CHAPTER II. THE BLACK HAND
CHAPTER III. THE MISSION STATION
CHAPTER IV. ALPHONSE AND HIS ANNETTE
CHAPTER V. UMSLOPOGAAS MAKES A PROMISE
CHAPTER VI. THE NIGHT WEARS ON
CHAPTER VII. A SLAUGHTER GRIM AND GREAT
CHAPTER VIII. ALPHONSE EXPLAINS
CHAPTER IX. INTO THE UNKNOWN
CHAPTER X. THE ROSE OF FIRE
CHAPTER XI. THE FROWNING CITY
CHAPTER XII. THE SISTER QUEENS
CHAPTER XIII. ABOUT THE ZU-VENDI PEOPLE
CHAPTER XIV. THE FLOWER TEMPLE
CHAPTER XV. SORAIS’ SONG
CHAPTER XVI. BEFORE THE STATUE
CHAPTER XVII. THE STORM BREAKS
CHAPTER XVIII. WAR! RED WAR!
CHAPTER XIX. A STRANGE WEDDING
CHAPTER XX. THE BATTLE OF THE PASS
CHAPTER XI. AWAY! AWAY!
CHAPTER XII. HOW UMSLOPOGAAS HELD THE STAIR
CHAPTER XIII. I HAVE SPOKEN
CHAPTER XIV. BY ANOTHER HAND
NOTE BY GEORGE CURTIS, Esq.
AUTHORITIES
I inscribe this book of adventure to my son ARTHUR JOHN RIDER HAGGARD
in the hope that in days to come he, and many other boys whom I shall
never know, may, in the acts and thoughts of Allan Quatermain and his
companions, as herein recorded, find something to help him and them to
reach to what, with Sir Henry Curtis, I hold to be the highest rank
whereto we can attain—the state and dignity of English gentlemen.
INTRODUCTION
December 23
“I have just buried my boy, my poor handsome boy of whom I was so
proud, and my heart is broken. It is very hard having only one son to
lose him thus, but God’s will be done. Who am I that I should complain?
The great wheel of Fate rolls on like a Juggernaut, and crushes us all
in turn, some soon, some late—it does not matter when, in the end, it
crushes us all. We do not prostrate ourselves before it like the poor
Indians; we fly hither and thither—we cry for mercy; but it is of no
use, the black Fate thunders on and in its season reduces us to powder.
“Poor Harry to go so soon! just when his life was opening to him. He
was doing so well at the hospital, he had passed his last examination
with honours, and I was proud of them, much prouder than he was, I
think. And then he must needs go to that smallpox hospital. He wrote to
me that he was not afraid of smallpox and wanted to gain the
experience; and now the disease has killed him, and I, old and grey and
withered, am left to mourn over him, without a chick or child to
comfort me. I might have saved him, too—I have money enough for both of
us, and much more than enough—King Solomon’s Mines provided me with
that; but I said, ‘No, let the boy earn his living, let him labour that
he may enjoy rest.’ But the rest has come to him before the labour. Oh,
my boy, my boy!
“I am like the man in the Bible who laid up much goods and builded
barns—goods for my boy and barns for him to store them in; and now his
soul has been required of him, and I am left desolate. I would that it
had been my soul and not my boy’s!
“We buried him this afternoon under the shadow of the grey and ancient
tower of the church of this village where my house is. It was a dreary
December afternoon, and the sky was heavy with snow, but not much was
falling. The coffin was put down by the grave, and a few big flakes lit
upon it. They looked very white upon the black cloth! There was a
little hitch about getting the coffin down into the grave—the necessary
ropes had been forgotten: so we drew back from it, and waited in
silence watching the big flakes fall gently one by one like heavenly
benedictions, and melt in tears on Harry’s pall. But that was not all.
A robin redbreast came as bold as could be and lit upon the coffin and
began to sing. And then I am afraid that I broke down, and so did Sir
Henry Curtis, strong man though he is; and as for Captain Good, I saw
him turn away too; even in my own distress I could not help noticing
it.”
The above, signed “Allan Quatermain”, is an extract from my diary
written two years and more ago. I copy it down here because it seems to
me that it is the fittest beginning to the history that I am about to
write, if it please God to spare me to finish it. If not, well it does
not matter. That extract was penned seven thousand miles or so from the
spot where I now lie painfully and slowly writing this, with a pretty
girl standing by my side fanning the flies from my august countenance.
