The chiefs and Gerard were unanimous in the opinion that it would be too
much luck to expect to find the Igazipuza unprepared, and the appearance
of Ingonyama's emissaries had set at rest all doubt upon that head; and
what with the desperate fearlessness of the outlaw clan--fighting, so to
say, with its neck in the halter--and the advantage of fighting on its
own ground, the battle that day, as Sobuza had said, was likely to prove
a right merry one.
All further necessity for concealment being now at an end, the _impi_
advanced swiftly and in silence, moving at a brisk ran, and now the
gleam of battle was in every eye, as gripping their formidable
broad-bladed assegais, the warriors pressed forward, in their own
expressive idiom beginning to "see red." Bounding the spar pointed out
by Gerard, they surged up the last slope.
Here they formed up into line of battle. Each flank consisted of a
company of the Ngobamakosi, and these were to constitute the "horns"
when the surrounding had to be done. That on the right had Gcopo for
leader, that on the left, another sub-chief, named Matela, while the
centre, which was composed of the Udhloko, was led by Sobuza, who, as
commander of the expedition, directed the movements generally. Beside
him, Gerard had resolved for the present to remain, in order, if called
upon, to give assistance by his knowledge of the place.
But for the incident of the two emissaries the king's _impi_ might have
supposed it was going to take the doomed Igazipuza completely by
surprise, according to the original plan, for as it advanced swiftly up
the slope not an enemy showed himself, not a sign of life was there.
Had the Igazipuza elected to choose their own fighting-ground, and
retired to some spot strategically more favourable for resisting the
invaders? Or was there some secret way out of the hollow, known only to
a few, and kept for an emergency such as this? It almost began to look
like it. Sobuza and his captains, however, were not the men to trust to
appearances or to leave anything to chance, and well indeed for them
that such was the case.
They had reached the critical point. A hundred yards further and they
would stand upon the ridge overlooking the hollow. Suddenly the
stillness was broken--broken in a startling manner. There was a crash
of firearms, and from the slope there arose a mass of warriors springing
up as though out of the very earth. Covered by their great war-shields,
the broad spear gripped in the right hand, they charged like lightning
upon the right flank of the king's force, and the roar of their
ferocious blood-shout went up as the roar of a legion of tigers.
Prepared as they were, the surprise, the terrible impetuosity of the
charge, momentarily staggered the untried and youthful warriors of the
Ngobamakosi. It almost seemed as though they must give way. But Gcopo,
their leader, was the right man in the right place.
"Strike, children of the king! Death to the _abatagati_!" he thundered,
waving his great shield as he sprang to meet the onrushing horde,
"_Usutu_! _'Su-tu_!"
"Igazi--pu--za!" roared the latter, answering the king's war-cry with
their own wild slogan. And then as the rival forces met in jarring
shock there fell a silence, save for the flutter and crash of shields,
the scuffle of feet, the gasp of deep-drawn breaths, the shiver of
spears, and the thud of falling bodies. It was all done in a moment.
By hurling his whole force upon that of the daring foe, Sobuza could
have crushed it in a very few minutes. But that astute leader knew
better. He saw at a glance that the attacking Igazipuza, though better
men, hardly equalled in numbers the company of the Ngobamakosi with
which they were engaged. So he passed a peremptory word to the
remainder of his force to hold itself in reserve, and his strategy was
justified, for almost immediately another band of the enemy arose with
equally startling suddenness, and fell furiously upon his left flank.
In obedience to a mysterious signal, the king's _impi_ divided. Half
the Udhloko hurled themselves to the support of the wing first attacked,
while the remainder sprang forward in the wake of their chief.
"Ho! hunting-dogs of the king, here is your game! _Usu-tu_!" roared
Sobuza, whirling his battle-axe aloft as he leaped to meet these new
assailants. The latter were led by a chief of gigantic stature and
hideous aspect, beneath whose wildly fantastic adornments of flowing
cowhair and long trailing crane's feathers, Gerard, keeping at the side
of Sobuza, had no difficulty in recognising Vunawayo.
"Hah!" growled the latter, as the ringed leader came at him. "Now we
have _men_ to deal with!"
Gerard, recognising his old enemy, had covered him with his revolver,
and drew the trigger. But with incredible quickness Vunawayo bounded
aside, and the ball found its billet in the body of a warrior behind
him. Before he could fire again, Sobuza had met the leader of the
Igazipuza in full shock.
