“Peace, peace? No, it’s war now, white man—war,” they replied. “Why should we give you any peace until the time comes to roast you? That’s what we are going to do with you.”
“Are you? Well, that’s for the Great Chief to decide. Meanwhile, if you were decent fellows, you’d fill me up a pipe and let me have a smoke as we go along.”
His coolness staggered them. But it stood him in good stead, for among these people a bold and fearless mien always commands respect. The tall chief stepped back to the prisoner’s side, and filling up a pipe from Claverton’s own tobacco pouch, lighted it and gave it to him, or rather stuck it into his mouth, with a grim laugh.
“There. You won’t smoke many more pipes in this world, Lenzimbi,” he said.
The Kafirs became quite good-humoured and began to sing, or rather hum, snatches of their war-songs as they stepped briskly out. They ceased to ill-treat their prisoner, and even showed a disposition to talk. They told him about the different engagements that had been fought between them and the colonists, and how they intended to go on fighting until every tribe had risen and joined them, and that then they would eat up the Fingo “dogs,” and ultimately, when they had fought enough, make peace with the whites. It was of no use for him to try and persuade them that in six months’ time they would be thoroughly beaten and broken up, and their chiefs either hanged or undergoing penal servitude as common convicts. They laughed him to scorn. The open air, the unending bush and impenetrable fastnesses of the rocks and caves were around them now, the white man’s warnings they treated as mere fables.
Suddenly Claverton was dragged to the earth, all the Kafirs sinking silently and like shadows. A blanket was thrown over his head, enveloping him in darkness and nearly suffocating him. It was impossible for him to utter so much as a sound. A few minutes of this silent darkness and the impromptu gag was removed. Something had alarmed the savages, and they had taken these precautions. They now resumed their way, and glad indeed was the prisoner to get rid of the horrible extinguisher that had been put upon him, and breathe the fresh air again; for a Kafir blanket, all nauseous with red ochre and grease and something more, diffuseth not a balmy perfume.
Towards dawn they halted for a short rest, and now the air became piercingly cold, for they were at a considerable elevation. Great clouds worked up from seaward, and the wind arose in dull, moaning gusts, driving the grey scud along the slopes beneath, and wrapping in a misty veil the brow of a lofty cliff which every now and then frowned down upon their way. Then, as it grew lighter, Claverton could just make out a town lying far away upon the plain, glimpsed between the slopes of the hills. It was King Williamstown, and at the sight he thought how happily he and Lilian had driven out of it and along that bit of road, the continuation of which he could see like a white thread winding along over the flat. He wae roused by a voice at his elbow.
“Now, white man, we are going to start again.”
Turning, he beheld the tall chief, and now, by the light of day, he recognised this man’s features. It was the man whom, with two others, he had turned away from Umgiswe’s out-station, on the morning of that never-to-be-forgotten ride over to Thirlestane, and whom Lilian had so much wished to see as a specimen of a real Kafir chief. He wondered if the other recognised him.
“Do you know me now, Lenzimbi?” was the quiet, but somewhat sneering question.