For answer the other had picked up a gun.
“I will give thee ‘dog,’” he said, bringing it up. But the sorcerers were thoroughly scared, and scattered yelling. Their múti was not proof against this, anyhow.
“Hambani-gahle, Abantwana Mlimo!” With which contemptuous dismissal Ujojo turned his back on the irate sorcerers, and, going to the end of the cave, bent over the recumbent form of his late master.
The latter moved restlessly, not recognising him. The fact was that the shock of capture and the pain of his bruised leg, coming upon the strain of the few days preceding, had told upon even Lamonts iron constitution—added to which several days of wet weather and exposure had brought about a bad attack of up-country fever. Now he lay covered with several blankets, yet shivering as though he were lying in contact with an iceberg.
His escape from death at the assegais of his captors was hardly short of miraculous; and was partly due to the wave of wonder that went through those who beheld him, reckoning as they did that he had been blown to atoms in his own dwelling, partly to the intervention of Zwabeka; about half of the impi which had reinforced the assailants of the Kezane Store being composed of that chief’s own followers. Now Zwabeka was not acting out of sheer good-nature when thus intervening, although, as a matter of fact, he liked Lamont, and would rather see him alive than dead. He had a motive underlying, and the motive was this. Zwabeka did not believe in the rising or in its ultimate success. He had been more or less drawn into it, but he was far too shrewd a man to believe that the whites would ever be driven out of the country, or that, even if they were, they would not return in tenfold force. Then where would he, and others, come in? Therefore, he was for ‘hedging,’ in pursuance of which line he was for saving Lamont’s life—if possible.
If possible! But these were times when it hardly seemed possible—when more than once a furious clamour was raised for the prisoner’s life. It had been discovered that he had been in command of the force which had offered such a staunch and stout resistance at the Kezane, and before. This was no man to let go, they represented, to do them incalculable damage in the future. Besides, think of their own people who had been slain—was no vengeance due to them? And the agitators were backed up by at least one chief of equal standing with himself, together with Gingamanzi and his band of Abantwana Mlimo.
But Zwabeka, albeit a morose savage, and given to pessimism, was a man of character; and having made up his mind to the line he had chosen to adopt, had no idea of wavering a hair’s-breadth therefrom. Wherefore, when such tumults were at their height, he would ask the clamourers what satisfaction there could possibly be in killing a man who was nearly dead already—pointing to the prisoner, who was so weak and ill he could hardly sit on his horse. That would be poor revenge for anyone. Give him time to get well again, anyhow.
This told—to a certain extent—but what told still more was a declaration, on the part of Zwabeka, that those who wanted to kill the prisoner could fight for the privilege. This Makiwa was his prisoner, and he intended to dispose of him as he chose.
By the time they gained their resting-place, the remote hollow in which we have seen them, Lamont found himself most piteously ill; indeed it seemed to matter but little to him whether the constant clamourings for his death should be acceded to or not. He had almost ceased to care whether he lived or died.
Seeing him sink lower and lower Zwabeka shook his head and muttered. Over and above the advantage it would be when the rising had failed, to be able to say to the Government, “Look now—here is one of your commanders, who led against us. I have taken care of him, when the people would have slain him. Have I not? Ask him.” Over and above this, we say, he had expected substantial reward at the hands of the man himself. And now the man would not get well, seeming to prefer to die. The native doctors—not necessarily despicable in cases known to them—had been able to do nothing. Zwabeka was puzzled.