The Adventures of Dick Maitland: A Tale of Unknown Africa

by Harry Collingwood

Those were strenuous days indeed for all concerned, and especially for the defenders; for the fighting usually began with the dawn, and continued all through the day as long as there was light enough to distinguish friend from foe; while, so far as the Izreelites were concerned, they were obliged to maintain a watch all through the hours of darkness, in order to be prepared for the surprise night attacks which the savages sprang upon them from time to time, with the obvious purpose of exhausting the defenders’ strength.

But while Mokatto and the other savage kings who had thrown in their lot with him for the purpose of “eating up” the Izreelites, and partitioning their country, were solacing themselves with the assurance that, despite their frightful daily losses in men, they were winning all along the line, Dick was artfully drawing them after him into the heart of the chain of mountains that encircled the lake and the island city of Bethalia. These mountains, or hills rather—for they were scarcely lofty enough to be worthy of the more imposing appellation—were of an exceptionally rugged and precipitous character, to such an extent, indeed, that they were absolutely impassable except at four points, where the natural features had been so far improved upon that passes of a sort—narrow ledges for the most part, bounded on one side by a vertical, unclimbable face of rock and upon the other by an appalling chasm—had been painfully hewn out of the stubborn granite; and it was in the direction of these four passes that young Maitland was now retiring in excellent order, and enticing the enemy to follow him. For it was in these passes that he expected to win the victory which he intended to convert finally into a complete, disastrous, panic-stricken rout of the enemy. To this end he had already made certain preparations, for news of the completion of which he was anxiously waiting. And at length the news came; whereupon, having dispatched to the commanders at the other three points identical sets of instructions, of a sufficiently elastic character to leave plenty of scope for initiative on the part of the leaders, he summoned the commanders of his own division to his tent as soon as the day’s fighting was over, and, having carefully and fully explained his plans to them, gave them explicit instructions regarding their conduct upon the following day, and dismissed them. Then, mounting his tired horse, Dick rode off up the pass at a foot-pace, closely followed by the faithful Mafuta, who, dog-tired though he was after many long days of strenuous fighting, chuckled grimly as his young master unfolded his plan of campaign.

The fighting which began with dawn upon the following morning was of a somewhat different character from that of the preceding days; for hitherto the Izreelites had always begun the day behind the shelter of stone walls of some sort, from which it had taken the best part of the day to dislodge them, and from which, when dislodged, they had been wont to retreat in more or less good order to the next stronghold in their rear. But now the last of these fortified positions had been abandoned and the Izreelite armies had retired—or been driven back, as the enemy firmly believed—into the mouths of the four passes which led across the hills to the lake and Bethalia. They had not only entered the mouths of the passes, but had retired into them, until they had reached certain spots where the natural configuration of the surrounding hills was of such a character as to constitute the position a natural fortress capable of being held and defended by a comparatively small body of men; and here they halted and lighted their watch fires. The enemy also halted, about half a mile lower down the pass, and, as soon as it was dark, sent out a number of scouts with instructions to search for a way by which the savages might slip past during the night, and get round to the rear of the Izreelites. Some of those scouts never returned to their camp; those who did reported that the task assigned to them had proved an impossible one, for that, after climbing laboriously and at the risk of their necks for varying distances, they had all, without exception, arrived at a point where farther progress was impossible and retreat scarcely less so. Meanwhile, the Izreelite watch fires, the foremost line of which happened to be at a turn of the pass, just where they were well within sight of the enemy, were kept brilliantly burning all through the night, evidencing an untiring vigilance on the part of the Izreelite outposts, who could be seen, by the light of the fires, moving about from time to time.

But when at length the first rays of the morning sun smote the topmost ridges of the hills and came stealing down their sides, arousing the combatants to another day of sanguinary strife, behold! there were no Izreelites to be seen in the neighbourhood of the still briskly blazing fires, nor could the fresh scouts which were promptly sent out find any trace of them. Then Mokatto, suspecting an ambush, sent forward other scouts, in relays, with orders to advance up the pass—each relay keeping the one next before it in sight—until the leading band should regain touch with the enemy, when a single scout was to return with the intelligence. But, strange to say, the single scout did not return; and when at length the fiery chief, losing patience at the absence of all news, gave orders for a general advance up the pass, the impi who led the way soon discovered the reason, for they came upon the bodies of those scouts, one after the other, lying in the narrowing roadway, each with an arrow through his heart, evidently shot from some spot near at hand, but quite inaccessible from the roadway itself.

Yet still no enemy was to be seen, no sign of his presence to be discovered, until Mokatto, leading his contingent and advancing with the utmost caution, reached the summit of the pass, when he found that the narrow roadway, at a point where it turned sharply round an elbow, had been broken down for a distance of some fifty feet, until only space enough was left for men to pass in single file. And as the first man essayed the passage of this perilous path and attempted to work his precarious way round the perpendicular buttress of rock that formed the elbow, a spear, wielded by an unseen hand, was observed to dart forward and bury itself deep in his naked breast, and the next moment he went hurtling downward off the narrow ledge into the ghastly abyss that yawned beside him. And as it was with the first man so was it with those who followed him in the desperate attempt to round that fatal elbow, until even Mokatto himself, fearless and resolute warrior as he was, was fain reluctantly to admit that farther progress, by that way at least, was impossible.