Harry is there and I am here, and yet somehow I cannot help feeling
that I am not far off Harry.
When I was in England I used to live in a very fine house—at least I
call it a fine house, speaking comparatively, and judging from the
standard of the houses I have been accustomed to all my life in
Africa—not five hundred yards from the old church where Harry is
asleep, and thither I went after the funeral and ate some food; for it
is no good starving even if one has just buried all one’s earthly
hopes. But I could not eat much, and soon I took to walking, or rather
limping—being permanently lame from the bite of a lion—up and down, up
and down the oak-panelled vestibule; for there is a vestibule in my
house in England. On all the four walls of this vestibule were placed
pairs of horns—about a hundred pairs altogether, all of which I had
shot myself. They are beautiful specimens, as I never keep any horns
which are not in every way perfect, unless it may be now and again on
account of the associations connected with them. In the centre of the
room, however, over the wide fireplace, there was a clear space left on
which I had fixed up all my rifles. Some of them I have had for forty
years, old muzzle-loaders that nobody would look at nowadays. One was
an elephant gun with strips of rimpi, or green hide, lashed round the
stock and locks, such as used to be owned by the Dutchmen—a “roer” they
call it. That gun, the Boer I bought it from many years ago told me,
had been used by his father at the battle of the Blood River, just
after Dingaan swept into Natal and slaughtered six hundred men, women,
and children, so that the Boers named the place where they died
“Weenen”, or the “Place of Weeping”; and so it is called to this day,
and always will be called. And many an elephant have I shot with that
old gun. She always took a handful of black powder and a three-ounce
ball, and kicked like the very deuce.
Well, up and down I walked, staring at the guns and the horns which the
guns had brought low; and as I did so there rose up in me a great
craving:—I would go away from this place where I lived idly and at
ease, back again to the wild land where I had spent my life, where I
met my dear wife and poor Harry was born, and so many things, good,
bad, and indifferent, had happened to me. The thirst for the wilderness
was on me; I could tolerate this place no more; I would go and die as I
had lived, among the wild game and the savages. Yes, as I walked, I
began to long to see the moonlight gleaming silvery white over the wide
veldt and mysterious sea of bush, and watch the lines of game
travelling down the ridges to the water. The ruling passion is strong
in death, they say, and my heart was dead that night. But,
independently of my trouble, no man who has for forty years lived the
life I have, can with impunity go coop himself in this prim English
country, with its trim hedgerows and cultivated fields, its stiff
formal manners, and its well-dressed crowds. He begins to long—ah, how
he longs!—for the keen breath of the desert air; he dreams of the sight
of Zulu impis breaking on their foes like surf upon the rocks, and his
heart rises up in rebellion against the strict limits of the civilized
life.
Ah! this civilization, what does it all come to? For forty years and
more I lived among savages, and studied them and their ways; and now
for several years I have lived here in England, and have in my own
stupid manner done my best to learn the ways of the children of light;
and what have I found? A great gulf fixed? No, only a very little one,
that a plain man’s thought may spring across. I say that as the savage
is, so is the white man, only the latter is more inventive, and
possesses the faculty of combination; save and except also that the
savage, as I have known him, is to a large extent free from the greed
of money, which eats like a cancer into the heart of the white man. It
is a depressing conclusion, but in all essentials the savage and the
child of civilization are identical. I dare say that the highly
civilized lady reading this will smile at an old fool of a hunter’s
simplicity when she thinks of her black bead-bedecked sister; and so
will the superfine cultured idler scientifically eating a dinner at his
club, the cost of which would keep a starving family for a week. And
yet, my dear young lady, what are those pretty things round your own
neck?—they have a strong family resemblance, especially when you wear
that _very_ low dress, to the savage woman’s beads. Your habit of
turning round and round to the sound of horns and tom-toms, your
fondness for pigments and powders, the way in which you love to
subjugate yourself to the rich warrior who has captured you in
marriage, and the quickness with which your taste in feathered
head-dresses varies—all these things suggest touches of kinship; and
you remember that in the fundamental principles of your nature you are
quite identical. As for you, sir, who also laugh, let some man come and
strike you in the face whilst you are enjoying that marvellous-looking
dish, and we shall soon see how much of the savage there is in _you_.
