If our adventurers, or any of them, hoped that they were going to be
led to the secret places of the fortress that day, they were destined
to disappointment. Indeed, the remainder of it was employed arduously
enough in unpacking rifles, and a supply of ammunition; also in giving
to a few of the leading Makalanga preliminary lessons in the method of
their use, a matter as to which their ideas were of the vaguest. The
rest of the tribe, having brought their women and children into the
outer enclosure of the ancient stronghold, and with them their sheep
and goats and the few cattle which remained to them, were employed in
building up the entrance permanently with stones, a zigzag secret path
upon the river side, that could be stopped in a few minutes, being now
their only method of ingress and egress through the thickness of the
walls. A certain number of men were also sent out as spies to discover,
if possible, the whereabouts of the Matabele impi.
That there was some impi they were almost sure, for a woman who had
followed them reported that the injured captain, Maduna, and his
companion had been met at a distance of about three miles from Bambatse
by a small party of Matabele, who were hiding in some bushes, and that
these men had made litters for them, and carried them away; whither she
did not know, for she had not dared to pursue them further.
That night Benita passed in the guesthouse, which was only a hut rather
larger than the others, while the two men slept in the waggon just
outside. She was so tired that for a long while she could not rest. Her
mind kept flying back to all the events of the day: the strange words
of that mystic old Molimo, concerning herself; the arrival of the brutal
messengers and the indaba that followed; then the sudden and awful
destruction of their spokesman at the hand of Jacob Meyer. The scene
would not leave her eyes, she saw it again and yet again: the quick
transformation of Meyer’s indifferent face when the soldier began to
insult and threaten her, the lightning-like movement of his hand, the
flash, the report, the change from life to death, and the slayer’s cruel
laugh. He could be very terrible, Jacob Meyer, when his passions were
roused!
And what had roused them then? She could not doubt that it was
herself--not mere chivalry towards a woman. Even if he were capable of
chivalry, merely for that he would never have taken such risk of future
trouble and revenge. No; it was something deeper. He had never said
anything or done anything, yet long ago instinct or insight had caused
Benita to suspect the workings of his mind, and now she was sure of
them. The thought was terrible--worse than all her other dangers put
together. True, she had her father to rely on, but he had been somewhat
ailing of late; age and these arduous journeys and anxieties had told
upon him. Supposing that anything were to happen to him--if he died, for
instance, how dreadful her position might become, left alone far from
the reach of help, with savages--and Jacob Meyer.
Oh! if it had not been for that dreadful shipwreck, how different might
be her lot to-day! Well, it was the thought of the shipwreck and of him
whom she had lost therein, which had driven her on to this adventure,
that in it perhaps her suffering mind might be numbed to rest; and now
she must face its issues. God still remained above her, and she would
put her trust in Him. After all, if she died, what did it matter?
But that old Molimo had promised her that she was safe from death, that
she should find here happiness and rest, though not that of the grave.
He promised this, speaking as one who knew of all her grief, and a very
little while afterwards, in the case of the Matabele soldier, he had
proved himself a prophet of awful power. Also--she knew not how, she
knew not why--now, as before, her inmost heart seemed to bear witness
that this old dreamer’s words were true, and that for her, in some
strange manner unforeseen, there still remained a rest.
Comforted a little by this intuition, at length Benita fell asleep.
Next morning, when she came out of the hut, Benita was met by her
father, who with a cheerful countenance informed her that at any rate
as yet there was no sign of the Matabele. A few hours later, too, some
spies came in who said that for miles round nothing could be seen or
heard of them. Still the preparations for defence went on, and the
hundred best men having been furnished with the rifles, were being
drilled in the use of them by Tamas and his two companions, Tamala and
Hoba, who had learned how to handle a gun very well in the course of
their long journey. The shooting of these raw recruits, however, proved
to be execrable; indeed, so dangerous were they that when one of them
fired at a mark set upon the wall, it was found necessary to order
all the rest to lie down. As it was, a poor trek ox--luckily it was
sick--and two sheep were killed.
Foreseeing a scarcity of provisions in the event of a siege, Meyer,
provident as ever, had already decreed the death of the tetse-bitten
cattle. These were accordingly despatched, and having been skinned and
cut up, their flesh was severed into long strips to be dried in the
burning sun as biltong, which secretly Benita hoped she might never be
called upon to eat. Yet the time was to come when she would swallow that
hard, tetse-poisoned flesh with thankfulness.
At midday, after they had eaten, Mr. Clifford and Meyer went to the
Molimo, where he sat against the second wall, and, pointing to the men
with the guns, said:
“We have fulfilled our bargain. Now fulfil yours. Lead us to the holy
place that we may begin our search.”
