Each awaited his fate with outwardly unshaken nerves, and then watched the weapon as it passed them by to tantalise or condemn another victim.
All this could be distinctly seen by Gray. He was breathless—cold dews poured down his face—his teeth chattered with horror and suspense—he covered his face with his hands. A shout!—was it of exultation?—pierced the air, and penetrated his very brain. He looked again,
Amayeka was in the hands of two fiendish women, witch-doctresses, confederates with Amani. The circle was broken—the throng were gathered closely together. Amani was standing up, gibbering and declaiming to the nearest listeners. Gray could distinguish a shrill scream from Amayeka.
Once again he bent his gaze upon the frightful picture.
Amani’s glittering wand was again in motion, the witches were tearing open Amayeka’s dress, the bead bodice, of which she had been so proud, was scattered in shreds on the ground; and oh, unhappy Gray! behold the proof—the witness in Amani’s accusation. They draw from the depths of her bosom, appended to a bit of reim secured round her waist, the steel chain thou gavest her last night!
He comprehended all instantly, dropped from his leafy covert, leaped into the ravine, and, scrambling through bush and briar, rushed across the plain, and overtook the hags as they were bearing off their victim to a fire in a hollow behind Umlala’s great hut.
Shocked, frightened, bewildered, unarmed, still he followed with the crowd. He could hear Amayeka’s cries of agony, and the poor meercat seeing him stopped, awaiting his white friend’s approach with an eye of wonderment and fear.
Once only the eye of Gray met Amayeka’s; as the unhappy girl was dragged to the bottom of the hollow, she caught a glimpse of her lover on the mound above. She made a desperate struggle to shake off her persecutors; but had she succeeded, not one of the tribe—partly from superstition, partly from dread of the consequences to themselves—dared have lifted a finger to assist her.
Gray was frantic. He rushed back to Umlala, and the white man threw himself at the feet of the brutal savage. He lifted up his hands in humble supplication.
Umlala sat motionless. Not even his eye gave sign that he saw the supplicator; and Amani grinned silently like a demon at his fallen foe. No response, no token of regret; all was stolid indifference on the chief’s part; and, ere long, he rose. The wizard shook his assegai in Gray’s face, and crying, in a loud voice, “Y-enzainhlela i be banzie”—“Make a path: let it be wide,” the throng in front parted to the right and left, the chief moved deliberately onward, Amani at his ear talking rapidly, and to Gray almost incoherently, although he had acquired enough of the language to know that the wizard was intent on keeping Umlala to the dreadful purpose for which the tribe had been summoned together.
All at once two strong women seized Gray from behind, and held him tight. Amayeka saw that, for he heard her shriek. Had they no mercy, these wretches? Were they women? Was he to be immolated with Amayeka? They dragged him down the green slope, slippery with dew, that shone in diamond drops upon flowers of rainbow hues. He heard the fire roaring, and saw boy devils at their impish work. They had bound poor Amayeka’s slender wrists with hard thongs of hide, and were trying to get the bangles over her hands. Had they not succeeded, they would have hacked off the limbs in their impatience to possess themselves of these gauds, so precious to them.
She ceased her cries, poor thing, and lay exhausted on the green-sward, while some of the women, who were foremost in the horrible work, prepared to stretch her out with the soles of her feet towards the flames, already greedy of their prey.
Gray called to her; she made a violent attempt to release herself, but in vain; and he, in his fury, shaking off the Amazons who held him, sprang forward, and would have either attempted to rescue the victim, or insisted on sharing her fearful death; when screams of affright and gestures indicative of warning drew the attention of the people on the plain to the herdsmen on the nearest hill. Some were hastily gathering the cattle together, while others pointed in the direction of Eiland’s glen, an outlet of the ravine which almost encircled the Kraal.
Some alarming object was evidently in sight; but what it was could not be distinguished by the people in the hollow.
They were soon enlightened. A group of Europeans on horseback emerged from a wooded glen, a branch of the ravine running between two hills to the north-west. As they reached the summit of the gorge, and halted between earth and sky, the shining morning light showed them to be heavily-armed, and fully accoutred for a trek; but their horses, though rough, were fresh; and if they were from a distance, they had evidently been resting somewhere within an easy ride of the Kraal. The party swept down the hill at a brisk pace, plunged into the ravine, and were out of sight for a moment. The next, with arms unslung and ready poised, they galloped in close column, in number about thirty, across the open space, to the mound overlooking the hollow, in which the fire had been lit, and where Gray now knelt, releasing, with his good English knife, poor Amayeka from her dreadful fate.
Yet, white men though they were, the unexpected visitants of the Kraal did not pause in their course to notice the unfortunate lovers, but dashed on towards the ravine, where they perceived the cattle and their drivers. The Kafirs, on first observing the farmer’s approach, had whistled off their plunder towards this dense bush, but had not succeeded in collecting the herd sufficiently close to the only gap through which such a body of men and beasts could pass in haste.
