The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

by Bertram Mitford

Chapter Eight.

A Fearsome Voyage.

On rushed the mighty stream, roaring its swollen course down to the Zambesi, rolling with it the body of dead Ziboza, hacked and ripped, the grand frame of the athletic savage a mere chip when tossed about by the hissing waves of the turbid flood. On, too, rolled the body of his slayer, as yet uninjured and still containing life. And in the noon-tide night, darkened by the black rain-burst which beat down in torrents, and, well-nigh ceaseless, the blue lightning sheeted over the furious boil of brown water and tree trunks and driftwood: and with the awful roar above, even the baffled savages were cowed, for it seemed as though the elements themselves were wrath over the death of a mighty chief.

Strange are the trifles which turn the scale of momentous happenings. Strange, too, and ironical withal, that the body of dead Ziboza should be the means of restoring to life its very nearly dead slayer. For the current, bringing the corpse of the chief against a large uprooted tree, upset the balance of this, causing it to rise half out of the water and turn right over. This in its turn impeded a quantity of driftwood, and the whole mass, coming in violent contact with the bank, threw back a great wave, the swirl of which, catching the body of the still-living man, heaved it into a lateral cleft, then poured forth again to rejoin the momentarily impeded current.

A glimmer of returning consciousness moved Hilary Blachland to grasp a trailing bough which swept down into the cleft, a clearer instinct moved him to hold on to it with all his might and main. Thus he saved himself from being sucked back into the stream again.

For a few minutes thus he crouched, collecting his returning faculties—and the first thing that came home to him was that he was in one of those cavernlike inlets on the river bank similar to that in which his struggle with Ziboza had taken place. Stay! Was it the same? He had a confused recollection of being swept out into stream, but that might have been an illusion. He peered around. The place was very dark but it was not a cave. The overhanging of one side of the cleft, and the interlacing of bushes and trees above, however, rendered it very like one. But this fissure was much smaller than the one he had fallen into with the Matabele chief, nor was it anything like as deep.

Had he been swept far down the river, he wondered? Then he decided such could not have been the case, or he would have been drowned or knocked to pieces among the driftwood, whereas here he was, practically unharmed, only very exhausted. A thrill of exultation ran through his dripping frame as he realised that he was uninjured. But it did not last, for—he realised something further.

He realised that he was weaponless. His rifle had been shot from his hand. He had lost his revolver in his fall, and even the sheath knife, wherewith he had slain Ziboza, he had relaxed his grasp of at the moment of being swept away. He was that most helpless animal of all—an unarmed man.

He realised further that he was in the remotest and most unknown part of little known Matabeleland, that he had formed one of a retreating column, which was fighting its own way out, and which would have given him up as dead long ago: that no further advance was likely to be made in this direction for some time to come, and that meanwhile every human being in the country was simply a ruthless and uncompromising foe. He realised, too, that save for a few scraps of grimy biscuit, now soaked to pulp in his jacket pocket, and plentifully spiced with tobacco dust, he was without food—and entirely without means of procuring any—and that he dared not leave his present shelter until nightfall, if then. In sum he realised that at last, even he, Hilary Blachland, was in very hard and desperate case indeed.

Were his enemies still searching for him, he wondered, or had they concluded he had met his death in the raging waters of the flooded river, as indeed it seemed to him little short of a miracle that he had not? The rain was still pouring down, and the lightning flashes lit up the slippery sides of his hiding-place with a steely glare: however, the fury of the storm seemed to have spent itself, or passed over, but the bellowing, vomiting voice of the flood as it surged past the retreat, was sufficient to drown all other sounds. Then it occurred to him that he could be seen from above by any one peering over. He must get further in.