The third day of their captivity had dawned, and waned. It seemed that
those around had grown rather more used to them, for they would chat at
times, while dexterously evading any attempts to extract news. But it
struck them that there was an atmosphere of tension, of expectation, as
though events were expected on the outside. Moreover the number of
armed men about the kraal seemed to have diminished by eight-tenths.
With the chief, Nteseni, they could get no speech, although they
repeatedly asked to see him. Moreover, did either or both of them catch
sight of a face they knew, that face was promptly turned away, and the
owner of it never risked the chance of their seeing it again. So far
this was a good augury they agreed, for had their deaths been already
decided upon it would not matter whose faces they recognised or whose
they did not. By this time they had almost got used to the strangeness
of the feeling that they were captives in their own land; that where
they were accustomed to lord it they were now obliged to obey. Many
times, too, and oft, they speculated as to what course would have been
adopted by those who had not been required to share their captivity.
"Edala has got her head screwed on the right way," Thornhill had said,
on one of these early occasions. "Depend upon it she will have warned
everybody within hail. What d'you think, Elvesdon? Will Prior have had
the sense to wire sharp to Police headquarters and laager up your
place?"
"Of course he will. We've often discussed contingencies, though not
such an unlooked-for one as this. Oh, he'll have made that all right."
That evening a surprise awaited. There was a sound of voices outside.
The wicker-slab that constituted the door of their hut was pushed, and
an English voice called out.
"It's me. Can I come in?"
"Why Parry, of course you can," cried Elvesdon, promptly undoing the
fastenings. "How are you? Glad to have you back again. We've been
trying all we knew to make them let you come back to us, but for some
reason they wouldn't. Have some skoff. We're half through ours. Well,
it'll be an invaluable experience to you afterwards."
"Thanks, Mr Elvesdon. You're awfully good," answered the young fellow.
"I don't know. I thought I was afraid of nothing--but somehow these
black devils with their beastly spears, threatening to stick you for a
couple of days and nights, rather saps your nerves, especially when
you're all alone, and can't talk to them either. I've been in the
roughest scrimmages at football and never knew what it was to funk, but
somehow now--I don't know--I've expected to be stuck ever since they
lugged me away two nights ago."
"Oh, they won't do that or they'd have done it before," answered
Elvesdon cheerily, though his cheerfulness was more than half-affected.
"Fact is you've been reading too much William Charles Scully, and Ernest
Glanville, and these other Johnnies who write up the noble savage within
an inch of his life. You've taken an overdose of them and of him.
Here--have some of this _tywala_: I've managed to raise some at last:
the stingy devils began with us on water. That's right. Now fall to."
The boy did so, nothing loath, and soon his spirits revived: he was not
more than twenty-one, and accustomed to a gregarious life, wherefore the
solitary confinement had told upon him.
"Light your pipe," said Elvesdon, when they had done. "We needn't stand
on etiquette now. We're all fellow-prisoners. By George, I've sent a
good many into that condition in course of duty, but never thought to
become a prisoner myself. Funny, isn't it?"
The boy laughed. Elvesdon could see that his first estimate was
correct, that he was a `gentleman ranker' and was not long in drawing
from him, with his usual tact and acumen, all his simple family history.
He was the son of a country vicar, and had had a great ambition towards
the army, but lack of means, as usual, stepped in, and he had turned to
a colonial Mounted Police force as many and many another likewise
circumstanced had done.
"Well Parry, I shall make it my business to see that you don't lose
anything by your behaviour the other day," said Elvesdon, "if my word is
good for anything. You carried out your orders to the letter, and that
as sharp as sharp could be."
The boy flushed up with pleasure.
"Thanks awfully, Mr Elvesdon," he said. "I'd like to get on in the
force. The dear old dad was always rather against my coming out to
join: said it was like enlisting as a private in the Army, and so on--
and that I'd much better try for a clerkship--a lot of good I'd have
been at quill driving! No, I didn't want that sort of life, but I was
going to do for myself so here I am."
"That's quite right," cut in Thornhill. "You're the sort of chap we
want out here, Parry. And even if you don't stick to the force a few
years' training in it'll do you all the good in the world."