Women and children fled into nooks and corners; some found their way to their huts, and the herdsmen on the hills rushed into the adjacent kloofs and valleys. The tribe being, as I have observed, much reduced in numbers, the thirty stout farmers were more than a match for the thieves who had cleared their homesteads. Umlala, paralysed with fear and surprise—for visits from the settlers were, on account of his remote position from the colony, very unusual,—had hastened to conceal himself in a mimosa thicket; and Amani was quaking in a wolf-hole, his favourite retreat in intrigue or danger.
The Kafirs were unprovided with their firearms, some were even without their assegais. A volley of musketry from the settlers sent them screeching into the glen; and a Hottentot guide, catching a glimpse of Amani’s head-gear, recognised him as a wizard, and shot him like a wild beast in his hole.
The cattle, responding to the call of their rightful owners, soon fell quietly into order, and were driven off with no further opposition than a few assegais thrown at random; the enemy calling out to the invaders, from the safe side of the ravine, “Take care of them; we will come for them before the hills grow white,”—alluding to the snow on the mountain ridges.
To this the colonists turned an indifferent ear, and, forbidding the guide to fire again, put their horses to speed, galloped round and round the herd of cattle, whistling, hallooing, and encouraging them forward, for no time was to be lost, as it was not unlikely that the armed Kafir scouts in the valleys might pounce upon them, unawares, by certain short cuts between the hills.
In the bustle and excitement attending the recovery of their property, the farmers had, as I have shown, paid but little attention to the singular situation of the young deserter and the Kafir girl; but, after securing the cattle en masse, five or six of the most daring cantered to the little eminence in rear of Umlala’s hut, and discovered Amayeka stretched on the grass alone. She had fainted, and Gray had left her to procure some water to moisten her parched lips, and was hastening at full speed from a vley in the hollow to tell his miserable tale to the white men.
He could see them from the vley, but they, wholly intent on rescuing the girl—whom, indeed, they were inclined to consider one of the Griqua race, from her soft hair and regular features—were in too great haste and too much excited to await the appearance of a white man, who had vanished, as they supposed, with the rest of the throng, leaving the wretched victim of superstition and fraud to escape as she could, or lie powerless till her tormentors returned.
At the impulse of the moment, a young Boer—the party consisted of Dutch farmers from the Stormberg, who, worn out in trying to obtain redress for accumulated grievances, had taken the law in their own hands—bent from his horse, and, lifting the light, insensible form of Amayeka to his saddle, bore her off.
Another, reckless of danger, lingered to seize a brand from the still burning embers, and, following his comrade with the flaming stick, cast it at random on the roof of a particularly well-built hut, and joined his companions. They sped on, their cheers and laughter rousing the mocking echoes as they retraced their steps up to the mouth of the gorge, whence they had descended on the Kraal.
What made Gray draw back, and fly with extraordinary speed towards the river? What made him shout the Kafir cry “Izapa! Izapa!” to the women and children still occupying the ground?
They looked out from the low doors of their huts, and saw in an instant the cause of his warning.
It was one of the huts containing ammunition which had caught fire from the random brand.
They tried to fly, but some were too late!
The cattle herds on the hills set up a terrific yell, which made the colonists look back from the elevation they had just reached. Gray had crossed the stream, and was at a safe distance from the scene ere the fire touched the flooring of the hut in which the gunpowder was buried. He turned to take a last look of the plain; the poor little meercat was sitting, in its old posture, at the door of Amayeka’s hut, just where the sunlight fell brightest,—a rumbling noise, like the muttering of distant thunder, woke the neighbouring echoes; the wind, which was beginning to gather from all quarters, caught the burning embers, and scattered them in all directions—several huts took fire—the unhappy women and children scoured over the plain, hardly knowing where to go in their blind terror. Some, as I have said, lingering about their dwellings to save their miserable property, and unconscious of the imminence of the peril, paid the penalty of their ignorance; for finally a great tongue of flame shot upwards, a loud explosion shook the earth, and from the mountain ridge Gray beheld the whole Kraal on fire.
He could not help feeling, since he had every hope of Amayeka’s safety, a glow of exultation, as he beheld the destruction of the scene of his late sorrows, and waved his hand in token of a glad farewell to some people huddled together and watching him from the upper drift: horrified as he was at the issue of the day’s events, he was so utterly disgusted at the part both women and children had taken in the torture scene, that he could not pity them as he might have done before it took place.
He resolved at all hazards on delivering himself into the hands of the colonists, and pressed forward to a tuft of trees crowning the apex of the hill.
Shading his eyes from the glare of the sun, he gazed intently into the valley on the other side. It was a scene of perfect repose. There were no groups of cattle to give life to the picture, these had long vanished from the open locations to the dark ravines of Kafirland; the Kraal filling the centre of the valley was deserted, and not even a pauw, or secretary-bird, was to be seen stalking solemnly along in the glow.
It was useless to descend the steep at random; he continued to scan the paths with careful eye. Suddenly he thought he saw the little band of horsemen, with the cattle in front, wending their way on the side of a hill, beneath a krantz of granite. He was not sure of this till they reached the sharp bluff or angle of the mountain range; they turned it, and he was left alone in the wilderness.
Note 1. Kraal indicates a hamlet of huts, as well as a solitary dwelling: I have endeavoured to distinguish the one from the other by prefixing a large K to the former.