AS FROM THE DEAD.
"There, there, Holmes. Do you quite intend to maim a chap for life, or
what?" exclaimed Laurence, liberating, with an effort, his hand from the
other's wringing grasp. "And Hazon, too? In truth, life is full of
surprises. How are you, Hazon?"
"So so," was the reply, as Hazon, who had been biding the evaporation of
his younger friend's effusiveness, now came forward. But his handshake
was characteristic of the man, for it was as though they had parted only
last week, and that but temporarily.
"And is it really you yourself, old chap?" rattled on Holmes. "It's for
all the world as if you had risen from the dead. Why, we never expected
to set eyes on you again in life--did we, Hazon?"
"Not much," assented that worthy laconically.
"Well, I can say the same as regards yourselves," rejoined Laurence.
"What in the world made them give you quarter?"
"Don't know," answered Hazon. "We managed to get together, back to back,
we two, and were fighting like cats. Holmes got a shot on the head with
a club that sent him down, and I got stuck full of assegais till I
couldn't see. The next thing I knew was that we were being carted along
in the middle of a big _impi_--Heaven knew where. One thing, we were
both alive--alive and kicking, too. As soon as we were able to walk they
assegaied our bearers, and--made us walk."
"Don't you swallow all that, Stanninghame," cut in Holmes. "He fought,
standing over me--fought like any devil, the Ba-gcatya say, although he
makes out now it was all playful fun."
"Well, for the matter of that, we had to fight," rejoined Hazon
tranquilly. "Where have you been all this time, Stanninghame?"
"Here, at Imvungayo. And you two?"
"Shot if I know. They kept us at some place away in the mountains. Only
brought us here a few days back."
"They won't let us out in the daytime," chimed in Holmes. "And it's
getting deadly monotonous. But tell us, old chap, how it is they didn't
stick you?"
This, however, Laurence, following out a vein of vague instinct, had
decided not to do, wherefore he invented some commonplace solution. And
it was with strange and mingled feelings he sat there listening to his
old confederates. For months he had not heard one word of the English
tongue, and now these two, risen, as it were, from the very grave,
seemed to bring back all the past, which, under novel and strange
conditions, had more and more been fading into the background. He was
even constrained to admit to himself that such feelings were not those
of unmingled joy. He had almost lost all inclination to escape from
among this people, and now these two, by the very associations which
their presence recalled, were likely to unsettle him again, possibly to
his own peril and undoing. Anyway, he resolved to say nothing as to the
incident of "The Sign of the Spider."
"Well, you seem to have got round them better than we did,
Stanninghame," said Hazon, with a glance at the Express rifle and
revolver wherewith the other was armed. "We have hardly been allowed so
much as a stick."
"So? Well, I've been teaching some of them to shoot. That may have had a
little to do with it. In fact, I've been laying myself out to make
thoroughly the best of the situation."
"That's sound sense everywhere," rejoined Hazon. "You can't get Holmes
here to see it, though. He's wearing out his soul-case wanting to break
away."
This was no more than the truth. Laurence, seated there, narrowly
watching his old comrades, was swift to notice that whereas these months
of captivity and suspense had left Hazon the same cool, saturnine,
philosophical being he had first known him, upon Holmes they had had
quite a different effect. There was a restless, eager nervousness about
the younger man; a sort of straining to break away even, as the more
seasoned adventurer had described it. The fact was, he was getting
desperately home-sick.
"I wish I had never had anything to do with this infernal business," he
now bursts forth petulantly. "I swear I'd give all we have made to be
back safe and snug in Johannesburg, with white faces around us,--even
though I were stony broke."
"Especially one 'white face,'" bantered Laurence. "Well, keep up your
form, Holmes. You may be back there yet, safe and sound, and not stony
broke either."
"No, no. There is a curse upon us, as I said all along. No good will
come to us through such gains. We shall never return--never."
And then Laurence looked across at Hazon, and the glance, done into
words, read: "What the mischief _is_ to be made of such a prize fool as
this?"
The night was spent in talking over past experiences, and making plans
for the future, as to which latter Hazon failed not to note, with faint
amusement, blended with complacency, that the disciple had, if anything,
surpassed his teacher. In other words, Laurence entered into such plans
with a luke-warmness which would have been astonishing to the
superficial judgment, but was not so to that of his listener.
Nondwana, the brother of the king, was seated among a group of his
followers in the gate as Laurence went forth the next morning to return
to his own quarters. This chief, though older than Tyisandhlu in years,
was not the son of the principal wife of their common father, wherefore
Tyisandhlu, who was, had, in accordance with native custom, succeeded.
