"AT THE FULL OF THE MOON."
Midnight.
The silence of desolation. The river, plashing on its sandy bars, makes
faint, tuneful murmur. At intervals the wild weird hoot of an owl, high
up on the wooded hillside, breaks startlingly upon the dead, solemn
stillness. The air hangs heavy down here in this silent hollow, and
above, the dark face of the haunted cliff rises, stern and tremendous,
in clear outline against the stars.
What are those shadowy figures ranged in a semicircle round the hollow,
motionless as the grave? Are they of earth? Not a whisper, not a
movement in that terrible phalanx. Only two hundred pair of eyes fixed
upon vacancy, with strained and expectant stare, show that these ghostly
shapes have life, or had. But what are they? Grim phantom warriors
gathered there to re-enact the tragedy of blood which the dim legend of
savage tradition associates with the spot.
And now a glow suffuses the sky, faint at first, then spreading nearly
to the zenith. A great golden disc peers above yonder bush-clad height,
and slowly mounting upward, soars majestically into space. Half of the
valley beneath is flooded with light, but the face of the haunted cliff
is still in gloom, casting a long black shadow upon the plashing river
whence the mist is rising in white wreathe.
"At the full of the moon."
A dull, moaning sound is heard in the cliff, seeming to come from the
very heart of the rocky wall, now rising, now falling, awesome and
mysterious. It is as the voices of the spirits of the dead. There is
an overpowering and mesmeric influence in the very atmosphere. Then
gleams forth a flickering green light which plays on the face of the
rock like a corpse candle. Suddenly the whole of that crouching phalanx
starts up erect. A deep-toned murmur, sounding like a muffled roar,
goes forth from the throats of two hundred dark warriors, and the
ghostly light glints on a forest of bristling assegais.
"At the full of the moon."
Small wonder that the orb of night, about which poets love to rave,
should be constituted the presiding goddess at the gruesome rites of
savage and superstitious races all the world over; that its changing
quarters should be endued with power to sway their weightiest
undertakings in war or in the chase. It would be strange if the great
lustrous disc stamped with a cold, impassive, remorseless-looking human
countenance, floating silently over the darkened earth, did not appeal
powerfully to the spiritual side of untaught and imaginative races. And
then, just think of the myriads upon myriads of scenes of violence and
treachery--fraud, rapine, murder, and wholesale massacre--upon which
that cold, spectral countenance has looked down, and still looks down;
ay, and will continue to do as long as this miserable world shall be
peopled with countless generations of the tailless and biped demon known
as Man.
"At the full of the moon."
And now the black shadow passes from the cliff, revealing a shape--a
shape which seems to have arisen from the earth itself, or peradventure
to have sprung from the smooth wall of rock behind, so sudden is its
appearance. Amid dead silence it glides into the midst of the expectant
semicircle. Truly an appalling monster. The moonlight, now well-nigh
as clear as day, plays upon a pair of glittering, wolf-like eyes and a
lean, gaunt figure, about whose long limbs are dangling ox-tails and
strings of beads. The grinning head-piece of a hyaena rests helmet-like
upon this creature's skull, and from between the open jaws of the beast
starts forth the horrible head of a live serpent, whose sinuous coils
are wound about the wearer's body. The latter, smeared from head to
foot with a glistening pigment, is hung about with birds' claws, reptile
heads and festoons of entrails. A horrible and disgusting object. The
right arm of the wizard is red to the elbow with blood, and in his hand
he carries nothing but one short, broad-headed assegai.
"Hear the words of Sefele, the spirit of this place, speaking by the
mouth of his descendant, Nomadudwana, the son of Mtyusi."
Silently the whole phalanx of dark warriors sank back into a crouching
attitude, gazing upon the speaker, expectant and motionless.
"There are voices above and voices beneath. There are voices in the air
and voices in the water. Lo, I see a mighty host; an army gathered for
battle; an army which fills the earth and the air; many warriors with
their chiefs and leaders; and their right hands are even as this,"
(holding up his gore-stained fingers), "and their shields are dinted and
their assegais are broken. And the warriors are angry and they are sad,
for they have fought and fought, always bravely, and now they are tired
and may not rest. And I see another army--an army not of warriors but
of women--and they, too, cannot rest; they must take weapons and go
forth to battle, for there are no men left."
A deep murmur from the listeners, who, squatted on their haunches, with
bodies bent eagerly forward, drink in every word the wizard speaks.
"Again, I look. This time I see another army--differing tribes, but all
one host--thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of fighting men;
the land is red with them, but they are all asleep. They have arms--
they have the sharp weapons which their fathers had, but they have
forgotten how to use them. They have more--they have the fire-weapons
of the whites, but they know not how to use them. The white fools put
their weapons into our hands willingly, joyfully, for money, but we do
not know how to use them. We drink of the white men's poisoned strong
waters and our hearts melt away--we become children--we wallow like
swine upon the ground. The fighting men of the Amaxosa have become dogs
and slaves."
A fierce ejaculation here went round the circle, while many a sinewy
hand grasped the tough wood of assegai hafts. The grim prophet
continued, his deep tones waxing more and more ferocious like the savage
growl of a beast:
"We are the dogs and slaves of the white men, even as the cowardly
Amafengu were our dogs. Not to the white men only, also to their women.
Do not our warriors drop their weapons, and take service, and plough
the land, and hoe corn, and milk the cows, and drive waggons for white
women? Ha! We, a free, a brave nation, whose fathers conquered the
land ages and ages before one accursed white-foot trod these mountains
and valleys--our _men_ to be dogs to the white _women_! Ha! Ask
Ncanda, there, who, at the word of a white woman, was tied up and lashed
with whips! Ask Mopela, the brother of Nxabahlana of the house of
Sandili the Great Chief, who was beaten and kicked like a dog in the
presence of a white woman--Hah!"
A frenzied howl burst from the audience at these words of the wily
wizard, while the two savages referred to by name, gnashed their teeth
with rage.
"Who are these people that rule us? Who are they? As a calabash of
water is to the Nxumba River in flood, as five stones are to the pebbles
on the sea-shore, so are the whites in this land to the fighting men of
the Amaxosa, to the warriors of the Amanqgika, and of the Amagcaleka,
and even of the peace-loving Abatembu. And we call ourselves men!"