“So be it,” he answered. “Follow me, white people.”
Then, quite unattended, he guided them round the inner wall till they
came to a path of rock not more than a yard wide, beneath which was a
precipice fifty feet or so in depth that almost overhung the river. This
giddy path they followed for about twenty paces, to find that it ended
in a cleft in the wall so narrow that only one person could walk
through it at a time. That it must have been the approach to the second
stronghold was evident, however, since it was faced on either side with
dressed stones, and even the foundation granite had been worn by the
human feet which had passed here for ages upon ages. This path zigzagged
to and fro in the thickness of the wall till it brought them finally
within its circle, a broad belt of steeply-rising ground, covered like
that below with the tumbled ruins of buildings amidst which grew bush
and trees.
“Heaven send that the gold is not buried here,” said Mr. Clifford,
surveying the scene; “for if it is, we shall never find it.”
The Molimo seemed to guess the meaning of his words from his face, for
he answered:
“I think not here. The besiegers won this place and camped in it for
many weeks. I could show you where they built their fires and tried to
undermine the last wall within which the Portuguese sat about until
hunger killed them, for they could not eat their gold. Follow me again.”
So on they went up the slope till they came to the base of the third
wall, and as before, passed round it, and reached a point above the
river. But now there was no passage, only some shallow and almost
precipitous steps cut from single stones leading from the foot of the
wall to its summit, more than thirty feet above.
“Really,” said Benita, contemplating this perilous ascent with dismay,
“the ways of treasure seekers are hard. I don’t think I can,” while her
father also looked at them and shook his head.
“We must get a rope,” said Meyer to the Molimo angrily. “How can we
climb that place without one, with such a gulf below?”
“I am old, but I climb it,” said the aged man in mild surprise, since to
him, who had trodden it all his life, it seemed not difficult. “Still,”
he added, “I have a rope above which I use upon dark nights. I will
ascend and let it down.”
Ascend he did accordingly; indeed, it was a wondrous sight to see his
withered legs scrambling from step to step as unconcernedly as though
he were going upstairs. No monkey could have been more agile, or more
absolutely impervious to the effects of height. Soon he vanished in--or,
rather, through--the crest of the wall, and presently appeared again on
the top step, whence he let down a stout hide rope, remarking that it
was securely tied. So anxious was Meyer to enter the hidden place of
which he had dreamed so long that he scarcely waited for it to reach
his hand before he began the climb, which he accomplished safely. Then,
sitting on the top of the wall, he directed Mr. Clifford to fasten the
end of the rope round Benita’s waist, and her turn came.
It was not so bad as she expected, for she was agile, and the knowledge
that the rope would prevent disaster gave her confidence. In a very
little while she had grasped Meyer’s outstretched hand, and been drawn
into safety through a kind of aperture above the top step. Then the rope
was let down again for her father, who tied it about his middle. Well
was it that he did so, since when he was about half-way up, awkwardness,
or perhaps loss of nerve--neither of them wonderful in an old
man--caused his foot to slip, and had it not been for the rope which
Meyer and the Molimo held, he would certainly have fallen into the
river some hundreds of feet below. As it was, he recovered himself, and
presently arrived panting and very pale. In her relief Benita kissed
him, and even as she did so thought again that she had been very near to
being left alone with Jacob Meyer.
“All’s well that ends well, my dear,” he said. “But upon my word I am
beginning to wish that I had been content with the humble profits of
horse-breeding.”
Benita made no answer; it seemed too late for any useful consideration
of the point.
“Clever men, those ancients,” said Meyer. “See,” and he pointed out
to her how, by drawing a heavy stone which still lay close by over the
aperture through which they had crept, the ascent of the wall could
be made absolutely impossible to any enemy, since at its crest it was
battened outwards, not inwards, as is usual in these ancient ruins.
“Yes,” she answered, “we ought to feel safe enough inside here, and
that’s as well since I do not feel inclined to go out again at present.”
Then they paused to look about them, and this was what they saw:
The wall, built like those below, of unmortared blocks of stone,
remained in a wonderfully good state of preservation, for its only
enemies had been time, the tropical rains, and the growth of shrubs
and trees which here and there had cracked and displaced the stones. It
enclosed all the top of the hill, perhaps three acres of ground, and
on it at intervals were planted soap-stone pillars, each of them about
twelve feet in height, and fashioned at the top to a rude resemblance
of a vulture. Many of these columns, however had been blown down, or
perhaps struck by lightning, and lay broken upon the wall, or if they
had fallen inward, at its foot; but some, six or eight perhaps, were
still standing.