There had been whisperings that Nondwana had attempted to oppose the
accession, and very nearly with success; but whether from motives of
policy or generosity, Tyisandhlu had foreborne to take his life. The
former motive may have counted, for Nondwana exercised a powerful
influence in the nation. In aspect, he was a tall, fine, handsome man,
with all the dignity of manner which characterized his royal brother,
yet there was a sinister expression ever lurking in his face--a cruel
droop in the corner of the mouth.
"Greeting, Nyonyoba. And is it good once more to behold a white face?"
said the chief, a veiled irony lurking beneath the outward geniality of
his tone.
"To behold the face of a friend once more is always good, Branch of a
Royal Tree," returned Laurence, sitting down among the group to take
snuff.
"Even when it is that of one risen from the dead?"
"But here it was not so, Ndabezita. My 'Spider' told me that these were
all the time alive," rejoined Laurence, with mendacity on a truly
generous scale.
"Ha! thy Spider? Yet thou art not of the People of the Spider."
"But I bear the sign," touching his breast. "There are many things made
clear to me, which may or may not be set forward in the light of all at
the fall of the second moon. Farewell now, Son of the Great."
The start of astonishment, the murmur which ran round the group, was not
lost upon him. It was all confirmatory of what he had heard. And then,
as he walked back to his tent in Silawayo's kraal, it occurred to
Laurence that he had probably made a false move. Nondwana, who, of
course, was not ignorant of his daughter's partiality, would almost
certainly decide that Lindela had betrayed the secret and sinister
intent to its unconscious object; and in that event, how would it fare
with her? He felt more than anxious. The king might take long in
deciding whether to restore his property or not, and etiquette forbade
him to refer to the matter again--at any rate for some time to come.
That Nondwana might demand too much _lobola_, or possibly refuse it
altogether as coming from him, was a contingency which, strange to say,
completely escaped Laurence's scheming mind.
"Greeting, Nyonyoba. Thy thoughts are deep--ever deep."
The voice, soft, rich, bantering, almost made him start as he raised his
eyes, to meet the glad laughing ones of the object of his thoughts at
that moment, the chief's daughter.
"What do you here, wandering alone, Lindela?" he said.
"Ha--ha! Now you did well to say my name like that--for--does it not
answer your question, 'to wait, to watch for'? And what is meant for two
ears is not meant for four or six. I have news, but it is not good."
They were standing in the dip of the path, where a little runlet coursed
along between high bush-fringed banks, and the tall, graceful form of
the girl stood out in splendid relief from its background of foliage.
Not only for love had she awaited him here, for her eyes were sad and
troubled as she narrated her discoveries, which amounted to this: It was
next to impossible for Laurence to escape the ordeal--whatever it might
be. All of weight and position in the nation were resolved upon it, and
none more thoroughly so than Nondwana. The king himself would be
powerless to save him, even if he wished, and, indeed, why should he run
counter to the desire of a whole nation, and that on behalf of a
stranger, some time an enemy?
Laurence, listening, felt his anxiety deepen. The net was closing in
around him, had indeed already closed, and from it there was no outlet.
"See now, Lindela," he said gravely, his eyes full upon the troubled
face of the girl, "if this thing has got to be, there is no help for it.
And, however it turns out, the world will go on just the same--and the
sun rise and set as before. Why grieve about it?"
"Because I love you--love you--do you hear? I know not how it is. We
girls of the Ba-gcatya do not love--not like this. We like to be married
to men who are great in the nation--powerful indunas--if not too
old,--or those who have much cattle, or who will name us for their
principal wife; but we know not how to love. Yet you have taught me,
Nyonyoba. Say now, is it through the magic of the white people you have
done it?"
"It may be so," replied Laurence, smiling queerly to himself, as he
thought how exactly, if unconsciously, this alluring child of nature had
described her civilized sisters. Then his face became alert and
watchful. He was listening intently.
"I, too, heard something," murmured Lindela, scarcely moving her lips.
"I fear lest we have been overlooked. Now, fare thee well, for I must
return. But my ears are ever open to what men say, and my father talks
much, and talks loud. It may be that I may learn yet more. But,
Nyonyoba, delay not in thy first purpose, lest it be too late; and
remember, Nondwana has a covetous hand. Fare thee well."
