AS FROM THE DEAD.
“There, there, Holmes.
Do you quite intend to maim a chap for life, or what?”
exclaimed Laurence, liberating, with an effort, his
hand from the other’s wringing grasp. “And
Hazon, too? In truth, life is full of surprises.
How are you, Hazon?”
“So so,” was the reply,
as Hazon, who had been biding the evaporation of his
younger friend’s effusiveness, now came forward.
But his handshake was characteristic of the man, for
it was as though they had parted only last week, and
that but temporarily.
“And is it really you yourself,
old chap?” rattled on Holmes. “It’s
for all the world as if you had risen from the dead.
Why, we never expected to set eyes on you again in
life did we, Hazon?”
“Not much,” assented that worthy laconically.
“Well, I can say the same as
regards yourselves,” rejoined Laurence.
“What in the world made them give you quarter?”
“Don’t know,” answered
Hazon. “We managed to get together, back
to back, we two, and were fighting like cats.
Holmes got a shot on the head with a club that sent
him down, and I got stuck full of assegais till I
couldn’t see. The next thing I knew was
that we were being carted along in the middle of a
big impi Heaven knew where.
One thing, we were both alive alive and
kicking, too. As soon as we were able to walk
they assegaied our bearers, and made us
walk.”
“Don’t you swallow all
that, Stanninghame,” cut in Holmes. “He
fought, standing over me fought like any
devil, the Ba-gcatya say, although he makes out now
it was all playful fun.”
“Well, for the matter of that,
we had to fight,” rejoined Hazon tranquilly.
“Where have you been all this time, Stanninghame?”
“Here, at Imvungayo. And you two?”
“Shot if I know. They kept
us at some place away in the mountains. Only
brought us here a few days back.”
“They won’t let us out
in the daytime,” chimed in Holmes. “And
it’s getting deadly monotonous. But tell
us, old chap, how it is they didn’t stick you?”
This, however, Laurence, following
out a vein of vague instinct, had decided not to do,
wherefore he invented some commonplace solution.
And it was with strange and mingled feelings he sat
there listening to his old confederates. For
months he had not heard one word of the English tongue,
and now these two, risen, as it were, from the very
grave, seemed to bring back all the past, which, under
novel and strange conditions, had more and more been
fading into the background. He was even constrained
to admit to himself that such feelings were not those
of unmingled joy. He had almost lost all inclination
to escape from among this people, and now these two,
by the very associations which their presence recalled,
were likely to unsettle him again, possibly to his
own peril and undoing. Anyway, he resolved to
say nothing as to the incident of “The Sign
of the Spider.”
“Well, you seem to have got
round them better than we did, Stanninghame,”
said Hazon, with a glance at the Express rifle and
revolver wherewith the other was armed. “We
have hardly been allowed so much as a stick.”
“So? Well, I’ve been
teaching some of them to shoot. That may have
had a little to do with it. In fact, I’ve
been laying myself out to make thoroughly the best
of the situation.”
“That’s sound sense everywhere,”
rejoined Hazon. “You can’t get Holmes
here to see it, though. He’s wearing out
his soul-case wanting to break away.”
This was no more than the truth.
Laurence, seated there, narrowly watching his old
comrades, was swift to notice that whereas these months
of captivity and suspense had left Hazon the same cool,
saturnine, philosophical being he had first known
him, upon Holmes they had had quite a different effect.
There was a restless, eager nervousness about the
younger man; a sort of straining to break away even,
as the more seasoned adventurer had described it.
The fact was, he was getting desperately home-sick.
“I wish I had never had anything
to do with this infernal business,” he now bursts
forth petulantly. “I swear I’d give
all we have made to be back safe and snug in Johannesburg,
with white faces around us, even though
I were stony broke.”
“Especially one ‘white
face,’” bantered Laurence. “Well,
keep up your form, Holmes. You may be back there
yet, safe and sound, and not stony broke either.”
“No, no. There is a curse
upon us, as I said all along. No good will come
to us through such gains. We shall never return never.”
And then Laurence looked across at
Hazon, and the glance, done into words, read:
“What the mischief is to be made of such
a prize fool as this?”
The night was spent in talking over
past experiences, and making plans for the future,
as to which latter Hazon failed not to note, with faint
amusement, blended with complacency, that the disciple
had, if anything, surpassed his teacher. In other
words, Laurence entered into such plans with a luke-warmness
which would have been astonishing to the superficial
judgment, but was not so to that of his listener.