Benita learned afterwards that they must have been placed there by
the ancient Phoenicians, or whatever people constructed this gigantic
fortification, and had something to do with the exact recordings of the
different seasons of the year, and their sub-divisions, by means of the
shadows which they cast. As yet, however, she did not pay much attention
to them, for she was engaged in considering a more remarkable relic of
antiquity which stood upon the very verge of the precipice, the wall,
indeed, being built up to its base on either side.
It was the great cone of which Richard Seymour had told her, fifty feet
high or more, such as once was found in the Phoenician temples. But in
this case it was not built of masonry, but shaped by the hand of man out
of a single gigantic granite monolith of the sort that are sometimes to
be met with in Africa, that thousands or millions of years ago had been
left standing thus when the softer rock around it was worn away by time
and weather. On the inner side of this cone were easy steps whereby
it could be ascended, and its top, which might have been six feet in
diameter, was fashioned in the shape of a cup, probably for the purposes
of acts of worship and of sacrifice. This extraordinary monument, which,
except on the river side, could not be seen from below on account of
the slope of the hill, leaned slightly outwards, so that a stone dropped
from its crest would fall into the waters of the stream.
“Thence it was,” said the Molimo, “that my forefathers saw the last of
the Portuguese, the fair daughter of the great Captain Ferreira, hurl
herself to death after she had given the gold into our keeping, and laid
the curse upon it, until she came again. So in my dreams have I seen and
heard her also, ay, and others have seen her, but these only from by the
river far below.”
He paused awhile, looking at Benita with his queer, dreamy eyes; then
said suddenly:
“Say, Lady, do you remember nothing of that matter?”
Now Benita grew vexed, for the whole thing was uncanny and jarred upon
her.
“How can I remember,” she asked, “who was born not five and twenty years
ago?”
“I do not know,” he answered. “How should I know, who am but an ignorant
old black man, who was born not much more than eighty years ago? Yet,
Lady, tell me, for I seek your wisdom, where were you born from? Out of
the earth, or out of the heavens? What? You shake your head, you who
do not remember? Well, neither do I remember. Yet it is true that all
circles meet somewhere, and it is true that the Portuguese maiden said
she would come again; and lastly it is true that she was such an one
as you are, for she haunts this place, and I, who have seen her sitting
yonder in the moonlight, know her beauty well. Yet mayhap she comes no
more in flesh, but still her spirit comes; for, Lady, out of those eyes
of yours I see it gaze at me. Come,” he added abruptly, “let us descend
the wall, for as you cannot remember, there is more to show you. Have no
fear--the steps are easy.”
So they went down without much difficulty, since, from the accumulation
of rubbish and other causes, the wall was a great deal lower on this
side, and found themselves in the usual dense growth of vegetation and
brushwood through which ran a little path. It led them past the ruins
of buildings whereof the use and purpose were long since forgotten, for
their roofs had fallen in hundreds or thousands of years ago, to the
entrance of a cave which was placed almost at the foot of the monolithic
cone, but thirty or forty yards further from the circle of the wall.
Here the Molimo bade them stay while he lit the lamps within. Five
minutes passed and he returned, saying that all was ready.
“Be not afraid of what you may see,” he added, “for know, white people,
that save my forefathers and myself, none have entered this place since
the Portuguese perished here, nor have we, who do but come hither to
pray and receive the word of the Munwali, ever ventured to disturb it.
As it was, so it is. Come, Lady, come; she whose spirit goes with you
was the last of your white race to pass this door. It is therefore
fitting that your feet and her spirit should be the first to enter it
again.”
Benita hung back a little, for the adventure was eerie, then, determined
that she would show no fear in the presence of this old priest, took the
thin hand he stretched out to her, and walked forward with head erect.
The two men began to follow her, but the Molimo stopped them, saying:
“Not so. The maiden enters first alone with me; it is her house, and
should it please her to ask you to dwell therein, so be it. But first
she must visit her house alone.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Clifford angrily. “I will not have it. It will
frighten her.”
“Lady, do you trust me?” asked the Molimo.
“Yes,” she answered; adding, “Father, I think you had better let me go
alone. I am not afraid now, and it may be wisest not to thwart him. This
is a very strange business--not like anything else--and really I think
that I had better go alone. If I do not come back presently, you can
follow.”
“Those who break in upon the sleep of the dead should walk gently,
gently,” piped the old Molimo in a sing-song voice. “The maiden’s breath
is pure; the maiden’s foot is light; her breath will not offend the
dead; her step will not disturb the dead. White men, white men, anger
not the dead, for the dead are mighty, and will be revenged upon you
when you are dead; soon, very soon, when you are dead--dead in your
sorrows, dead in your sins, dead, gathered to that company of the dead
who await us here.”
And, still chanting his mystic song, he led Benita by the hand out of
the light, onward into darkness, away from life, onward into the place
of death.