"THE TOOTH."
In announcing his hearty desire to bid good-bye to the Igazipuza kraal
as soon as possible, John Dawes had stated no more than the barest
truth, but its fulfilment seemed destined to be postponed indefinitely,
failing the conversion to his views of the Igazipuza themselves. They,
apparently, did not share his aspiration. They were not nearly so
anxious to part with him as he was to part with them, and objected most
strenuously to all and every suggestion to that end. In sum, he and his
companion and servants, and all their possessions, were practically
prisoners. Ingonyama's motives in thus holding them in restraint they
were up till now at a loss to fathom. It was not trade, for they had
long since bartered everything negotiable. It certainly was not
friendship, for the chief's manner had become sullen and distrustful,
not to say gruff. John Dawes, who understood natives thoroughly, and
knew that they are nothing if not practical, confessed himself utterly
baffled, failing a motive.
Once they had actually inspanned, but before they had trekked half a
mile from the kraal they were met by a large force of armed warriors,
and deliberately turned back. There was no help for it. Might was
right, and comply they must. But, after that, under pretence that the
chief had forbidden any grazing within a certain radius of the kraal,
all their trek-oxen were driven away to a small outlying kraal in a
distant corner of the hollow. No obstruction was placed in the way of
them looking after the animals, counting them occasionally, and so
forth. But any attempt at inspanning was very promptly frustrated.
As with the chief, so with his followers. Taking their cue from him,
these had become more and more insolent, ruffianly, and bullying in
their demeanour. They would swagger around the waggons, hustle and
annoy Sintoba and the other native servants, pull things about, and
behave in general in such fashion as would almost put to the blush a
crowd of the worst kind of British yahoos. Once, indeed, yielding to an
uncontrollable impulse of exasperation, Gerard had given one of these
sportive young savages a sound thrashing. It was an imprudent not to
say a perilous thing to do. But again a bold attitude answered, and the
Igazipuza became a little more respectful.
Days had merged into weeks, and weeks had almost lengthened into months,
and still no chance of getting away. Taking Sintoba into complete
confidence the pair would, on such few occasions as they could find
themselves absolutely and entirely beyond the reach of prying eyes and
ears, discuss the situation earnestly and in all its bearings. The only
motive either Dawes or Sintoba could guess at was that an Anglo-Zulu war
was imminent, if it had not actually broken out. This would supply a
sufficient reason for their detention. Ingonyama was holding them as
hostages. In the event of hostilities with the British, his intention
was probably to carry them captive to the king's kraal. Or he might be
keeping them with the design of sacrificing them to the manes of such
members of his clan who might eventually be slain. This aspect of the
case was not a pleasant one.
Seldom indeed could they feel sure they were out of hearing of their
gaolers, out of sight never. The latter were ever around them, on one
pretext or another. If they so much as strolled down to a water-hole to
take a swim, a group of armed warriors was sure to start up at some
unexpected point, and hover around them until their return. If they
rode out to see how their stock was getting on, it was the same thing, a
band was sure to make-believe to be proceeding in the same direction,
and they had long since ascertained that the sole entrance to the place
was indefatigably watched and strongly guarded day and night. Now, all
this surveillance, at first galling and irksome in the extreme,
eventually became more serious in its results. It told upon their
nerves. It was ominous--depressing. They were as completely shut away
from the outer world in this wild and remote fastness of the Igazipuza
as though shipwrecked on a desert island. Those grey cliff walls that
encircled them became hateful, horrible, repellent. They were even as
the walls of a tomb.
"Well, Ridgeley, I own this is getting serious," said Dawes, one morning
as they sat on the waggon-box moodily smoking the pipe of bitter
reflection. "And the worst of it is I see no way out of it. I've been
in a queer corner or two in my time, but never did I feel so thoroughly
like a rat in a trap as now. There's no way of climbing these infernal
cliffs; leastways, not with our horses, and without them, we might
almost as well stop here, for we should be overhauled and lugged back to
a dead certainty. The way we came up is no go, either."
