The river Umgeni, at Howick, a point about twelve or fourteen miles west
of Maritzburg, hurls itself over a sheer cliff, making a truly
magnificent waterfall some hundreds of feet high. So sudden and
unlooked-for is the drop that, crossing by the drift a little above the
fall, the appearance of the river and the lay of the country would lead
the casual visitor to expect nothing very wonderful. Yet, as a matter
of fact, viewed from the opposite side of the great basin into which it
hurls itself bodily, the Umgeni Fall is one of the grandest sights of
its kind.
Now, it happened one morning that Gerard Ridgeley, riding through the
above-mentioned drift, found his attention attracted by an extraordinary
sound, a sort of loud, long-drawn, gasping cry, as though an appeal for
help; and it seemed to come from the river. His first impulse was to
rein in his steed, but his own position was not quite free from risk,
for the river was in a somewhat swollen condition and the drift
dangerous. So he plunged on, and, having gained the opposite bank, he
halted his panting and dripping horse and sat listening intently.
Yes, there it was again, and, oh, Heavens! it came from below the drift.
Some one was in the water and in another minute would be over the fall.
With lash and spur he urged his horse along the bank. The broad current
swept downward swift and strong. He could see the turbid water creaming
into foam where it sped in resistless rapids around two or three rock
islets, and then curled over the frightful brink, and between himself
and the brink, speeding swiftly towards it, swept helplessly onward by
the force of the flood, was a round dark object--a man's head.
It was the head of a native. Gerard could even make out the shiny black
ring which crowned it. But native or white man, here was a
fellow-creature being whirled down to a most horrible death right before
his eyes. Again that wild harsh cry for help rang out above the
seething hiss of the flood and the dull roar of the cataract below, but
shorter, more gaspingly. The man was nearly exhausted. He was swimming
curiously too. It seemed as if he was treading water; then his head
would sink half under, as though something were dragging him down.
Gerard had heard there were crocodiles in the Umgeni. Could it be that
the unfortunate man had been seized by one of these? The thought was a
terrible one; but he could not see the man perish. In a trice he had
kicked off his boots and thrown off his coat, and urging his horse into
the river till the depth of the water swept the animal off its legs, he
threw himself from its back, for it had become unmanageable with fright,
and struck out for the drowning man.
The latter was about thirty yards below him, and hardly thrice that
distance from the brink. Gerard was a bold and powerful swimmer, and
with the aid of the current was beside him in a moment. But what to do
next? The upper part of the man's body was entirely naked. There was
nothing to lay hold of him by. But the cool self-possession of the
savage met him halfway. The latter gasped out a word or two in his own
language and held out his arm. Gerard seized it firmly below the
shoulder, and, using no more effort than was just necessary for the
other's support, he husbanded his strength for the final struggle.
Now, all this had taken place in a mere moment of time. It would take
no more than that to decide their fate. And this seemed sealed.
For all his hard condition and desperate pluck, Gerard felt strength and
nerve alike well-nigh fail him. The native was a fearful weight,
heavier even than one of his size ought to be, and he was not a small
man. They were now in the roar and swirl of the rapids. Once or twice
Gerard's foot touched ground, only to be swept off again resistlessly,
remorselessly. Several times he thought he must relax his grasp and
leave the other to his fate. He could see the smooth glitter of the
glassy hump where the river curled over the brink; could feel the
vibration of the appalling boom on the rocks below. In a second he--
both of them--would be crashed down on to those rocks, a thousand
shapeless fragments, unless, that is, he could secure a footing upon the
spit of stony islet in front.
A yard more will do it. No. The current, split into two, swirls past
the obstruction with a perfectly resistless force. He is swept out
again as his fingers come within an inch of grasping a projecting stone.
Then he--both of them--are whirled over and over in the surging boil of
the rapids--the brink is in front--space.
Then it seems to Gerard that he is upholding the weight of the whole
world. For a most wonderful thing has happened. The native is
perfectly stationary--still as though anchored--in the resistless
velocity of the current, and now it seems to be his turn to support his
would-be rescuer. For the latter's legs are actually hanging forth over
the fearful abyss, and but for the firm grip--now of both hands--which
he has upon the other's arm, he would be shot out into space. The roar
and vibration of the mighty fall is bewildering, maddening--the crash
upon the rocks, the spuming mist flying away into countless rainbows
before his sight. He seems to live a lifetime in that one fearful
moment. He must loose his hold and--
"Here, mister! I'm going to throw you a _reim_. Can you catch it?"
