On rushed the mighty stream, roaring its swollen course down to the
Zambesi, rolling with it the body of dead Ziboza, hacked and ripped, the
grand frame of the athletic savage a mere chip when tossed about by the
hissing waves of the turbid flood. On, too, rolled the body of his
slayer, as yet uninjured and still containing life. And in the
noon-tide night, darkened by the black rain-burst which beat down in
torrents, and, well-nigh ceaseless, the blue lightning sheeted over the
furious boil of brown water and tree trunks and driftwood: and with the
awful roar above, even the baffled savages were cowed, for it seemed as
though the elements themselves were wrath over the death of a mighty
chief.
Strange are the trifles which turn the scale of momentous happenings.
Strange, too, and ironical withal, that the body of dead Ziboza should
be the means of restoring to life its very nearly dead slayer. For the
current, bringing the corpse of the chief against a large uprooted tree,
upset the balance of this, causing it to rise half out of the water and
turn right over. This in its turn impeded a quantity of driftwood, and
the whole mass, coming in violent contact with the bank, threw back a
great wave, the swirl of which, catching the body of the still-living
man, heaved it into a lateral cleft, then poured forth again to rejoin
the momentarily impeded current.
A glimmer of returning consciousness moved Hilary Blachland to grasp a
trailing bough which swept down into the cleft, a clearer instinct moved
him to hold on to it with all his might and main. Thus he saved himself
from being sucked back into the stream again.
For a few minutes thus he crouched, collecting his returning faculties--
and the first thing that came home to him was that he was in one of
those cavernlike inlets on the river bank similar to that in which his
struggle with Ziboza had taken place. Stay! Was it the same? He had a
confused recollection of being swept out into stream, but that might
have been an illusion. He peered around. The place was very dark but
it was not a cave. The overhanging of one side of the cleft, and the
interlacing of bushes and trees above, however, rendered it very like
one. But this fissure was much smaller than the one he had fallen into
with the Matabele chief, nor was it anything like as deep.
Had he been swept far down the river, he wondered? Then he decided such
could not have been the case, or he would have been drowned or knocked
to pieces among the driftwood, whereas here he was, practically
unharmed, only very exhausted. A thrill of exultation ran through his
dripping frame as he realised that he was uninjured. But it did not
last, for--he realised something further.
He realised that he was weaponless. His rifle had been shot from his
hand. He had lost his revolver in his fall, and even the sheath knife,
wherewith he had slain Ziboza, he had relaxed his grasp of at the moment
of being swept away. He was that most helpless animal of all--an
unarmed man.
He realised further that he was in the remotest and most unknown part of
little known Matabeleland, that he had formed one of a _retreating_
column, which was fighting its own way out, and which would have given
him up as dead long ago: that no further advance was likely to be made
in this direction for some time to come, and that meanwhile every human
being in the country was simply a ruthless and uncompromising foe. He
realised, too, that save for a few scraps of grimy biscuit, now soaked
to pulp in his jacket pocket, and plentifully spiced with tobacco dust,
he was without food--and entirely without means of procuring any--and
that he dared not leave his present shelter until nightfall, if then.
In sum he realised that at last, even he, Hilary Blachland, was in very
hard and desperate case indeed.
Were his enemies still searching for him, he wondered, or had they
concluded he had met his death in the raging waters of the flooded
river, as indeed it seemed to him little short of a miracle that he had
not? The rain was still pouring down, and the lightning flashes lit up
the slippery sides of his hiding-place with a steely glare: however, the
fury of the storm seemed to have spent itself, or passed over, but the
bellowing, vomiting voice of the flood as it surged past the retreat,
was sufficient to drown all other sounds. Then it occurred to him that
he could be seen from above by any one peering over. He must get
further in.
He was more than knee deep in water. Towards its head, however, the
cleft was dry. It terminated in a cavity just large enough for him to
crouch within--overhung too, with thorn bush from above. An ideal
hiding-place.
The situation reminded him of something. Once he had shot a guinea-fowl
on a river bank, and the bird had dropped into just such a cleft as
this. After a long and careful search, he had discovered it, crouching,
just as he was now crouching. It was only winged, however, and fled
further into the cleft. He remembered the fierce eagerness with which
he had pursued the wounded bird, fearing to lose it, how he had pounced
upon and seized it when it came to the end of the cleft and could get no
further. Well, events had a knack of repeating themselves. He was the
hunted one now.
Wet through now, he shivered to the very bones. The pangs of hunger
were gnawing him. He dived a hand into his pocket. The pulpy biscuit
was well-nigh uneatable, and black with tobacco dust. There was no help
for it. He swallowed the stuff greedily, and it produced a horrible
nausea. Soaked, chilled through and through, he crouched throughout
that long terrible day, and a sort of lightheadedness came over him.
