------------------------------------------------------------------------
The white man looked about at the faces close to him--and stopped. He
began slowly to untie the outstretched arms, and blustered out some
threats. But no one said a word!
The noises died down as the night wore on, until the stillness was
broken only by the desultory barking of a kaffir dog or the crowing of
some awakened rooster who had mistaken the bright moonlight for the dawn
and thought that all the world had overslept itself. But for me there
was one other sound for which I listened into the cool of morning with
the quivering sensitiveness of a bruised nerve. Sometimes it was a long
catchy sigh, and sometimes it broke into a groan just audible, like the
faintest rumble of most distant surf. Twice in the long night there
came the same request to one of the boys near him, uttered in a deep
clear unshaken voice and in a tone that was civil but firm, and
strangely moving from its quiet indifference.
"Landela manzi, Umganaam!" ("Bring water, friend!") was all he said;
and each time the request was so quickly answered that I had the guilty
feeling of being one in a great conspiracy of silence. The hush was
unreal; the stillness alive with racing thoughts; the darkness full of
watching eyes.
There is, we believe, in the heart of every being a little germ of
justice which men call conscience! If that be so, there must have been
in the heart of the white man that night some uneasy movement--the first
life-throb of the thought which one who had not yet written has since
set down:
"Though I've belted you and flayed you,
By the living God that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following afternoon I received an ultimatum. We had just returned
from the town when from a group of boys squatting round the fire there
stood up one big fellow--a stranger--who raised his hand high above his
head in Zulu fashion and gave their salute in the deep bell-like voice
that there was no mistaking, "Inkos! Bayete!"
He stepped forward, looking me all over, and announced with calm and
settled conviction, "I have come to work for you!" I said nothing.
Then he rapped a chest like a big drum, and nodding his head with a sort
of defiant confidence added in quaint English, "My naam Makokela! Jim
Makokel'! Yes! My catchum lion 'live! Makokela, me!"
He had heard that I wanted a driver, had waited for my return, and
annexed me as his future `baas' without a moment's doubt or hesitation.
I looked him over. Big, broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, and as straight
as an assegai! A neck and head like a bull's; a face like a
weather-beaten rock, storm-scarred and furrowed, rugged and ugly, but
steadfast, massive and strong! So it looked then, and so it turned out:
for good and for evil Jim was strong.