Three
The Wizard’s Rock derives its name from the circumstance that in the old days—before the advent of civilised government—it was the place of execution of those hapless creatures who were condemned for the supposed practice of witchcraft.
Before the rule of the European in South Africa there was, among the natives, a strong recrudescence from time to time of the lamentable belief that the land was full of malevolent wizards and witches, who spent most of their time in weaving deadly spells against man and beast. The consequences were terrible; men and women were put to death upon the flimsiest suspicion; torture of the most horrible kind was freely resorted to, and the wildest confession wrung from the agonised lips of some was taken as absolute confirmation of the most preposterous apprehensions.
Not more than thirty years ago many a dolorous procession wended its way up to this jutting peak, from the base of which, hundreds of feet below, a slope, covered with noble forest, fell away to a deep and rapid river. The doomed wretch would be blindfolded and placed, standing, at the edge of the precipice. Then the executioner would deal him a smashing blow on the side of the head with a heavily knobbed stick, and thus hurl him into the abyss.
Among the broken rocks below, the curious may, even at this late day, find fragments of human bones. The place has an evil reputation; no native boy cares to go near it; no bribe would induce one to visit it alone. Now and then a few of the bolder spirits, finding themselves in the forest, make an excursion to the foot of the great rock, but they steal along breathlessly from tree to tree and from stone to stone, taking cover at each and listening fearfully lest the restless “imishologu”—the spirits of the wicked ones who have died violently—should be unseasonably awake. Then the fall of a dead bough, the rush of a troop of monkeys through the branches, the slightest unfamiliar echo from the beetling crag, will send them flying toward the open in speechless terror, with ashen-grey faces and staring eyes. Afterward they will boast loudly to their friends of the bravery evinced in the visit, omitting, of course, all reference to the invariable panic.
The day following the assembling of the lepers at the Magistracy died splendidly. To seaward the milk-white thunderclouds which marked the track of the monsoon towered into the deep azure, and when the sun began to sink behind the great mountain range to westward, every stately vapour-turret took on a changing glory, while in the inky vaults between incessant lightnings played.
Since early in the afternoon the poor lepers had been laboriously ascending the mountain by the different footpaths. Many were hardly able to hobble, but these were assisted by others whose legs were not so badly affected. Mangèlè bore upon his broad back an old man whose feet had completely crumbled away. Leaving this poor creature at the summit, he returned and helped the weaker among the others to ascend. The sun was still some little distance above the horizon when the last of the self-doomed band sank panting at the edge of the cliff. Of the four-and-twenty who had come to the Residency to interview the Magistrate, twenty had assembled at the Rock. The others, three women and a man, had felt their courage fail them, so had decided to accept their less violent, though dreaded, fate and go to Emjanyana.
’Mpofu, the oldest of the men, dragged his shapeless frame to a stone, against which he leant, supporting himself by his stick at the same time. He trembled violently and made several attempts before he succeeded in speaking. Then his voice came in a husky quaver. The others turned toward him with an air of expectancy.
“It is,” he said, “a long time since I last stood on this spot. I was then hardly a man; Hintza was Chief. We came here to look upon the killing of Gungubèlè, who was ‘smelt out’ for having bewitched his elder brother. I leant my head over the edge of the rock and listened for the thud of his body as it struck the stones, far down. I thought the wind had borne it away, but at length it struck me like a club. Many seasons have since passed, but that sound has ever since been in my ears. And now—when my body falls—”