“Not the least chance of that. They’d get the worst of it themselves. Besides the Igazipuza know all about us by this time—even if they haven’t been watching us all along. Remember that fellow who killed our buck—Vunawayo!”
“The idea of being watched is distinctly demoralising,” said Gerard. “There’s a sort of creepy, eerie feeling about the notion, don’t you know.”
“I’m inclined to plead guilty to something of an error of judgment,” said Dawes. “A fellow of my experience ought to have known better than pooh-pooh any native story however tall. I didn’t believe in the existence of these people, and now I do. The chap we met yesterday left us under no sort of doubt as to their existence. I’m afraid we shall have trouble with them yet. All this stock we’ve got along is temptation enough to any thieving gang. No. We ought to have avoided this border altogether, and trekked straight down to Luneburg. Well it’s of no use now talking of what ought to have been done. We must just push on and trust to luck to get us through.”
Nothing in Nature suggested the brooding peril which overhung their path. The deep blue of the sky was without a cloud. The scenery of this beautiful wilderness, with its boldly outlined hills, was wild and romantic, but not forbidding. There was plenty of the smaller species of game to be shot for the going after—partridges and francolin, and a bush-buck or so—and the warm air was musical with the voices of ringdoves, with many a strange bird-call from the black strips of bush which belted the slopes of the hills.
“Hallo, hallo! What’s all this?” said Dawes, suddenly, as they rounded a spur.
There was a prodigious flapping of wings, and a cloud of great white vultures rose from the ground to join a number of others which were wheeling lazily overhead. At sight of the horsemen, however, the swooping circles widened and the great birds darted off. In a moment they seemed to disappear.
“Here’s a chap who can’t fly!” cried Gerard, eagerly, putting his horse at one of the aasvogels, who, thoroughly gorged, could only waddle along like a puffin. And then a cry of horror escaped him, and his face paled. Boiling gently down the slope of the ground, where the vulture had let go of it, was a severed head—the head of a native child of about nine or ten years of age. Grim and gory, with the eyes picked out by the carrion birds, the frightful object rolled. Gerard felt nearly sick with horror. At the same time Dawes’s horse, shying violently, nearly unseated his rider.
The slope of the hill here was covered by a low, bushy scrub. Lying about among this, contorted into ghastly attitudes, were several bodies, all natives, and representing all ages and sexes. They had been torn by the vultures, and ripped and mangled by their slayers, and the appearance they presented to those who thus came upon them wholly unexpectedly in the midst of the wilderness was inexpressibly hideous and horrible. Three of the bodies were those of full-grown men, the rest women and children—thirteen persons in all. They were covered with assegai-stabs, out of which the blood seemed yet to ooze, and they were all ripped up, a circumstance which pointed to their slayers being of Zulu nationality. Why had these poor creatures, thus travelling peaceably through the country—for fragments of mats and other articles pointed to the probability of it being a family trek—been thus fallen upon and ruthlessly butchered—men, women, and children, even to the month-old baby speared again and again on its mother’s back? Who had done it? The two white discoverers of the massacre looked at each other, and the mind of each shaped the same reply—Igazipuza.
A shadow passed between them and the sun, then another and another. The vultures, having become accustomed to the cause of their first alarm, had gathered again, impatient to drop down to their horrible feast. To Gerard it seemed that all the virtue had gone out of the sweet golden sunlight, yielding place to a flaming brassy glare, and the atmosphere seemed to reek of blood.
“Poor devils!” said Dawes. “They’re ‘eaten up’ and no mistake. We had better not let on about this to the ‘boys,’ or all that diplomacy this morning is just thrown away. Nothing on earth would keep them from taking to their heels.”