Gerard hardly dares so much as nod an affirmative. He sees as in a
dream a couple of bearded faces on the bank above, the owner of one of
which is swinging a long, noosed cord of twisted raw hide.
"All right! Now--catch!"
Swish! The noose flies out, then straightens. It falls on Gerard's
shoulder. Loosening one hand, he quickly passes it round his body. It
is hauled taut.
"Now--leave go the nigger. He's all right. He's anchored."
Instinctively Gerard obeys, and swings free. For a second he is hanging
on the smooth, glassy, curling lip of the fall. Should the reim break--
But it is staunch. He is drawn slowly up against the current, and
hauled safely to land.
The native, deprived of Gerard's support, is seen to be thrown, as it
were, with his face downward on the current. Something is holding him
back, something which has him fast by the legs; but for it, he would be
shot out over the falls. He shouts something in his own language.
"By jingo! It's just as I said," exclaims one of the men. "He's
anchored."
"Anchored?" wonderingly echoes Gerard, who, beyond being very much out
of breath, is none the worse for his narrow escape.
"Yes, anchored. He says he's got a lot of _reims_ and truck tangled
round his legs, and it's hitched in something at the bottom of the
river. That's what's holding him back; and a mighty good thing it is
for you, young fellow, as well as for him. You'd have been pounded dust
at the bottom of the fall long before this."
The while the speaker has been fixing a knife to the noosed ram, in such
wise that the distressed native shall be able to detach it and cut
himself loose below water. A warning shout--the noose flies outward--
the man catches it without difficulty, for the distance is not great.
Then, having made it fast beneath his armpits, he dives under the
surface, while the two on the bank--the three in fact, for Gerard now
helps to man the line--keep the ram taut. The latter shakes and quivers
for a moment like a line with a heavy fish at the end; then the ringed
head rises.
"Haul away--he's clear!" is the cry. And in a moment the native is
dragged safe to the bank and landed beside his rescuers.
Having recovered breath, he proceeded to account for the origin of his
mishap. He was on his way to a neighbouring kraal, to obtain possession
of a horse which he had left there. He was carrying a headstall and a
couple of _reims_ for this purpose, and, thinking it a trifle shorter to
ford the river below the drift than at it, had gone into the water
accordingly. But the current proved stronger as well as deeper than he
had expected. He had been swept off his feet, and then the _reims_ had
somehow or other got entangled round his legs, which were practically
tied together, so that he could not swim. It must have been the
headstall which, dragging along the bottom, had so opportunely anchored
him.
"Well, it's the tallest thing I've seen in a good many years," said one
of the men. "_The_ very tallest--eh, George?"
"_Ja_, that's so!" laconically assented George, beginning to shred up a
fragment of Boer tobacco in the hollow of his hand.
The men were transport-riders, travelling with their waggons, which
accounted for the prompt production of the long _reim_ which had borne
so essential a part in the rescue. They had just come over the rise in
time to take in the situation, and with the readiness of resource which
characterises their class, were prompt to act accordingly. But the
object in which Gerard's interest was centred was the man whom he had
been instrumental in saving from a most horrible death.
The latter was a very fine specimen of native manhood, tall, erect, and
broad, and with exquisitely modelled limbs. His face, with its short
black beard, was firm and pleasing, and the straight fearless glance of
the clear eyes seemed to shadow forth the character of the man. He had
a grand head, whose broad and lofty forehead was tilted slightly back,
as though the shiny black ring which surmounted it were a crown, instead
of merely a badge of marriage and manhood; for the Zulu wears his
wedding-ring on his head, instead of on his finger, and moreover is not
accounted to have attained to manhood until he has the right to wear it.
His age might have been anything between thirty and fifty. His only
clothing was a _mutya_, which is a sort of apron of hide or cats' tails
hung round the loins by a string.
If Gerard expected him to brim over with gratitude, and to vow a life's
service or anything of the sort, he was disappointed. The man made a
few laughing remarks in his own language as he pointed to the terrible
fall, whose thunderous roar almost drowned their voices where they
stood. The two might have been taking a friendly swim together, instead
of narrowly escaping a most frightful death.
"Who is he?" said Gerard. "Where does he live?"
