THE MESSENGERS
I did not rest as I should that night who somehow was never able to
sleep well in the neighbourhood of the Black Kloof. I suppose that
Zikali’s constant talk about ghosts, with his hints and innuendoes
concerning those who were dead, always affected my nerves till, in a
subconscious way, I began to believe that such things existed and were
hanging about me. Many people are open to the power of suggestion, and
I am afraid that I am one of them.
However, the sun which has such strength to kill noxious things, puts
an end to ghosts more quickly even than it does to other evil vapours
and emanations, and when I woke up to find it shining brilliantly in a
pure heaven, I laughed with much heartiness over the whole affair.
Going to the spring near which we were outspanned, I took off my shirt
to have a good wash, still chuckling at the memory of all the
hocus-pocus of my old friend, the Opener-of-Roads.
While engaged in this matutinal operation I struck my hand against
something and looking, observed that it was the hideous little ivory
image of Zikali, which he had set about my neck. The sight of the thing
and the memory of his ridiculous talk about it, especially of its
assertion that it had come down to him through the ages, which it could
not have done, seeing that it was a likeness of himself, irritated me
so much that I proceeded to take it off with the full intention of
throwing it into the spring.
As I was in the act of doing this, from a clump of reeds mixed with
bushes, quite close to me, there came a sound of hissing, and suddenly
above them appeared the head of a great black _immamba_, perhaps the
deadliest of all our African snakes, and the only one I know which will
attack man without provocation.
Leaving go of the image, I sprang back in a great hurry towards where
my gun lay. Then the snake vanished and making sure that it had
departed to its hole, which was probably at a distance, I returned to
the pool, and once more began to take off the talisman in order to
consign it to the bottom of the pool.
After all, I reflected, it was a hideous and probably a blood-stained
thing which I did not in the least wish to wear about my neck like a
lady’s love-token.
Just as it was coming over my head, suddenly from the other side of the
bush that infernal snake popped up again, this time, it was clear,
really intent on business. It began to move towards me in the
lightning-like way _immambas_ have, hissing and flicking its tongue.
I was too quick for my friend, however, for snatching up the gun that I
had lain down beside me, I let it have a charge of buckshot in the neck
which nearly cut it in two, so that it fell down and expired with
hideous convulsive writhings.
Hearing the shot Hans came running from the waggon to see what was the
matter. Hans, I should say, was that same Hottentot who had been the
companion of most of my journeyings since my father’s day. He was with
me when as a young fellow I accompanied Retief to Dingaan’s kraal, and
like myself, escaped the massacre.[1] Also we shared many other
adventures, including the great one in the Land of the Ivory Child
where he slew the huge elephant-god, Jana, and himself was slain. But
of this journey we did not dream in those days.
[1] See the book called “Marie.”—Editor.
For the rest Hans was a most entirely unprincipled person, but as the
Boers say, “as clever as a waggonload of monkeys.” Also he drank when
he got the chance. One good quality he had, however; no man was ever
more faithful, and perhaps it would be true to say that neither man nor
woman ever loved me, unworthy, quite so well.
In appearance he rather resembled an antique and dilapidated baboon;
his face was wrinkled like a dried nut and his quick little eyes were
bloodshot. I never knew what his age was, any more than he did himself,
but the years had left him tough as whipcord and absolutely untiring.
Lastly he was perhaps the best hand at following a spoor that ever I
knew and up to a hundred and fifty yards or so, a very deadly shot with
a rifle especially when he used a little single-barrelled,
muzzle-loading gun of mine made by Purdey which he named _Intombi_ or
Maiden. Of that gun, however, I have written in “The Holy Flower” and
elsewhere.
“What is it, Baas?” he asked. “Here there are no lions, nor any game.”
“Look the other side of the bush, Hans.”
