Chapter Thirteen.
Discomfiture
“Well, girlie, and what d’you think of our prospective guest now that you’ve had time to form an opinion?” said Ben Halse, a few days after their arrival at Ezulwini.
“Candidly,” answered Verna, “I think him one of the nicest and pleasantest men I ever met.”
“Or the nicest?”
“Perhaps that.”
“Well, that’s lucky, because it’ll be much jollier for you to have some one fresh to talk to for the next few weeks. Shall we get Harry Stride along too – on the principle of the more the merrier?”
“N-no; I don’t think in this case the more would be a bit the merrier, rather the reverse.”
“Same here. But I thought perhaps a young un about might be jollier for you while we old ’uns yarned,” answered her father, with a spice of lurking mischief.
“‘Old ’uns?’” echoed Verna, raising her eyebrows. “Why, you don’t call Mr Denham old?”
“Oh, that’s drawn you, has it?” cried Ben. “Quite right, dear. He isn’t old.”
Under her father’s straight gaze and quizzical laugh Verna could not for the life of her restrain a slight change of colour.
“I shall have to give you such a pinch, dear, if you talk like that,” she said. “One that’ll hurt.”
The two were standing among the rose-bushes in the garden of the Nodwengu Hotel. It was a lovely morning, though Alp-like masses of cloud in the distance gave promise of thunder. Ben Halse had been detained longer than he had reckoned on, but had found it unnecessary to go on to Durban. In a day or two he expected to return home. The time at Ezulwini went by pleasantly enough. The trader had several old friends in the place, and Verna was in request for tennis, here or there. So, too, was Denham, who had at once been made free of the ready friendliness of a small community.
“Talking of Denham,” went on Ben Halse, puffing at a newly lighted pipe that would only half draw, “it’s a rum thing, Verna, that just as you had been wondering what sort of chap he was he should have turned up here.”
“Yes, isn’t it? But I hope he won’t find it too rough with us,” she added somewhat anxiously.
“Not he. Didn’t he say he’d knocked about in South America? I expect it’s a sight rougher in parts there than here. He’s a man who takes things as they come, rely upon it. And he doesn’t put on an atom of ‘side.’”
Incidentally, “side” is the unpardonable sin among our colonial brethren, and rightly so.
“No, that he certainly doesn’t,” assented Verna decisively. “Oh, I dare say it’ll be all right.”
At the same time she was wondering as to this anxiety on behalf of this particular guest’s comfort. She had never done so on behalf of any other, had never dreamed of giving any such consideration a second thought. They must just take them as they found them, or, if not, stay away, was her rule.
“Why, here comes Harry Stride,” said Ben, looking up. “He seems a bit cross by the way he’s walking. You can nearly always tell a man’s mood by the way he walks. Hallo, Harry!”
The young prospector turned to join them, only too delighted. He was a handsome and manly-looking young fellow, as Verna was not slow to recognise as she noted his tall form coming down the garden path.
“Come from the club, Harry?” said the trader.
“Yes, I couldn’t stick it any longer. That man Denham’s there, laying down the law, as usual. I’m fed up with Denham. It seems that a man has only to come out from home with enough coin, and crowd on enough ‘side,’ and – ”
“But this one doesn’t crowd on ‘side,’” interrupted Verna quietly.
The other stared.
“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said. “I forgot he was a friend of yours. I ought to have remembered.”
“We most of us suffer from lapse of memory at times, Harry,” said Ben Halse kindly. “Often two people don’t take to each other, and that through no fault on either side. Now the sun’s over the yard-arm and I’m going in to wet the bosun’s whistle. You join?”
“No, thanks, Mr Halse. It’s rather too early for me.”
“Sure? Well, I’ll have to do it alone, then. So long.” And he strolled off, leaving the two young people together.
“What a splendid chap your father is, Verna,” began Stride, for on the strength of his former “refusal,” with which we heard him acquaint his partner, she conceded him the use of her Christian name – at any rate, in private. “So kind and tactful.”
Verna smiled. The encomium holding good of herself, she refrained from lecturing him on the subject of the vilified Denham. As a matter of fact, since Stride’s arrival she had been about with him far more than with the other, so that really there was no ground for the younger man’s jealous irritation – as yet. As yet? Exactly. But he, for his part, was looking ahead. Would she not be under the same roof for an indefinite time with the objectionable stranger? He knew by experience that it was impossible to be under the same roof for an indefinite time with Verna Halse and go forth again heart-whole. And this stranger seemed to be “coiny,” and, to give the devil his due, was a fine-looking fellow, poor Stride allowed, whereas he himself hardly had a “fiver” to his name, and lived mainly on the great god Hope. In fact, remembering this he was inclined to abandon the resolution we heard him express to his partner – trying his luck again. It was hopeless. He had better make up his mind to throw up the sponge. But Verna’s next words acted upon him like a spur.