There, I might go on for ever, but what is the good? Civilization is
only savagery silver-gilt. A vainglory is it, and like a northern
light, comes but to fade and leave the sky more dark. Out of the soil
of barbarism it has grown like a tree, and, as I believe, into the soil
like a tree it will once more, sooner or later, fall again, as the
Egyptian civilization fell, as the Hellenic civilization fell, and as
the Roman civilization and many others of which the world has now lost
count, fell also. Do not let me, however, be understood as decrying our
modern institutions, representing as they do the gathered experience of
humanity applied for the good of all. Of course they have great
advantages—hospitals for instance; but then, remember, we breed the
sickly people who fill them. In a savage land they do not exist.
Besides, the question will arise: How many of these blessings are due
to Christianity as distinct from civilization? And so the balance sways
and the story runs—here a gain, there a loss, and Nature’s great
average struck across the two, whereof the sum total forms one of the
factors in that mighty equation in which the result will equal the
unknown quantity of her purpose.
I make no apology for this digression, especially as this is an
introduction which all young people and those who never like to think
(and it is a bad habit) will naturally skip. It seems to me very
desirable that we should sometimes try to understand the limitations of
our nature, so that we may not be carried away by the pride of
knowledge. Man’s cleverness is almost indefinite, and stretches like an
elastic band, but human nature is like an iron ring. You can go round
and round it, you can polish it highly, you can even flatten it a
little on one side, whereby you will make it bulge out the other, but
you will _never_, while the world endures and man is man, increase its
total circumference. It is the one fixed unchangeable thing—fixed as
the stars, more enduring than the mountains, as unalterable as the way
of the Eternal. Human nature is God’s kaleidoscope, and the little bits
of coloured glass which represent our passions, hopes, fears, joys,
aspirations towards good and evil and what not, are turned in His
mighty hand as surely and as certainly as it turns the stars, and
continually fall into new patterns and combinations. But the composing
elements remain the same, nor will there be one more bit of coloured
glass nor one less for ever and ever.
This being so, supposing for the sake of argument we divide ourselves
into twenty parts, nineteen savage and one civilized, we must look to
the nineteen savage portions of our nature, if we would really
understand ourselves, and not to the twentieth, which, though so
insignificant in reality, is spread all over the other nineteen, making
them appear quite different from what they really are, as the blacking
does a boot, or the veneer a table. It is on the nineteen rough
serviceable savage portions that we fall back in emergencies, not on
the polished but unsubstantial twentieth. Civilization should wipe away
our tears, and yet we weep and cannot be comforted. Warfare is
abhorrent to her, and yet we strike out for hearth and home, for honour
and fair fame, and can glory in the blow. And so on, through
everything.
So, when the heart is stricken, and the head is humbled in the dust,
civilization fails us utterly. Back, back, we creep, and lay us like
little children on the great breast of Nature, she that perchance may
soothe us and make us forget, or at least rid remembrance of its sting.
Who has not in his great grief felt a longing to look upon the outward
features of the universal Mother; to lie on the mountains and watch the
clouds drive across the sky and hear the rollers break in thunder on
the shore, to let his poor struggling life mingle for a while in her
life; to feel the slow beat of her eternal heart, and to forget his
woes, and let his identity be swallowed in the vast imperceptibly
moving energy of her of whom we are, from whom we came, and with whom
we shall again be mingled, who gave us birth, and will in a day to come
give us our burial also.
And so in my trouble, as I walked up and down the oak-panelled
vestibule of my house there in Yorkshire, I longed once more to throw
myself into the arms of Nature. Not the Nature which you know, the
Nature that waves in well-kept woods and smiles out in corn-fields, but
Nature as she was in the age when creation was complete, undefiled as
yet by any human sinks of sweltering humanity. I would go again where
the wild game was, back to the land whereof none know the history, back
to the savages, whom I love, although some of them are almost as
merciless as Political Economy. There, perhaps, I should be able to
learn to think of poor Harry lying in the churchyard, without feeling
as though my heart would break in two.
And now there is an end of this egotistical talk, and there shall be no
more of it. But if you whose eyes may perchance one day fall upon my
written thoughts have got so far as this, I ask you to persevere, since
what I have to tell you is not without its interest, and it has never
been told before, nor will again.
CHAPTER I.
THE CONSUL’S YARN
A week had passed since the funeral of my poor boy Harry, and one
evening I was in my room walking up and down and thinking, when there
was a ring at the outer door. Going down the steps I opened it myself,
and in came my old friends Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good, RN.
They entered the vestibule and sat themselves down before the wide
hearth, where, I remember, a particularly good fire of logs was
burning.