He slipped round it, making a wide circle with his usual caution, then,
seeing the snake which was, by the way, I think, the biggest _immamba_
I ever killed, suddenly froze, as it were, in a stiff attitude that
reminded me of a pointer when it scents game. Having made sure that it
was dead, he nodded and said,
“Black _‘mamba_, or so you would call it, though I know it for
something else.”
“What else, Hans?”
“One of the old witch-doctor Zikali’s spirits which he sets at the
mouth of this kloof to warn him of who comes or goes. I know it well,
and so do others. I saw it listening behind a stone when you were up
the kloof last evening talking with the Opener-of-Roads.”
“Then Zikali will lack a spirit,” I answered, laughing, “which perhaps
he will not miss amongst so many. It serves him right for setting the
brute on me.”
“Quite so, Baas. He will be angry. I wonder why he did it?” he added
suspiciously, “seeing that he is such a friend of yours.”
“He didn’t do it, Hans. These snakes are very fierce and give battle,
that is all.”
Hans paid no attention to my remark, which probably he thought only
worthy of a white man who does not understand, but rolled his yellow,
bloodshot eyes about, as though in search of explanations. Presently
they fell upon the ivory that hung about my neck, and he started.
“Why do you wear that pretty likeness of the Great One yonder over your
heart, as I have known you do with things that belonged to women in
past days, Baas? Do you know that it is Zikali’s Great Medicine,
nothing less, as everyone does throughout the land? When Zikali sends
an order far away, he always sends that image with it, for then he who
receives the order knows that he must obey or die. Also the messenger
knows that he will come to no harm if he does not take it off, because,
Baas, the image is Zikali himself, and Zikali is the image. They are
one and the same. Also it is the image of his father’s father’s
father—or so he says.”
“That is an odd story,” I said.
Then I told Hans as much as I thought advisable of how this horrid
little talisman came into my possession.
Hans nodded without showing any surprise.
“So we are going on a long journey,” he said. “Well, I thought it was
time that we did something more than wander about these tame countries
selling blankets to stinking old women and so forth, Baas. Moreover,
Zikali does not wish that you should come to harm, doubtless because he
does wish to make use of you afterwards—oh! it’s safe to talk now when
that spirit is away looking for another snake. What were you doing with
the Great Medicine, Baas, when the _‘mamba_ attacked you?”
“Taking it off to throw it into the pool, Hans, as I do not like the
thing. I tried twice and each time the _immamba_ appeared.”
“Of course it appeared, Baas, and what is more, if you had taken that
Medicine off and thrown it away _you_ would have disappeared, since the
_‘mamba_ would have killed you. Zikali wanted to show you that, Baas,
and that is why he set the snake at you.”
“You are a superstitious old fool, Hans.”
“Yes, Baas, but my father knew all about that Great Medicine before me,
for he was a bit of a doctor, and so does every wizard and witch for a
thousand miles or more. I tell you, Baas, it is known by all though no
one ever talks about it, no, not even the king himself. Baas, speaking
to you, not with the voice of Hans the old drunkard, but with that of
the Predikant, your reverend father, who made so good a Christian of me
and who tells me to do so from up in Heaven where the hot fires are
which the wood feeds of itself, I beg you not to try to throw away the
Medicine again, or if you wish to do so, to leave me behind on this
journey. For you see, Baas, although I am now so good, almost like one
of those angels with the pretty goose’s wings in the pictures, I feel
that I should like to grow a little better before I go to the Place of
Fires to make report to your reverend father, the Predikant.”
Thinking of how horrified my dear father would be if he could hear all
this string of ridiculous nonsense and learn the result of his moral
and religious lessons on raw Hottentot material, I burst out laughing.
But Hans went on as gravely as a judge,
“Wear the Great Medicine, Baas, wear it; part with the liver inside you
before you part with that, Baas. It may not be as pretty or smell as
sweet as a woman’s hair in a little gold bottle, but it is much more
useful. The sight of the woman’s hair will only make you sick in your
stomach and cause you to remember a lot of things which you had much
better forget, but the Great Medicine, or rather Zikali who is in it,
will keep the assegais and sickness out of you and turn back bad magic
on to the heads of those who sent it, and always bring us plenty to eat
and perhaps, if we are lucky, a little to drink too sometimes.”