“We start for home to-morrow,” she said.
“No!”
“Yes.” She could not help smiling a little at his crestfallen look. All the woman within her accepted the tribute, and at the same time felt pitiful towards him.
“Do you know why I came over here now, Verna?” he burst forth suddenly, impulsively. “It was because I heard you would be here, and I couldn’t help trying my luck again.”
His animated face and eager eyes held her. Yet her reply was unequivocal, though kind.
“Your luck is elsewhere, Harry,” she answered softly but firmly. “Try it. I don’t want to hurt you, but there is no other way out.”
He began to plead. He was at low ebb now, but luck might change. Beyond that he had expectations; nothing very great, but substantial. Would she not wait? And a great deal more he poured forth, there in the golden sunshine among the roses, and the bees humming from flower to flower, and the flitting butterflies. But Verna’s answer was the same steady shake of the head.
“It’s of no use, Harry,” she said. “I like you very much, as you know, but not in that way. People are drawn towards each other – in that way – or they are not. I mean, you were talking about luck changing, and so on, but if you were ever such a millionaire I’m afraid it would make no difference in that way. Now do you see?”
He said nothing. He looked at her with misery in his eyes. Never had she seemed so all-alluring as here under the burning midday sun, so cool and fresh and self-possessed. And it was hopeless.
“Well, I suppose I’m nothing but a born idiot,” he said, but not resentfully.
Verna laid a hand upon his arm.
“No, you’re not,” she said. “Only – your luck is elsewhere. You’ll find it some day sooner or later, and remember my words.”
Then she looked at him in astonishment, for a scowl had come over his face. Following his glance she saw the reason. Denham was walking along the path which led to the house. He must have seen them, but looked as if he had not, and passed on without any attempt to join them. Verna’s astonishment was dispelled, but she made no remark as to it or its cause. Tactfully she led Harry Stride on to other topics, and his jealous eyes noted that she made no excuse to return to the house, in fact, she drew him off down a little-used path under the trees; nor was it until an hour after that they returned, a little late for lunch, Verna declaring, publicly, that they had had a most delightful walk.
Yes, but for all that, she and Denham would be for weeks beneath the same roof, thought poor Stride. How lucky some men were, how unlucky others. This one apparently had not a care in the world, and now he was going to rob him, Stride, of all that made life worth living. How he hated him, sitting there beside Verna, chatting easily to her.
“What’s the matter with your appetite, Mr Stride?” remarked the hostess, noticing that he sent everything away almost untouched.
“Oh, I don’t know, Mrs Shelford. It’s too hot, I suppose. Or it may be that I tried a new concoction at the club that some fellow left them a recipe for. It’s supposed to be an appetiser, but I thought it vile. Heard any more about Shelford coming back, by the way?”
“I’m expecting him next week.”
“Sorry, because I shall miss seeing him. Am starting back to-morrow.”
The other smiled faintly to herself. She thought she knew what was wrong with Stride’s appetite.
“You’re making a short stay this time,” she said.
Harry mumbled something about “rough on Robson being left alone,” which caused the smile to deepen.
“How are the niggers out your way, Stride?” asked a man who had only arrived that morning.
“Getting bumptious. A boy of ours came at me with a pick-handle the other day because I threatened to hammer him. Only threatened, mind! hadn’t started in to do it. I did it then, though – had to, you know.”
“I should think so,” said the hostess emphatically. “They want all the hammering they can get.”
“Rather. Well, we cleared this dev – er – this chap out. When he got to a safe distance he turned round and sang out that it didn’t matter now, all the whites in the country were going to be made meat of directly, and he and some others would take particular care of us. I got out a rifle, but that didn’t scare him. He knew I daren’t fire.”
“Quite right. Mustn’t take the law into your own hands, Stride,” said Inspector James humorously. “Only, if you do, see that you abolish the corpus delicti.”
“Talking of corpus delicti,” said the man who had first spoken. “Is there anything in this rumour that a white man has been killed in the Makanya forest? I heard that something had been found that pointed to it, but not the remains of the chap himself.”
“You mustn’t swallow every yarn you hear,” said James.
“We’ve been killed at least three times this year already on those terms,” said Ben Halse.
“I suppose I shall be included in the fourth,” laughed Denham, alluding to his approaching visit.