“It is very kind of you to come round,” I said by way of making a
remark; “it must have been heavy walking in the snow.”
They said nothing, but Sir Henry slowly filled his pipe and lit it with
a burning ember. As he leant forward to do so the fire got hold of a
gassy bit of pine and flared up brightly, throwing the whole scene into
strong relief, and I thought, What a splendid-looking man he is! Calm,
powerful face, clear-cut features, large grey eyes, yellow beard and
hair—altogether a magnificent specimen of the higher type of humanity.
Nor did his form belie his face. I have never seen wider shoulders or a
deeper chest. Indeed, Sir Henry’s girth is so great that, though he is
six feet two high, he does not strike one as a tall man. As I looked at
him I could not help thinking what a curious contrast my little
dried-up self presented to his grand face and form. Imagine to yourself
a small, withered, yellow-faced man of sixty-three, with thin hands,
large brown eyes, a head of grizzled hair cut short and standing up
like a half-worn scrubbing-brush—total weight in my clothes, nine stone
six—and you will get a very fair idea of Allan Quatermain, commonly
called Hunter Quatermain, or by the natives “Macumazahn”—Anglicè, he
who keeps a bright look-out at night, or, in vulgar English, a sharp
fellow who is not to be taken in.
Then there was Good, who is not like either of us, being short, dark,
stout—_very_ stout—with twinkling black eyes, in one of which an
eyeglass is everlastingly fixed. I say stout, but it is a mild term; I
regret to state that of late years Good has been running to fat in a
most disgraceful way. Sir Henry tells him that it comes from idleness
and over-feeding, and Good does not like it at all, though he cannot
deny it.
We sat for a while, and then I got a match and lit the lamp that stood
ready on the table, for the half-light began to grow dreary, as it is
apt to do when one has a short week ago buried the hope of one’s life.
Next, I opened a cupboard in the wainscoting and got a bottle of whisky
and some tumblers and water. I always like to do these things for
myself: it is irritating to me to have somebody continually at my
elbow, as though I were an eighteen-month-old baby. All this while
Curtis and Good had been silent, feeling, I suppose, that they had
nothing to say that could do me any good, and content to give me the
comfort of their presence and unspoken sympathy; for it was only their
second visit since the funeral. And it is, by the way, from the
_presence_ of others that we really derive support in our dark hours of
grief, and not from their talk, which often only serves to irritate us.
Before a bad storm the game always herd together, but they cease their
calling.
They sat and smoked and drank whisky and water, and I stood by the fire
also smoking and looking at them.
At last I spoke. “Old friends,” I said, “how long is it since we got
back from Kukuanaland?”
“Three years,” said Good. “Why do you ask?”
“I ask because I think that I have had a long enough spell of
civilization. I am going back to the veldt.”
Sir Henry laid his head back in his arm-chair and laughed one of his
deep laughs. “How very odd,” he said, “eh, Good?”
Good beamed at me mysteriously through his eyeglass and murmured, “Yes,
odd—very odd.”
“I don’t quite understand,” said I, looking from one to the other, for
I dislike mysteries.
“Don’t you, old fellow?” said Sir Henry; “then I will explain. As Good
and I were walking up here we had a talk.”
“If Good was there you probably did,” I put in sarcastically, for Good
is a great hand at talking. “And what may it have been about?”
“What do you think?” asked Sir Henry.
I shook my head. It was not likely that I should know what Good might
be talking about. He talks about so many things.
“Well, it was about a little plan that I have formed—namely, that if
you were willing we should pack up our traps and go off to Africa on
another expedition.”
I fairly jumped at his words. “You don’t say so!” I said.
“Yes I do, though, and so does Good; don’t you, Good?”
“Rather,” said that gentleman.
“Listen, old fellow,” went on Sir Henry, with considerable animation of
manner. “I’m tired of it too, dead-tired of doing nothing more except
play the squire in a country that is sick of squires. For a year or
more I have been getting as restless as an old elephant who scents
danger. I am always dreaming of Kukuanaland and Gagool and King
Solomon’s Mines. I can assure you I have become the victim of an almost
unaccountable craving. I am sick of shooting pheasants and partridges,
and want to have a go at some large game again. There, you know the
feeling—when one has once tasted brandy and water, milk becomes insipid
to the palate. That year we spent together up in Kukuanaland seems to
me worth all the other years of my life put together. I dare say that I
am a fool for my pains, but I can’t help it; I long to go, and, what is
more, I mean to go.” He paused, and then went on again. “And, after
all, why should I not go? I have no wife or parent, no chick or child
to keep me. If anything happens to me the baronetcy will go to my
brother George and his boy, as it would ultimately do in any case. I am
of no importance to any one.”