Left alone, Laurence thought he might just as well make sure that no
spy had been watching them. Yet though he examined the banks of the
stream for some little distance around, he could find no trace of any
human presence, no mark even, however faint, of human foot. Still, as he
gained his own quarters in Silawayo's kraal, a presentiment lay heavy
upon him--a weird, boding presentiment of evil to come--of evil far
nearer at hand than he had hitherto deemed.
Long and hard he slept, for he was weary with wakefulness and anxiety.
And when he awoke at dusk, intending to seek an interview with the king,
he beheld that which in no wise tended to allay his fears. For as he
drew nearer to Imvungayo there issued from its gate a crowd of
figures--of black, grotesque, horrible figures, and in the midst a man,
whom they were dragging along in grim silence, even as they had hauled
Lutali to his unknown doom, and as they disappeared into the gathering
darkness, Laurence knew only too well that here was another
victim--another hideous sacrifice to the grisly and mysterious
demon-god. No wonder his blood grew chill within him. Would he be the
next?
"And you would still become one of us, Nyonyoba?"
"I would, Great Great One; and to this end have I sent much ivory, and
many things the white people prize, including three new guns and much
ammunition, to Nondwana."
"Ha! Nondwana's hand is large, and opens wide," said the king, with a
hearty chuckle. "Yet Lindela is a sprig of a mighty tree. And I think,
Nyonyoba, you yourself are sprung from such a root."
"That is no lie, Ruler of the Wise. As a man's whole height is to the
length of half his leg, so is the length of my house to that of the
kings of the Ba-gcatya, or even to that of Senzangakona[5] himself."
"Ha! That may well be. Thou hast a look that way."
This conversation befell two days after the events just described. The
king had refused him an audience on that evening, and indeed since until
now. But in the meantime, by royal orders, a great portion of the
plunder taken from the slave-hunters' camp had been restored to him,
considerably more, indeed, than he had expected. And now he and
Tyisandhlu were seated once more together in the royal dwelling, this
time alone.
"But to be sprung from an ancient tree avails a man nothing in my
country if he is poor," went on Laurence. "Rather is it a disadvantage,
and he had better have been born among the meaner sort. That is why I
have found my way hither, Ndabezita."
"That is why? And you have gained the desired riches?" said the king,
eyeing him narrowly.
"I had--nearly, when the Ba-gcatya fell upon my camp, and killed my
people and my slaves. Now, having lost all, I care not to return to my
own land."
"But could you return rich you would care so to return?"
"That is so, Root of a Royal Tree. With large possessions it is indeed
a pleasant land to dwell in--with no possessions a man might often think
longingly of the restful sleep of death."
"That may well be," said Tyisandhlu thoughtfully. "The cold and the
gloom and the blackness, the fogs and the smoke--the mean and
horrible-looking people who go to make up the larger portion of its
inhabitants. _Whau_, Nyonyoba, I know more of your white people and
their country than anyone here dreams, and it is as you say. Without
that which should raise him above such horrors as this, a man might as
well be dead."
"Wherefore I prefer to live in the land of the Ba-gcatya rather than die
in my own. But whoever brought hither that description of our land told
a wonderfully true tale, Ruler of the Great."
Tyisandhlu made no reply, but reaching out his hand he took up a whistle
and blew a double note upon it. Immediately there entered an _inceku_.
"Let no man approach until this note shall again sound," said the king.
"Preserve clear a wide space around, lest the ear that opens too wide be
removed from its owner's head. Go."
The man saluted humbly and withdrew. And then for long did they sit
together and talk in a low tone, the barbarian monarch and the white
adventurer--and the subject of their talk seemed fraught with some
surprise to the latter, but with satisfaction to both.
"See now, Nyonyoba," concluded the king. "They have brought you here,
here whence no man ever returned; and you would become one of us. Well,
be it so. There is that about you I trust."
"Whence no man ever returned?" echoed Laurence.
"Surely. Ha! A white man found his way hither once, but--he was a
preacher--and I love not such. He never returned."
"But what of my two friends? You will not harm them, Ndabezita, because
they are my friends, and we have fought together many a long year,"
urged Laurence.
"I will spare them for that reason. They shall be led from the country
with their eyes covered, lest they find the way back again. But--if they
do--they likewise shall never depart from it. And now, Nyonyoba, all I
have told you is between ourselves alone. Breathe not a whisper of it or
anything about me even to your friends. For the present, farewell, and
good fortune be yours."
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Founder of the Zulu dynasty, and of course patriarchally greater
than the royal house of this Zulu-originated tribe.