“Go away,” I said, “I want to wash.”
“Yes, Baas, but with the Baas’s leave I will sit on the other side of
that bush with the gun—not to look at the Baas without his clothes,
because white people are always so ugly that it makes me feel ill to
see them undressed, also because—the Baas will forgive me—but because
they smell. No, not for that, but just to see that no other snake
comes.”
“Get out of the road, you dirty little scoundrel, and stop your
impudence,” I said, lifting my foot suggestively.
Thereon he scooted with a subdued grin round the other side of the
bush, whence as I knew well he kept his eye fixed on me to be sure that
I made no further attempt to take off the Great Medicine.
Now of this talisman I may as well say at once that I am no believer in
it or its precious influences. Therefore, although it was useful
sometimes, notably twice when Umslopogaas was concerned, I do not know
whether personally I should have done better or worse upon that journey
if I had thrown it into the pool.
It is true, however, that until quite the end of this history when it
became needful to do so to save another, I never made any further
attempt to remove it from my neck, not even when it rubbed a sore in my
skin, because I did not wish to offend the prejudices of Hans.
It is true, moreover, that this hideous ivory had a reputation which
stretched very far from the place where it was made and was regarded
with great reverence by all kinds of queer people, even by the
Amahagger themselves, of whom presently, as they say in pedigrees, a
fact of which I found sundry proofs. Indeed, I saw a first example of
it when a little while later I met that great warrior, Umslopogaas,
Chief of the People of the Axe.
For, after determining firmly, for reasons which I will set out, that I
would not visit this man, in the end I did so, although by then I had
given up any idea of journeying across the Zambesi to look for a
mysterious and non-existent witch-woman, as Zikali had suggested that I
should do. To begin with I knew that his talk was all rubbish and, even
if it were not, that at the bottom of it was some desire of the
Opener-of-Roads that I should make a path for him to travel towards an
indefinite but doubtless evil object of his own. Further, by this time
I had worn through that mood of mine which had caused me to yearn for
correspondence with the departed and a certain knowledge of their
existence.
I wonder whether many people understand, as I do, how entirely distinct
and how variable are these moods which sway us, or at any rate some of
us, at sundry periods of our lives. As I think I have already
suggested, at one time we are all spiritual; at another all physical;
at one time we are sure that our lives here are as a dream and a shadow
and that the real existence lies elsewhere; at another that these brief
days of ours are the only business with which we have to do and that of
it we must make the best. At one time we think our loves much more
immortal than the stars; at another that they are mere shadows cast by
the baleful sun of desire upon the shallow and fleeting water we call
Life which seems to flow out of nowhere into nowhere. At one time we
are full of faith, at another all such hopes are blotted out by a black
wall of Nothingness, and so on _ad infinitum_. Only very stupid people,
or humbugs, are or pretend to be, always consistent and unchanging.
To return, I determined not only that I would not travel north to seek
that which no living man will ever find, certainty as to the future,
but also, to show my independence of Zikali, that I would not visit
this chief, Umslopogaas. So, having traded all my goods and made a fair
profit (on paper), I set myself to return to Natal, proposing to rest
awhile in my little house at Durban, and told Hans my mind.
“Very good, Baas,” he said. “I, too, should like to go to Durban. There
are lots of things there that we cannot get here,” and he fixed his
roving eye upon a square-faced gin bottle, which as it happened was
filled with nothing stronger than water, because all the gin was drunk.
“Yet, Baas, we shall not see the Berea for a long while.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked sharply.
“Oh! Baas, I don’t know, but you went to visit the Opener-of-Roads, did
you not, and he told you to go north and lent you a certain Great
Medicine, did he not?”
