THE SHADOW OF THE MYSTERY.

The next few days were spent by the Ba-gcatya in dancing and ceremonial and by Laurence Stanninghame in trying to find out all he could about the Ba-gcatya. He laid himself out to make friends with them, and this was easy, for the natural suspiciousness wherewith the savage invariably regards a new acquaintance, once fairly laid to rest, the Ba-gcatya proved as chatty and genial a race of people as those of the original Zulu stock. But on one point the lips of old and young alike were sealed, and that was the fate of Lutali. No word would they ever by any chance let fall as to this; but the awed silence wherewith they would treat all mention of it, and their hurried efforts to change the subject, added not a little to the impression the last glimpse of his Arab confederate had made upon Laurence. What awesome, devilish mystery did not those hideous beings represent?

For the rest, he learned that these people were of Zulu stock, and having opposed the accession of Tshaka, when that potentate usurped the royal seat of Dingiswayo, had deemed it advisable to flee. They had migrated northward, even as Umzilikazi and his followers had done, though some years prior to the flight of that chieftain. But they were nothing if not conservative, and so intent was the king on preserving the pure Zulu blood, that he was chary of allowing any slaves among them. As it was, the issue of all slaves had no rights, and could under no circumstances whatever rise above the condition of slavery. And Laurence, noting the grand physique, and even the handsome appearance, of the sons and daughters of this splendid race, had no doubt as to the wisdom of such a restriction.

Now, as the days went by, there began to grow upon Laurence a sort of restfulness. The terrible conflict and merciless massacre of his friends and followers had impressed him but momentarily, accustomed as he was to scenes of horror and of blood and indeed in direct contrast to such did he the more readily welcome the peaceful tranquillity of his present life. For the dreaded Ba-gcatya at home were a quiet and pastoral race owning extensive herds of cattle also goats and a strange kind of large-tailed sheep though, true to their origin, horned cattle formed the staple of their possessions, and the land around the king’s great palace was dappled with grazing stock, and the air was musical with the singing of women hoeing the millet and maize gardens.

Then again, the surrounding country swarmed with game, large and small, from the colossal elephant to the tiny dinkerbuck. To Laurence, passionately fond of sport, this alone was sufficient to reconcile him to his strange captivity for a time. He would be the life and soul of the Ba-gcatya hunting parties, and skill and success, together with his untiring energy and philosophical acceptance of the hardships and vicissitudes of the chase, went straight to the hearts of these fine, fearless barbarians. He became quite a favourite with the nation.

The female side of the latter, too, looked upon him with kindly eyes. He would chaff the girls, when he came upon them wandering in bevies, as was their wont, and tell them strange stories of other conditions of life, until they fairly screamed with laughter, or brought their hands to their mouths in mute wonder.

“Whau, Nyonyoba, why do you not lobola for some of these?” said Silawayo one day, coming upon him thus engaged. “Then you could dwell among us as one of ourselves.”

“One might do worse, induna of the king,” he returned tranquilly, with a glance at the group of bright-faced, merry, and extremely well-shaped damsels, whom he had been convulsing with laughter.

“Yau! Listen to our father,” they cried. “He is joking, indeed. Yau! Farewell, Nyonyoba. Fare thee well.” And they sped away, still screaming with laughter.

The old induna looked quizzically after them, then at Laurence. Then he took snuff.

“One might do worse, Silawayo,” repeated Laurence. “I have known worse times than those I have already undergone here. But all I possess I have lost. My slaves your people have killed, and my ivory and goods the king has taken, leaving me nothing but my arms and ammunition. Tell me, then, do the Ba-gcatya give their daughters for nothing, or how shall a man who is so poor think to set up a kraal of his own?”

The induna laughed dryly.

“We are all poor that way, for all we own belongs to the king. Yet the Great Great One is open handed. He might return some of your goods, Nyonyoba.”

This, by the way, was Laurence’s sobriquet among these people, bestowed upon him by reason of his skill and craft in stalking wild game.

It was even as he had said. This raid had gone far towards undoing the results of their lawless and perilous enterprise a portion of his gains were safe, but this last blow was of crippling force. And only a day or so prior to it he had been revelling in the prospect of a speedy return to civilized life, to the enjoyment of wealth for the remainder of his allotted span. He recalled the misgivings uttered by Holmes, that wealth thus gained would bring them no good, for the curse of blood that lay upon it. Poor Holmes! The prophecy seemed to have come true as regarded the prophet but for himself? well, the loss reconciled him still more to his life among the Ba-gcatya.

