The Ruined Cities of Zululand

by Hugh Mulleneux Walmsley

Wyzinski stood looking at her. It seemed like a dream; but then there was the stoppered bottle of white powder in his hand to prove the reality. All that day, all that night, the missionary watched by the bedside. Towards midnight a heavy thunderstorm passed over the plains watered by the Zambesi. The air seemed blue with the forked lightning; the thunder rattled and roared over the fort, but the morning dawned calm and beautiful, and a cool breeze blew in at the open windows, bringing with it the sweet breath of the tamarind flowers. The quinine, too, had done its work; and the crisis which in the dreadful tertian fever of the Zambesi always occurs on the third day, had passed over favourably. These storms are of frequent occurrence in the land through which the Zambesi rolls its waters, and scarcely a week goes by without the thunder making itself heard round the dilapidated walls of Senna. Another of these periodical storms had just occurred, sweeping over the land, accompanied by torrents of rain, cooling the air, and refreshing the parched-up plains on the banks of the Zambesi. The river was high in consequence, rolling down branches and trees and quantities of driftwood past the brick walls of the crumbling fort. It has already been said that several small islands intersect the course of the river; and near one of these, not a stone’s throw from the water-gate, two boats were moored, swinging to the stream. The one a large European-looking pinnace—though really built on the Zambesi after an English model—possessed a covered cabin aft, and was capable of holding some twenty people. The other was of smaller and lighter mould. From the island came the sounds of laughter and conversation.

Under the trellised creepers, through which the rays of the afternoon sun were shining, sat a party of Europeans. The water was bubbling up in a stone basin; the purple grapes were hanging in rich clusters from the vines; and there, doing the honours of the table with a gentle grace which showed a practised ease and knowledge of the world, sat Dona Isabel Maxara. Near her, half sitting, half reclining on some cushions, Captain Hughes seemed lost in contemplation of the fair girl. Still very weak, and much pulled down by the short but sharp attack of the deadly tertian, he had got it into his head that the quinine had saved his life; and perhaps it was not a very unpleasant thing to be beholden for life to so fair a physician. And so he gazed on the tall, graceful, and beautifully-turned figure, the head carried with that dignified swan-like movement peculiar to Spain and Portugal, the long black lace veil now thrown back and floating behind. The clear olive complexion was well set off by the crimson lips of the well-cut mouth, and the large coal black eyes, with their long lashes, well matched by the luxuriant tresses of jetty hair. As she rose to carry the small cup of coffee to the invalid, he certainly thought the life it pleased him to consider she had saved, could not have a better use than devotion to her; and when the fair Isabel stooped over the young soldier, and one long tress, of the raven hair touched his hand, raised to receive the cap, the rosy flush flew up into a cheek once browned by exposure, but paled now by illness.

At a table close by, the Portuguese envoy, Dom Francisco Maxara, sat playing at chess with the Commandant of Senna; the two, wholly absorbed in their game, exchanging a word only at intervals. The missionary was unpacking, showing, and repacking, the various skins and small animals he had managed to secure. The birds were singing in the bushes round about, and above all came the buzz of insect life, and the ceaseless roll of the broad Zambesi.

The soldier lay back on the cushions sipping his coffee, his eyes half shut, a pleasant feeling of indolence enervating his frame, as he gazed. “She is very lovely,” he muttered; “and here am I, a captain of a marching regiment, allowing myself to fall in love with the daughter of a Portuguese grandee, whom I shall probably never see again.”

“And this,” continued Wyzinski, who seemed to have monopolised the conversation, “is it not a beautiful skin? Do you remember, Hughes, shooting this wild cat in the tree the morning of that terrible day among the Amatongas?”

“Indeed,” replied the other, “I am little likely to forget it. I shall always think it was the excitement, and the prostration consequent on the hunt, which so nearly consigned me to an African grave.”

“Tell me the tale,” cried Isabel. “I long to hear your adventures among the tribes of the interior. It seems so strange for us to meet here on this great African river.”

The conversation was carried on in French; and the soldier told of their travels; told how the baboon had first been found; how it had lived in the camp, and how it had died. The chess-players were disturbed by the silvery peals of laughter which rang round them as Hughes related, with some humour, the incident of the powder-flask; and Dona Isabel’s dark eyes had been fixed for a long time on the speaker’s face ere the tale was finished, and the sun sank beneath the horizon, the stars peeping out, while the fire-flies came floating around, and the cool puffs of the sea breeze swept across the river.

“Sing for us, Isabel,” said Dom Francisco, as he checkmated his antagonist, at the same time rising and making him a stately bow.

Dona Isabel took her guitar, and the sweet tones of her voice rang out among the trellised vines and over the broad river, dying away on the plains beyond, where the howl of the jackal was just making itself heard.