Stride, however, had suddenly grown silent.
The Ezulwini Club was not large, as we have said; however, it would sometimes get lively at night, but not always. To-night it was lively, very; the circulation of whiskies-and-sodas brisk.
“Anything more been heard about that yarn from the Makanya?” began the man who had sprung the subject at the hotel table. Others asked, “What yarn?”
“You ought to know something of it, Hallam,” went on the first speaker, the point of the emphasis being that the man addressed was an official holding an important post.
“Why?” curtly.
“Because you’re in a position to.”
This was all the other wanted.
“Exactly,” he retorted. “But if I’m in a position to know, I’m in a position not to tell. See?”
There was a laugh, in which the offender, who at first looked resentful, joined.
“What’s the joke?” asked James, who at that moment entered.
“Joke? Oh, Slingsby’s putting up idiotic questions,” answered Hallam shortly. “Here, Mabule,” to the Bar-keeper, “set ’em up again – you know every one’s pet poison. What’s yours, Mr Denham? You’ll join?”
“Thanks. All right,” answered Denham, who had come to the conclusion that the hospitality of this club required a strong head, which, fortunately, he possessed. But Harry Stride, less fortunate, did not.
“I can tell you all about that yarn,” he broke in. “Slingsby’s not so wide of the mark either. Some one has come to grief in the Makanya, and a white man too, for I picked up a saddle in the Bobi drift, and it had a bullet hole through the flap, an unmistakable bullet hole.”
“You picked it up?” said some one, while Inspector James, who was “in the know,” muttered to himself, “Damned silly young ass!”
Then followed a considerable amount of questionings and discussion. When was this, and where, and how would it have happened, and what had he done with the saddle, and so forth? Hallam, it might have been noticed, stood out of the discussion altogether. Perhaps he was “in the know” also; at any rate, as an official, he was instinctively averse to making public property of this kind of thing. But Harry Stride had got outside of quite as many whiskies-and-sodas as were good for him, and the effect, coming on top of his then state of frothy mental tension, was disastrous. Now he said —
“You must have crossed just above the Bobi drift, Mr Denham. I hear you came through the Makanya that way.”
“Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if it was somewhere about there,” answered Denham easily. “But, you see, I didn’t know any of the names of drifts and so on. I just ‘drifted’ on.”
“Were you alone?” queried Stride, with a marked emphasis on the last word, and looking the other full in the face.
There could be no possible mistake as to the meaning. A scarcely perceptible start ran through those present. This was getting too thick altogether, was the general opinion.
“Very much so, except when I could get hold of some black chap for a guide,” answered Denham, easily again. “I suppose, though, in the light of your discovery I must consider myself jolly lucky to have come through with a whole skin.”
The ease and tactfulness of the answer saved the situation. The tension relaxed. Stride had been having a little too much whisky, was the consensus of opinion. But, by a strange instinct, one, or even two there present were not prepared to swear to themselves that there could be nothing in it.
Chapter Fourteen.
Forging the Blades
Malemba, the assegai-maker, sat plying his trade busily. Around him, interestedly watching the process, squatted several young Zulus.
Malemba was an old man, and grizzled. He wore the ring, as well he might, for his trade was a profitable one, and he had wives and cattle galore. He had made assegais for the fighting men of Dingana and Mpande and Cetywayo, and as a skilled craftsman his repute was great. In those days his remuneration had been rendered in cattle or other kind, now it was in hard English money, and nothing else would satisfy him.
Such blades he turned out, such splendid blades, keen as razors, the fluting in perfect symmetry – broad blades for close quarter, stabbing purposes; long, tapering ones, which would bring down a buck at forty yards if well thrown, or an enemy at the same distance. Why, Dingana had commanded them more than once, indeed when a more powerful but less skilful rival had sought his destruction that king had ordered the death of that rival instead. Cetywayo had even more keenly appreciated his skilful craftsmanship, so that Malemba might safely have put up a notice over his primitive forge: “Assegai-forger to the Royal Family.”
His son, Umjozo, did the stick-making; and the binding of the blades, and the plaiting of the raw hide which should secure these within their hafts to last for all time, was a work of art in itself. By and by Birmingham-forged blades were imported, surreptitiously, by the traders; but the assegai turned out by old Malemba and his son never fell in reputation. It was to the imported article as the production of a crack firm of gun-makers would be to the cheap gun purchasable at six or seven pounds in an ironmonger’s shop. And yet it was forged mostly out of old scrap iron – cask-hoops, nuts, bolts, anything thrown away by the roadside, but carefully collected.