As one of the other men put this question, the native, with a word or
two, pointed with his hand to the northward.
"But--what's his name?"
The question struck the onlookers as an unpalatable one.
"Name?" repeated the native, after the manner of his race when seeking
to gain time. "Name? They call me Sobuza. I am of the Aba Qulusi, of
the people of Zulu. Who is he who helped me out of the water?"
Gerard told who he was. The two white men exchanged looks of surprise.
"Anstey's relative! So?" they said. "Looking him up, maybe?"
Gerard explained his exact position with regard to Anstey. He noticed
that the significance of the look exchanged between the pair did not
decrease. The Zulu, however, seemed to receive the answer with but
little interest. He made one or two ineffectual attempts at Gerard's
name, but the recurring "r"--a letter which none of the Bantu races can
pronounce, always in fact making it a sort of guttural aspirate--baffled
him, and he gave it up. Then, with a sonorous farewell, he took his
departure.
"If all Zulus are like him, they must be a splendid race," said Gerard,
gazing after the retreating figure. "That's the first real one I've
seen, to my knowledge."
"Ungrateful beggar!" commented one of the men, angrily. "Why, he hardly
took the trouble to say `Thankee.' He deserved to have been let go over
the fall."
"I'm afraid I'm nearly as bad," said Gerard. "I don't--or rather I do--
know where I should be if it hadn't been for you."
"That's nothing, mister," was the prompt rejoinder. "Help one another's
the rule of the road--eh, George?"
"_Ja_, that's so," assented George again.
They chatted on for a while, and smoked a sociable pipe, and Gerard
accepted an invitation to accompany his friends in need to their
waggons--which were standing waiting for them at the drift higher up--
and take a glass of grog, which, with the torrid heat of the sun,
combined to keep off any chill which might result from his wetting.
Then with much mutual good will they separated.
Gerard held on his way, pondering over his adventure, which indeed was a
pretty stirring one, and the first he had ever had. He was bound on an
errand of partly business, partly pleasure; namely, to visit some people
he did not greatly care for on some business of Anstey's. Still the
change from the sedentary round of the store was something, and, hot as
it was, he enjoyed the ride. It was Sunday, and thus a sort of holiday,
though even on the Sabbath we fear that trade was not altogether at a
standstill.
That day, however, was destined to be one of incident, of adventure.
His visit over, he was riding home in the cool of the evening. The sun
was just touching the western sky-line, flooding with a golden light the
open, rolling plains. There was nothing specially beautiful in the
landscape, in fact it was rather monotonous, but the openness of it gave
an idea of free and sweeping space, and the almost unearthly glow of a
perfect evening imparted a charm that was all its own. The uncongenial
circumstances of his present life faded into insignificance. Gerard
felt quite hopeful, quite elated. He felt that it was good even to
live.
Suddenly a hubbub of voices rose upon the evening air--of native voices,
of angry voices--and mingled with it the jarring clash of kerries.
Spurring his horse over the slight eminence which rose in front, the
cause of it became manifest. A small native kraal stood just back from
the road. Issuing from this were some half-dozen figures. A glance
served to show that they were engaged in a highly congenial occupation
to the savage mind--fighting, to wit.
It was a running fight, however, and an unequal one. A tall man was
retreating step by step, holding his own gallantly against overwhelming
odds. He was armed with nothing but a knobkerrie, with which he struck
and parried with lightning-like rapidity. His assailants were mostly
armed with two kerries apiece, and were pressing him hard; albeit with
such odds in their favour they seemed loth to come to close quarters,
remaining, or springing back, just beyond the reach of those terrible
whirling blows. To add to the shindy, all the women and children in the
kraal were shrilly yelling out jeers at the retreating adversary, and
three or four snarling curs lent their yapping to the uproar.
"_Yauw_! great Zulu!" ran the jeers. "We fear you not! Why should we?
Ha-ha! We are free people-free people. We are not Cetywayo's dogs.
Ha-ha!"
"Dogs!" roared the tall man, his eyes flashing with the light of battle.
"Dogs of _Amakafula_! By the head-ring of the Great Great One, were I
but armed as ye are, I would keep the whole of this kraal howling like
dogs the long night through--I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulusi--I alone.
Ha!"