Of Tyisandhlu he had seen but little. Now and then the king would send for him and talk for a time upon things in general, and all the while Laurence would feel that the shrewd, keen eyes of this barbarian ruler were reading him like a book. Tyisandhlu, moreover, had expressed a wish that a body of picked men should be armed with the rifles taken from the slavers, and instructed in their use; and to this Laurence had readily consented.

“Yet consider, Ndabezita," he had said, “is it well to teach them reliance on any weapon rather than the broad spear? For had your army possessed fire-weapons, never would it have eaten up our camp out yonder. It would have spent all its time and energy shooting, and that to little purpose. It would have had time to think, and then the warriors would have brought but half a heart to the last fierce charge.”

“There is much in what you say, Nyonyoba,” replied the king; “yet, I would try the experiment.”

So the indunas were required to select the men, and about three hundred were organized, and Laurence, having spent much care in their instruction, soon turned out a very fair corps of sharp-shooters. No scruple had he in thus increasing the fighting strength of this already fierce and formidable fighting race, to which he had taken a great liking. He even began to contemplate the contingency of ending his life among them, for of any return to civilization there seemed not the remotest prospect; and, indeed, rather than return without the wealth for which he had risked so much, he preferred not to return at all.

Even the memory of Lilith brought with it pain rather than solace. After all this time years indeed, now would not his memory have faded? The life he had led tended to foster such memory in himself, but with her it was otherwise. All the conditions of her daily life tended rather to dim it. That sweet, short, passionate episode had been all entrancing while it lasted; yet was it not counterpoised by the certainty that with women of her temperament such episodes are but episodes? All the bitter side of his philosophy cried aloud in the affirmative.

He had now been several months among the Ba-gcatya; and had long since ceased to feel any misgiving as to his personal safety at their hands. But his sense of security was destined to receive a rude shock, and it came about in this way.

Returning one day from a hunt, at some distance from Imvungayo, he had marched on ahead of his companions, and, the afternoon being hot, had lain down in the shade of a cluster of trees for a brief nap. From this the buzz of muttering voices awakened him.

At first he paid no attention, reckoning that the remainder of the party had come up. But soon a remark which was let fall started him very wide awake indeed, and at the same time he recognized that the voices were not those of his present companions, but of strangers. From a certain quaver or hesitancy in the tones, he judged them to be the voices of old men.

“Whau! The spider must be growing hungry again. It is long since he has drunk blood.”

“Not since the son of Tondusa assumed the head-ring,” answered the other.

“And now a greater is about to assume the head-ring,” went on the first speaker, “even Ncute, the son of Nondwana.”

“The brother of the Great Great One?”

“The same,” asserted the first speaker, in that sing-song hum in which natives, when among themselves, will carry on a conversation for hours.

Now the listener was interested indeed. On the mysterious subject of “The Spider” the Ba-gcatya had been close as death. No hint or indication tending to throw light upon it would they let fall in reply to any question, direct or indirect. Now he was going to hear something. These men, unaware of his presence, and talking freely among themselves, would certainly afford more than a clew to it. Nondwana, the king’s brother, he suspected of being not over favourably disposed towards himself, possibly through jealousy.

“That will be when the second moon is at full?” continued one of the talkers.

“It will. Ha! The Spider will receive a brave offering. Yet how shall it devour one who bears its Sign?”

“It may not,” rejoined the other. “Hau! that will in truth be a test if the sign is real.”

One who bears its Sign! The listener felt every drop of blood within him turn cold, freeze from head to foot. What sort of devil-god could it be from which this nation derived its name, and which these were talking about as one that devoured men?

He that bears its Sign! The words could apply to none other than himself. He had deduced that, although the Ba-gcatya held cannibalism in abhorrence, yet from time to time human sacrifices of very awesome and mysterious nature took place, and that on certain momentous occasions the accession or death of a king, of an heir to any branch of the royal house, or such a one as this now under discussion the admission to full privileges of manhood of a scion of the same. And the sacrifice on this occasion was to consist of himself? To this end he had been spared even honoured.