Then it was as a battle of the giants to behold these two. Their
shields clashed together, and remained held at arm's length, pressing
against each other as the heads and interlocked horns of two fighting
bulls, each striving to beat down the other's guard, to draw the other's
stroke by a deft and clever feint; and a false stroke would mean the
death of whichever should make it. The warriors on either side had
rallied around their respective chiefs and champions, to neither of whom
could they render any aid by reason of the desperate fierceness
wherewith they were themselves pressing each other. Gerard, carried
away by the indescribable savagery and excitement of the combat, began
himself to "see red," was hardly, in fact, conscious of his acts. A
sharp sting in the ear, as of a red-hot iron, brought him to himself.
Grinding his teeth in fury he emptied his rifle point-blank into the
body of a warrior whose assegai stroke had so narrowly missed him, then
he was knocked down by the violent contact of a great shield. The
bearer of it had raised his spear to strike when he himself was felled
by a blow of a battle-axe, and at the same time Gerard was seized by
friendly hands and set upon his feet again. Half dazed he continued to
load and fire. He saw men stagger beneath their death wound and sink to
the earth, now foul and slippery with gore. He saw others almost hacked
to pieces as they stood, and then fall to their knees, still thrusting
and stabbing as long as there was life in them; but ever the deafening
roar of the opposing war-cries, the tossing of weapons and shields, the
blows and the gasping, and the spouting blood. It could not last--it
could not last.
Even the desperate valour of the Igazipuza, together with the fact that
they were on higher ground, for they had charged down upon the king's
_impi_, could not avail for long against the superior numbers of the
latter. Vunawayo, finding his efforts against Sobuza unavailing, and
noting that more and more of the latter's warriors were free to come to
their chief's assistance, sprang suddenly back, and waving his shield,
gave out in thunder tones the order to retreat.
But if the king's troops imagined that victory was theirs they were
destined to be undeceived. All this while the Igazipuza had been
pressed farther and farther back until they had nearly reached the top
of the ridge, and now as they poured over this in their retreat, through
the point where the slopes narrowed to a kind of gateway, the pursuers
thundering on their rear were met by a small but fresh force which had
been placed there to cover the retreat of the bulk.
"By the head-ring of the Great Great One, but these are _abatagati_
indeed!" growled Sobuza at this fresh evidence of the desperate
pertinacity of the enemy. "At them, my children! Hew them down!"
And shouting the king's war-cry he leaped upon the opposing Igazipuza.
If the fighting had been fierce before, it was doubly so now. This band
of heroes in their way, savage, bloodthirsty freebooters as they were,
had been placed there in this latter-day Thermopylae, to die--to die in
order that the rest might renew the combat under more favourable
conditions, and what more formidable foe can there be than a cornered
combatant? They went down at last before the Udhloko spears, but the
struggle was a fearful one, the result almost man for man. When the
victors, panting, bleeding, maddened with bloodshed and fury, stood on
the ridge looking down into the hollow upon the Igazipuza kraal, those
who had originally withstood them, and of whom they were in pursuit, had
disappeared. This would mean hunting them down--hunting down a cornered
and desperate foe who had not hesitated to assume the offensive and
attack a force twice as strong as itself, and who still mustered in
sufficient numbers to be of formidable menace; hunting down such as
these, at bay among the bush and rocks of their own stronghold. A
redoubtable undertaking indeed.
There lay the great kraal, apparently deserted, for it and its
surroundings showed no sign of life. Eagerly Gerard's glance sought the
waggons, and then his heart turned sick. They were still there, but
around them also was no sign of life. What had happened? But the next
glance was destined to sicken him yet more.
"Look--look!" he gasped, gripping Sobuza by the arm. "That is The
Tooth. Oh, good God!"
The last ejaculation escaped him in his grief. There rose the great
pyramid, clear and distinct in the light of early dawn. Something was
moving on its apex, and against the cliff-face several dark objects were
plainly discernible. To the sharp eyes of the Zulus, and, indeed, to
Gerard himself, the nature of them was unmistakable. They were human
forms, and they were hanging from the brow of the cliff.
Sobuza, to whom Gerard had imparted this novel and hideous form of
torture practised by the savage freebooters, gave a grunt of interest
and surprise as he beheld with his own eyes the actual process; for to
hang a man up by his dislocated arms wrenched round in the sockets was
unique and a novelty to him--barbarian as he was.
"We are too late--we are too late!" groaned Gerard.
"Not so, Jeriji," said the chief, sending another look at the grisly
cliff and the dangling bodies. "There are three of them. But not one
of them is a white man."
The rush of hope that rose in Gerard's heart was dashed.
