The Witch's Head

by H. Rider Haggard

Thus was the fight ended.

Ernest and Jeremy sank upon the bloody grass, gasping for breath. The firing from the direction of the camp had now died away, and, after the tumult, the shouts, and the shrieks of the dying, the silence seemed deep.

It was the silence of the dead.

There they lay, white man and Zulu, side by side in the peaceable sunlight and in a vague bewildered way Ernest noticed that the faces, which a few minutes before looked so grim, were mostly smiling now. They had passed through the ivory gates and reached the land of smiles. How still they all were! A little black-and-white bird, such as fly from ant-hill to ant-hill, came and settled upon the forehead of a young fellow, scarcely more than a boy, and the only son of his mother, who lay quiet across two Zulus. The bird knew why he was so still. Ernest had liked the boy, and knew his mother, and began to wonder as he lay panting on the grass what she would feel when she heard of her son’s fate. But just then Mazooku’s voice broke the silence. He had been standing staring at the body of one of the men he had killed, and was now apostrophising it in Zulu.

“Ah, my brother,” he said, “son of my own father, with whom I used to play when I was little; I always told you that you were a perfect fool with an assegai but little thought that I should ever have such an opportunity of proving it to you. Well, it can’t be helped; duty is duty, and family ties must give way to it. Sleep well, my brother; it was painful to kill you—very!”

Ernest lifted himself from the ground, and laughed the hysterical laugh of shattered nerves, at this naive and thoroughly Zulu moralising. Just then Jeremy rose and came to him. He was a fearful sight to see—his hands, his face, his clothes, were all red; and he was bleeding from a cut on the face, and another on the hand.

“Come, Ernest,” he said, in a hollow voice, “we must clear out of this.”

“I suppose so,” said Ernest.

On the plain at the foot of the hill several of the horses were quietly cropping the grass, till such time as the superior animal, man, had settled his differences. Among them was Ernest’s black stallion, “The Devil,” which had been wounded, though slightly, on the flank. They walked towards the horses, stopping on their way to arm themselves from the weapons which lay about. As they passed the body of the man Ernest had killed in his last struggle for life, he stopped and drew the broken assegai from his throat. “A memento!” said he. The horses were caught without difficulty, and “The Devil” and the two next best animals selected. Then they mounted, and rode towards the top of the ridge over which Ernest had seen the body of Zulus lying in reserve. When they were near it Mazooku got down and crept to the crest on his stomach. Presently, to their great relief, he signalled to them to advance: the Zulus had moved on, and the valley was deserted. And so the three passed over the neck, that an hour and a half before they had crossed with sixty-one companions, who were now all dead. “I think we have charmed lives,” said Jeremy, presently. “All gone except us two. It can’t be chance.”

“It is fate,” said Ernest, briefly.