And with a ferocious downward sweep of his kerrie, he knocked the
foremost of his assailants off his legs, receiving in return a numbing
blow on the shoulder from the stick of another. All the warrior blood
of the martial Zulu was roused, maddened, by the shock. He seemed to
gain in stature, and his eyes blazed, as roaring out the war-shout of
his race, the deep-throated "Usutu!" he abandoned the offensive and
hurled himself like a thunderbolt upon his four remaining adversaries.
These, not less agile than himself, scattered a moment previous to
closing in upon him from all sides at once. At the same time he was
seen to totter and pitch heavily forward. The man whom he had
previously swept off his feet had, lying there, gripped him firmly by
the legs.
Nothing could save him now! With a ferocious shout the others sprang
forward, their kerries uplifted. In a moment he would be beaten to a
jelly, when--
Down went the foremost like a felled ox, before the straight crushing
blow of an English fist; while at the same time a deft left-hander met
the next with such force as to send him staggering back a dozen paces.
Wrenching the two sticks from the fallen man, Gerard pushed them into
the hands of the great Zulu. The latter, finding himself thus evenly
armed, raised the war-shout "Usutu!" and charged his two remaining
assailants. These, seeing how the tables had been turned, did not wait.
They ran away as fast as their legs could carry them.
"_Whou_!" cried the Zulu, the ferocity which blazed from his countenance
fading into a look of profound contempt. "They show their backs, the
cowards. Well, let them run. Ha! they have all gone," he added,
noticing that the others, too, had sneaked quietly away. "_Whau_!"
The last ejaculation was a staccato one of astonishment. For he
recognised in Gerard his rescuer of the morning.
"I say, friend, you floored those two chappies neatly. By Jove, you
did!"
Both turned towards the voice. It proceeded from a light buggy, which
stood drawn up on the road behind them. In this were seated a young man
some three or four years older than himself, and an extremely pretty
girl, at sight of whom Gerard looked greatly confused, remembering the
circumstances under which she had beheld him.
"It was an A1 row," continued the former. "We saw the whole of it.
_Allamaghtaag_! but I envy the way in which you spun those two to the
right and left."
"Well, I had to," answered Gerard. "It was five to one. That's not
fair play, you know." And his eyes met the blue ones of the young lady
in the buggy, and were inclined to linger there, the more so that the
said blue orbs seemed to beam an approval that was to the last degree
heterodox in one of the tenderer sex and therefore, theoretically, an
uncompromising opponent of deeds of violence.
"Who's your long-legged friend?" went on the young man, proceeding to
address a query or two to the Zulu, in the latter's own language, but in
a tone that struck even Gerard as a trifle peremptory. "He's a surly
dog, anyhow," he continued, annoyed at the curtness of the man's answer.
"He's a Zulu--a real Zulu--and his name's Sobuza," said Gerard.
"A Zulu, is he? Do you know him, then?" was the surprised rejoinder.
"I didn't before this morning. But I happen to have got him out of one
little difficulty already to-day. I never expected to see him again,
though."
"The deuce you did! Was he engaged in the congenial pastime of
head-breaking then, too?"
"N-no. The fact is--" And then Gerard blushed and stuttered, for he saw
no way out of trumpeting his own achievements, and somehow there was
something about those blue eyes that made him shrink instinctively from
anything approaching this. "The truth is he got into difficulties in
the river--a bit of string or something twisted round his legs in the
water so that he couldn't swim, and I helped him out."
The girl's face lighted up, and she seemed about to say something; but
the other interrupted--
"By Jove, we must get on. It'll be dark directly, and looks like a
storm in the offing, and we've a good way to go. Well, ta-ta to you,
sir. So long!" And the buggy spun away over the flat.
Gerard followed it with his glance until it was out of sight. Then he
turned to the Zulu. That worthy was seated on the ground, calmly taking
snuff.
"Ha, _Umlungu_!" [white man] he exclaimed, as, having completed that
operation, he replaced his horn snuff-tube in the hole cut out of the
lobe of his ear for that purpose. "This has been a great day--a great
day. Surely my _inyoka_ has taken your shape. Twice have you helped me
this day. Twice in the same day have you come to my aid. Wonderful--
wonderful! The death of the water--to pass through the mighty fall to
the Spiritland--that is nothing. It is a fitting end for a warrior.
But that I, Sobuza, of the Aba Qulusi, of the people of Zulu--that I,
Sobuza, the second fighting captain of the Udhloko regiment--should be
`eaten up' by four or five miserable dogs of _Amakafula_ [Note 2].