"No, it isn't," agreed Gerard, despondently. "I don't want to croak,
Dawes; but it strikes me the tenure of our lives is not worth a great
deal to any one who thought to do a good spec by purchasing it."
The suspense, the daily, hourly apprehension under which they lived, had
made its mark upon Gerard, and even his cheerful spirits and sunny good
humour had begun to fail him. He thought of his young life, and the joy
and exhilaration of living which until lately had been his. He thought
of those he had left behind him in the Old Country. But, most of all,
full oft and continually--and he had plenty of time for thinking, little
else, in fact--he thought of May Kingsland, and that bright golden day
and happy peaceful evening he had spent in her society. How would she
feel, he wondered, when she came to hear of his death--God grant it
might not be a barbarous and lingering one--at the hands of cruel and
merciless savages?
"Don't lose heart, Ridgeley, whatever you do," said Dawes, looking at
him earnestly. "The situation is pretty black, but, please Heaven,
we'll get through to talk over it snug and safe at home one of these
days. The worst of it is that it's all my doing you're in this fix at
all. That's what I blame myself for, my lad."
"Then don't think of doing that," returned Gerard, with all his old
alacrity. "Aren't we in it together, share and share alike, risks as
well as good times. Come now, Dawes, if I think you're bothering over
that, it'll go far towards knocking the bottom out of me. Hang it all,
can't we get on the horses some dark night, and make a dash for it?"
"We can't, Ridgeley, and for this reason. It would simply be the death
warrant of all our people if we succeeded, and of ourselves if we
didn't. I'm not a more straight-laced chap than most, but, you see, I
can't exactly bring myself to slope off and leave Sintoba and the rest
of them in the lurch. No. We must either march out as we came, with
all the honours of war, or--stay here."
"I never thought of it from that point of view, I admit," said Gerard.
"There is another scheme I've been plotting, but it don't pan out
overmuch," went on Dawes. "If one could manage to smuggle you out, by
hook or by crook, you might find your way to Ulundi, and lay the case
before the king, always provided there's no such thing as a British war,
of course. But, bar that event, Cetywayo would soon bring Master
Ingonyama to book. He's a straight man, is Cetywayo, and well-disposed
towards Englishmen, though we have been badgering him more than enough
of late. But he'd never allow a couple of British subjects to be put
upon in this outrageous manner by one of his own subordinate chiefs."
"By Jove! that is an idea," said Gerard. "But would it be better than
knocking up a rescue expedition among our own people--in Natal for
instance?"
"Rather. About five hundred per cent, better. Why such an expedition
would mean a young war, and do you think Government would embark on that
for the sake of a brace of poor devils of traders? Not much. It'd say
we travelled at our own risk, and if we'd got into difficulties we must
get out of them on the same terms. Even if otherwise, just think of the
red tape! No. My plan is the best, and, I'm afraid, the only one."
For a few moments both men sat puffing at their pipes in silence.
Gerard felt his pulses beginning to throb already with the excitement
and prospect of such an adventure. Then he said--
"It won't do, Dawes; I'm not going to leave you. We must go out
together or not at all."
"That's no sort of good sense," was the other's rejoinder. "I shall be
all right here, and it's the only way out of the difficulty."
"But, on your own showing, they will take it out of you," urged Gerard,
speaking quickly. "Didn't you give that as a reason just now for not
leaving Sintoba and the others behind? You go, and leave me to take my
chance here."
"Yes; but the cases are different, I can manage them better. You see, I
understand them thoroughly, and you, after all, are a good bit of a
novice. Still, you know enough of the country and people to get along
among them, and find your way to Ulundi as quick as possible; but if you
were left here on your own hook you'd likely make a mess of it. Tell
the first you meet you are the bearer of a message to the king, and they
will be bound to help you. They dare not refuse. We must pan out the
thing, though, with every care. The main difficulty will, of course, be
that of getting you clear out of this place, in the first instance. The
rest is simplicity itself in comparison."
