Chapter Nine.
What Lamont Heard.
In telling Ancram that the Matabele were likely to give trouble in the event of a further extensive destruction of their cattle, Lamont had been indulging in prophecy that was a good deal in nubibus. He had thought such trouble might very likely occur, but not just yet. Now, as he lay there in the darkness, a participator, unknown to them, in the most secret counsels of the plotting savages, he was simply aghast at the magnitude and imminence of the peril which the whole white population of the country either laughed at or ignored.
“Not yet the time for killing,” went on the voice of the one who had first proposed the listener’s own death. “Hau! But something else was said by Umlimo—ah-ah—something else! When Amakiwa are killed then it will rain. So said he. Our cattle are all dead, and our crops are dying. But—it has not yet rained. When Amakiwa are killed the rain will be great. Ah! ah! The rain will be great!”
As though burned in letters of fire within his mind there flashed back upon Lamont the recollection of these words. The sullen, uncordial reception, the reiteration of these words by those who witnessed their arrival—the meaning of all was clear now. This infernal Umlimo, whose quackeries and influence already had caused some stir in the land, had promised them copious rain on condition that the whites were slain.
“But so far there is none,” went on the speaker. “The storm of this night, which should have revived our thirsting cornlands, has passed over us dry. Yet it was such a storm as should have brought with it a flood. Whou! And these two Amakiwa are in our hands. But enough of them. Há! U’ Gandela. The talk is about it.”
“Eh! hé!” assented the listeners. “The talk is about it.”
“When the sun rises to-morrow,” went on the speaker, “it will rise on a great company of fools. All the Amakiwa, for a long journey around, will be hurrying into Gandela, where they are going to race horses, and play games, and drink strong waters. The day after, the sun will rise upon all this, but—it will set on no more Amakiwa—not at Gandela.”
“No more Amakiwa! ’M—’m!” hummed the audience.
“Yet the other plan might be better,” urged one of these. “To strike them all by twos and threes, all over our country. Thus would they be the quicker dead but with less trouble to us. How is that, Zwabeka?”