Owing to the difficulty of transporting so many wounded men, it took our
friends quite four days to accomplish the distance which they had
covered on a former occasion in less than one-half that time; but by the
fourth night all had safely reached the mountains of the north, and
after Amaxosa had carefully reconnoitred the vicinity of the hermit's
cave, the party took undisputed possession thereof, and made
arrangements to defend the place in the event of an attack, by throwing
up a great earthwork round the outlet of the cavern.
This important matter attended to, Grenville and Kenyon next proceeded
to explore, by torchlight, the labyrinth of caves with which the heart
of the mountain proved to be honeycombed, and in the furthest of those
natural vaulted chambers they finally discovered Muzi Zimba the Ancient.
The old man was in a state of very great prostration, and was obviously
dying from sheer decay of all his faculties. Kenyon at once
administered to him a spoonful of brandy, and afterwards prevailed upon
him to swallow some beef-tea. This grateful nourishment soon appeared
to revive his sinking form, and, recognising Grenville, he accorded him
a hearty welcome, and congratulated him kindly upon his marvellous
escape from death, and then, speaking very lucidly, his mental faculties
seeming to grow clearer as his bodily vigour gradually died out, he
dilated at some length to the attentive pair, upon their present
dangerous position, and regarding the cause and the remedy for the
horrors of the slave-trade.
It must not, however, be supposed that the conversation given here, is
written down precisely as it was spoken; for at times our friends had
much ado to keep the poor old man alive, and it was only by continually
giving him weak stimulants, that body and soul were kept together until
his work was done. Often, too, his halting tongue refused to frame the
meanings he desired to convey, and Grenville had thus frequently to come
to his assistance, and express his thoughts for him in clear, every-day
English.
"My sons," said the aged man, "I came hither many, many years ago--how
many, I know not, for my mind has for a long and weary time been under a
very darksome cloud, but it is clearer now, and in the light which
streams through heaven's wide-open gates. I once more see, with the eye
of faith, and know that all will yet again be well. Hearken, my sons,
for I can tell ye much that may avail ye to escape from the hands of the
demon who dwells in yonder city of evil.
"Ye are brave men, and I have heard how that ye have already rescued
many precious lives from this fiend in human form, and have thrice
brought defeat and disaster upon his hateful arms. Nevertheless, be ye
ware, my sons, for he has, indeed, a very great army of bloody-minded
and wicked men, and he has, moreover, sworn to entirely eat you up.
Know, therefore, that in the third cave from here is a spot where, by
moving a great black stone, a narrow passage can be found, but wide
enough for two men to walk abreast, and this leads gently downwards,
step by step, right through the bowels of the mountain, and so into the
town of the evil ones, where there are many white and black slaves, both
of men and women. Mark this passage well, my children, for if once yon
monster wins the secret of the way, ye, too, will exist only as I do--
even midway between the bitter memories of the unforgotten past and the
golden shores of the great hereafter.
"And now, my sons, bear with me yet, regarding this shameful trade in
human flesh and blood. Long years ere Zero came hither, like a curse,
this country was peaceful and all happy, and much did I teach the simple
people that tended to the welfare of both soul and body; but since the
coming of this man of sin, all has been turned again to evil, and the
land everywhere weeps tears of sorrow and of blood.
"What can we do more, my sons, we who, simply placing our lives in the
hands of the good God who gave them, penetrate unarmed, and with naught
of defence but the Gospel of Peace, to the furthest confines of this
dark land? What, I say, can we do, when the misguided rulers of
Christian countries at home daily permit--nay, encourage--the
unrestricted sale to the wretched natives, of millions of gallons of a
very evil drink, which goes by the name of `square face,' but which the
traders declare to be but harmless gin. Gin! my sons, _the first coat
of which is under one shilling a gallon_, and which is poured into the
land, after it has paid the British governors upon the western sea-girt
border of this mighty continent _a duty of half-a-crown a gallon_, or
equal to two-and-a-half times its cost. Look what follows. The already
debased African is at once reduced below the level of the very beasts
that perish. He must have this fiery spirit, the first fatal draught of
which has inflamed his soul, and brought into active being every vicious
slumbering detail of his fallen human nature, and in order to obtain the
wherewithal to purchase the beloved `Square Face,' he falls unawares
upon his next-door neighbour, so to speak--perhaps upon his own familiar
friend, who trusts him--and carrying him off by night, secretly sells
him to the highest bidder, white or black, that he can find within easy
distance of his home.