And then the boy, all ideas of the difference between a Police trooper
and the Resident Magistrate forgotten for the time, opened his heart,
and got back to his home in the pleasant English country, and his
schooldays, only, comparatively speaking, a matter of yesterday. He had
not been coddled either, but had had to take the rough with the smooth--
and more rough than smooth--therein. And eagerly and enthusiastically
did he let himself go to his older listeners, his fellow-captives, here,
in the night-gloom of this savage hut, lighted only by the dimness of
the dying fire: forgetting everything, forgetting that he might never
see that English home again; might never see the setting of another sun;
and causing them almost to forget it too. Poor boy! Poor boy!
He was eloquent on the big trout he had taken out of the mill-pool in
the rippling moonlight in the sweet early summer, with a white moth; the
big two-and-a-half pounder he had tried for so often; on the
sparrow-hawk's nest in the straight, slippery stemmed Scotch fir on the
border of the most carefully watched covert of the countryside, also in
the moonlight, and the hanging on by one hand--for an awful half minute
to a greasy, slippery bough, with sixty feet of clear drop beneath him--
on his brothers and sisters, and the first pipe which he and two of the
former had smoked, with doubtful satisfaction, in the depths of a
clay-sided ditch overhung with brambles, a little way below the vicarage
garden--on the splendid old copper-beech beneath which they used to take
tea on sultry summer afternoons. Elvesdon, listening sympathetically,
encouraged him to talk on--Thornhill was already snoring. At last the
boy himself grew drowsy.
"Well, Mr Elvesdon, I'm keeping you awake," he said. "But I can't tell
you how kind you have been to me. I hope, if we get out of this, and
you are ever in England you will go and see my people, and I hope still
more that I shall, by some chance or other, be there too to welcome you.
I'm so thankful we're together again; it was awfully lonely stuck away
there all by myself among these brutes."
"Why Parry, that's a first-rate after-dinner speech," laughed Elvesdon,
dropping a kindly hand on the lad's shoulder. "I hope all that you say,
too. And now--go to sleep."
The other obeyed. Elvesdon however, sitting there, did not feel in the
least inclined to follow suit. He felt uncomfortably wakeful, and
unwontedly depressed. He groped around for some fresh twigs to throw on
the fire, and found a scanty remnant. As the flame flared up, making a
shimmer on the shining backs of innumerable cockroaches studding the
domed roof, he got out his pouch, and as he filled his pipe he thought
how there was about enough to stand him in for another day's smoke, and
that only. He also thought of Edala.
It was nothing new. He had been flunking of her all the time. Now,
however, he thought of her with a vividity of concentration that almost
seemed to bring her presence here within this squalid hut. Would she
miss him, or would her anxiety be all on account of her father? He did
not know what to think--he could only hope.
His companions were slumbering peacefully. Hour followed hour and still
he sat. The fire burned low, then went out altogether. The keen
breaths of the night air chilled him to the bone. Rolling his blanket
around him--they had been allowed the use of a blanket apiece by their
captors--he lay down and suddenly sleep came to him.
But not for long. Hardly five minutes seemed to have passed before he
was awake again--in reality it was as many hours. Daylight was
streaming into the hut through the wicker-door, but what had really
awakened him, and the other two as well, was a hubbub of voices outside.
"What the devil is that infernal racket?" he growled--a man awakened in
the soundness of a much needed sleep is apt to growl.
"Don't know. I'm listening," returned Thornhill. And the purport of
the said listening made the listener grow rather grave. Then the door
was violently banged against, and excited voices ordered those within to
come forth.
"What is it?" exclaimed Parry, springing up eager and alert. "Are we
rescued?"
But to his two elder companions an idea suggested itself. Had a white
force suddenly appeared and was threatening the kraal? If so the more
excuse they could find for delaying to come forth from the hut the
better.
"What is it?" called back Thornhill. "Wait now. _Gahle_, _gahle_! we
must dress ourselves."
They had lain down in their clothes, of course, but anything for an
excuse to gain time. But those without did not see things in the same
light. The uproar redoubled.
"Come forth! Come forth! _Au_! Dress yourselves? You shall be
dressed--in red."
