Chapter Seventeen.
“Quod Dixi Dixi.”
As soon as opportunity offered, Grenville closely questioned the Chieftain of the Stick as to the manner in which his party, commanded by Leigh, had been expelled from the cavern, where all had thought them so securely entrenched, and now it was that our friends received another striking proof of Zero’s intense cunning, and of the absolutely perfect knowledge which the man possessed regarding the mountain fastnesses in the immediate neighbourhood of his quarters.
Foolishly enough, the little band had failed to notice the singular fact that the air in the cave was at all times fresh and crisp, instead of being extremely heavy and “muggy,” as is ordinarily the case in long, unventilated caverns; and it was only now that they realised the truth, which was that Muzi Zimba’s home was situated in the very heart of an immense volcano, which had been extinct for ages, but whose final convulsions had probably torn the range in two, and formed the kloof, or pass, of the Dark Spirit of Evil.
This fact, however, was perfectly well-known to their astute and unscrupulous foe, and, appreciating his knowledge at its right strategic value, and sending on by night a large party provided with an immense rope-ladder, Zero had occupied the adjacent heights above and in the rear of Leigh’s position, and had actually dropped three hundred men down through the very crater of the extinct volcano; and the first intimation which the defenders of the cave had received of the presence of this large force in their immediate rear, came to them in the objectionable form of a well-aimed volley poured into their very backs at point-blank range, just at the moment of the delivery, by Zero with his main army, of a furious attack upon their defences in the mouth of the cave.
To turn their attention to the force ambushed in their rear would, of course, have been to let the slaver-chief in upon them, when the cavern would have literally become a shambles, and every man of the party would have died a dog’s death, for the ambushed foe was securely entrenched between the position of our friends and the entrance of the mountain burrow leading to the old well.
Choosing the least of two evils, Leigh drew his men together, and then launched them like a thunderbolt down the hill and into the very heart of Zero’s force, which they drove before them like chaff before the wind. Then, getting right through the ranks of the slavers, our friends, to the utter bewilderment of the foe, ignored altogether the cover of the forest, and commenced to fall back steadily upon Equatoria, in order, of course, to effect a junction with Grenville and Kenyon, whom Zero, perhaps naturally, imagined to be lying dead in the cavern along with poor Ewan and upwards of a score of the Atagbondo, who had fallen victims to the first treacherous and fatal discharge of the ambushed foe.
In the running fight which had ensued, the loss on the side of our friends had not been worth speaking of, whilst Leigh, with his repeater charged with explosive bullets, had dropped an enemy on every hundred yards of ground from the mountain to the skull-shaped knoll. But when the slavers once sighted the mighty volumes of smoke ascending from their burning town, they naturally scented something extremely wrong, and Zero’s active mind instantly jumped to the likeliest solution of the mystery, and told him that Grenville and the great Zulu, both of whom he hated beyond expression, were revenging themselves upon his force at home, and stamping out his town.
This caused the slaver to throw the whole of his available force, at any cost, upon the desperate little band, and drive them in upon the town pell-mell, with fearful loss upon both sides, for the Atagbondo had contested every inch of ground, with a stubborn valour little short of incredible when it is borne in mind that to rifle, spear, and axe, they could only oppose their rough-hewn wooden clubs.
Of the Zanzibari carriers nothing had been seen since the very commencement of the fight, for they had been placed for safety in the hindmost cavern of all, as being worse than useless to the fighting brigade; but whether the cowards were still in hiding there, or whether the ambushed slavers had found and massacred the wretched men forthwith, was, of course, as yet unknown, though, as the slavers in the cavern had followed our friends out when they fled the spot, it was more than probable that the fellows were still where their masters had left them.