"The trade in gin and rum is at the bottom of one-half of this evil
slave-dealing, and so long as this crying sin is not only permitted, but
encouraged, amongst a simple people, who have no more judgment to
exercise, than have a third of the weak-minded ones sheltered from the
cruel world in many a private mad-house, so long will Central Africa
remain a country where cruelty and misery, and the shedding of blood,
prevail, where men bow down to stocks and stones, where Satan's kingdom
is, and where the missionary, my sons, is little more than a useless
martyr, his precious life expended in the lively faith that the mighty
power of his God will cause the barren soil he waters with his blood to
prove a fruitful field before the great day of reckoning comes for
missionary, for slaver, and for the miserable aboriginal African, whose
body and soul these opposing forces contend for mightily both night and
day.
"Hear me further, my sons, for much good may yet be done, in spite of
Zero and of the Arabs, who accomplish a world of evil, if someone of the
great white nations of the world will but come forward and use its
God-given strength for the purpose of putting down the slave-trade,
suppressing entirely the sale of gin and rum in Africa, and supporting
the missionaries. Africa! The whole country is being depopulated, and
every acre of it watered with the tears of a people torn from their
happy homes and sold into slavery in distant lands, or sent across the
seas, and soon this vast and fertile region, as yet almost unknown to
the white races, will become in all directions an impenetrable and
useless jungle, through which even the mammoth elephant must fail to
force his way--a dark continent in very deed and truth, an eyesore to
both God and man.
"In the earlier days of my sojourn in this place, my sons, I looked to
free and happy England to do all that this rich and fruitful land
required to make it perfect; and I taught the natives, under God, to
reverence and to pray for the Great White Queen, their mother, in whose
all-powerful name I came to them in Freedom's cause. Alas! my sons, the
first slaver who entered here and broke up their quiet homes was this
shameless scoundrel Zero; and, speaking with the same tongue as my own,
naught of difference could this people see between his land and mine;
and then worse, far worse, when the horrible slave traffic attracted
hither the native dealers from the farther west, these brought with them
word that slaves could be freely sold under French and German, and--oh!
the shame of it--under British rule, ay, under Freedom's own flag on the
utmost coast of Western Equatorial Africa.
"My sons, I credited it not, and I sent my trusted runner a journey of
many, many weary moons, and he brought me back a faithful word--alas!
that it should have been a true one.
"`The thing is even so, my father,' he said. `Almost within the very
cities of the Great White Queen, where the moving water beats, ever
murmuring, upon the yellow sands, and within hearing of the guns of
British forts, I saw very many slaves; and these were sold from house to
house, or from land to land, as their owners in the towns desired.
Also, day by day I watched great caravans of slaves from the peoples of
many, many powerful kingdoms, bringing in native produce and dust of
gold, and carrying out very many cases of square face and of rum.'
"`It is a false report that ye bring,' I said; `how know ye that the men
were slaves? the Great White Queen frees all who come beneath the shadow
of her glorious flag.'
"`That may be,' he said, `as I saw not the Great White Queen herself,
but the slaves were there, all marked with a brand on the cheek, my
father. Also, I had speech of some of these, and they said that they
were slaves. More, my father, there are also in the cities many native
guards, and most of these men are also slaves, who serve under the
Queen's ruler for money, which they give to the owners of their bodies
whenever the Queen pays them; and so, my father, I would even live here
under your shadow, where I and my people are free by the strength of our
own right hands, than be a pining slave under the flag of the Great
White Queen, my mother, who is too far away to help her suffering
children when they cry out of wrong and find none to hear them.'
"Then it was, my sons," said the aged man, "that I lost my reason; I
could not eat my food, and my sleep at nights went from me; I could only
kneel and humbly pray, both night and day, to the good God on high that
lie would wake the ear of our gracious Queen to hear the pitiful cry of
these poor defenceless creatures, over whom he has given her an empire,
and power, and glory, and who, though they are so far from her, are yet
her loyal subjects, and very near to the great God Himself, in whose
hand her breath is, and whose are all her ways.
"And now, my sons, my eyes are closing fast, and I leave ye to follow me
along the weary road which leads to the great hereafter. Take, then,
the last blessing of a very aged and a defenceless man, to whom ye were
both kind and good. Fear God, and follow that which is good, so shall
we meet again in the land where sorrows are forgotten, and where peace
and rest await both you and me. Greeting, then, my sons, to you and
yours--greeting and farewell!"
And so he died, this one staunch witness for freedom and his God, in a
land where all else was foul and evil. Very peacefully his life slipped
from him with the dawn of day, and his loyal spirit soared to the very
presence of Him who gave it life.
"God rest him," said Grenville gently; "God rest His faithful servant.
May I too die the death of a brave man, and may my last end be even as
the end of Muzi Zimba the Ancient."
That same day the little band buried the hermit's body, the natives
following him to the grave with many marks of respect and reverence, and
the white men firing a farewell salute over the last resting-place of
this gallant soldier, who had given up his life for the truth, and died
in freedom's cause, in this far-distant land.