There was nothing for it but to call a halt, and consider what was the next thing to be done. To advance was impossible; to retreat was equivalent to an acknowledgment of defeat, which, after the frightful losses already sustained by the savages, would probably result in them rising upon their leaders and slaying them in revenge for having fomented so disastrous a war; while a very brief inspection of their surroundings sufficed to convince them that nothing without wings could possibly surmount that vertical rock on the one hand, or descend that awful precipice on the other. Yet, as they looked, the savage warriors became aware that somewhere there must be a path to the top of the rock, for they caught sight first of one, then of another, and then of many Izreelites peering down upon them from above. Then, suddenly, there came hurtling down from the summit of the rock, some five hundred feet above the heads of the savages, a shower of stones, not very big, yet big enough, falling from that height, to dash a man’s brains out, smash an arm or a leg like a dried twig, or send him reeling off the narrow pathway to the depths below.

The word was given to retire. There was no other course open to the invaders, for obviously it was worse than useless to stand huddled helplessly together upon that narrow pathway and suffer themselves to be destroyed without the ability to strike a blow in self-defence—and the retreat down the pass began. Then, with the first rearward movement, the air, pent in between the rocky walls of that savage gorge, began to vibrate with a most dreadful outcry of shrieks, shouts, and yells of dismay and panic; for, as though at some preconcerted signal, a devastating shower of great boulders came pouring over the crest of the cliff above the pass, crushing men into unrecognisable fragments or hurling them by hundreds over the edge of the narrow pathway. Moreover this state of affairs prevailed not at one isolated spot only, but all along the road, as far as it was occupied by the battalions of the savages. There was a moment of helpless confusion, during which those who were fortunate enough to have escaped the first effects of that terrible shower stood, stricken motionless and dumb, gazing as in a dream at the frightful, overwhelming destruction that had come upon them in that awful gorge. Then blind, raging panic seized upon the survivors, who turned and fled shrieking down the pass, intent only upon escaping from the ceaseless pounding of that merciless hail of boulders, madly fighting for precedence with their equally panic-stricken comrades, savagely grappling with those who happened to be in front of them impeding their passage, and either hurling them, or being themselves hurled, into the ravine that gaped to receive them.

The scene was appalling beyond all possibility of description; it was not a defeat only, it was not even merely a disastrous rout, it was practically annihilation; for of the thousands of savages who entered that pass—that awful death-trap—on that fatal day, only hundreds emerged from it again; and they were so utterly demoralised and unnerved with terror that no thought of rallying or making a stand ever entered their minds; they simply ran blindly ahead until they fell exhausted, and there lay, absolutely heedless of what might befall them. And as it was with Mokatto and his legions in the one pass, so was it with the chiefs and those who followed them in the other three passes; many of the leaders—Mokatto himself among others—were numbered among the slain; and there seemed to be nobody to take the lead or to assume command. The invading armies had been practically wiped out, and the few survivors had degenerated into a flying, panic-stricken mob dominated only by the one idea of escape into the comparative safety of their own land.

As for the Izreelites, infuriated at the wanton invasion of their country, and fully realising what would have been their own fate had the savages chanced to have been the victors, they relentlessly pursued the flying enemy during the whole of their retreat down the passes, and would doubtless have destroyed them to the very last man had not Dick personally, and by means of imperative messages persistently reiterated, stayed the slaughter, by pointing out that the victory was too decisive and complete for further aggression to ever again become a possibility; and that a too relentless pursuit of already desperate men could but result in a further loss of life among the Izreelites themselves. Even this representation, forcibly as it appealed to a people who regarded the lives of their men-kind as the most precious possession of the nation, scarcely sufficed to curb their lust for further slaughter, for they had become, for the moment, human tigers who, having tasted blood, abandoned their prey only with the utmost reluctance and with much savage snarling of discontent and disappointment. But at length the obvious soundness of Dick’s reasoning gained recognition and acceptance by the Izreelite chiefs, who finally persuaded their followers to content themselves with the mere ejectment of the insignificant remnants of the enemy beyond the frontier.

Meanwhile Dick, having paid a flying visit to Bethalia, to satisfy himself that all was well in that quarter, made arrangements for the immediate reconstruction of those portions of the roads through the passes that had been broken down, in order to check the advance of the invaders. This was temporarily accomplished by the building of rough bridges across the gaps; but, fully recognising how important a part had been played by those gaps, he sketched out a scheme whereby they should be made permanent, spanned by substantial drawbridges, and defended at the inner extremity by strongly fortified gateways. This scheme he laid before the Elders, who immediately approved of it, and ultimately the work was carried out.