"We cannot see the stake from here," he said--"the thing they call the
`point of The Tooth.' Oh, Heavens, if we are too late! Let us get
forward! Quick! We may be in time--we may be in time!"
But the Zulu chief, though concerned because of the agony of mind of his
young friend, was not there out of any considerations of sentiment. He
was there to carry out the orders of the king in all their drastic
severity, and was not going to risk failure and court ruin because one
unknown white man was in danger of a barbarous death at the hands of the
rebel clan. He had got to pursue the fighting force of the latter, and
leave it no time to master in any position favourable to itself.
"It can't be done, Jeriji," he replied. "Afterwards, when we have eaten
up all these dogs, then we will turn our attention to The Tooth."
"It will be too late then--too late!" said Gerard, angrily. "Listen,
Sobuza!" he almost shouted, as an idea struck him. "Give me a few men,
and I will go myself. Don't you see! That peak commands all the
hollow. I know, for I have been on it. And there are people on it now
who can signal to the others. Now--is it not in your interest that it
should be cleared?"
"_Hau_!" cried the chief, on whom this idea came with a new light. Then
he turned, and after a rapid conference with his colleagues, agreed to
the plan, and as by this time the _impi_--less those who had fallen--had
mustered on the ridge, the word was given to advance.
And what a different appearance did they now present. Covered with dust
and sweat, many of them gashed with wounds and dripping with blood,
shields hacked and weapons splintered, still panting with the exertion
and excitement of the battle, there was none of that spick-and-span
parade-ground appearance which had characterised them during their march
upon them now. But instead there was a grim light in their eyes, a fell
meaning in the low murmurs that issued now and then from their lips, as
the growls of a wounded lion. Here a man might be seen passing his
fingers along the blade of a broad assegai, foul and clotted with blood;
there another, balancing his heavy short-handled kerrie and explaining
how he had just failed to beat down his adversary's guard; another
again, with a gash which had cut through his head-ring and sliced away a
portion of the head beneath. Others again, had lost a finger, an ear,
and Sobuza himself was wounded in three places, though not seriously.
But on every countenance there was a grim and vengeful rigidity, which
showed that when the "suppression" of the Igazipuza should come to be
proceeded with, the king's orders would be carried out in no
half-hearted manner.
Leaving a detachment on the ridge to hold the enemy in check in case he
should double back and endeavour to break through, Sobuza ordered the
advance. The Igazipuza had fled towards the further end of the hollow,
where the rocky jungly nature of the ground would be favourable to them
making their last stand, and Gerard, who had thoroughly explored the
place, was able to estimate pretty accurately the spot where this was
likely to be.
"Shall we burn it, my father?" said one of the sub-chiefs, as they
passed the great silent kraal. "It would make a merry blaze."
"And a most troublesome smoke," returned Sobuza. "Burn it not. When we
have done with these jackals we will warm ourselves by the flames of
their straw. For the present let it be."
"We are near The Tooth now, Sobuza," said Gerard. "Send the men with me
that we may clear it."
But here a fresh difficulty arose. None seemed eager to accompany him.
Although the discipline of a Zulu regiment on a war expedition is of
iron rigidity, there were mutterings of discontent at the bare idea.
The warriors had not come there to take up the quarrel of an unknown
white trader, but to exterminate the rebellions subjects of the king.
Having tasted its delights, they were burning once more for the mad
shock of battle, and with such a foe. They were not keen on falling out
of this for the sake of dislodging three or four spies from an elevated
position, nor were they eager to place themselves under the command of a
white man. The chief himself was but lukewarm in the matter, and it
seemed in danger of being abandoned.
"If no one will go with me I will go alone!" cried Gerard, in despair.
Then, as his glance fell upon a face in the ranks, he was inspired with
new hope. "Come now, Nkumbi-ka-zulu," he went on. "Are you not ready
to win the double gun? It is waiting for you. Are there none of your
friends who will go with you? We shall be back with the _impi_ long
before the fight is at an end."
The young warrior stepped forth. It was the dream of his life to
possess that double gun which he had so vainly tried to jockey out of
its owner. Now, by a strange turn of events, he might only hope to
possess it by saving the life of that owner.
"I am ready," he said, turning deferentially towards Sobuza for
permission.
Another and another stepped forward, friends and kinsmen of his.
"Nine of you. With yourself there will be ten. You must do the best
you can, Jeriji, for I can spare no more," said Sobuza impatiently. And
the pursuit was resumed.
