“The Lion’s Den.”
The principal kraal of the Igazipuza lay in a great natural crater, surrounded by cliff-crowned heights. Like all the Zulu kraals it wore an excessively neat and symmetrical appearance in its perfect circular formation; the dome-shaped huts, which could not have numbered less than five hundred, standing between the double ring fences, which latter rose as high as a man’s chin, and being constructed of the thorniest of mimosa boughs tightly interlaced, presented a formidable chevaux-de-frise to whosoever would cross or break through them. It was a large and imposing kraal, as became the residence of an influential chief, the head quarters of a powerful clan.
The situation of the place had evidently been chosen with no insignificant eye to strategy. Shut in by its amphitheatre of heights, the bushy hollow wherein it lay was accessible from one side alone, and that could only be approached by an exposed and toilsome climb up a long and rugged slope. A sentinel posted on the heights around could descry the advance of an enemy for miles, and all the fighting force could concentrate their efforts on the one accessible point. Of course a couple of field-pieces planted on the nearest cliff could have banged the place to rubbish in half an hour, but to foemen armed as themselves, or even with rifles, this stronghold of the Igazipuza was a very formidable fastness indeed, and not far short of impregnable.
All these points did Dawes and Gerard take in as, upon the afternoon of the third day following their compulsory enterprise, the waggons creaked and groaned behind their panting, toiling spans, up the rugged acclivity aforesaid, whither their live stock, urged on by its very willing if self-constituted drivers, had already preceded them in a now vanishing cloud of dust. They noticed, too, on gaining the ridge whence they could look down upon the great kraal lying a mile or so before and beneath them, that the valley was one of considerable area, and though bush-clad was green and grassy. There was yet one thing more they noticed. Rising abruptly from the bush, about a mile and a half in the rear of the kraal, was a conical tooth-shaped rock, the more noticeable because it seemed to have no business to be there at all. It was a kind of excrescence on the natural formation of the ground, which was there smooth. Yet this strange pyramid, with its precipitous cliff-face, thus shot up abruptly to a height of nearly a hundred feet.
Their cogitations on this and other matters were interrupted suddenly, and in a manner which was somewhat alarming. From the tree-clad hillsides arose the same wild roaring shout which had preceded the massacre of the unfortunate Swazi runaways, and they beheld charging down upon them from either side a band of armed men, shaking their shields and assegais by way of adding to the strength and hideosity of the uproar.
“All this dancing and bellowing is getting just a trifle thin—eh, Ridgeley?” said Dawes, with a touch of ill-humour, as the savages came surging round the waggons, and amusing themselves by yelling at, and now and again goading, the already panting and terrified oxen. The Swazis, who had not dared leave the sides of their white protectors, turned grey with fear. This was too much like what had preceded the slaughter of their companions.
But the Zulus in the present instance confined their aggression to mere boisterous noise. And then the kraal in front seemed suddenly in a turmoil. Heads could be seen peering over the palisades, and another body of warriors came swarming from its gates. These advanced, marching in regular orderly column, to meet the wild uproarious crowd which was swaying and surging around the slowly progressing waggons; and as they approached they began to sing. The burden of their song might be translated in this wise—
“Ho! the Lion’s teeth are sharp,
They bite, they tear;
And the land is white with bones
Round the Lion’s lair.
Lo! the prey comes home of itself
To the Lion’s den,
Where the Lion’s cubs grow fat
On the blood of men.
Há, há, há!
Grow fat on the blood of men!”
The repetition of this ferocious refrain was, under the circumstances, anything but reassuring; the fell imagery of it only too alarmingly plain. Were they not indeed walking of themselves right into the “lion’s den”—the lair of this savage and freebooting chieftain whose very name meant lion in the Zulu language! However, there was nothing for it but to preserve a cool and unconcerned demeanour, as the singing warriors drew near; and thus marshalled, amid an indescribable din, the shrill chatter of women and children, the clamourous yelping of a hundred curs, mingling with the rattle of shields and assegai hafts, the rumble of tramping feet and the deep-toned, measured war-chant of the warriors, our two friends made their entrance into the Igazipuza kraal, after a fashion which, as Gerard remarked, was a cross between a procession to the scaffold and a Caesar’s triumph.
Dawes had wanted to leave the waggons outside, but this his escort—or captors—would not hear of. They must all enter, had urged the latter. To act otherwise would be to make the reception invalid, maimed, unlucky. They could go out again afterwards if they liked, and Dawes for his part sincerely wished they might.