In the dead of night, by the light of a lantern, the two would sit in
the waggon-tent, while Dawes, with surprising accuracy, drew from
memory, and in as small a compass as possible, a map of that section of
the Zulu country which comprised their present place of captivity and
the king's capital and night after night, with their heads together,
they would sit studying this rough plan, while Dawes pointed out the
general features of the country--the lay of the mountains and the most
convenient and least frequented route to be chosen. With extra good
luck, he reckoned Gerard might make Ulundi in a little over two days--
with ordinary luck it might take him four. But that Cetywayo would
order their immediate release he never entertained or uttered the
smallest doubt.
One day Gerard saddled up his pony, and started off alone to see how
their stock was getting on. And, indeed, it really seemed that he was
alone, for strange to say, none of the Igazipuza offered to accompany
him, nor did he meet with a soul on the way. But between seeing nobody
and being himself seen by nobody, he well knew there lay a wide
difference, and he must be careful accordingly; indeed, he almost began
to fear that this unwonted immunity from surveillance concealed a trap--
was designed to draw him into some indiscretion, which might be turned
into a reason for his destruction.
The intense longing to escape, however, soon overweighed all prudential
consideration to the extent of causing him to scan for the fiftieth time
every cranny and crevice in the face of the cliffs, which might by any
chance afford exit. Surely there was some such--a cleft, a gnarled
tree, a concealed passage. Hardly could he believe there was not. But,
even as heretofore, he could not find it, and despondently he once more
turned his horse to ride back to the waggons.
Suddenly the animal shied, and dropping his nose to the ground sniffed
at something and then backed away, snorting. The white round object
which had caused the alarm needed no second glance. It was a human
skull.
Yet another lay there, its fleshless eye-holes staring upward from the
grass. Scattered around were fragments of broken bones.
Gerard looked up. In his meditative fit he had ridden abstractedly, not
seeing where he was going. Now he found himself at the foot of a great
rock, and a cold shiver ran through his frame, for he recognised it as
the rock called _Izinyo_, "The Tooth." It was the rock of
slaughter--"the tooth that eats," as Vunawayo had grimly put it.
For various reasons he had always avoided this locality. He had no sort
of an inclination to explore it--very much the reverse--and he feared
lest in doing so he might unconsciously be offending the superstitions
of the people. Now, thus brought by chance to its very base, he looked
up at it with a cold, creepy sensation of shuddering awe. He
contemplated it much as a Liberty, Equality and Fraternity "citizen"
during the thick of the Reign of Terror, may have contemplated the
guillotine, as an institution with which he might any day be called upon
to cultivate a much closer acquaintance.
He looked down at the shattered bones, then up at the cliff. This was
the mode of death then. The victims were taken to the summit of this
latter-day Tarpeian rock and hurled therefrom. But as he looked
something seemed to be flapping softly against the face of the cliff
high overhead. Ropes? _Reims_? Were people then _hanged_ from the
brow--not merely thrown over? Hanging was not a Zulu method of
slaughter. Gerard was more mystified than ever.
And with this mystification came a great and growing curiosity. As he
was here he determined to explore further. He would take advantage of
being alone and unwatched to ascend the rock. A horrible fascination,
which was more than mere curiosity, seemed to beckon him on, and with it
ran an instinctive feeling that the knowledge thus gained might possibly
be of use to him. Acting upon this impulse he rode round to the other
side and began the ascent.
The latter was not difficult. Precipitous only on its front face, the
further side of the pyramid, though steep, was smooth enough to enable
him to ride nearly to the top. Here, however, he was obliged to leave
his horse and ascend on foot by a rough-hewn but well-worn path.
The summit was large enough to hold about fifty persons. It was
smoothly rounded, with a hollow depression in the centre. And as
Gerard's glance fell upon this, every drop of blood within him seemed to
turn to ice.
A sharp, tough stake, pointed at the top, rose upright in the centre of
the hollow, and upon this stake, in a sitting posture, shrivelled, half
mummified, was impaled a human body. The head lay over on the shoulder,
and on the features, drawn back from the bared teeth in a grin of
ghastly torment, was the most horrible expression of fear and agony.
