A roar of execration was the answer to this appeal. Weapons were brandished, and the crowd pressed closer around.
“Give him to us!” they yelled. “See, there is a fire; we will burn him, one limb at a time.”
“Old men, where are your sons?” went on the wizard. “Young men, where are your brothers? Where are they? Ask the vulture of the rocks, the wolf and the wild dog of the forest, even the skulking jackal who burrows in the earth. Ask the breezes of the air, which blow over their whitening bones where they lie by thousands, slain by the charmed bullets of the English. Hark; I hear their voices in the wind—the voices of their spirits crying for vengeance. I hear it in the trees, in the rocks, in yon thundercloud which is drawing nearer and nearer,” and at his words a heavy boom was heard, followed by a spasmodic rustling gust violently agitating the surrounding bush, and stirring up the air around. With awe-stricken looks, his superstitious listeners bent their heads. “Yes,” roared the ferocious demon, working himself into a state of frenzy. “Do you not hear them? They are crying—‘Vengeance! Vengeance! Vengeance!’ And we, who are left—are we not hunted like wild beasts? Are we not driven from bush to bush by these white men—who have not a tenth of our number—by them and our dogs the Fingoes? Soon shall we follow our brethren, and the name of Gaika will exist no more. Here is a white man! Here is the destroyer of our race. Shall we not make him weep out in tears of blood the woe which has come upon us? Shall we not make him writhe in torment for many days, to appease the spirits of our slaughtered sons? We await the word of the Great Chief!”
Every eye was fixed upon the semicircle of grey-bearded councillors seated round the chief—dark, stern, and immovable. With bodies bent forward, and a wolfish, bloodthirsty grin, the warriors stood scanning the expression of the impassive countenances before them, eagerly awaiting the word, which they doubted not would be given. Again reverberated that thunder-roll—nearer still—as half the sky was hidden beneath an inky shroud, and the dull red flash gleamed from its depths. One of those storms which, in the hot weather, break with such fearful violence over the wilds of Southern Africa, would shortly be upon them.
But “the word” remained still unspoken. Sandili—whose pliant, vacillating nature ever ready to yield to the pressure of circumstances or to the advice of whoever had his ear last, was so powerfully appealed to—would have spoken it, and ended the difficulty; but it was evident that the councillors were not unanimous on the point. On the one hand, the nation was clamouring for the captive’s life; on the other, some of the councillors were clearly opposed to the expediency of sacrificing it, and even the Great Chief dared not fly dead in the teeth of their advice without some show of debate. So he gave orders that the prisoner should be removed out of hearing while they talked, but that he should not be harmed.
“We have heard what Nomadudwana, the seer, has told us,” said the chief, looking inquiringly around. “Shall we then allow the prisoner to go free?”
Now the wizard was hated and despised by the older men of the tribe, though among the younger he was in the zenith of his popularity as a fierce and unswerving preacher of a crusade among the whites. Consequently the mention of his name struck a chord calculated to tune the whole instrument in Claverton’s favour. The mutterings of Matanzima and a few of the younger men, to the effect that a prisoner ought to be treated in the accustomed way—i.e. handed over to the people without all this indaba—were stifled by the decided and dissenting head-shakes of many of their seniors.
Then one of the amapakati spoke. He was a very old man; and an expectant murmur greeted his appearance.
“It is Tyala!” murmured the group. “Hear Tyala—he is wise!”
“My chief, Sandili,” began the old man, in a low, earnest voice; “my brethren, the wise men and councillors of the house of Gaika; my children, its warriors—listen to my words, which have always been spoken for your welfare. Have they not?”