Chapter Fifteen.
Mnyamana’s Cattle.
High up among the crags they crouched, like eagles looking forth from an eyrie, sweeping indeed with eagle-like gaze the vast expanse of plain which lay in many an undulating roll, outspread beneath.
Three dark forms, long and lithe, destitute of clothing save for the mútya and a few war adornments in the way of cow-hair tufts, or feathers. Beside each were several bright, broad-bladed assegais, and medium-sized shields, just where they had been deposited. Far away in the distance rose a cloud of dust—a moving cloud of dust.
“Ou! the hand of the spoiler sweeps. The dust which it raises floats away, that which causes it moves on.”
A hum of assent greeted this murmured remark, and the eager attention of the look-out was redoubled. The face of the mountain fell grandly away in terraced slopes, rows of great krantzes intervening. There was a glorious feeling of air, and height, and domination from this lofty post of outlook. Far above, a number of white specks soared and floated against the blue empyrean. The instinct of the vulture is unerring, and that instinct had been kept well in practice as regarded this disturbed region for some time past.
The dust cloud moved onward, drawing nearer, yet still a great way off. The faces of the watching three were rigid in their eagerness, the eyes dilated, the nostrils distended like those of a stag snuffing the wind. Then the one who had spoken, taking a broad assegai from the bundle which lay beside him, slid, with a serpentine writhe, down from his coign of vantage, then when the ridge of this was well between him and the expanse over which he had been watching, he drew himself up in a sitting posture, and holding the spear so that it pointed vertically upwards, took one glance at the sun, then twirled the bright blade slowly, facing down upon the valley beneath. This was done several times, until an answering gleam appeared far below. The signaller, satisfied, wormed himself back into his former position on the very crest of the mountain. They renewed their watch, those human eagles, their tense, self-contained excitement deepening as the moments fled by, and it preluded a swoop.
Looking back, to whence had come the answering signal gleam, a maze of broken valley, interseamed with dongas, lay outspread. Opposite and beyond this, a further rocky range towered in a crescent wall. A rugged wilderness, silent, deserted, given over to savage solitude. Yet—was it?
Rank upon rank they crouched, those dark rows of armed warriors, their variegated shields and broad assegais lying upon the ground in front of them. Row upon row of eager, expectant faces; set, intense; the roll of eyeballs alone giving sign of mobile life, a constrained hum passing down the gathering as they drank in the impassioned and burning words of the speaker.
He was a largely-built, thick-set Zulu of a rich copper colour, which threw out in unwonted blackness the jetty shine of his head-ring. He held himself with the erect, haughty ease of a king addressing his subjects, of a despot speaking to those who owned their very lives only at his will. Yet, he was not the King.