“Ah!” I said, “I thought you would come to that sooner or later. And
now, Good, what is your reason for wanting to trek; have you got one?”
“I have,” said Good, solemnly. “I never do anything without a reason;
and it isn’t a lady—at least, if it is, it’s several.”
I looked at him again. Good is so overpoweringly frivolous. “What is
it?” I said.
“Well, if you really want to know, though I’d rather not speak of a
delicate and strictly personal matter, I’ll tell you: I’m getting too
fat.”
“Shut up, Good!” said Sir Henry. “And now, Quatermain, tell us, where
do you propose going to?”
I lit my pipe, which had gone out, before answering.
“Have you people ever heard of Mt Kenia?” I asked.
“Don’t know the place,” said Good.
“Did you ever hear of the Island of Lamu?” I asked again.
“No. Stop, though—isn’t it a place about 300 miles north of Zanzibar?”
“Yes. Now listen. What I have to propose is this. That we go to Lamu
and thence make our way about 250 miles inland to Mt Kenia; from Mt
Kenia on inland to Mt Lekakisera, another 200 miles, or thereabouts,
beyond which no white man has to the best of my belief ever been; and
then, if we get so far, right on into the unknown interior. What do you
say to that, my hearties?”
“It’s a big order,” said Sir Henry, reflectively.
“You are right,” I answered, “it is; but I take it that we are all
three of us in search of a big order. We want a change of scene, and we
are likely to get one—a thorough change. All my life I have longed to
visit those parts, and I mean to do it before I die. My poor boy’s
death has broken the last link between me and civilization, and I’m off
to my native wilds. And now I’ll tell you another thing, and that is,
that for years and years I have heard rumours of a great white race
which is supposed to have its home somewhere up in this direction, and
I have a mind to see if there is any truth in them. If you fellows like
to come, well and good; if not, I’ll go alone.”
“I’m your man, though I don’t believe in your white race,” said Sir
Henry Curtis, rising and placing his arm upon my shoulder.
“Ditto,” remarked Good. “I’ll go into training at once. By all means
let’s go to Mt Kenia and the other place with an unpronounceable name,
and look for a white race that does not exist. It’s all one to me.”
“When do you propose to start?” asked Sir Henry.
“This day month,” I answered, “by the British India steamboat; and
don’t you be so certain that things have no existence because you do
not happen to have heard of them. Remember King Solomon’s mines!”
Some fourteen weeks or so had passed since the date of this
conversation, and this history goes on its way in very different
surroundings.
After much deliberation and inquiry we came to the conclusion that our
best starting-point for Mt Kenia would be from the neighbourhood of the
mouth of the Tana River, and not from Mombassa, a place over 100 miles
nearer Zanzibar. This conclusion we arrived at from information given
to us by a German trader whom we met upon the steamer at Aden. I think
that he was the dirtiest German I ever knew; but he was a good fellow,
and gave us a great deal of valuable information. “Lamu,” said he, “you
goes to Lamu—oh ze beautiful place!” and he turned up his fat face and
beamed with mild rapture. “One year and a half I live there and never
change my shirt—never at all.”
And so it came to pass that on arriving at the island we disembarked
with all our goods and chattels, and, not knowing where to go, marched
boldly up to the house of Her Majesty’s Consul, where we were most
hospitably received.
Lamu is a very curious place, but the things which stand out most
clearly in my memory in connection with it are its exceeding dirtiness
and its smells. These last are simply awful. Just below the Consulate
is the beach, or rather a mud bank that is called a beach. It is left
quite bare at low tide, and serves as a repository for all the filth,
offal, and refuse of the town. Here it is, too, that the women come to
bury coconuts in the mud, leaving them there till the outer husk is
quite rotten, when they dig them up again and use the fibres to make
mats with, and for various other purposes. As this process has been
going on for generations, the condition of the shore can be better
imagined than described. I have smelt many evil odours in the course of
my life, but the concentrated essence of stench which arose from that
beach at Lamu as we sat in the moonlit night—not under, but _on_ our
friend the Consul’s hospitable roof—and sniffed it, makes the
remembrance of them very poor and faint. No wonder people get fever at
Lamu. And yet the place was not without a certain quaintness and charm
of its own, though possibly—indeed probably—it was one which would
quickly pall.
