Yet it thrust itself persistently upon me again and again as I approached the smoke-blackened walls of the ruined building and gazed with horrified eyes at the constantly accumulating evidences of the desperate character of the attack and defence. I believed I could pretty accurately picture what had happened. My father had evidently not been taken entirely by surprise, or there would not have been so many dead savages lying around the house: he had probably obtained an inkling of what was toward in time to put the building into some sort of state of defence; possibly he had found time to barricade the doors and windows, and from the general aspect of things outside I surmised that he had somehow contrived to get half a dozen or more of the Totties into the house to assist in its defence.
The attack had probably occurred about two or three o’clock in the morning, when the whites might be expected to be sound asleep, and from the appearance of the slain I believed that it had taken place about thirty-six hours before my arrival on the scene. In any case the attack was unwisely planned, from the native point of view, for it was about the time of full moon, and the South African night, with a full moon riding high in the sky, is almost literally as light as day, and the defenders, being doubtless on the qui vive, would perceive the first stealthy approach of the savages and at once open fire upon them. And I knew enough about my father’s and Nesbitt’s marksmanship to feel assured that every time they pressed a trigger an enemy would fall. But even their deadly skill with the rifle would not account for the many bodies lying round the house, and thus I was brought to the conclusion that some of the Totties, armed with shot guns loaded with loopers, or slugs, must have assisted in the defence. Time after time the enemy must have charged toward the house, and time after time must they have been driven back from those stout stone walls and barricaded doors and windows by the withering volleys of lead poured into them at close range. But the weak point of Bella Vista was its thatched roof, which was the universal form of covering to every farmhouse at that day, on account of its coolness. It was, however, easily capable of being set fire to, and in all probability the Kafirs, after being several times repulsed, had made a concerted rush, in the course of which they had succeeded in hurling several spears, with bunches of burning grass attached to them, into the thatch, where they had remained, setting the roof on fire. Then, as the house was only a one-storey building, it would quickly fill with smoke, and the inmates would be faced with the alternatives of suffocating, being burnt to death beneath the blazing roof when it should fall in, or yielding themselves to the tender mercies of the ferocious Tembu. I thought I knew which of the alternatives my father would choose, provided, of course, that he survived long enough to avail himself of the choice; but did he? That was the question, and—merciful heaven! if he did not, what had become of my mother?
Frenzied at the thought of what her fate might be if she had fallen alive into the hands of the savages, I dashed up the front steps to the stoep, clubbing my rifle and striking out right and left at the gorged aasvogels congregated there, which seemed disposed to resent my intrusion. And as I mounted to the top step I at once perceived that I had now arrived at the spot where the fight had raged most fiercely and stubbornly, for the ornamental guard rail and one of the veranda posts were broken-down, the climbing roses which had been trained to screen the railing were crushed and trodden into the earth, and the whole stoep was choked with the bodies of Tembu warriors who had evidently met death in a desperate attempt to force their way into the house through the barricaded doors and windows.
But the barricades no longer existed, having evidently been consumed in the conflagration that followed the collapse of the flaming roof, and now only the charred and blackened remnants of the door and window frames remained; beyond them appeared a small heap of white ashes, among which could be detected here and there a few fragments of what had once been picture frames, the metal-work of furniture, or the unconsumed end of a roof timber. With a strong effort of will I compelled myself to pass through one of the window openings, and entered what had been the drawing-room. A strong odour of fire still clung to the place, but there was not much débris, for the room had been by no means crowded with furniture. I was obliged to pick my way with care, for the floor was burned completely through in some places, while in others it was so deeply charred that my feet broke through upon encountering them. I persevered, however, for near the middle of the room I perceived a mound of ashes of exceedingly suggestive shape and dimensions, and I was anxious to ascertain what lay beneath. And, combating the almost invincible repugnance to close investigation which seized me, I presently discovered that the heap concealed, as I had suspected, a half-consumed human body, so dreadfully disfigured that it was only with the utmost difficulty I presently succeeded in identifying it as the remains of a Tottie. The metal blade and shank of a Tembu spear—the wooden shaft of which had been consumed by fire—transfixed the throat, and my father’s roer, with its stock deeply charred, was still grasped in what remained of the left hand. It was the only body in the room.
From this room I passed into the hall. This was in a similar condition to that of the drawing-room, except that it contained the remains of two bodies, one close to the doorway and the other at the point where the passage leading from the rear entrance of the building opened upon the hall. The body near the front doorway I identified as that of Nesbitt—by the watch which was lying close beside it, and which, I noticed, had stopped at twenty-three minutes after six—while the other body was quite unrecognisable. There was nothing to show how either of these men had died.