_Whau_! that were indeed the end of the world. I will not forget this
day, _Umlungu_. Tell me again thy name."
Gerard, who although he understood by no means all of this speech, had
picked up sufficient Zulu to grasp most of its burden, repeated his
names, slowly and distinctly, again and again. But Sobuza shook his
head. He could not pronounce them. The nearest he could come was a
sort of Lewis Carrollian contraction of the two--"U' Jeriji,"
pronouncing the "r" as a guttural aspirate.
"I shall remember," he said; "I shall remember. And now, Jeriji, I
journey to the northward to the land of the Zulu. Fare thee well."
Instinctively Gerard put forth his hand. With a pleased smile the
warrior grasped it in a hearty muscular grip. Then with a sonorous
"_Hlala gahle_," (or farewell), he turned and strode away over the now
fast darkening _veldt_.
The occupants of the buggy, speeding too on _their_ way, were engaged in
something of an altercation.
"It was too provoking of you, Tom," the girl was saying, "to rush me
away like that."
"So? Well, we've no time to spare as it is. And that cloud-bank over
there means a big thunderstorm, or I'm a Dutchman."
"I don't care if it does. And we never found out his name--who he is."
"No more we did, now you mention it," said the other in a tone of
half-regretful interest. "But, after all, we can survive the loss."
"But--he was such a nice-looking boy."
"Oho!" was the rejoinder, accompanied by a roar of laughter. "So that's
the way the cat jumps!"
"Don't be an idiot," answered the girl, but in a tone which seemed to
say the "chaff" was not altogether displeasing to her. "But you
remember the report we heard coming through Howick, about two men being
nearly carried over the Umgeni Fall to-day, while one was trying to save
the other. That's the hero of the story, depend upon it. I'd have got
it all out of him if you hadn't been in such a desperate hurry. And now
we don't even know who he is!"
"No more we do. Let's put an advertisement in the paper. That'll draw
him--eh? Such a nice-looking boy, too!" he added, mimicking her tone.
"Tom, you're a born idiot," she rejoined, blushing scarlet.
The "nice-looking boy" meanwhile was cantering homeward in the twilight,
building castles in the air at a furious rate. Those blue eyes--that
voice--hovered before his imagination even as a stray firefly or so
hovered before his path. It was long since he had heard the voice or
seen the face of any woman of birth and refinement. Anstey was not wont
to mix with such, and the few female acquaintances the latter owned,
though worthy people enough, were considerably his inferiors in the
social scale. At this time, indeed, his mind and heart were peculiarly
attuned to such impressions, by reason of his lonely and uncongenial
surroundings; more than ever, therefore, would a feeling of discontent,
of yearning home-sickness, arise in his mind. Then, by a turn of
retrospect, his memory went back to Mr Kingsland's hearty,
straightforward words of advice: "When you've got your foot in the
stirrup, keep it there. Stick to it, my lad, stick to it, and you'll do
well." And now he _had_ got his foot in the stirrup. Was he to kick it
out again in peevish disgust because the stirrup was a bit rusty? No;
he hoped he was made of better stuff than that. He must just persevere
and hope for better times.
He reached home just as the black cloud, which had been rolling up
nearer and nearer, with many a red flash and low rumble, began to break
into rain. Having hastily put up his horse in the tumble-down stable,
and seen him fed, he went indoors, only to find Anstey blind drunk and
snoring in an armchair. Utterly disgusted, he helped that worthy to
bed, and then, after a cold supper, for which he had little appetite, he
sought his own shakedown couch in the comfortless lumber-room. Then the
storm broke in a countless succession of vivid flashes and deafening
thunder-peals which shook the building to its very foundations; and to
the accompaniment of the deluging roar and rush of the rain upon the
iron roof he fell fast asleep--to dream that he was rescuing countless
numbers of fighting Zulus from the Umgeni Fall, over which a rainbow
made up of blue eyes was striving to lure them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. "Snake." Zulus are great believers in tutelary spirits, of
which each individual has one or more continually watching over him. To
such they frequently, though not invariably, attribute the form of the
serpent.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 2. A term of contempt employed by the warlike natives of Zululand
to designate the natives dwelling in Natal. Probably a corruption of
the popular term "Kafir," _ama_ being the plural sign.