“Au, ’mlúngu! I told you our meeting would be a long one,” growled Vunawayo, between his set teeth, as they rolled nearer and nearer to the brow of the cliff. Gerard the while felt every muscle in his powerful young frame cracking, strained as it was to prevent the savage from freeing the hand which held the assegai. Moments seemed years—nearer and nearer to the fatal brink the combatants rolled. Then the fierce and desperate savage, suddenly jerking free his left wrist, seized his adversary by the throat.
Then Gerard felt that his end had come. His eyes seemed squeezed out of his head. The whole world was spinning round with him. A tug—a final effort—his opponent had got him to the edge of the height. He was going—both were going—
The air rang with the deep-throated “Usútu!” as Sobuza and his followers came swarming over the edge of the summit. Gerard was conscious of a spout of warm blood over his face, for the moment blinding him; of the relaxing grip of his adversary; of a plunge and scuffle as the body of the latter crashed over the brink—of the grasp of powerful hands dragging him back to life and safety. Then, half choked, his brain swimming, he rose to his feet, and took in what had happened—what was happening—the last act in the suppression of the redoubtable freebooting clan.
It all took place in a moment. The summit was alive with warriors, with tossing shields and bristling weapons, all pressing forward upon one man.
He was standing fronting them like a stag at bay—standing on a projecting pinnacle of rock, balancing himself right over the abyss. He was a man of large, fine stature, and his eyes flashed with the elation of a heroic courage, as covered by his great shield, and a broad assegai flourished aloft in his right hand, he defied his slayers to approach.
“Ho, hunting-dogs of the king, here is your quarry! Come and seize it,” he shouted, in deep, mocking tones. “What, afraid? The king’s impi afraid of one man! What a sight for the spirit of Tyaka! Ha! I am the last of the Igazipuza, and the whole of the king’s impi fears me—fears me!” he repeated, in a kind of long-drawn chant—a very death-song, in fact.
Now the summit sloped down to the pinnacle of rock whereon the man stood. To attack him hand-to-hand was certain death, for his object was plain—to seize and drag into the abyss with him whoever should approach, and thus to die true to the traditions of his order, an enemy’s life in his hand. Assegais thrown at him from above he only laughed at, parrying them easily with his shield. Sobuza and his warriors were beside themselves with helpless rage. The jeering laughter and contemptuous defiance of the man goaded them to madness. But how to get at him? The chief was too proud to admit himself beaten by asking the aid of the firearms of his white allies, whereas they, in sheer admiration of the man’s desperate intrepidity, forebore to use them. Even John Dawes, notwithstanding his recent rough treatment and narrow escape from the most barbarous of deaths, could hardly bring himself to fire upon this sole survivor of the race which had so abominably ill-used him.
But the difficulty solved itself unexpectedly. The savage, seeing Gerard pushing his way to the front—seeing, too, the rifle in his hand, mistook his intentions. If they were not going to purchase the pleasure of taking his life at the price of losing one of their own, they should not have it for nothing.
“Ho, cowards!” he roared with flashing eyes. “Ho, cowardly dogs who fear one man. Go, tell your king I spit at his head-ring! Igazi—pu—za!” And as the last long-drawn note of the ferocious war-shout of his tribe escaped his lips, he turned and sprang out into empty air, and a dull, heavy thud and the clink of metal upon stones rising upward to the ears of those above, told that the last of the Igazipuza warriors had died even as those who had gone before him had died—fierce, stubborn, formidable to the end, but unyielding.