“Ramoo Samee and I have each brought two buckets of water from the hole, and the Inkose’s bath is ready for him when he will,” answered Mafuta.
Grosvenor’s sleep appeared to have been extraordinarily beneficial, for when he awoke to the rattle of crockery as Mafuta busied himself in the arrangement of the breakfast table, not only was he absolutely free from headache, and all the other unpleasant symptoms of which he had complained two hours earlier, but his general condition was also greatly improved, the swelling of the injured limb had subsided, the flesh had recovered its natural colour, the numb feeling had almost disappeared, and now all that remained to remind him of his disagreeable and perilous adventure of the previous night was the smarting and burning sensation of the cauterised wound itself, which he endured with stoical composure, and indeed laughed at as a trifle not worth wasting words about. But he was fully alive to the frightful nature of the peril from which he had so narrowly escaped, and was so earnest and profuse in his thanks to Dick for having twice saved his life in the course of a few hours that at length the young medico laughingly threatened to gag him if he did not instantly change the topic of conversation. One of the best signs of his progress towards complete recovery, perhaps, was the voracious appetite which he developed when breakfast was placed upon the table. But it was not until late in the afternoon that Dick allowed him to rise from his hammock; then it was only permitted in order that the camp might be moved somewhat farther from the water-hole, with the object of avoiding a recurrence of the annoyances of the preceding night.
By the following morning Grosvenor was practically well again, and, with his injured leg well protected by a bandage, was once more able to mount a horse; the march was therefore resumed, and came to an unadventurous end in a small valley, watered by a tiny brook, as the sun was sinking beneath the western horizon. Thenceforward their progress was steady, averaging about twenty miles a day, for six days a week, Sunday being always observed as a rest day, whenever possible, primarily for the sake of the cattle, it must be confessed, which it was found required at least one day’s rest in every seven upon such a prolonged journey as that upon which they were now engaged. The journey was not altogether devoid of adventure, by any means; for upon one occasion they killed no less than five of their oxen through overwork during a hurried flight from the neighbourhood of a devastating grass fire; they lost three more at one fell swoop while crossing a flooded river; six succumbed to snake bites; four fell a prey to lions; and seven died of sickness believed to have been induced by the eating of some poisonous plant. But, after all, these were merely the ordinary accidents incidental to travel in the African wilderness, and would need too much space to be recorded in detail. The natives whom they encountered from time to time during their progress were by no means uniformly friendly, but tact and firmness, coupled with an occasional demonstration of the terribly destructive qualities of their firearms, and a judicious distribution of presents among the chiefs, secured them from actual molestation, though there were times when it seemed to be, figuratively speaking, a toss-up, whether they would or would not have to choose between being turned back or “wiped out.”
Indeed now, when they had been continuously journeying for nearly three months since they had turned their backs upon the friendly Makolo nation, and were daily receiving fresh evidence that they were drawing very near to the goal of their long pilgrimage, it was by the merest chance, the most extraordinary caprice of the king into whose country they had penetrated, that they were permitted to live and accorded freedom to pursue their journey unmolested. For the savages among whom they now found themselves seemed to be possessed of an extraordinarily virulent animus, or prejudice—call it which you will—against whiteskins, due, as the travellers eventually discovered, to the fact that a nation of whites inhabited the adjacent territory, between whom and the blacks, who surrounded them on all sides, an implacable enmity had existed as far back as history or even legend extended. From whence those white people had come, or how long they had inhabited the land of which they held such stubborn possession, there was no record to tell; but the grievance of the blacks seemed to consist in the fact that the interlopers—as they chose to regard them—occupied the whole of a peculiarly rich and fertile tract of country from which, though they were relatively few in number, they resolutely refused to be dislodged; while the surrounding territory, occupied by the blacks, was comparatively poor, sterile, and ill-watered, affording an ever more scanty subsistence to the steadily growing population. Also there was a widespread belief, amounting to conviction among the blacks, that their white neighbours were wont to punish such attempts as were made from time to time to drive them out, by putting all prisoners to death in a variety of peculiarly hideous forms—although it was by no means clear how this belief arose, since no prisoners ever returned to throw any light upon the subject.
It is not, perhaps, greatly to be wondered at if, under such circumstances, the blacks had gradually come to regard the possessor of a white skin as the incarnation of everything that was superlatively detestable, and a person to be destroyed promptly with as little hesitation or compunction as one would destroy a particularly venomous snake; and such was the feeling which Grosvenor and Dick inspired in the breasts of those natives in whose hands they found themselves upon a certain memorable day. It was at first proposed to put them to the torture sans cérémonie; but a certain petty chief, anxious to curry favour with the king, intervened in the nick of time, and, having made prisoners of the entire party, sent the whole of them, including the wagon, oxen, horses, and animals generally, to the king’s village, in order that His Majesty might have his full share of such sport as the torture of the white men might furnish. This journey, however, occupied five days, during the progress of which the two white men proved to be so different in every respect from the only other white men whom the blacks had ever encountered, to be possessed of such strange powers, and to be, generally, such “kittle cattle” to deal with, that the king, learning that these strangers were bent upon entering the territory of his white neighbours, ultimately came to the somewhat cynical conclusion that he could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak, by allowing the formidable strangers to go their way and inflict the maximum amount of annoyance and damage upon his especial enemies before those enemies in their turn destroyed the unwelcome visitors.
Thus it came to pass that, after spending close upon a fortnight in momentary expectation of a hideously protracted death by torture, Dick Maitland and Philip Grosvenor one day found themselves most unexpectedly released, their belongings returned to them, and permission accorded them to proceed upon their journey as soon as they would. They instantly availed themselves of this permission, lest peradventure it should be retracted; the result being that for five days they travelled under the protection of an armed escort until they arrived at the frontier, where the escort hurriedly left them, after jeeringly warning them of the many evil things that awaited them in the immediate future.