Lying back from the hollow in a lateral spur, shut in by ironstone
cliffs, was a small kraal, and this place had been chosen by the
Igazipuza for their last stand. Hither all their women and cattle had
been sent, and here they were resolved to die--to die fighting hard.
And no better place could they have chosen than this grim _cul de sac_.
It would be impossible to surround them. Only when they had been driven
back step by step--forced against the very face of the iron cliff
itself, would the last man be exterminated.
Over this weird death-trap there towered a great cloud of dust, and the
rocks re-echoed the lowing and trampling of the cattle and the shouts of
their drivers, the shrill voices of women, and the squalling of
children. And still the messengers of retribution marched on, a fell
purpose in each grim countenance; eyeballs rolling with a lurid fury,
weapons gripped, step elastic and eager. The dawn had broken lowering
and murky, and there was no sun. The wind sang mournfully through the
hollow; moaning among the cliffs, as with the wail of spirit voices over
the drama of carnage and massacre which was here to be played out. As
in the first instance, the Igazipuza had selected a place where their
assailants would be obliged to approach them from below.
Sobuza having satisfied himself that all the fighting force of the rebel
clan was before him, sent back two swift runners to order forward the
detachment he had left on the outer ridge, with the exception of a few
who were to remain to cut off any stray fugitives who might break
through. The contingency that anything like a number might do so seemed
hardly worth reckoning on. Then he ordered the immediate attack.
As the king's troops came sweeping up the slope, in perfect line of
battle, regular and unbroken, there floated to their ears, rising in
dull menace on the fitful puffs of the morning, the weird rhythmical
chorus of a war-song.
"Cubs of the Lion we,
Whose roar sounds Death;
Vultures who sit on high,
Whose swoop means Death;
Serpents who creep below,
Whose fangs deal Death--
We drink of the blood of men,
We laugh at Death!
"Wizards of thunder we
Whose voice rolls Death;
Wizards of lightning we
Who flash forth Death!
Ho! `hunting-dogs of the king,'
Come, taste our Death!
We drink of the blood of men--
We drink _your_ Death!"
The great ironstone cliffs echoed back the weird words of the savage
strophe with almost the effect of articulate repetition, and when, in
its final paean of defiance, the chorus swelled to a clamourous,
threatening roar, the disgust and hatred and repulsion which ran through
the minds of the king's soldiers knew no bounds. For to the average
Zulu nothing is more repellent than any suggestion of dark dealing, and
the gruesome import of the song of the Igazipuza, who had already earned
a reputation for wizardry in its foulest form, inspired in the minds of
these a fell determination to rid the earth of the whole evil brood.
"Usutu!"
"Igazi--Pu--Za!"
The war-shout of the royal house and the defiant slogan of the rebel
clan, mingled in booming echoes from the overhanging cliffs, as the dark
crescent line swept unswervingly on; the line of white shields, and the
flanking companies of parti-coloured ones, the bristling groups of
bright spears. In their wild and fantastic array, the red disk, the
hideous stamp of their dreaded order, freshly painted on forehead and
chest, the strength of ten men in the hopeless desperation of each, the
doomed clansmen stood awaiting the shock. It came.
Then again was the silence of voices, but the tramp of striving feet as
the conflicting crowd surged backwards and forwards--with the hiss and
heave of a dark billow split up on a half-submerged rock--the crash of
shields and weapons, the stagger of falling bodies, and the gasp of the
slain beneath the savage slashing blows of the infuriated slayers. The
Igazipuza are fighting like a race of giants. At this rate barely half
the king's force will return to Ulundi. All three of its leaders are
wounded; Sobuza is streaming with blood, but still his gigantic form
towers in the thick of the fray, still his battle-axe shears aloft in
wavy circles of light, still his white shield shivers that of an
opponent like the shock of a charging elephant.
Suddenly a sharp shrill warning cry rings forth. Even above the din of
the strife there rises a doll, rambling sound which shakes the ground.
Nearer, nearer it draws. Thunder? No. Even the combatants pause. A
dense cloud of dust is rolling down the kloof, and through it can be
seen a forest of bristling horns, a sea of rolling eyes. Even the
combatants take up the warning shout, "_Xwaya--xwaya! 'Zinkomo_!"
["Look out--look out! The cattle!"]
Like a whirlwind the frantic herd sweeps down the narrow gorge.
Bellowing, leaping, throwing up their horns, the maddened beasts plunge
onward, hundreds and hundreds of them, shaking the earth with the
thunder of their hoofs, smothering and blinding all with the cyclone of
their dust, heading for the outlet. There is no staying the headlong
course of the stampeded beasts. The whole _impi_ will be crashed to
pulp by the horned terror. In dismay the combatants spring
helter-skelter up the rocks, and it goes roaring and thundering by,
crushing many as it does so.
