The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories

by W. C. Scully

Sikulumè soon ascertained that Madilenda was at the kraal of Galonkulu, and on the second day of her sojourn there he followed with the intention of persuading her to return to her home. She confronted him with blazing eyes and heaving breast, and bade him begone and never again approach her. Galonkulu and all the others at his kraal were fully persuaded of the guilt of Mamagobatyana, and they strongly suspected Sikulumè of complicity. He, conscious of his innocence, was thunderstruck at the accusation, the foulest that can be made against a native, and at once withdrew, filled with indignation.

Madilenda and little Tobè were given a hut to live in, and were provided with milk and corn. The poor little child only lived for a week after his removal. One morning, after a night of terrible coughing, he lay very still in his mother’s arms. Fearing to disturb him she sat still until she became quite stiff. By and by he grew cold, and when she moved her hand to reach for a blanket to cover him with, his head fell back loosely. He had been dead for a long time whilst she thought he was sleeping.

They dug a grave close to the kraal; a pit was first sunk to a depth of about five feet, and then in the side a little chamber was excavated. In this the emaciated little body, which had grown so long, was laid facing the north. It was wrapped in white calico obtained from the trader, and beneath it was a mat. The opening of the side-chamber was then walled up, and the grave filled in. The desolate mother would sit for hours on a stone next to the grave-cairn, and weep bitter tears.

The unhappy woman brooded day and night over her sorrow, and, as the time for her confinement approached, she was filled with a fresh dread. She had persuaded herself that Mamagobatyana and her husband had bewitched her unborn child, and that it would die like little Tobè. This delusion preyed upon her mind to such an extent that she became almost insane. The people of the kraal feared and avoided her. They still supplied her with food and left her in possession of the hut, but otherwise neglected her completely. She took to lonely wanderings and often talked to herself. Sikulumè, wroth at the undeserved aspersion cast upon him and his “great wife,” did not again come near her, and thus she ate her own heart out in grief, terror, and loneliness.

It was now September, and the spring rains set in with a cold deluge. The Kenira river roared in flood through the rocky gorge below the northern face of the Umgano Mountain.

One morning, the second after the rain had ceased, Madilenda wandered down the valley she dwelt in, to where it joins the river, and then lay down to rest in a sunny nook just below a rocky bluff. The deep-thrilling murmur of the brown flood as it churned along in its winding course soothed her, the warm sunshine brought a sensation of physical comfort which to her weary and debilitated body had long been unknown, and she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. When she awoke it was late in the afternoon. She tried to rise, but found she was unable to do so. A succession of sharp pains racked her. Her time had come.

One advantage which women of the uncivilised races possess over their European sisters is this, that for them the curse of Eve is lightened to such an extent as to be hardly a curse at all. That ordeal which the artificial life of our race through so many generations has made pathological, is, with the majority of native women, a process so easy that in normal instances little suffering and hardly any danger is entailed. But in Madilenda’s case mental agony and bodily fatigue during the terrible months she had just lived through had lowered her vitality to such an extent that she completely collapsed. The sun went down on her ineffectual pangs; throughout the long, cold, winter’s night the stars swept over her anguish.

The sun arose and thawed the thick hoarfrost that had crusted over the shrubs and the grass, and still she lay moaning between frequent swoons. A troop of wild baboons came searching along the mountain-side, turning over the stones in their pursuit of lizards and scorpions; the leader looked at Madilenda where she lay, and darted aside with a startled cough. A jackal slinking home to his burrow after a night of depredation, crept close up to her, looked long and carefully, and then hid amongst the stones near by, awaiting further developments. A wandering vulture made a loop in its course and then swept upwards in a widening circle. Soon afterwards, other vultures, that had read the signal aright, came flocking up from all directions in increasing numbers.

Late in the afternoon exhausted nature made a final effort, and the child was born. The mother fainted immediately and then lay long unconscious. When she again came to herself she turned with painful difficulty and drew the child to her. It was cold and dead.

So the curse had fallen here as well, as she had expected. A wild indignation surged up in Madilenda and conquered the weakness of death that was stealing over her. The sky seemed to have turned black, and the swirling river blood-red.