Part 88 (1/2)
”Now then, _Umfundisi_,” impatiently exclaimed one of the Kafirs, dragging him by the shoulder. Swaysland walked dejectedly away, glad of the Kafir's escort to protect him from the ill-treatment of the women and children; and Claverton, leaning back, wondered, dreamily, what the deuce would be his own fate. So the hours dragged their slow length; and it was with but scant hope that the captives awaited the arrival of the Gaika chief.
VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
THE ”WORD” OF THE GREAT CHIEF.
Tired of gazing at the prisoner, and realising, moreover, that there was not much fun to be got out of one who took matters so coolly, the women and children ceased to crowd round him, and he was left very much, to himself. It was broiling hot, and every now and then upon the sultry hushened air came the discharge of firearms in the far distance.
Evidently the rival forces were making targets of each other; but it was probably only a slight skirmish with some patrol, and Claverton did not allow himself to hope anything from the circ.u.mstance. The Kafirs, too, seemed in no way to trouble themselves about it.
”Time pa.s.ses slowly, doesn't it, Lenzimbi?” said Mopela, mockingly. ”It pa.s.sed quicker sitting by the pool at midnight, you and the tall dark lily at Seringa Vale. How well you looked together! Why didn't you bring her here with you, eh? It would have been much more comfortable for you, and for us, ha, ha!”
At that moment Claverton would have bartered his life to be free to spring upon the jibing savage and tear him in pieces with his bare hands. But it is safe to worry a chained mastiff, if only the chain is strong enough.
”Ha! ha! What will the dark lily say when you do not return to her?”
went on Mopela. ”When she hears how you were cut in pieces like a sheep, or roasted. Once we killed a man by putting red-hot stones upon him. At last they slid off, but we held them on again with sticks. He was two days dying. That was for witchcraft. Another was smeared over with honey, and a nest of black ants was broken over him. They stung him, they got into his ears, and nose, and eyes, and stung him everywhere. He died raving mad. Another was skinned alive, and then his skin was sewn round him again. Another was hung by the heels over a slow fire, and his eyes were put out with red-hot fire-sticks. Which of these things would you rather have happen to you, Lenzimbi?” concluded the Kafir with a hideous laugh.
”Nothing of the kind will happen to me,” was the imperturbable reply.
A low boom of thunder smote upon the air--long, very distant, but distinctly audible. On the farthest horizon a little cloud was just visible. The slightest suspicion of a superst.i.tious misgiving was in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the bystanders. How could this man preserve such perfect imperturbability unless he were sure of some miraculous deliverance?
”Will it not?” jeered Mopela. ”What will happen then?”
”Wait and see. If you have been telling me those interesting stories to try and frighten me--well, then, Mopela, you're a bigger fool than even I took you for, and have been taking a vast deal of trouble about nothing. But now, if it's all the same to you, I think I'll go to sleep.”
They stared at him. Here was a marvellous thing. These white men, too, were so afraid of pain; and this one, whom in a few hours they intended to burn alive, announced his intention of going to sleep. But they offered no objection. He was in their eyes a natural curiosity, and to be studied as such.
And he actually did sleep, and slept soundly, too, so that two hours later when the whole kraal was astir and in a commotion, he awoke quite refreshed. The arbiters of his fate had arrived.
The chief, Sandili, a refugee with the remnant of his tribe in the fastnesses of the Amatola forest, was a very different personage to the sleek, well-fed, benevolent-looking old ”sponge” who had asked for sixpences when sitting against the wall of the Kaffrarian trading-store.
To begin with, he was sober, a state he could rarely plead guilty to during the piping times of peace. But there were no canteens in these rugged strongholds, and the very limited supply of liquor that could be smuggled in was but as a drop in the bucket to this habitual old toper.
His temper, too, was peevish and uncertain, whether owing to the supplies of grog being cut off, or the reverses sustained by his arms, was open to debate. So when this prisoner stood before him as he sat in front of his hut surrounded by his _amapakati_ [councillors] and attendants, the old chief's countenance wore none of its former friendliness and geniality.
One swift glance at the rows of dark, impa.s.sive faces, whose eyes were fixed upon him, keenly noting every point of his demeanour, and Claverton saluted the chief--easily, naturally, and as between equals.
A murmur ran through the group in acknowledgment, and every eye was bent upon the prisoner. For some moments they regarded each other in silence, and then Sandili spoke.
”Who are you, white man, and what are you doing here?”
”Who am I? The chief will recollect that we have met before. Does he not remember Thompson's store and the man who talked with him there?
That was myself.”
Again a hum of a.s.sent ran through the group, and the chief sat gazing at his prisoner as if in deep thought. And what an unaccountable turn of fate it seemed to Claverton! The last time he had talked with this man he had felt for him a good-humoured, contemptuous kind of pity as he gave him the trifling gifts which the other had asked for; and Lilian's sweet eyes had looked upon the old savage with a delicious air of half-frightened interest, much as she might have regarded a tame old lion, and then they had ridden so light-heartedly away, without much thought of the evil to come. How vividly that day came back to him now--now, as he once more stood before the old chief, whose lightest word was sufficient to decide his fate! Verily, the turns in the wheel of Fortune are capricious.
Seeing that no one was in a hurry to break the silence, Claverton continued:
”As to what I am doing here, I was brought here, very much against my will, I admit. Our friends here drove me over a cliff higher than that one yonder,” pointing to one that overhung the hollow; ”but I stopped half-way down and got inside. Then I walked down through the heart of the earth, and came out at the foot of the cliff, where your people found me.”
”What childishness is this?” said the chief, sternly. ”Are we children and fools that you tell us such tales, white man?”