“Well, where are you gentlemen steering for?” asked our friend the
hospitable Consul, as we smoked our pipes after dinner.
“We propose to go to Mt Kenia and then on to Mt Lekakisera,” answered
Sir Henry. “Quatermain has got hold of some yarn about there being a
white race up in the unknown territories beyond.”
The Consul looked interested, and answered that he had heard something
of that, too.
“What have you heard?” I asked.
“Oh, not much. All I know about it is that a year or so ago I got a
letter from Mackenzie, the Scotch missionary, whose station, ‘The
Highlands’, is placed at the highest navigable point of the Tana River,
in which he said something about it.”
“Have you the letter?” I asked.
“No, I destroyed it; but I remember that he said that a man had arrived
at his station who declared that two months’ journey beyond Mt
Lekakisera, which no white man has yet visited—at least, so far as I
know—he found a lake called Laga, and that then he went off to the
north-east, a month’s journey, over desert and thorn veldt and great
mountains, till he came to a country where the people are white and
live in stone houses. Here he was hospitably entertained for a while,
till at last the priests of the country set it about that he was a
devil, and the people drove him away, and he journeyed for eight months
and reached Mackenzie’s place, as I heard, dying. That’s all I know;
and if you ask me, I believe that it is a lie; but if you want to find
out more about it, you had better go up the Tana to Mackenzie’s place
and ask him for information.”
Sir Henry and I looked at each other. Here was something tangible.
“I think that we will go to Mr Mackenzie’s,” I said.
“Well,” answered the Consul, “that is your best way, but I warn you
that you are likely to have a rough journey, for I hear that the Masai
are about, and, as you know, they are not pleasant customers. Your best
plan will be to choose a few picked men for personal servants and
hunters, and to hire bearers from village to village. It will give you
an infinity of trouble, but perhaps on the whole it will prove a
cheaper and more advantageous course than engaging a caravan, and you
will be less liable to desertion.”
Fortunately there were at Lamu at this time a party of Wakwafi Askari
(soldiers). The Wakwafi, who are a cross between the Masai and the
Wataveta, are a fine manly race, possessing many of the good qualities
of the Zulu, and a great capacity for civilization. They are also great
hunters. As it happened, these particular men had recently been on a
long trip with an Englishman named Jutson, who had started from
Mombasa, a port about 150 miles below Lamu, and journeyed right round
Kilimanjaro, one of the highest known mountains in Africa. Poor fellow,
he had died of fever when on his return journey, and within a day’s
march of Mombasa. It does seem hard that he should have gone off thus
when within a few hours of safety, and after having survived so many
perils, but so it was. His hunters buried him, and then came on to Lamu
in a dhow. Our friend the Consul suggested to us that we had better try
and hire these men, and accordingly on the following morning we started
to interview the party, accompanied by an interpreter.
In due course we found them in a mud hut on the outskirts of the town.
Three of the men were sitting outside the hut, and fine frank-looking
fellows they were, having a more or less civilized appearance. To them
we cautiously opened the object of our visit, at first with very scant
success. They declared that they could not entertain any such idea,
that they were worn and weary with long travelling, and that their
hearts were sore at the loss of their master. They meant to go back to
their homes and rest awhile. This did not sound very promising, so by
way of effecting a diversion I asked where the remainder of them were.
I was told there were six, and I saw but three. One of the men said
they slept in the hut, and were yet resting after their labours—“sleep
weighed down their eyelids, and sorrow made their hearts as lead: it
was best to sleep, for with sleep came forgetfulness. But the men
should be awakened.”
Presently they came out of the hut, yawning—the first two men being
evidently of the same race and style as those already before us; but
the appearance of the third and last nearly made me jump out of my
skin. He was a very tall, broad man, quite six foot three, I should
say, but gaunt, with lean, wiry-looking limbs. My first glance at him
told me that he was no Wakwafi: he was a pure bred Zulu. He came out
with his thin aristocratic-looking hand placed before his face to hide
a yawn, so I could only see that he was a “Keshla” or ringed man,[1]
and that he had a great three-cornered hole in his forehead. In another
second he removed his hand, revealing a powerful-looking Zulu face,
with a humorous mouth, a short woolly beard, tinged with grey, and a
pair of brown eyes keen as a hawk’s. I knew my man at once, although I
had not seen him for twelve years. “How do you do, Umslopogaas?” I said
quietly in Zulu.