Nondwana, the brother of the king,
was seated among a group of his followers in the gate
as Laurence went forth the next morning to return
to his own quarters. This chief, though older
than Tyisandhlu in years, was not the son of the principal
wife of their common father, wherefore Tyisandhlu,
who was, had, in accordance with native custom, succeeded.
There had been whisperings that Nondwana had attempted
to oppose the accession, and very nearly with success;
but whether from motives of policy or generosity,
Tyisandhlu had foreborne to take his life. The
former motive may have counted, for Nondwana exercised
a powerful influence in the nation. In aspect,
he was a tall, fine, handsome man, with all the dignity
of manner which characterized his royal brother, yet
there was a sinister expression ever lurking in his
face a cruel droop in the corner of the
mouth.
“Greeting, Nyonyoba. And
is it good once more to behold a white face?”
said the chief, a veiled irony lurking beneath the
outward geniality of his tone.
“To behold the face of a friend
once more is always good, Branch of a Royal Tree,”
returned Laurence, sitting down among the group to
take snuff.
“Even when it is that of one risen from the
dead?”
“But here it was not so, Ndabezita.
My ‘Spider’ told me that these were all
the time alive,” rejoined Laurence, with mendacity
on a truly generous scale.
“Ha! thy Spider? Yet thou
art not of the People of the Spider.”
“But I bear the sign,”
touching his breast. “There are many things
made clear to me, which may or may not be set forward
in the light of all at the fall of the second moon.
Farewell now, Son of the Great.”
The start of astonishment, the murmur
which ran round the group, was not lost upon him.
It was all confirmatory of what he had heard.
And then, as he walked back to his tent in Silawayo’s
kraal, it occurred to Laurence that he had probably
made a false move. Nondwana, who, of course,
was not ignorant of his daughter’s partiality,
would almost certainly decide that Lindela had betrayed
the secret and sinister intent to its unconscious
object; and in that event, how would it fare with
her? He felt more than anxious. The king
might take long in deciding whether to restore his
property or not, and etiquette forbade him to refer
to the matter again at any rate for some
time to come. That Nondwana might demand too
much lobola, or possibly refuse it altogether
as coming from him, was a contingency which, strange
to say, completely escaped Laurence’s scheming
mind.
“Greeting, Nyonyoba. Thy thoughts are deep ever
deep.”
The voice, soft, rich, bantering,
almost made him start as he raised his eyes, to meet
the glad laughing ones of the object of his thoughts
at that moment, the chief’s daughter.
“What do you here, wandering alone, Lindela?”
he said.
“Ha ha! Now
you did well to say my name like that for does
it not answer your question, ‘to wait, to watch
for’? And what is meant for two ears is
not meant for four or six. I have news, but it
is not good.”
They were standing in the dip of the
path, where a little runlet coursed along between
high bush-fringed banks, and the tall, graceful form
of the girl stood out in splendid relief from its
background of foliage. Not only for love had
she awaited him here, for her eyes were sad and troubled
as she narrated her discoveries, which amounted to
this: It was next to impossible for Laurence
to escape the ordeal whatever it might
be. All of weight and position in the nation were
resolved upon it, and none more thoroughly so than
Nondwana. The king himself would be powerless
to save him, even if he wished, and, indeed, why should
he run counter to the desire of a whole nation, and
that on behalf of a stranger, some time an enemy?
Laurence, listening, felt his anxiety
deepen. The net was closing in around him, had
indeed already closed, and from it there was no outlet.
“See now, Lindela,” he
said gravely, his eyes full upon the troubled face
of the girl, “if this thing has got to be, there
is no help for it. And, however it turns out,
the world will go on just the same and the
sun rise and set as before. Why grieve about it?”
“Because I love you love
you do you hear? I know not how it
is. We girls of the Ba-gcatya do not love not
like this. We like to be married to men who are
great in the nation powerful indunas if
not too old, or those who have much cattle,
or who will name us for their principal wife; but
we know not how to love. Yet you have taught me,
Nyonyoba. Say now, is it through the magic of
the white people you have done it?”
“It may be so,” replied
Laurence, smiling queerly to himself, as he thought
how exactly, if unconsciously, this alluring child
of nature had described her civilized sisters.
Then his face became alert and watchful. He was
listening intently.
“I, too, heard something,”
murmured Lindela, scarcely moving her lips. “I
fear lest we have been overlooked. Now, fare thee
well, for I must return. But my ears are ever
open to what men say, and my father talks much, and
talks loud. It may be that I may learn yet more.
But, Nyonyoba, delay not in thy first purpose, lest
it be too late; and remember, Nondwana has a covetous
hand. Fare thee well.”
