“He is known for never breaking it,” replied the missionary, “he is—.” The sentence was not finished, for a black arm and hand seemed to glide out of the darkness, and was laid on the missionary’s shoulder.
Starting up, he seized the intruder by the throat, but instantly released him, laughing. It was Masheesh, the Matabele brave, who had presented them that day to Mozelkatse, and as it may be easily imagined that the king, though able to create the sun and moon, was readier with his spear than his pen; the credentials, which were to make his protection of the party known, assumed the tangible form of the chief who thus unceremoniously startled them, and who soon, squatted beside the blaze, proceeded gravely to light his pipe and smoke in silence. The fire grew low, the two Europeans retired into the tent, but Masheesh smoked on quietly and composedly. One by one the Kaffirs and Hottentots lay down, but still the glow of the chief’s tobacco could be seen by the fire side. Rising at last, he heaped fresh wood on the embers, and calmly taking his place by the tent door and outside, though he had but to lift it to enter, Masheesh rolled himself in his buffalo hide, and, gorged with meat and tobacco, soon slept as soundly as the rest.
The Matabele Hunt.
Masheesh had been deputed by Mozelkatse to accompany them, and there was now nothing to stay their progress northward. The country, too, at the foot of the mountains, was comparatively bare of game, so early the following morning the small party outspanned, and took their way across the plain to strike the banks of the Limpopo.
“How easily the Matabele falls into our ways!” said Wyzinski; as on the morning of the second day after leaving the mountains, the two were riding about half a mile ahead of the waggon, which was coming lumbering along behind them, the shouts of the drivers and the cracking of the long whip reaching their ears.
“It seems strange to see him take the management of our people, and at the same time associate himself with us on a footing of perfect equality,” replied Hughes, “he a half-naked and totally uneducated savage.”
“Turn it the other way, Hughes; he is a chief in the land, known and respected; we are strangers, with nothing but the white man’s prestige placing us at all on the footing of his equal. Masheesh is naturally the leader of our party, and is responsible to his chief for our safety. It is on this I rely.”
The Matabele rode well, and he now came dashing along bestriding a small horse which had been given him. He disdained the use of a saddle, and as he came along at full speed, his ostrich feather streaming on the wind, the loose panther skin floating behind, and his long black legs nearly touching the ground, there was something grotesque and yet striking in his appearance. He held his slender assegai in his hand. Dashing up to the two in front, he checked his horse suddenly, bringing it instantly to a standstill, and sending the ground and grit beneath its hoofs flying into the air. Bending down over its shoulder, the savage pointed with the spear head to some marks on the earth, and then looking up into the soldier’s face, uttered some words in a low guttural tone, and laughed.
“The track of elephants,” said the missionary, who spoke the Zulu tongue, though imperfectly. In a moment Hughes was off his horse, and stooping low as he examined for the first time the footprint of the mighty denizen of the African forests. Masheesh rode on, and in a few moments, a low guttural cry was heard, and the Matabele was seen, halting under a tree, and signing with his spear for the rest to come on. The path had led through a forest, the trees not growing thickly together, but at intervals, and now and then broken by rich undulating plains. Following the direction of the chief’s assegai, the two halting by his side under the shade of the mohunno trees, saw stretched before them the winding silver line of the Limpopo, one of the favourite hunting grounds of the Bazizulu.