For years Malemba’s trade had been in abeyance, if not practically extinct. There had been occasional rumours which threatened to call it forth again, but nothing had come of them. Well, it didn’t matter. He was a rich man, in short, a successful manufacturer who had made his pile and could afford to retire. And yet – and yet – the hard English money flowed into the country, and it represented everything that should render a man’s declining years comfortable and pleasant; and further, Malemba loved his craft, and took an artist’s pride in it; wherefore even his prosperity left something further to wish for.
Then sporadic rumours began to creep about, and the atmosphere became charged. In the midst of which Malemba was sent for by a powerful chief, and offered such tempting inducements that he decided to open his forge again. And that chief was Sapazani.
For Sapazani had wielded weapons of Malemba’s manufacture with his own hand, had wielded them to considerable purpose, too. He desired nothing so much as to wield them again.
Sapazani, the ultra-conservative, had no use for assegais fabricated across the seas. He knew the balance and the temper of the home-made article to a nicety, especially that made by Mklemba. Wherefore he sent his invitation to the latter, and lo! under the noses of the civil officials and the half-dozen police who represented or carried out law and order in the district, Malemba’s forge was set up, and turned out its score of assegais per diem. But the Lumisana district was a very wide, wild and, in parts, inaccessible tract, and in one of its most remote and inaccessible ranges was Malemba’s forge set up.
“Ah, my sons,” said the old man, as he paused in his work to take snuff, while his assistants were arranging their primitive bellows. “Ah, my sons, I fear me that what I do is useless. What are these poor weapons beside the thunder and lightning wherewith the Amangisi and the Amabuna poured death upon each other from distances further than a man can see? How then will ye get near enough to use these?”
“But, my father,” answered one of the spectators, “what if the izanusi put múti upon us which render the white man’s bullets of no avail?”
The old man chuckled, and his face crinkled up.
“Will the izanusi doctor themselves and then stand up and let themselves be shot at?” he answered. “Will they do this? Ou!”
This was a puzzler. His hearers were pretty sure they would do no such thing, yet so ingrained is this stale and flimsy superstition, that notwithstanding the numbers of times its utter fallacy had been proved, there is no getting it out of the native system.
“I made blades for that Elephant who fell by ‘the stroke of Sopuza,’ when your fathers were children,” went on the old man, “Dingana, who scourged the Amabuna as a whip-lash scourges an ox, until he had to take flight when our nation was divided. But then the guns of the Amabuna shot but feebly and there was opportunity to run in and make an end. But now, when the white man’s bullets fall thick as the stones in the fiercest hail storm, what chance have ye with these?” pointing to a row of blades which awaited the binding. Whereby it will be seen that Malemba was progressive.
Even this argument did not impress the group. They were inclined to make very light of it.
“We will not allow them time to fire their bullets at all, my father,” laughed another of them. “We shall eat them up while they sleep.”
“But will they sleep?” said the old man, his head on one side.
“Will they not? They are asleep even now,” came the answer. “We need not even wait until night. They are scattered. We can take them at any time – when ‘the word’ is given.”
“When ‘the word’ is given! Ah! ah! When the word is given.” And the old man chuckled darkly.
“What means our father?”
“What I mean? What if ‘the word’ is given too late? Or worse still – too soon? Ou!”
“That will not be, my father. The chain is now forged, even as these blades. And the whites are scattered – scattered. They lie in our hands.”
“Let them not lie there too long, or perchance they may spring out,” returned Malemba quizzically. “Well, I have nought to do with it, I who am old. I can but make you the weapons, it is for yourselves to wield them. And most of you have never learned the art. You were born too late.”
A laugh went up at this. The old assegai-maker was looked upon with the greatest veneration. His wisdom was recognised and appreciated. But to these young bloods, fed up of late on conspiracy, and yearning to prove themselves worthy of their warrior ancestors, mere wisdom was at a slump just then.
“I can but make you assegais,” repeated the old man. “I am too old to wield them.”
And he resumed his work, crooning, to the strokes of the hammer, a snatch from an old war-song —
“Nantsi ’ndaba —
Indaba yemkonto!
Ji-jji! Ji-jji!”
(“That is the talk. The talk of the assegais.” “Ji-jji” is the stabbing hiss.)
“These whites, they are not so powerful as we are told,” said one of the group. “I have been among them – have worked for them, where they dig the gold, the gold that is turned into round money that makes them rich – and us. Whau! They will do anything for money! Ha!”
An evil laugh went round among his listeners.
“Their women,” echoed another. “When ‘the word’ goes forth we shall take their women, when the rest are dead. It will make a pleasant change.”