Thornhill and Elvesdon looked at each other, and the look was that of
men who knew that their last hour had come. The third, of course, did
not understand what was being said, or rather howled, outside.
"Well, you can wait," called back Elvesdon. "I am an official of the
Government--of the most powerful Government the world has ever seen. I
am not accustomed to be hurried, and I will not be. When we are ready
we will come forth."
It was the boldness of desperation. If an attacking force was advancing
it might be here at any moment. They were not going forth to hold out
their throats to be cut.
There was silence at this answer, save that a few deep voices were
vehemently debating in a wholly indistinct undertone. Elvesdon and
Thornhill looked around for a weapon, even a stick. There was nothing
of the sort within the hut. They even put up their hands and groped
among the thatch in the hope of finding concealed assegais--anything for
a weapon! Same result. There was nothing.
"The chief would see you, _Abelungu_," now called out a voice in more
conciliatory tones. "The chief--_Au_! he would speak with you."
"Well, I suppose we must chance it," said Thornhill. Elvesdon nodded.
The other, of course, had no say in the matter. The trio passed through
the low doorway, and stood upright. What was this? They were in the
midst of hundreds of armed warriors. The latter looked dusty and travel
soiled. Some, even, had wounds bound up, the blood which had filtered
through the filthy rags, browned and hardened upon them.
"Where is the chief?" cried Elvesdon. "As a Government official I talk
to no common man."
A growl arose, and assegai hafts rattled ominously. But the policy of
boldness answered here. No aggressive move was made.
"There he is, _Abelungu_," said one or two.
They passed between the armed ranks, to where a tall man was standing.
He was a sullen, heavy-faced savage, black-bearded, and holding his
shining head-ring as proudly thrown back as though he were the Zulu
king, at least.
"Greeting Nteseni," said Thornhill. "It is not long since we met, and
now we meet again. I am glad to look upon your face, and having done
so, I think now we will go home."
The chief returned no answer, save for a sullen grunt. The armed men
however made up for his silence, for they crowded up, in a kind of
war-dancing step, and their clamour was for blood, to make up for the
blood that had been shed, to make the _muti_ which should put into those
who tasted it the strength that should enable them to avenge that blood.
So they howled, and stamped, and clamoured, crying again and again that
these should be given over to them. Here was a curious contrast.
Little less than half of them had been quiet, civil, peaceable storeboys
or rickshaw drawers in the towns until a few months ago--some, even,
still wore the decorative horns affected by those pursuing the latter
useful calling--ready to greet their present prisoners with smiles and
civility; to exchange chaff with them, and to receive the reward of
their labours with whole-hearted geniality. Now, as by the wave of a
magic wand, they had reverted to their original barbarism. Every
vestige of civilised clothing had been discarded, and they now stood
forth, naked, bloodthirsty savages, rattling shields and assegais, and
thirsting for all the cruelty of barbarian vengeance.
Nteseni made a hardly perceptible sign. There was a sudden,
overwhelming rush forward. The young Police trooper was swept away from
the other two. There was a confusion of leaping, howling forms. It was
in vain that both Thornhill and Elvesdon strove to make themselves
heard. The tumult was too deafening. They were borne back, assegais
flashing zig-zag lightning before their eyes. They went through a
hundred deaths. But of their comrade in adversity they saw no more.
He the while, was dragged to the feet of the chief and barbarously
butchered. Then into his poor bleeding, mutilated body these fiends
drove their assegais, again and again, anointing themselves with the
blood, in some instances even licking it. And the roar of their
devilish blood-song reached these other two, sitting within the hut into
which they had been forced back, looking into each other's faces with
stony horror, with a glance that seemed to say: "What could we have
done?" And the answer could only be: "Nothing."
But their turn would come next. And there was no escape.
In gloomy horror thus they sat, listening to the dreadful clamour of
many voices outside like ravening beasts all howling for their blood.
For upwards of an hour this continued, and the strain became so great
that it was all they could do not to go forth, and say, "Here, work your
will." Then, suddenly, the hubbub ceased and an authoritative voice was
heard addressing the multitude. And then indeed did Thornhill, at any
rate, know the very depths of all hope abandoned, for the voice was that
of Manamandhla--of Manamandhla, for every reason under the sun, his own
particular enemy.