The Settler and the Savage

by R. M. Ballantyne

The white man gratefully acknowledged the kind offer, and, asking the name of the friendly chief, was informed that it was Hintza. Just then a court fool or jester stepped forward, and cried aloud his announcements of the events of the day, mixed with highly complimentary praises of his master. Stephen did not understand all he said, but he gathered thus much,—that the warriors had been out to battle and had returned victorious; that Hintza was the greatest man and most courageous warrior who had ever appeared among the Kafirs, to gladden their hearts and enrich their bands; and that there was great work yet for the warriors to do in the way of driving certain barbarians into the sea—to which desirable deed the heroic, the valiant, the wise, the unapproachable Hintza would lead them.

Orpin feared that he understood the meaning of the last words too well, but, being aware that Hintza was regarded by the colonists as one of the friendliest of the Kafir chiefs, he hoped that he might be mistaken.

Hintza was as good as his word, and set out next day with a band of warriors, giving the white man a good horse that he might ride beside him. On the way they came on a sight which filled Orpin with sadness and anxiety. It was the ruins of a village, which from the appearance of the remains had evidently been occupied in part by white men. He observed that a gleam of satisfaction lit up Hintza’s swarthy visage for a moment as he passed the place.

Dismounting, the party proceeded to examine the ruins, but found nothing. The Kafirs were very taciturn, but the chief said, on being pressed, that he believed it had been a mission station which wicked men of other tribes had burned.

On the outbreak of this war some of the missionaries remained by their people, others were compelled to leave them.

The station just passed had been deserted. At the one to which Hintza was now leading Orpin the missionaries had remained at their post. There he found them still holding out, but in deep dejection, for nearly all their people had forsaken them, and gone to the war. Even while he was talking with them, crowds of the bloodstained savages were returning from the colony, laden with the spoils of the white man, and driving thousands of his sheep and cattle before them. In these circumstances, Stephen resolved to make the best of his way back to Salem. On telling this to Hintza, that chief from some cause that he could not understand, again offered to escort him. He would not accompany him personally, he said, but he would send with him a band of his warriors, and he trusted that on his arrival in the colony he would tell to the great white chief (the Governor) that he, Hintza, did not aid the other Kafir tribes in this war.

Stephen’s eyes were opened by the last speech, and from that moment he suspected Hintza of treachery.

He had no choice, however, but to accept the escort. On the very day after they had started, they came to a spot where a terrible fight had obviously taken place. The ground was strewn with the mangled corpses of a party of white men, while the remains of waggons and other signs showed that they had formed one of the bands of Dutch emigrants which had already begun to quit the colony. The savages made ineffectual attempts to conceal their delight at what they saw, and Orpin now felt that he was in the power of enemies who merely spared his life in the hope that he might afterwards be useful to them.

The band which escorted him consisted of several hundred warriors, a few of whom were mounted on splendid horses stolen from the settlers. He himself was also mounted on a good steed, but felt that it would be madness to attempt to fly from them. On the second day they were joined—whether by arrangement or not Orpin had no means of judging—by a band of over a thousand warriors belonging to a different tribe from his escort. As the trader rode along in a dejected state of mind, one of the advance-guard or scouts came back with excited looks, saying that a large band of Dutch farmers was encamped down in a hollow just beyond the rise in front of them. The chief of the Kafirs ordered the scout sternly to be silent, at the same time glancing at Orpin. Then he whispered to two men, who quietly took their assagais and stationed themselves one on either side of their white prisoner—for such he really was.

Orpin now felt certain that the group of principal men who drew together a little apart were concerting the best mode of attacking the emigrant farmers, and his heart burned within him as he thought of them resting there in fancied security, while these black scoundrels were plotting their destruction. But what could he do—alone and totally unarmed? He thought of making a dash and giving the alarm, but the watchful savages at his side seemed to divine his intentions, for they grasped their assagais with significant action.