The eyeballs, lustreless and shrunken, stared upon the intruder with a
stare that might haunt him to his dying day, and gazing upon the grisly
contortion of the bound and trussed limbs--the terrible attitude--the
foetid odour of the corpse--for in this dry atmosphere decomposition had
been a long and gradual process--it seemed to the petrified and
unutterably horror-stricken spectator that the tortured wretch must
still have life in him.
Recovering by a strong effort of will some degree of self-possession,
for the horrid sight had turned him sick and faint, Gerard drew nearer
to the corpse. The stake, burnt and hardened to a point, was of the
_umzimbili_ or iron-wood. This was clearly not the first time it had
been so used, and now as he remembered the skulls and bones lying
beneath, he thought with a shudder on the numbers of wretches who might
have suffered this most hideous of deaths. Heavens! and might not he
himself, and Dawes, be called upon to suffer in like fashion, at the
mercy, as they were, of this horde of cruel barbarians?
He turned his face outward to look over the valley. The sweet golden
sunshine, now declining, shed a softened and beautiful light upon the
verdure of the bush, toning down the angles of the grey cliffs. Blue
smoke clouds curled lazily upward from the great circle of the kraal,
lying below in the distance, and the sound of far-away voices floated
melodiously, pleasingly upon the clear still air. It was a lovely
scene, a scene that many might travel any distance to look upon, but to
him who now gazed upon it from this grim and horrid Golgotha it was
darker, blacker than the Tartarus of Dante.
Then another sight arrested Gerard's attention. Along the brow of the
cliff was a row of stout pegs driven firmly into the ground, and round
each was tied a _reim_, or raw-hide rope, whose other end dangled over
into space. These were what he had seen flapping overhead when he was
below. With a shuddering loathing he drew up one of them. Its end was
not a running noose as he had expected, only a loop, so small that he
could not even put his hand through it. What new horror did this
represent?
And then a quick, deep-toned ejaculation behind made him start--start so
violently in the sudden unexpectedness of the interruption in the then
state of his nerves, that he was within an ace of losing his balance and
pitching headlong over the height. Recovering himself, however, he
turned to confront a tall Zulu who stood contemplating him with an
expression of ironical mirth, and recognised the great frame and evil
countenance of Vunawayo.
"Ha, _Umlungu_!" said the latter. "So you have come to look at the
point of The Tooth?"
"Yes," answered Gerard, as composedly as possible. "But, Vunawayo, what
is that?"
"This?" said the savage, reaching up his hand to the point of the stake.
"It is the point of The Tooth--the part it eats with."
"No; that, I mean," pointing to the impaled corpse.
"_Hau_! That is--its last morsel," replied Vunawayo, with the laugh of
a demon. "When The Tooth bites, it bites hard. Wizards--and such
people. I told you it did."
"What, then, are these used for?" went on Gerard, showing the raw-hide
rope which he had drawn up.
"These? Ha! not all who come here to be eaten by The Tooth are bitten
by its point. This loop you see was tied round a man's wrists. He was
then flung over to the full end of the rope, and his arms being fastened
behind him, were broken by the jerk. He dangled there until he dropped
loose. The last to suffer in this way was a woman who had been a
captive, and was taken to wife by the chief. She killed her newborn
child, saying that she would die rather than increase the strength of
the Igazipuza. She did die--but she took a long time about it--a long,
long time."
"And who was the man who was impaled, Vunawayo? What did he die for?"
"Be not too curious, _Umlungu_," was the answer. "Have patience. There
may soon come a time when you shall attend at the `eating of The Tooth.'
Have patience."
To Gerard, in his then frame of mind, it seemed that the other's tone
was fraught with grim irony, with fell significance.
"Let us go down," resumed Vunawayo. "Ha! our meeting up here has been
short and unexpected. But it may be that we shall meet again upon the
point of The Tooth, and then our meeting will be a much longer one. Oh
yes; we shall meet again up here," added the savage, with a sinister
laugh, as he turned to lead the way down.
And Gerard, unnerved by these evidences of the sickening barbarities
practised by this ferocious clan, could hardly bring himself on his
return to tell Dawes what he had seen.