[1] Among the Zulus a man assumes the ring, which is made of a species
of black gum twisted in with the hair, and polished a brilliant black,
when he has reached a certain dignity and age, or is the husband of a
sufficient number of wives. Till he is in a position to wear a ring he
is looked on as a boy, though he may be thirty-five years of age, or
even more.—A. Q.
The tall man (who among his own people was commonly known as the
“Woodpecker”, and also as the “Slaughterer”) started, and almost let
the long-handled battleaxe he held in his hand fall in his
astonishment. Next second he had recognized me, and was saluting me in
an outburst of sonorous language which made his companions the Wakwafi
stare.
“Koos” (chief), he began, “Koos-y-Pagete! Koos-y-umcool! (Chief from of
old—mighty chief) Koos! Baba! (father) Macumazahn, old hunter, slayer
of elephants, eater up of lions, clever one! watchful one! brave one!
quick one! whose shot never misses, who strikes straight home, who
grasps a hand and holds it to the death (i.e. is a true friend) Koos!
Baba! Wise is the voice of our people that says, ‘Mountain never meets
with mountain, but at daybreak or at even man shall meet again with
man.’ Behold! a messenger came up from Natal, ‘Macumazahn is dead!’
cried he. ‘The land knows Macumazahn no more.’ That is years ago. And
now, behold, now in this strange place of stinks I find Macumazahn, my
friend. There is no room for doubt. The brush of the old jackal has
gone a little grey; but is not his eye as keen, and are not his teeth
as sharp? Ha! ha! Macumazahn, mindest thou how thou didst plant the
ball in the eye of the charging buffalo—mindest thou—”
I had let him run on thus because I saw that his enthusiasm was
producing a marked effect upon the minds of the five Wakwafi, who
appeared to understand something of his talk; but now I thought it time
to put a stop to it, for there is nothing that I hate so much as this
Zulu system of extravagant praising—“bongering” as they call it.
“Silence!” I said. “Has all thy noisy talk been stopped up since last I
saw thee that it breaks out thus, and sweeps us away? What doest thou
here with these men—thou whom I left a chief in Zululand? How is it
that thou art far from thine own place, and gathered together with
strangers?”
Umslopogaas leant himself upon the head of his long battleaxe (which
was nothing else but a pole-axe, with a beautiful handle of rhinoceros
horn), and his grim face grew sad.
“My Father,” he answered, “I have a word to tell thee, but I cannot
speak it before these low people (umfagozana),” and he glanced at the
Wakwafi Askari; “it is for thine own ear. My Father, this will I say,”
and here his face grew stern again, “a woman betrayed me to the death,
and covered my name with shame—ay, my own wife, a round-faced girl,
betrayed me; but I escaped from death; ay, I broke from the very hands
of those who came to slay me. I struck but three blows with this mine
axe Inkosikaas—surely my Father will remember it—one to the right, one
to the left, and one in front, and yet I left three men dead. And then
I fled, and, as my Father knows, even now that I am old my feet are as
the feet of the Sassaby,[2] and there breathes not the man who, by
running, can touch me again when once I have bounded from his side. On
I sped, and after me came the messengers of death, and their voice was
as the voice of dogs that hunt. From my own kraal I flew, and, as I
passed, she who had betrayed me was drawing water from the spring. I
fleeted by her like the shadow of Death, and as I went I smote with
mine axe, and lo! her head fell: it fell into the water pan. Then I
fled north. Day after day I journeyed on; for three moons I journeyed,
resting not, stopping not, but running on towards forgetfulness, till I
met the party of the white hunter who is now dead, and am come hither
with his servants. And nought have I brought with me. I who was
high-born, ay, of the blood of Chaka, the great king—a chief, and a
captain of the regiment of the Nkomabakosi—am a wanderer in strange
places, a man without a kraal. Nought have I brought save this mine
axe; of all my belongings this remains alone. They have divided my
cattle; they have taken my wives; and my children know my face no more.
Yet with this axe”—and he swung the formidable weapon round his head,
making the air hiss as he clove it—“will I cut another path to fortune.
I have spoken.”
[2] One of the fleetest of the African antelopes.—A. Q.
