“Stand up?” said the savage, peremptorily.
“Needs must where literally the devil drives,” was the prisoner’s reply, given with all his wonted coolness, as he obeyed. Resistance would be worse than useless, for it would only subject him to further indignity. He was absolutely in their power.
“Now walk,” was the next order.
“Which way?”
“Hamba-ké!” (“Walk, then,” or “Go on.”) repeated the tall Kafir—who seemed to be the chief of the gang—and the command, uttered in a fierce and threatening tone, was emphasised by a prod with his assegai.
Not by word or sign did the prisoner show that he even felt the sharp dig of the weapon, though the blood was running freely down his leg. Then they started in single file, with the prisoner in the middle, a reim fastened to his bound hands being held by the man immediately behind him. Thus they made their way out of that moonlit valley, and the strange procession wended on through the still, beautiful night. The Kafirs, for the most part, kept perfect silence as they walked, and now even Claverton was surprised by the readiness with which they got through the dense bush, picking out the most unlikely paths, and threading them with an ease and rapidity that savoured of the marvellous; but although they hit upon the smoothest paths, the prisoner’s powers were sorely tried, for he had undergone no slight strain within the last twenty-four hours, and his footsteps began to drag in spite of himself. The first sign of this, however, met with encouragement in the shape of a dig from the assegai of the man behind him, accompanied by a brutal laugh. There was no help for it—he was entirely in their hands.
“The white man is a very great warrior,” remarked the Kafir whom he had knocked down. “He can turn his hand into a club when he has no other weapon. He is made of iron; but even iron will bend and melt in the fire—in the fire. Whaow!” repeated the savage, with a dark, meaning look; and Claverton knew that the reference was to his probable fate. His probable?—nay, his certain fate.
“Look here, you fellows,” said the prisoner coolly. “You’re rather a skulking lot, when all’s said and done. Here you’ve got me in your power—me whom you’ve fought fairly and openly in the field—and you think it immense fun to give me a quiet dig now and then with your assegais, like a lot of old women’s spiteful pinches. That’s not the way in which warriors of the Amaxosa should behave, even to a prisoner.”
A laugh, not wholly an ill-natured one, greeted this remonstrance.
“If you intend to cut my throat, as no doubt you do, cut it and have done with it; but, hang it, until you do you might give a fellow a little peace,” he went on.