Here Hans proceeded to light his corncob pipe with an ash from the
fire, all the time keeping his beady eyes fixed upon that part of me
where he knew the talisman was hung.
“Quite true, Hans, but now I mean to show Zikali that I am not his
messenger, for south or north or east or west. So to-morrow morning we
cross the river and trek for Natal.”
“Yes, Baas, but then why not cross it this evening? There is still
light.”
“I have said that we will cross it to-morrow morning,” I answered with
that firmness which I have read always indicates a man of character,
“and I do not change my word.”
“No, Baas, but sometimes other things change besides words. Will the
Baas have that buck’s leg for supper, or the stuff out of a tin with a
dint in it, which we bought at a store two years ago? The flies have
got at the buck’s leg, but I cut out the bits with the maggots on it
and ate them myself.”
Hans was right, things do change, especially the weather. That night,
unexpectedly, for when I turned in the sky seemed quite serene, there
came a terrible rain long before it was due, which lasted off and on
for three whole days and continued intermittently for an indefinite
period. Needless to say the river, which it would have been so easy to
cross on this particular evening, by the morning was a raging torrent,
and so remained for several weeks.
In despair at length I trekked south to where a ford was reported,
which, when reached, proved impracticable.
I tried another, a dozen miles further on, which was very hard to come
to over boggy land. It looked all right and we were getting across
finely, when suddenly one of the wheels sank in an unsuspected hole and
there we stuck. Indeed, I believe the waggon, or bits of it, would have
remained in the neighbourhood of that ford to this day, had I not
managed to borrow some extra oxen belonging to a Christian Kaffir, and
with their help to drag it back to the bank whence we had started.
As it happened I was only just in time, since a new storm which had
burst further up the river, brought it down in flood again, a very
heavy flood.
In this country, England, where I write, there are bridges everywhere
and no one seems to appreciate them. If they think of them at all it is
to grumble about the cost of their upkeep. I wish they could have
experienced what a lack of them means in a wild country during times of
excessive rain, and the same remark applied to roads. You should think
more of your blessings, my friends, as the old woman said to her
complaining daughter who had twins two years running, adding that they
might have been triplets.
To return—after this I confessed myself beaten and gave up until such
time as it should please Providence to turn off the water-tap. Trekking
out of sight of that infernal river which annoyed me with its constant
gurgling, I camped on a comparatively dry spot that overlooked a
beautiful stretch of rolling veld. Towards sunset the clouds lifted and
I saw a mile or two away a most extraordinary mountain on the lower
slopes of which grew a dense forest. Its upper part, which was of bare
rock, looked exactly like the seated figure of a grotesque person with
the chin resting on the breast. There was the head, there were the
arms, there were the knees. Indeed, the whole mass of it reminded me
strongly of the effigy of Zikali which was tied about my neck, or
rather of Zikali himself.
“What is that called?” I said to Hans, pointing to this strange hill,
now blazing in the angry fire of the setting sun that had burst out
between the storm clouds, which made it appear more ominous even than
before.
“That is the Witch Mountain, Baas, where the Chief Umslopogaas and a
blood brother of his who carried a great club used to hunt with the
wolves. It is haunted and in a cave at the top of it lie the bones of
Nada the Lily, the fair woman whose name is a song, she who was the
love of Umslopogaas.”[2]
[2] For the story of Umslopogaas and Nada see the book called “Nada
the Lily.”—Editor.
“Rubbish,” I said, though I had heard something of all that story and
remembered that Zikali had mentioned this Nada, comparing her beauty to
that of another whom once I knew.
“Where then lives the Chief Umslopogaas?”
