Colonel Blow had neither forgotten to shave nor to put on his collar, but the orders that had come down to him to stay at his post and look after the town of Fort George had changed him from a charming, nice man into a bear of the most unsociable kind. He looked capable of falling with fang and claw upon any one who ventured to speak to him. Among the rest of our defenders were the bearded pard, the parson, the postmaster whose genial face was also trimmed with scowls, and the doctor, whose gout prevented him from being a warrior but who frankly informed every one who was interested enough to listen that nothing would have induced him to go, gout or no gout. He was not looking for any Lobengulas, he said. He had not lost any Matabele impis, so why should he go and search for them?
There were other odds and ends of human relics who were not for the front. I noticed one man, a tall fellow with a stoop in his broad shoulders and a ravaged face that still bore traces of rather extraordinary good looks, but his skin was a terrible yellow colour and his eyes were sunken pits in his face. He was such a striking tragedy that I could not refrain from putting a question about him to the woman at my side.
“What a splendid piece of wreckage!” I said in a low voice. “Why didn’t some one save him from the rocks, I wonder? Who is he, Mrs Marriott?”
In her dull quiet voice she answered two words:
“My husband.”
My face went hot with shame for my thoughtless cruelty.
“Oh, forgive me!” I stammered, remembering the tale that I had been told of the terrible tragedy of her finding after marriage that her husband was a slave to the morphia habit. I did not know what to say: the thing was so unpardonable, so irremediable. But her face showed no more than its usual expression of dull sadness.
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, and continued to stare blankly before her.
At that moment my attention was wrenched away from her by the sound of a charming and musical voice. Some one was speaking—a rather short, thickset man, sitting heavily on his horse. He had a reddish face, large, bright, dark eyes, and an abnormally big forehead; and under his cocked-up-at-one-side hat he held his head bent forward in a curiously concentrated way as he spoke to the men, who all turned to him, listening like men in a trance. He had not spoken two words before I knew the American name for this ordinary-looking man with the magnetic presence and the charming and musical woman’s voice. He was a spell-binder.
“Men, I have to thank you, from Mr Rhodes, for the British South Africa Company, and for the British Empire, for the way in which you and the men all over Mashonaland have come forward to tackle this job. It is going to be a tough job—and not at all pretty—but we will stick to it, and I am confident of our ultimate success. We have right on our side. ‘Thrice-armed is he who hath his quarrel just’ you know and we have given Lobengula every opportunity to make good his promise to the Chartered Company, but over and over again he has betrayed our trust and broken his compact. He has crossed our boundaries, cut our telegraph wires, raided the chiefs under our protection, and lately, as you are aware, not content with wallowing in blood in his own kraals, he has been here to our very doors murdering the wretched natives who as our servants for the first time in their lives knew the sweet taste of liberty that is the right of every man that breathes. It has come to this—that our women and children are in danger; our mining and agricultural interests, dearly bought by fever and privation, are threatened; none of us can ever be safe away on a lonely farm or mine; we have proved the treachery of Lobengula, and we know that his people mean mischief. Well, it has got to end! We must either once and for all put down the power of the Matabele, or get out. I don’t think we mean to get out. This is too good a country to leave—and we have paid too dearly for our share in it. It is too fine a country to be nothing but the shambles of a bloody butcher; this wide, lovely land calls for some nobler destiny than to be the necropolis of the wretched Mashona nation. It is a white man’s country—a fit heritage for the children of British men and women—your children, and the children of the women who have not disdained to come up here and feel the rough edge of life; who do not grudge their men to the service of the Empire; who are here this morning not to weep, but to cheer you forth to victory. Goodbye, boys! I’ll meet you again at Buluwayo. In the name of Cecil Rhodes I give you Godspeed!”