“But what if he is not here?” said the Kafir, sullenly.
“But what if he is?” returned Greenoak, composedly. “I know my way. I have no need of these here”—with a wave of the hand towards those who were following. “They can go home.”
A hoarse jeer among the crowd greeted the words, but the said crowd showed not the slightest sign of complying with the speaker’s wish. More than one, gripping the long, tapering assegai, was thinking what a tempting target was offered by the back of this unmoved white man, riding there before them as though his life hung upon something stronger than a not very secure rope. So the strange procession passed on.
The newly risen sun was flaming above the Kei hills. The blue sky was without a cloud. The morning air, not yet unpleasantly warm, was clear and invigorating. The fair, rolling pastures were green and promising, and altogether the whole scene should have been one of pastoral peace. But it was the peace of the slumbering volcano, to-day stillness, to-morrow red ruin, and none knew this better than Harley Greenoak. He knew why there was no cattle anywhere in sight.
Now he had reached a kraal at the head of the valley, one in no wise differing in appearance from any of the others he had passed. Here he dismounted, but before he could make an inquiry of the inhabitants—the crowd following him, by the way, having now halted at a respectful distance—an interruption occurred—startling, unexpected.
A large body of Kafirs came pouring over the ridge. They were in full war-array—cow-tail tufts, flapping monkey-skins, long crane feathers flowing back from the head, jackals’ teeth necklaces—in short, every conceivable variety of wild and fantastic adornment which could lend to the sinuous clay-smeared forms a wholly terrific appearance. And indeed such was the effect, as with a roar like that of a beast they rushed down upon Harley Greenoak.
He, for his part, stood unmoved; though even to one of his iron resolution the array of excited faces and gleaming eyeballs, and threatening assegais, as the savages crowded up to him, might well have proved momentarily unnerving. Was this the projected Gcaleka raid, he wondered, and in a flash he decided that it was not. It was a body of young men who had spent the night war-dancing, with its concomitant of beef and beer feasting, hard by; and, now excited by such stimulant, mental and physical, was prepared for anything.
They made mock thrusts at him with their assegais—not too near, however. Others were leaping into the air, singing, or reciting all the deeds they were about to do.
“The time of the Abelungu has come!” cried one, if possible more truculent and demoniacal-looking than his fellows. “Whau! but we will drive them all into the sea, and take their wives for our wives. Have you a wife, Kulondeka? But no. She would be too old. She, and others like her, would do to hoe our corn lands. Or—”
And the speaker made a quick, downward slash with his assegai that left room for no explanation in mere words.