“They say that his town is yonder on the plain, Baas. It is called the
Place of the Axe and is strongly fortified with a river round most of
it, and his people are the People of the Axe. They are a fierce people,
and all the country round here is uninhabited because Umslopogaas has
cleaned out the tribes who used to live in it, first with his wolves
and afterwards in war. He is so strong a chief and so terrible in
battle that even Chaka himself was afraid of him, and they say that he
brought Dingaan the King to his end because of a quarrel about this
Nada. Cetywayo, the present king, too leaves him alone and to him he
pays no tribute.”
Whilst I was about to ask Hans from whom he had collected all this
information, suddenly I heard sounds, and looking up, saw three tall
men clad in full herald’s dress rushing towards us at great speed.
“Here come some chips from the Axe,” said Hans, and promptly bolted
into the waggon.
I did not bolt because there was no time to do so without loss of
dignity, but, although I wished I had my rifle with me, just sat still
upon my stool and with great deliberation lighted my pipe, taking not
the slightest notice of the three savage-looking fellows.
These, who I noted carried axes instead of assegais, rushed straight at
me with the axes raised in such a fashion that anyone unacquainted with
the habits of Zulu warriors of the old school, might have thought that
they intended nothing short of murder.
As I expected, however, within about six feet of me they halted
suddenly and stood there still as statues. For my part I went on
lighting my pipe as though I did not see them and when at length I was
obliged to lift my head, surveyed them with an air of mild interest.
Then I took a little book out of my pocket, it was my favourite copy of
the Ingoldsby Legends—and began to read.
The passage which caught my eye, if “axe” be substituted for “knife”
was not inappropriate. It was from “The Nurse’s Story,” and runs,
“But, oh! what a thing ‘tis to see and to know
That the bare knife is raised in the hand of the foe,
Without hope to repel or to ward off the blow!”
This proceeding of mine astonished them a good deal who felt that they
had, so to speak, missed fire. At last the soldier in the middle said,
“Are you blind, White Man?”
“No, Black Fellow,” I answered, “but I am short-sighted. Would you be
so good as to stand out of my light?” a remark which puzzled them so
much that all three drew back a few paces.
When I had read a little further I came to the following lines,
“‘Tis plain,
As anatomists tell us, that never again,
Shall life revisit the foully slain
When once they’ve been cut through the jugular vein.”
In my circumstances at that moment this statement seemed altogether too
suggestive, so I shut up the book and remarked,
“If you are wanderers who want food, as I judge by your being so thin,
I am sorry that I have little meat, but my servants will give you what
they can.”
“_Ow!_” said the spokesman, “he calls us wanderers! Either he must be a
very great man or he is mad.”
“You are right. I _am_ a great man,” I answered, yawning, “and if you
trouble me too much you will see that I can be mad also. Now what do
you want?”
“We are messengers from the great Chief Umslopogaas, Captain of the
People of the Axe, and we want tribute,” answered the man in a somewhat
changed tone.
“Do you? Then you won’t get it. I thought that only the King of
Zululand had a right to tribute, and your Captain’s name is not
Cetywayo, is it?”
“Our Captain is King here,” said the man still more uncertainly.
“Is he indeed? Then away with you back to him and tell this King of
whom I have never heard, though I have a message for a certain
Umslopogaas, that Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, intends to visit him
to-morrow, if he will send a guide at the first light to show the best
path for the waggon.”
“Hearken,” said the man to his companions, “this is Macumazahn himself
and no other. Well, we thought it, for who else would have dared——”
Then they saluted with their axes, calling me “Chief” and other fine
names, and departed as they had come, at a run, calling out that my
message should be delivered and that doubtless Umslopogaas would send
the guide.
So it came about that, quite contrary to my intention, after all
circumstances brought me to the Town of the Axe. Even to the last
moment I had not meant to go there, but when the tribute was demanded I
saw that it was best to do so, and having once passed my word it could
not be altered. Indeed, I felt sure that in this event there would be
trouble and that my oxen would be stolen, or worse.
So Fate having issued its decree, of which Hans’s version was that
Zikali, or his Great Medicine, had so arranged things, I shrugged my
shoulders and waited.