Once more he was within Umzilikazi's sepulchre, and the awful coils of
the black _mamba_ were waving, over yonder in the gloom, then, with a
prolonged hiss, the terror plunged into the flood which was bearing him
along. It had seized his legs beneath the surface and was dragging him
down--and then it changed to Hermia. She was in the stream with him,
and he was striving to save her, and yet fiercely combating a longing to
let her drown, but ever around his heart was one yearning, aching pain,
an awful, unsatisfied longing for a presence, a glimpse of a face--he
hardly realised whose--and it would not come. Had he gone mad--he
wondered dully, or was this delirium, the beginning of the end, or the
terrible unsatisfied longings of another world? Then even that amount
of brain consciousness faded, and he slept. Chilled, soaked, starred--
his case desperate--down there in that clay-girt hole, he slept.
When he awoke it was quite dark, and the roar of the flood seemed to
have decreased considerably in intensity. Clearly the river had ran
down. How long he had been asleep he could form no approximate idea,
but the thought moved him to hold his watch to his ear even though he
could not see it. But it did not tick. The water had stopped it of
course.
Yes, the river had gone down, for no water was left in the cranny now.
Moreover, the entrance to his hiding-place was several feet above the
surface. The next thing was to get out. Simple it sounds, doesn't it?
But the sides of the cleft, wet and slimy from the rain, offered no
foothold. There were boughs hanging from above--but on clambering up
these, lo, the lip of the cleft was overhung with a complete
_chevaux-de-frise_ of _haakdoorn_, a mass of terrible fishhooks, turned
every way, as their manner is, so as to be absolutely impenetrable, save
to him who should be armed with a sharp cane knife with abundant room
and purchase for plying it. To an enfeebled and exhausted man, obliged
to use one if not both hands for holding on to his support and armed
with nothing at all, the obstacle was simply unnegotiable. He was at
the bottom of a gigantic natural beetle trap--with this difference that
there remained one way out: the way by which he had got in--the river to
wit.
From this alternative he shrank. The flood had very considerably
decreased; yet there was abundance of water still running down, quite
enough to tax the full resources of an average strong swimmer--moreover,
he knew that the banks were clayey and overhanging for a considerable
distance down--and over and above that, the rains would have bordered
the said banks, even where shelving, with dangerous quicksands. Yet
another peril lay in the fact that the stream was inhabited by the
evil-minded, carnivorous crocodile. It was one thing to choose the
river as a means to avoid an even surer peril still, it was quite
another to take to it in cold blood, for it might mean all the
difference between getting in and getting out again. But a further
careful investigation of his prison decided him that it was the only
way.
Letting himself cautiously down, so as to drop with as little splash as
possible, he was in the river once more, but somehow the water seemed
warmer than the atmosphere in his chilled state, as, partly swimming,
partly holding on to a log of driftwood, he allowed the stream to carry
him down. It was a weird experience, whirled along by the current in
the darkness, the high banks bounding a broad riband of stars overhead,
but it was one to be got through as quickly as possible, for have we not
said that the river was inhabited by crocodiles? Carefully selecting a
likely place, the fugitive succeeded in landing.
Many a man in his position, alone, unarmed, and without food, in the
heart of a trackless wilderness whose every inhabitant was
uncompromisingly hostile, would have lost his head and got turned round
indeed. But Hilary Blachland was made of different stuff. He was far
too experienced and resourceful an up-country man to lose his head in
the smallest degree. He understood how to shape his bearings by the
stars, and fortunately the sky was unclouded; and in the daytime by the
sun and the trend of the watercourses whether dry or not. So he began
his retreat, facing almost due south.
Fortune favoured him, for in the early morning light he espied a large
hare sitting up on its haunches, stupidly looking about it. A deft,
quick, stone throw, and the too confiding animal lay kicking. Here was
a food supply which at a pinch would last him a couple of days.
Selecting as shut in a spot as he could find, he built a fire, being
careful to avoid unnecessary smoke, and cooked the hare--his matches had
been soaked in the river, but he was far too experienced to be without
flint and steel.
For four days thus he wandered, without seeing an enemy. A small
deserted kraal furnished him with more food, for he knew where to find
the grain pits, and then, just as he was beginning to congratulate
himself that safety was nearly within his grasp, he ran right into a
party of armed Matabele.
There was only one thing to be done and he did it. Advancing with an
apparent fearlessness he was far from feeling, he greeted the leader of
the party, whom he knew. The demeanour of the savages was sullen rather
than overtly hostile, and this was a good sign, still Blachland knew
that his life hung upon a hair. There was yet another thing he knew,
and it was well he did. This petty chief, Ngeleza, was abnormally
imbued with a characteristic common to all savages--acquisitiveness to
wit. This was the string upon which to play. So he represented how
anxious he was to return to Bulawayo, as soon as possible, ignoring the
fact that the war was not over, or indeed that there was any war at all,
and that they could not do better than guide him thither. He gave
Ngeleza to understand that he would pay well for such a service, and not
only that, but that all who had the smallest share in its rendering,
should receive a good reward--this for the enlightenment of the rest of
the band, which numbered a round dozen men. It was well, too, that
Ngeleza knew him--knew him for a man of substance, and a man of his
word.