But the old assegai-maker went on crooning his old and appropriate war-song —
“Nantsi ’ndaba —
Indaba yemkonto.”
“That is not much change, except for the worse,” said another. “Their women. A set of hut poles!” Whereat a great laugh went up from the gathering. “Sons of my father, I would not pay half a calf in lobola for one white woman I have ever seen.”
“Half a calf! Au! What of Izibu?” This, it will be remembered, was Verna Halse’s name.
“Izibu?” returned the first speaker. “She is for one greater than we.”
A gurgle of bass laughter ran through the group.
“There are others at Ezulwini,” went on the one who had worked at the Rand. “Also at Malimati and Nongoma. It will be great to obtain wives we have paid no lobola for. White wives! Ha! That will be a change indeed.”
“You have got to get them first, my sons,” said the old assegai-maker. “I remember in the days of Dingana, when I was young, wives were plentiful even without paying lobola. That king had an open hand, and after an impi had returned from raiding the Amaswazi, or the Basutu, he would distribute the captive women with a free hand. Whau! I not only made assegais in those days, I wielded them.”
“Baba!” (Father.)
“Ye-bo! Twice did Dingana send me a wife, for he said that a man who could make assegais like mine deserved a share of what those assegais could procure. But that is now all a thing of bygone years. It is dead, dead and buried. We are the white man’s dogs to-day, and always shall be.”
“And always shall be, Hau!” echoed his listeners. “And always shall be. My father, I think not.”
“I am old, my sons, and I shall end my life peacefully,” answered the assegai-maker – “shall end my life as the white man’s dog. There are those among you who will end your lives in blood.”
“Ha! And what then?” cried the man who had worked at the Rand. “We fight for our father and chief, and for – ” and here he suddenly stopped. He would name no names, but all knew what was in his mind, and the same thought was in theirs. “I would I had lived in the time when we were a nation indeed, when our assegais bit deep and drank blood. My father lost his life in blood at Nodwengu, but he had washed his spear in the blood of the whites twice before that. And I, his son, I have to turn out and work at mending the white man’s roads. Hau!”
“You will get all your chances of a death in blood – a glorious death in blood – presently, my sons,” said the old assegai-maker, his face puckered up quizzically. “The whites will take care of that.”
“Au! I like not this talk,” growled one of the group, a much older man. “It is as if our father were putting bad múti upon the weapons he is making.”
“No múti, good or bad, put I on them, Sekun-ya,” returned the old man tranquilly. “The múti is for those who use them.”
There was a laugh at this, and then the group fell to talking, and their topic was the former one – the capture of the white women in the coming rising. It was not a pleasant conversation. The man who had worked at the Rand was giving voluble impressions and even experiences of the great gold town, and his hearers listened delightedly. Such experiences, however, were not calculated to deepen their respect for the white man, or for his womenkind. The while the old assegai-maker worked on. At last he deposited the last blade to cool.
“There, my sons. You will have as many as you can carry – when darkness falls,” he said. “Sapazani has an open hand, yet I would like to have what comes out of it before these are used, for thereafter nothing may there be to have. Say that unto the chief.”
This they promised to do, amid much merriment. But the old sceptic did not controvert them; he merely reiterated —
“Say it.”
Suddenly a change came over the attitude of the group. They were suddenly silent, and sat tense and listening.
“O’ Nongqai!” exclaimed more than one simultaneously.
For to their keen ears was borne the far-away sound of horse-hoofs, and it was that of several horses. The inference was clear. A police patrol.
The assegai-maker’s kraal was situated in a hollow on a densely bushed and rugged hillside. Even the smoke of his fire would hardly show above the tree-tops, yet it was just possible that the secret of its existence and of its whereabouts might have leaked out. But such a contingency had been provided against, and Malemba would have had ample time to conceal all traces of his craft by the time horses could make their way up that rugged hillside. Quickly the group had melted away and were speeding for a point whence they could overlook the country beneath.
Three horsemen were advancing along the rough track down on the level, over two miles distant. The ordinary civilised gaze would have required glasses to make out their identity, but to the telescopic eyes of these savages that was plain enough. So plain that they could even distinguish the sergeant from the two troopers.
One man was dispatched to warn Malemba, and the rest crouched there, and watched – watched with some anxiety. Were they coming up the hill? No, they held straight on, heading away in the direction of Ben Halse’s store. And the watchers laughed and chuckled among themselves.
“O’ Nongqai! Three out of five here. Four there; ten elsewhere. Whau! We shall eat them up easily.”
Nevertheless they continued to watch, even after the patrol was out of sight.