“Now, listen to me, Matanzima, and we will talk ‘dark’ no longer,” said Greenoak, becoming impressive. “You have referred to me as your ‘father,’ and that is just what I want to be to you. I want to see you great and powerful, and at the head of your nation. I do not want to see you—with others—spend the rest of your life in the white man’s prison. The Great Chief Sandili, is old and infirm, and are you not his ‘great’ son? It cannot be long before you yourself are Chief of the House of Gaika! Whau! look around. Is it not a splendid land which is given you wherein to dwell? Are not the people prosperous and happy, with cattle grazing by their tens of thousands in valley and on hill? Why, then, fling all this away with both hands? Why exchange it all—for what? Ask those of your people who have passed years of their lives in the white man’s prison, for any offence against the white man’s laws. Ask such what it feels like—day after day—moon after moon—toiling at road-making, dragging heavy carts loaded with heavy stones, watched and guarded every moment by, it may be, some miserable Hottentot, ready to shoot you down at any attempt to escape, sometimes in chains it may be. Whau! What a fate for the chiefs of the House of Gaika. Come heat, come cold—ever the same weary round of toil. Then again—no home, no comfortable huts, no wives, no tobacco—nothing to look forward to but the most miserable and grinding slavery. That is the fate you are rushing upon headlong. The fate that will as surely be yours as that the sun is shining above at this moment. You and your people are not as the Ama Gcaleka. They are Kreli’s men, and you and the Ama Ngqika are the Queen’s men. This is the way the laws of the white men punish those who rise in rebellion against the Queen. Now say. Is it good enough? Is it?”
Greenoak paused, and sat gazing fixedly at his listener. The young chief’s face had grown troubled and moody.
“Whau! Such words are even as the words of Tyala,” he said, as though half to himself.
“The words of Tyala,” echoed Greenoak, eager to push his advantage. “Ha! And Tyala is wise—no man wiser. Now, Matanzima. You have the ear of the Great Chief. Go now and speak into it, word for word, all I have been saying. Lose no time, do it at once. So shall you save not only yourself, but your people. To delay is death. Where is Sandili?”
“Near Tembani. But I cannot go to him now, Kulondeka,” he explained gloomily. “Do you not see? The people here. I alone can hold them.”
Yes, that “pulse” was beating now, that pulse of the people which Harley Greenoak was there to feel. There was no chance of making a wrong diagnosis here. But a great sinking came into his heart. More and more, while reasoning with this young leader of the seething war-party, his mind had been impregnated with a growing pity for him, and the dreary intolerable doom he was so surely preparing for himself and many more. For, reading the other, more and more easily he realised that it was too late for the young chief to draw back. The plot had about reached its head. The incursion from beyond the river was all arranged, and its fulfilment imminent. Yet—was it too late?
“Then—hold them,” he answered emphatically. “Hold them. Have you no men? Send and recall the cattle and women that have been sent away. Send out another ‘word’—that the time is not ripe. Think, son of Sandili, the last chief of the House of Gaika; for no other will be chief after him when the whole nation is broken up. There is yet time. It is not too late. Now, I have ridden the night through, and I am growing old. While I sleep—for I am tired—think again upon my words; and—act upon them, and that at once.”
Greenoak rose, and going to the side of the hut, stretched himself upon the ground. In less than five minutes he slept, slept hard and dreamlessly. Slept—one man, alone—in the midst of teeming enemies, who but a short while before had been clamouring for his life, and even now, it might be, were plotting how they might take it when he should be once clear of the protecting presence of their chief. The sanctuary of the latter’s house they dared not violate. But blood had been shed, and blood cried for blood. It would be hard if they could not, by way of wily ambuscade, obtain their just vengeance when this man should be beyond the protecting influence. The prestige of his personality was great; still he was but one, and they were many. Vast events were maturing; the making an end, then, of this man, with the semi-supernatural reputation for invulnerability, would be a fitting precursor of them.
But Harley Greenoak was still Harley Greenoak, and meanwhile he slumbered on, peacefully and unafraid, in their midst. Would he have slept on so soundly had he known what was going on in another part of the location? Who knows?