On, on through the forest shades the hunted man sped, the voices of his
pursuers, like hounds upon a trail, sounding deep behind him. Though
strong and otherwise athletic, he was in no condition for running,
especially for keeping up a long chase, the chasers being wiry, untiring
savages.
The ground, too, became rough and stony, and this taxed his powers still
more. His aim was to reach the rocks and holes on the Lebombo slopes;
could he do so while yet at a fair distance from his enemies he stood
just a chance. They might look for him for ever there, or again they
might just hit upon the right place.
He set his teeth firm, and with elbows to his sides, kept on, husbanding
his wind like a trained sprinter. The while, bitter thoughts surged
through his mind; for it was bitter to die just then, tenfold so now
that Lalante was within his reach at last; now that a means of escape
had been afforded him. He thought of Joe Fleetwood too, and wondered if
he had managed to get clear away and if so in what direction. They had
been separated by some little distance what time the snake-torture had
begun, and if the other's liberation had been effected in the same way
as his own, even as Mtezani had given him to understand, why then it is
probable that Fleetwood would head in the direction he himself was
taking, to find refuge among the caves and krantzes around the spot
where the object of their search lay hidden.
The bush became somewhat dense, and more tangled. Thorns caught and
tore at his clothing, and now the voices of his pursuers, and the
ferocious deep-toned hum which they had kept up as they ran, was growing
very near. They were sure of their prey. What could a white man, and a
big and heavy one such as this, do against them as a runner? He might
keep it up for a time, but sooner or later they would come up with him,
probably utterly exhausted. He was unarmed too. So, not hurrying
themselves, they kept on at a long, steady trot--some singing snatches
of a war-song as they ran.
Wyvern gripped his short-handled knob-kerrie, wondering whether it was
not time to make a last stand before his strength should entirely leave
him. But it occurred to him that he could make simply no fight at all.
His enemies had only to keep their distance and hurl assegais at him
until they had finished him off, and that without the slightest risk to
themselves. Turning suddenly, to avoid a clump of _haak-doorn_, whose
fish-hook-like thorns would have held him powerless, or at any rate so
seriously have delayed him that he might just as well have given up the
struggle, he became aware of a small yellowish animal blundering across
his path, together with a hideous snarl just behind. To this, however,
he paid no heed His enemy now was brother man, not the beasts of the
forest. Just turning his head, however, for a glance back--he felt his
footing fail, and then--the ground gave way beneath him. Down he went,
to the bottom of what seemed a deep, covered-in _donga_.
Yes--that was it. Boughs and bushes, interlaced in thick profusion, all
but shut out the light of Heaven from above. He estimated he had fallen
a matter of over twenty feet, but the slope of the side had saved his
fall. The place was, in fact, the exact counterpart of that into which
the unfortunate Kafir had fallen with the puff-adder hanging to his leg,
at Seven Kloofs. Well, he would be utterly at the mercy of his enemies
now, and with no more facility for making a fight for it than a rat in a
trap.
Bruised, half-stunned, he lay and listened. Ah! they were coming. They
would be on him in a moment. The secret of his sudden disappearance
would be only too obvious to their practised eyes. His time had come.
Suddenly a terrific series of roars and snarlings broke forth above.
With it mingled volleys of excited exclamations in the Zulu voice, then
the Usutu war-shout. The clamour became terrific. The ground above
seemed to shake with it. With each outbreak of roaring, the war-shout
would rise in deafening volume--then snarling and hissing, but the
sounds would seem to be moving about from place to place. Then arose a
mighty shout of triumphant cadence and the roaring was heard no more--
instead a hubbub of excited voices, and then Wyvern, partly owing to the
tensity of his recent trial, partly owing to sheer exhaustion, subsided
into a temporary unconsciousness.
This is what had happened above. The lion-cub which had run across
Wyvern's path had strayed from its parent. The latter, with another
cub, bounded forward just as the foremost of the pursuing Zulus arrived
upon the scene. She sprang like lightning upon the first, crushing his
head to fragments in her powerful jaws, and that with such suddenness as
to leave him no time to use a weapon. Another, rushing to the rescue,
shared the same fate, and then the whole lot came up. There were under
a dozen, but they were all young men, and full of warrior courage; yet,
even for them, to kill a full-grown lioness--and this one was out of the
ordinary large and powerful, and fighting for her cubs to boot--with
nothing but assegais and sticks, was a very big feat indeed, and
appealed to their sporting instincts far more than continuing the
pursuit of one unarmed white man. So with loud shouts they entered into
the fray, leaping hither and thither with incredible agility so as to
puzzle the infuriated beast, the while delivering a deft throw with the
lighter or casting assegai. Another received fatal injuries, and two
were badly torn, then one, with consummate daring, watching his
opportunity, rushed in and drove his broad-bladed assegai right into the
beast's heart; and that one was Mtezani, the son of Majendwa.