Scarcely ten minutes had elapsed after the departure of the guard before the travellers perceived a man intently watching them from the summit of a low kopje about a quarter of a mile ahead of them. For perhaps a minute he stood, motionless as a statue, gazing steadfastly at them under the shade of his hand, then he turned suddenly and disappeared. But during that minute Dick and Grosvenor had brought their powerful field glasses to bear upon him, and had distinctly seen that his skin was white, excepting in so far as it had become browned by the sun, that his hair was thick, black, and arranged in long, straight curls that reached to his shoulders, that he was naked save for a breech clout about his loins and a pair of sandals upon his feet, and that he was armed with a long, slender spear and a circular shield or target about two and a half feet in diameter. Three minutes later they saw him running with incredible speed toward another low elevation, distant about a mile from his starting-point, and which, as the travellers discovered, when they brought their glasses to bear upon it, was crowned by a low structure, so roughly constructed that it might easily have passed for a mere heap of stones and turf, but which, later on, proved to be a sort of blockhouse accommodating an outpost consisting of an officer and ten men. Two minutes later the man whom they had first seen, or another so exceedingly like him that it was impossible to distinguish any difference at a distance of two or three hundred yards, left the blockhouse—which they now perceived was only one of many in sight arranged in a somewhat irregularly curved line which probably conformed to the line of the frontier—and set off, at the same astonishing speed that the first had displayed, heading inward from the frontier line. They watched him for about five minutes, and then lost sight of him over the brow of a slight undulation. Beyond the roughly constructed blockhouses there was not a sign of inhabitants in any direction; the land was rough and uncultivated, there were neither cattle nor sheep to be seen; and if, as they strongly suspected, the blockhouses in sight accommodated a few men, none of their occupants revealed their presence nor made the slightest attempt to interfere with the uninvited visitors. It was a moot point between Dick and Grosvenor whether they should not take the bull by the horns, as it were, by riding up to the nearest blockhouse and attempting to get into communication with its occupants at once; but Grosvenor was very strongly opposed to any such step, upon the ground that, if they did so, they might be summarily turned back and ordered to quit the country forthwith, which, as Phil pointed out with some emphasis, would be an exceedingly tame and ignominious ending of their long and arduous journey. His policy was to let well enough alone, to get as far into the country as possible before attempting to open up communication with its inhabitants, and, meanwhile, to show in every possible manner by their sober behaviour that their mission was a peaceable one.
But if the borderland of this mysterious country presented a somewhat wild and uninviting appearance, it was not long before the travellers perceived that this state of things prevailed only over a very narrow belt of territory. For as they pressed on toward the interior they first sighted another line of blockhouses, considerably larger and more substantially constructed than the first, each perched upon a commanding knoll and completely surrounded by a stout, lofty, and practically unclimbable stockade; then they saw a few cattle dotted about, grazing, under the protection of quite a strong force of armed men, similar in all respects to the individual whom they had first sighted. These people took no notice of the strangers beyond removing themselves and their charges well out of the route which was being pursued by the wagon; it was evident that they had no desire to come into touch in any way whatever with their uninvited visitors. Then, a mile or so farther on, the herds became larger and their attendants more numerous; and, next, the intruders reached what seemed to be a belt of farms, each containing its own fortified farmhouse, a lofty and, apparently, immensely strong and solid structure of hewn stone, surrounded in many cases by a moat, either wet or dry, with a single narrow entrance high up in the wall and only accessible by means of a ladder; the unglazed window openings few in number and too narrow to permit the passage of a human being through them; the roof flat, and protected by a breast-high parapet; the structure, as a whole, constituting a very efficient miniature stronghold. The crops appeared to be of the most varied character, starting with sugar cane on the outside margin of what may be called the agricultural belt, and then gradually changing to various kinds of grain, which in its turn was succeeded by fruit orchards and vineyards. These last, however, were not met with until the detached farms had been left far behind, and had been succeeded in turn, first by tiny hamlets of half a dozen houses huddled together as if for mutual protection, and then by villages of ever-increasing importance, each dominated by a castle-like structure that looked as though it might serve the purpose of a keep or refuge for the inhabitants to retire to in times of stress or danger. These, however, were not reached by the travellers until quite late in the following day, and are only referred to now, in order that some idea may be conveyed of the manner in which the mysterious white race who inhabited the country met the problem of carrying on their agricultural pursuits, and at the same time affording protection to the farmers against sudden raids by their savage neighbours.
The region or belt of small hamlets still lay some two miles ahead of the travellers when, about half an hour before sunset, the word was given to outspan in the midst of a patch of rich pasture watered by a small, shallow stream of crystal-clear water. By the time that the sun was sinking behind a range of hills that rose gradually from the plain, and the summits of which were apparently about twenty miles distant, the oxen and other animals had been watered, the tent pitched, and the two leaders of the little expedition, having found a passable bathing place a short distance up the stream and taken their evening dip, were impatiently awaiting the last meal of the day, which by courtesy they named dinner, although it very inadequately represented the usual conception of what that meal ought to be.
Presently the viands made their appearance—a haunch of venison, cut from a buck that Grosvenor had shot early that morning, served sparingly with red currant jelly, the last pot of which had been opened for the occasion, sweet potatoes, purchased from the savages a few days earlier, “flap-jacks”—so called because they could find no other name for them—made by Ramoo Samee of flour, mealie meal, and water, and baked over the embers of the cooking fire, a few wild guavas, and as much water from the stream as they cared to drink, followed by a very small cup of coffee each, for both coffee and sugar were now becoming exceedingly scarce commodities with them.