Whether the move was a spontaneous one, and that the animals, frantic
with the shouting and the reek of blood, and all penned up moreover in
such small compass, had stampeded of their own accord, or whether it was
a last desperate resource on the part of the Igazipuza to crush and
destroy the king's _impi_, could not at the time be determined. Both
parties, for the moment dazed, now rushed at each other with renewed
access of fury--but it could not last. The numbers of the Igazipuza had
dwindled frightfully; all cohesion among them was at an end. They were
now broken up into groups, still fighting desperately.
"Yield, wizards!" roared Sobuza. "To fight on is death."
"Ha, ha! We laugh at death, leader of the king's hunting-dogs!" came
the jeering reply.
"Taste it, then!" thundered the chief, springing at the largest of these
groups, and, whirling a heavy knobkerrie aloft, for his battle-axe was
broken, he smashed in the skull of the speaker like an eggshell. With a
roar and a rush the king's _impi_ surged forward, overwhelming the now
scattered groups by sheer weight of numbers. The battle was at an end.
In ghastly staring heaps, their splintered weapons still gripped in
their dying throes, still half covered by their hacked shields, the
corpses of the Igazipuza warriors lay, gashed and streaming with blood.
Grimly, sullenly, to the death had they fought, and now there were none
left to fight. The king's troops, too, had suffered severely. Gcopo,
the leader of the Ngobamakosi, had been killed, and Matela, the
sub-chief, was badly wounded with assegai thrusts, and many a staunch
fighting man of that regiment and of the Udhloko had fallen.
"On, on!" cried Sobuza, waving his arm. "The king's work is not yet
done. Where is Ingonyama? Where is Vunawayo?"
A shout of dismay, of baffled fury, answered him. Rolling their eyes
over the groups of slain, the warriors sought the now familiar features
of the fighting leader. In vain. Vunawayo was not among them. Had he
succeeded in breaking through the lines during the confusion caused by
the rush of the cattle? It began to look like it.
Again, roaring out the king's war-cry, the whole force charged eagerly
forward. There stood the small kraal. In a moment it was entirely
surrounded.
"Come forth! come forth!" thundered Sobuza, his voice almost drowned by
the dismal clamour of shrieks and terrified howling kept up by the women
and children hiding away in their huts in terror of their lives. "Come
forth, ere the torch is put in! To linger is death!"
Screaming, grovelling in abject fear, the miserable herd crept forth.
"Spare us, father! Crush us not, Foot of the Elephant! Bend us not,
Paw of the Lion!" they howled, rolling on the ground before the chief,
beside themselves with fear as they looked upon the blood-stained
weapons and threatening scowls of the king's warriors. The old hags,
especially, kept up their dismal, quavering screech. The younger women
were for the most part less scared or stonily resigned. All, however,
expected immediate massacre.
"Peace, witches--night cats!" thundered Sobuza. "Say, while ye may.
Where is Ingonyama?"
Whether in the bewilderment of her terror, or out of sheer force of
habit, the foremost of the women, a hideous wrinkled hag, to whom the
question seemed in particular addressed, replied--
"We know not, father; we know not--"
"Ha! Ye know not!" said Sobuza, making a sign.
Immediately a warrior stepped forward, and without a word, drove his
great assegai through the hag's body.
"I give you all one more chance," roared the chief again, cutting short
the howl of terror which went up. "Where is Ingonyama?"
"On The Tooth, father. On The Tooth!" eagerly yelled a whole chorus of
voices.
"If this is a lie, then shall every one of you be even as she," said the
chief, sternly, pointing with his foot at the corpse of the one who had
been ill-advised enough to protest ignorance.
"It is no lie, father!" they cried lustily. "He is there. It is no
lie."
"Ill will it be for yourselves if it is," said Sobuza, darkly. "And
now, witches, this nest of yours shall burn."
Half a dozen warriors sprang eagerly forward, and in as many moments
flames were bursting from the straw huts. Disappointed in their hopes
of thus smoking out any fighting men who might have crept in there for
shelter, the warriors amused themselves by spearing the dogs as they
rushed forth, shouting with laughter as a whole cloud of assegais
whizzed past some one more fortunate or more fleet than the rest,
without transfixing him. But no further violence was offered to the
women and children. The king's sentence had gone forth only against
such as should offer resistance, and did not include these.