A roar of applause and delight arose from the few left. _Auf_ the son
of Majendwa was a man indeed--they chorused. Surely the trophies of the
lioness were his. The throws of their light assegai were as pin-pricks.
It was the _umkonto_ of the son of Majendwa that had cleft the heart.
And then they started a stirring dance and song around their slain
enemy.
"Have done, brothers!" cried Mtezani at last. "I think we have done
better than running down and killing one white man and he unarmed. Now
we will take off the skin and return with it; and I think my father will
no longer say I am still a boy, and unfit to put on the head-ring."
They agreed, and in high good-humour all turned to to flay the great
beast. None had any idea as to the part Mtezani had borne in the escape
of the said white man, or of his motive in joining in the pursuit.
Further, it is even possible that if they had, his last feat would have
gone far in their eyes to justify it or, indeed, anything which he chose
to do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wyvern awoke to consciousness in the pitch dark. His confused senses at
first failed to convey any clear idea of what had happened; indeed the
first shape his thoughts took was that he had been killed, and buried.
The damp, earthy smell around him must be of course that of the grave,
and yet he had suffered little or no pain. How had he been killed?
Then suddenly and with a rush all came back--the lion-cubs and the
snarl, his own fall, and the tumult overhead. He was not dead then, and
now an intense joy took possession of him. All was not yet lost, no,
not by any means. It must have been hours since he had fallen in there,
and now, listening intently, he heard no sound outside. The Zulus must
have given up the pursuit His fall into the covered-in _donga_ had been
the saving of him. Clearly the lioness had attacked the pursuing
warriors and had either been slain by them or had delayed their advance
to such an extent that they had not deemed it worth while to continue
the pursuit; and here the strangeness of the repetition of incidents
suggested itself. On a former occasion he had been spared the necessity
of combating a formidable enemy in an unarmed state by the intervention
of a snake, now the same thing had happened through the intervention of
a lion.
And now the next thing was to get out of his friendly prison. Looking
upward, the overhanging boughs and bush were faintly pierced by threads
of golden moonlight; and he blessed that light for would it not make his
way plain once up above? He guessed that the _donga_ was of the same
nature as the one at Seven Kloofs although here there was no river for
it to open into, and to that end he slowly began to make his way
downward. No easy matter was it however, in the pitchy gloom, but by
dint of taking time, and exercising great care he at length came to
where it opened into a kloof, and breathed the fresh air of night once
more. Then he remembered that in his eagerness to get out he had left
his knob-kerrie in the _donga_. He was now entirely unarmed.
Well, it was of no use going back to look for it. He would cut a cudgel
presently, but in his eagerness to proceed, he was in no hurry to do
that. He began to feel desperately hungry, but that caused him not much
concern, for in the course of their wanderings together Fleetwood had
put him up to what he had called "veldt-scoff," to wit such roots and
berries as were innocuous and would sustain life at a pinch. What was
worse however was that a burning thirst had come upon him, and where to
find water in what was, for all he knew, an utterly waterless waste,
might become a most serious consideration. Still, there was no help for
it. He must endure as long as he could, and a feeling of elation took
hold of him as he thought of the awful experiences of the last
twenty-four hours and the peril from which he had escaped; for now a
sure and certain conviction was his that he had been spared with an
object, and that object the happiness of Lalante, and, incidentally, of
himself.
And this spirit supported him as, hour after hour, he held on his way,
now climbing the wearisome side of a steep kloof, only to find nothing
but another on the further side, steering his way by the stars, and
lo!--towards morning, in the waning moonlight, there rose the ridge of
the Lebombo, right at hand--with its grand terraced heights of bosh and
forest and krantz. And--better still--and his heart beat high with
joy--he had come right upon the spot where the object of their search
lay.
Yes. There was the black opening of the triangular cave about a mile
ahead. In the dimness of the hour before dawn he recognised it. Hunger
and thirst were forgotten now and he could have sang aloud in
exultation; for within that black triangle lay hidden that which should
bring him Lalante.
In his haste to reach it he almost ran. Was it the same? At first a
misgiving tortured his mind. There might be many such holes among the
broken-ness of the foot-hills. No. There was the ridge from which the
wretched myrmidon of Bully Rawson had fired at him. This was the place.
In his hurry he dived inside it. There was something in being on the
very spot itself--besides now in the lightening dawn it would serve as a
hiding-place in case any of his late enemies were still about or
searching for him. The coolness of the hole was refreshing after his
rapid and heating travel; so refreshing indeed that a sudden drowsiness
came upon him, and he sank on the ground and fell fast asleep.
When he awoke the sun was high in the heavens. Gazing outward he could
see the shimmer of heat arising from the stones. Then as he was looking
around, reassuring himself as to the undoubted identity of the place,
something moved. He could have sworn it was something or somebody
trying to see within. Nonsense! The solitude and excitement of recent
events had got upon his nerves. He looked steadily into the gloom of
the interior for a moment, then turned suddenly to the entrance.
Peering round the great boulder which constituted one side of this was
the shaven, ringed head of a Zulu.