The instant that the executioner turned his back upon the well, and busied himself with the fastening of the poor woman to the stake, Grenville gave the word, and the whole party as one man shot noiselessly out of the bush, and commenced a jog-trot across the open space which separated them from the scene of the execution. When all were within a hundred yards, the wretched fellow upon the hill turned him round and saw them; then uttering a wild shout, and hurriedly bending down, he seized a lighted brand and endeavoured, with trembling hands, to thrust it in amongst the faggots.
Dropping quickly upon one knee, Grenville raised his rifle, but still somewhat weak and shaken by the sharp run, for once he missed his man. Kenyon, however, quickly following, “wiped his eye,” knocking the rascal head-over-heels off the hill.
A great roar of surprise and wonder burst from the mob beyond the knoll, changed to a shriek of terror and consternation as the fierce Zulus sent their wild battle-cry echoing across the rolling veldt, and charged right up the hill, instantly surrounding the poor creature at the stoke, and killing the Mormon satellites who were clambering up to the spot.
And now ensued a stubborn fight, for Zero had left behind him many more men than our friends had counted upon, and these, having mostly left their rifles behind them in the town, charged madly up the little hill, and furiously engaged the rescue-party hand-to-hand, and for quite five minutes the cause of all this tumult was utterly forgotten, whilst the fight swung fiercely to and fro, and the issue hung in doubt. Our friends certainly had the advantage of position, whilst the slavers, on the other hand, still stood in the proportion of at least two to one; but the fiery valour of the active Zulus, nobly backed by the almost insensate fury of the injured “People of the Stick,” would brook no living check, and presently, led by Amaxosa, they went right through the slaver crowd, cutting them down on every hand, and driving all that were left of the wretched men pell-mell into the town, which both bands entered simultaneously.
Kenyon then bethought him of the prisoner, and, taking Grenville back, both men turned to ascend the hill, and relieve the poor girl from her painful and dangerous position. Still as a statue she stood, with her head drooping forward upon her breast, and for one moment the thought that some stray shot had struck her crossed painfully the minds of both; but when they had arrived within twenty yards of her position the girl heard them, and quickly raised her head, her beautiful face all wet with tears, and eloquent with voiceless prayers to heaven. Staggering back, as if struck by a shot, Grenville, to Kenyon’s utter astonishment, dropped his gun, and threw up his hands in a frenzy of terror.
“God in heaven!” he screamed, “Dora, sister Dora! or am I mad, indeed.”
Well might poor Grenville think his brain had turned. After all Zero’s wicked boasts of crime, and all his cousin’s bitter sorrow for his long-dead wife, how could he believe that there before him, in the flesh, beautiful as when first he saw her in East Utah, stood Dora, Lady Drelincourt, dressed in deep black, with a pure white cross upon her breast, and fastened to a martyr’s stake, in the darkest part of darkest Equatorial Africa?
“Dick!” she cried, “dear Dick Grenville, tell me, does my darling husband live, or have I lost him, too. Tell me, tell me! I beseech you, for the love of God.”
Pulling himself together, as the music of those well-known accents reached his ears, Grenville at once ran to the poor girl’s side, and quickly unbound the chain which fixed her to the cruel stake, speaking meanwhile soothing words of hope and joy, and peace on earth, whilst Kenyon, hearing that her boy was in the town, went off, like an arrow from the bow, to make certain of the safety of his friend and patron’s little son.
In every direction, as the detective entered the town, he found blazing houses, and dead and dying men, but the Atagbondo had behaved splendidly, and set a lesson to their evil white-skinned foes, in this respect, that on woman or on child they laid no hand, but every man they found died by the spear or by “the stick.” One ghastly sight, however, did Kenyon see, for absolutely pinned to a burning house by a Zulu assegai, which had passed right through her heart, hung the dead mistress of Zero, the slaver-chief, and the beholder know that the hand that killed her was the hand of justice—justice on a woman more evil in her ways than many a wicked man who had that day fallen in fair fight.