It will in truth be a test, for some doubt that the Sign as worn by this stranger hath any magic at all, continued one of the talkers. If he comes out unharmed hau! that will be a marvel, indeed a marvel, indeed.”

“E-he!” they assented. Then they fell to talking of other things, and soon the concealed listener heard them rise up and depart.

Laurence decided to wait no more for his companions. He wanted to be alone and think this matter out. So when the voices of the talkers had fairly faded beyond earshot he left the cluster of trees on the farther side and took his way down the mountain slope.

A ghastly fear was upon him. The horror and mystery of the thing got upon even his iron nerves the suddenness of it too, just when he had lulled himself into a complete sense of security. Had he learned in like fashion that he was to be slain in an ordinary way at a given time it would not have shaken him beyond the ordinary. But this thing there was something so devilish about it. What did it mean? Was it some grotesque idol worked by mechanism, even as in the old pagan temples to which human sacrifices were offered? Or for he could not candidly discredit all the weird and marvellous tales and traditions of some of these up-country tribes, degraded and man-eating as they were was it some unknown and terrifying monster inhabiting the dens and caves of the earth? Whatever it was, he knew too well, of course, that the coincidence which had so miraculously resulted in the sparing of his life at the hands of the victorious Ba-gcatya, reeking with slaughter, would stand him in nowhere here. He remembered the mystery hanging over the fate of Lutali, and those horrible beings who had hauled the Arab to his doom, whatever it was, who indeed might well constitute the priesthood of the unknown devil-god.

Surely never indeed had earth presented a fairer scene than this upon which the adventurer’s eyes rested, as he made his way down the mountain-side. The calm, peaceful beauty of the day, the golden sunlight flooding the plain beneath, the great circle of Imvungayo, and the by contrast tiny circles of lesser kraals scattered about the valley or crowning some mountain spur, and, mellow upon the stillness, the distant low of cattle the singing of women at work mingling with the soft voices of a multitude of doves in cornlands and the surrounding forest-trees. Yet now in the white peaks towering to the cloudless heavens, in the black and craggy rifts, in the wide, rolling, partially-wooded plains the hunter’s paradise this man saw only a gloomy wizard circle, inclosing some horrible inferno, the throne of the frightful demon-god of this extraordinary race.

Then it occurred to Laurence that he had better not let this thing get too much upon his nerves. It was the result of inaction, he told himself. Several months of rest and tranquillity had begun to turn him soft. That would not do. He had got to look matters in the face fairly and squarely. The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost certainly be a fearful fate was set for the fall of the second moon, the talkers had said but of this he had been already aware, for the chief Nondwana and his son were both well known to him. That would give him a little over six weeks. Escape? Nothing short of a miracle could effect that, he told himself, remembering the immense tract of desolate country surrounding the fastnesses of the Ba-gcatya, and the ferocious cannibal hordes which lay beyond these, and who indeed would wreak a vengeance of the most barbarous kind upon their old enemy and scourge, the slaver-chief, did they find him alone, and to that extent no longer formidable, in their midst.

The friendship of the king? No. That was based on superstition, even as the friendship of the entire nation. Even it was assumed for an end. Again, should he boldly challenge the pretensions of the demon-god, whatever it might be, and asserting himself to be the real one, offer to slay the horror in open conflict? Not a moment’s reflection was needed, however, to convince him of the utter impracticability of this scheme. The cherished superstition of a great nation was not to be uprooted in any such rough-and-ready fashion. The only way of escape left open to him was that of death death swift and sudden the death of the suicide to escape the greater horror. But from this he shrank. The grim hardness of his recent training had nerved him rather to face peril than to avoid it. He did not care to contemplate such a way out of the dilemma. He was cornered. There was no way of escape.

And then, as he walked thus, thinking, and thinking hard, in the fierce, desperate, clearheadedness of a strong, cool-nerved man face to face with despair, a voice a female voice, lifted in song sounded across his path, nearer and nearer. And now a wave of hope, of relief, surged through Laurence Stanninghame’s heart, for there flooded in upon him, as with an inspiration, a way out of the situation. For he knew both the voice and the singer, and at that moment a turn in the bushes brought the latter and himself face to face.