Left alone, Laurence thought he might
just as well make sure that no spy had been watching
them. Yet though he examined the banks of the
stream for some little distance around, he could find
no trace of any human presence, no mark even, however
faint, of human foot. Still, as he gained his
own quarters in Silawayo’s kraal, a presentiment
lay heavy upon him a weird, boding presentiment
of evil to come of evil far nearer at hand
than he had hitherto deemed.
Long and hard he slept, for he was
weary with wakefulness and anxiety. And when
he awoke at dusk, intending to seek an interview with
the king, he beheld that which in no wise tended to
allay his fears. For as he drew nearer to Imvungayo
there issued from its gate a crowd of figures of
black, grotesque, horrible figures, and in the midst
a man, whom they were dragging along in grim silence,
even as they had hauled Lutali to his unknown doom,
and as they disappeared into the gathering darkness,
Laurence knew only too well that here was another
victim another hideous sacrifice to the
grisly and mysterious demon-god. No wonder his
blood grew chill within him. Would he be the
next?
“And you would still become one of us, Nyonyoba?”
“I would, Great Great One; and
to this end have I sent much ivory, and many things
the white people prize, including three new guns and
much ammunition, to Nondwana.”
“Ha! Nondwana’s hand
is large, and opens wide,” said the king, with
a hearty chuckle. “Yet Lindela is a sprig
of a mighty tree. And I think, Nyonyoba, you
yourself are sprung from such a root.”
“That is no lie, Ruler of the
Wise. As a man’s whole height is to the
length of half his leg, so is the length of my house
to that of the kings of the Ba-gcatya, or even to
that of Senzangakona himself.”
“Ha! That may well be. Thou hast a
look that way.”
This conversation befell two days
after the events just described. The king had
refused him an audience on that evening, and indeed
since until now. But in the meantime, by royal
orders, a great portion of the plunder taken from
the slave-hunters’ camp had been restored to
him, considerably more, indeed, than he had expected.
And now he and Tyisandhlu were seated once more together
in the royal dwelling, this time alone.
“But to be sprung from an ancient
tree avails a man nothing in my country if he is poor,”
went on Laurence. “Rather is it a disadvantage,
and he had better have been born among the meaner sort.
That is why I have found my way hither, Ndabezita.”
“That is why? And you have
gained the desired riches?” said the king, eyeing
him narrowly.
“I had nearly, when
the Ba-gcatya fell upon my camp, and killed my people
and my slaves. Now, having lost all, I care not
to return to my own land.”
“But could you return rich you would care so
to return?”
“That is so, Root of a Royal
Tree. With large possessions it is indeed a pleasant
land to dwell in with no possessions a man
might often think longingly of the restful sleep of
death.”
“That may well be,” said
Tyisandhlu thoughtfully. “The cold and the
gloom and the blackness, the fogs and the smoke the
mean and horrible-looking people who go to make up
the larger portion of its inhabitants. Whau,
Nyonyoba, I know more of your white people and their
country than anyone here dreams, and it is as you say.
Without that which should raise him above such horrors
as this, a man might as well be dead.”
“Wherefore I prefer to live
in the land of the Ba-gcatya rather than die in my
own. But whoever brought hither that description
of our land told a wonderfully true tale, Ruler of
the Great.”
Tyisandhlu made no reply, but reaching
out his hand he took up a whistle and blew a double
note upon it. Immediately there entered an inceku.
“Let no man approach until this
note shall again sound,” said the king.
“Preserve clear a wide space around, lest the
ear that opens too wide be removed from its owner’s
head. Go.”
The man saluted humbly and withdrew.
And then for long did they sit together and talk in
a low tone, the barbarian monarch and the white adventurer and
the subject of their talk seemed fraught with some
surprise to the latter, but with satisfaction to both.
“See now, Nyonyoba,” concluded
the king. “They have brought you here,
here whence no man ever returned; and you would become
one of us. Well, be it so. There is that
about you I trust.”
“Whence no man ever returned?” echoed
Laurence.
“Surely. Ha! A white
man found his way hither once, but he was
a preacher and I love not such. He
never returned.”
“But what of my two friends?
You will not harm them, Ndabezita, because they are
my friends, and we have fought together many a long
year,” urged Laurence.
“I will spare them for that
reason. They shall be led from the country with
their eyes covered, lest they find the way back again.
But if they do they likewise
shall never depart from it. And now, Nyonyoba,
all I have told you is between ourselves alone.
Breathe not a whisper of it or anything about me even
to your friends. For the present, farewell, and
good fortune be yours.”