I shook my head at him. “Umslopogaas,” I said, “I know thee from of
old. Ever ambitious, ever plotting to be great, I fear me that thou
hast overreached thyself at last. Years ago, when thou wouldst have
plotted against Cetywayo, son of Panda, I warned thee, and thou didst
listen. But now, when I was not by thee to stay thy hand, thou hast dug
a pit for thine own feet to fall in. Is it not so? But what is done is
done. Who can make the dead tree green, or gaze again upon last year’s
light? Who can recall the spoken word, or bring back the spirit of the
fallen? That which Time swallows comes not up again. Let it be
forgotten!
“And now, behold, Umslopogaas, I know thee for a great warrior and a
brave man, faithful to the death. Even in Zululand, where all the men
are brave, they called thee the ‘Slaughterer’, and at night told
stories round the fire of thy strength and deeds. Hear me now. Thou
seest this great man, my friend”—and I pointed to Sir Henry; “he also
is a warrior as great as thou, and, strong as thou art, he could throw
thee over his shoulder. Incubu is his name. And thou seest this one
also; him with the round stomach, the shining eye, and the pleasant
face. Bougwan (glass eye) is his name, and a good man is he and a true,
being of a curious tribe who pass their life upon the water, and live
in floating kraals.
“Now, we three whom thou seest would travel inland, past Dongo Egere,
the great white mountain (Mt Kenia), and far into the unknown beyond.
We know not what we shall find there; we go to hunt and seek
adventures, and new places, being tired of sitting still, with the same
old things around us. Wilt thou come with us? To thee shall be given
command of all our servants; but what shall befall thee, that I know
not. Once before we three journeyed thus, in search of adventure, and
we took with us a man such as thou—one Umbopa; and, behold, we left him
the king of a great country, with twenty Impis (regiments), each of
3,000 plumed warriors, waiting on his word. How it shall go with thee,
I know not; mayhap death awaits thee and us. Wilt thou throw thyself to
Fortune and come, or fearest thou, Umslopogaas?”
The great man smiled. “Thou art not altogether right, Macumazahn,” he
said; “I have plotted in my time, but it was not ambition that led me
to my fall; but, shame on me that I should have to say it, a fair
woman’s face. Let it pass. So we are going to see something like the
old times again, Macumazahn, when we fought and hunted in Zululand? Ay,
I will come. Come life, come death, what care I, so that the blows fall
fast and the blood runs red? I grow old, I grow old, and I have not
fought enough! And yet am I a warrior among warriors; see my scars”—and
he pointed to countless cicatrices, stabs and cuts, that marked the
skin of his chest and legs and arms. “See the hole in my head; the
brains gushed out therefrom, yet did I slay him who smote, and live.
Knowest thou how many men I have slain, in fair hand-to-hand combat,
Macumazahn? See, here is the tale of them”—and he pointed to long rows
of notches cut in the rhinoceros-horn handle of his axe. “Number them,
Macumazahn—one hundred and three—and I have never counted but those
whom I have ripped open,[3] nor have I reckoned those whom another man
had struck.”
[3] Alluding to the Zulu custom of opening the stomach of a dead foe.
They have a superstition that, if this is not done, as the body of
their enemy swells up so will the bodies of those who killed him swell
up.—A. Q.
“Be silent,” I said, for I saw that he was getting the blood-fever on
him; “be silent; well art thou called the ‘Slaughterer’. We would not
hear of thy deeds of blood. Remember, if thou comest with us, we fight
not save in self-defence. Listen, we need servants. These men,” and I
pointed to the Wakwafi, who had retired a little way during our
“indaba” (talk), “say they will not come.”
“Will not come!” shouted Umslopogaas; “where is the dog who says he
will not come when my Father orders? Here, thou”—and with a single
bound he sprang upon the Wakwafi with whom I had first spoken, and,
seizing him by the arm, dragged him towards us. “Thou dog!” he said,
giving the terrified man a shake, “didst thou say that thou wouldst not
go with my Father? Say it once more and I will choke thee”—and his long
fingers closed round his throat as he said it—“thee, and those with
thee. Hast thou forgotten how I served thy brother?”
“Nay, we will come with the white man,” gasped the man.
“White man!” went on Umslopogaas, in simulated fury, which a very
little provocation would have made real enough; “of whom speakest thou,
insolent dog?”
“Nay, we will go with the great chief.”
“So!” said Umslopogaas, in a quiet voice, as he suddenly released his
hold, so that the man fell backward. “I thought you would.”
“That man Umslopogaas seems to have a curious moral ascendency over his
companions,” Good afterwards remarked thoughtfully.