Leaving the hall, I entered the dining-room; and the moment I did so it became apparent that I had arrived upon the scene of the last stand of the little garrison, where the final phase of the stubborn and protracted attack and defence had been fought out. For the room was in a terrible state of confusion, the scattered remains of the heavy furniture showing that the savages had actually succeeded in forcing the barricade and gaining an entrance—this evidence being confirmed by the presence of nine Tembu corpses piled up in the window opening. And within arm’s length of them lay another corpse—that of my father, still grasping in his right hand the trusty cavalry sabre that had served him so well in his campaigning days, while his left held a pistol. Three Tembu spearheads in his body, one of which had evidently passed through his heart, told how he had died. A few feet away, right up against the front wall, I noticed a pile of scorched, brittle stuff that, as I cautiously probed it with the barrel of my rifle, proved to be burnt rugs. The three upper layers were burnt to a cinder, but the fourth was only scorched, while the last was scarcely singed; and beneath this lay the body of my mother, the flesh slightly darkened by the smoke of the burnt woollen rugs, but otherwise not disfigured at all. A bullet hole in the very centre of her forehead told me all that I wanted to know; and while I cast myself on my knees in the ashes beside that beloved form, a tempest of dry sobs rending my bosom as I realised for the first time all that I had lost, I felt thankful that my father had found the courage and resolution at the last moment to save her, even though by such dreadful means, from falling alive into the hands of the fiendishly ferocious Tembu.
In the remaining rooms I found seven more corpses, all of them being those of Totties, who had either perished in defending the house or had died of suffocation. And nowhere but in the dining-room had the savages ever succeeded in gaining even a temporary footing, while the general appearance of the ruins showed that they had not entered after the flames had died out; indeed, I doubted whether they had even deferred their departure until then, for they must have known at last that nothing could possibly have survived in that furnace of flame, and with the whites all slain and the house ablaze, there was no reason why they should desire to enter it, for the fire would effectually destroy everything in the shape of plunder. But they had driven off the whole of the live stock, and that alone should have satisfied them.
I do not know how long I remained on my knees beside the corpse of my mother in that fire-seared, bloodstained dining-room, plunged into a very stupor of grief; but I remember that I was at length aroused by the distant sounds of a cracking whip and the screams of Jan, the Hottentot driver, to his oxen, announcing the approach of the wagon; and, looking about me, I discovered that the sun had already set, and that darkness was fast closing down upon the scene. Then I rose to my feet, and, leaving the ruined house, made my way down the path to where Prince still stood patiently awaiting my return, with the dogs Thunder and Juno crouching upon the ground before him; and, flinging the bridle over his head, I climbed into the saddle and rode slowly forth to meet the wagon. I came to it at a distance of about half a mile from the broken-down gate at the garden entrance, and ordered the others to outspan where they were, water the oxen, and turn them loose to graze. Then I briefly acquainted Jan, the driver, and Piet, my after-rider, with what had happened, strictly forbade the former to go up to the house—though there was little need for that, for I doubt whether anything would have induced the fellow to go near the place after nightfall—and ordered Piet to accompany me, as it was my intention to ride on to Mr Lestrange’s place, to see whether he and his had escaped a similar visitation, and, if so, to beg shelter for the night and his presence and help on the following day while I performed the last sad offices for my beloved dead.
I am now an old man, for my age already exceeds the limit allotted by the Psalmist as the length of man’s life, but the memory of that night ride, and my heart-breaking burden of grief as I stared out unseeingly upon the fast-darkening landscape, allowing Prince to find his own way and travel his own pace while I dwelt upon the harrowing scenes which I had so recently beheld, and began to realise the full extent of my irreparable loss, will never leave me; it is as fresh to-day as it was at that moment, and so I know it will continue to be until I die. Yet, keenly as I suffered, I frequently found myself wondering why I did not suffer still more keenly; for after I had progressed a mile or two on my way the sky to the eastward brightened, and presently the moon, two days past the full, sailed up over the far-distant horizon, flooding the scene with mystic radiance, and, all unknowingly, I reined up to gaze upon the entrancing scene. Yes, even at that moment, with the dry sobs bursting from my aching bosom; with my dead mother’s face floating before my eyes, her lovely features placid and smiling in death, as I had beheld them only one short hour before; with the figure of my dead father lying outstretched among the ashes of his ruined home, his body pierced with the spears of the enemy, his weapons still tightly grasped in his clenched hands, and his sightless eyes still glaring defiance at the foe, I could pause to gaze upon the beauty of a South African moonrise! I could not understand it then; I was surprised and horrified at what I stigmatised as my callous heartlessness: but I know now that a merciful Providence has so ordered matters that when human suffering, whether mental or physical, reaches a certain degree of acuteness, partial insensibility sets in—I have known cases where men have slept while being subjected to the most awful tortures—and such was undoubtedly the case with me on that memorable night. My sensibility had become so benumbed that I had partially lost control of my mental processes, and my thoughts broke away at intervals to dwell for a few moments upon some entirely trivial matter which, one would have supposed, could not possibly have had the slightest interest for me, under the circumstances. Yet so it was; and in that curious, detached, semi-conscious frame of mind I covered the fourteen miles of veld that lay between Bella Vista and Triannon, most of it at a walking pace, coming in sight of the house about nine o’clock at night.