Shiminya resumed his seat upon the ground, with the _muti_ bowl in his
hands. The wolf he had already secured in one of the huts. The grim
beast was in truth his familiar spirit, and as such not to be gazed upon
by profane eyes, and in broad daylight. And now footsteps were heard
approaching the _scherm_, together with the rattle of assegai hafts.
Three men entered by the narrow gateway. Shiminya looked up.
"Greeting, _Izinduna_," he said.
"Greeting to thee, Umtwana 'Mlimo," came the reply in a deep-voiced hum,
as the newcomers deposited their assegais just within the gate, and
advanced a few steps nearer in. With two of these we are already
acquainted, they being, in fact, Madula and his brother Samvu. The
third was another influential chief by name Zazwe.
Shiminya seemed to take no further notice of their presence, continuing
to sway the _muti_ bowl from side to side, muttering the while. The
faces of the three indunas wore an expression of scarcely to be
concealed disgust; that of Zazwe in addition showed unutterable
contempt. He was an unprepossessing looking man, lean, and of middle
height, with a cold, cruel countenance. At bottom he loathed and
despised the whole Umlimo hierarchy as a pack of rank impostors, but it
suited him now to cultivate them, for he was an arrant schemer, and
would fain see every white man in the country cut to pieces.
"There are three goats in thy kraal beyond the river, Shiminya," he
began presently, tired of the silence.
"That is good, my father," the sorcerer condescended to reply. "They
are for Umlimo?"
"Nay; for his child."
"And--for Umlimo?"
"There is a young heifer."
"_Au_! Of such there will soon be no more," replied Shiminya.
"No more?" echoed the trio.
"No more. The whites are bewitching all the cattle in the land. Soon
you will see great things. The land will stink with their rotting
carcases."
A murmur went up from the three listeners. They all bent eagerly
forward. Shiminya, who knew his dupes, was in no hurry. He continued
to shake his bowl of abomination and mutter; then he went on:
"The last time you heard the Great Voice, what did it say? Were not the
words thereof as mine are now--I, its child? _Whau_! I fear there were
some who heard that voice and laughed, Izinduna--who heard that voice
and did not believe."
At this juncture there came a subdued wail, inexpressibly doleful, from
one of the huts. It was answered by a snarl from another. Two of the
three chiefs, listening, felt perturbed, the countenance of Zazwe alone
preserving its hard, sceptical expression; though, to tell the truth,
even he--so rooted is the innate superstition of savages--did not feel
entirely at ease in his surroundings.
"There is, further, a good milch cow for the Umlimo," spake Madula, "and
for his child a heifer."
"It is well. There will soon be no more," repeated the wizard.
"And three fat-tailed sheep, and for Umlimo a young bull," said Samvu.
"That, too, is good," was the cold acknowledgment of Shiminya, "for
there will soon be no more."
Now, cattle constitute the very life of all the South African tribes,
wherefore the three chiefs felt their hearts sink as they realised the
gist of this doleful prophecy. The rinderpest had not as yet made its
appearance in their midst, but was very soon destined to do so, and the
sorcerers of the nation, having gained secret information that the
terrible scourge was, in the ordinary course of things, bound to be upon
them soon from further north, used their knowledge as a most powerful
lever towards promoting the uprising they were straining every nerve to
bring about. In this they found willing aid from many of the chiefs,
who saw their power and influence waning day by day; themselves forced
to be the subservient vassals of a few--from their point of view--
upstart and arrogant whites.
"Why, then, should Makiwa [Matabele term for the white man] wish to
bewitch all the cattle?" said Madula, who at present was in the
vacillating stage, though the high-handed action we have recorded, on
the part of the native police, had gone far towards settling him in the
wrong direction. "They will suffer equally with ourselves."
"_Our_ cattle are our life. _Their_ life is in other things,"
pronounced Shiminya, who never looked at his interlocutors when he
spoke, thus giving his answers an oracular air, as though inspired by
the magic stuff into whose black depth he was gazing. "We die. They
live."
"_Hau_!" cried the listeners, fully comprehending the hint.
"Not many times will the moon be at full before this death is upon us,"
went on the wizard, still without looking up. "If there are no whites
left in the land, then will it be averted."
Again that hollow groan proceeded from the hut. Their feelings worked
up to an artificial pitch, the superstitious savages felt something like
a shudder run through their frames. But the imperturbable Shiminya went
on:
"There are two who must die--Pukele, the son of Mambane."
"He who is servant to Jonemi?" queried Madula.
"The same."
"Has he done wrong?" said Samvu, for the man named was one of Madula's
people, and neither of the brothers liked this edict.
"He knows too much," was the remorseless reply. "The other is Ntatu,
formerly wife of Makani."
A measure of relief came into the countenances of the two chiefs. A
woman more or less mattered nothing, but they did not like to sacrifice
one of their men.
"It is the `word' of Umlimo," pursued Shiminya, decisively. "This must
be." And for the first time he raised his eyes, and fixed them upon the
two chiefs with cruel, snake-like stare.
"What is the life of a man, more or less, when Umlimo has spoken?" said
Zazwe, thus throwing in the weight of his influence with the dictum of
the sorcerer. "A man, too, who is faithful to one of these whites set
over us! _Au_! Umlimo is wise."
This carried the day; and after some more talk, mostly "dark," and
consisting of hints, the three chiefs, gathering up their assegais,
withdrew.
Left alone, Shiminya still sat there, satisfied that his sanguinary
edict would be carried out. A dead silence reigned over the great thorn
thicket, and as though the satanic influence which seemed to brood upon
the place imparted itself to wild Nature, even the very birds forbore to
flutter and chirp in its immediate vicinity. The sun sank to the
western horizon, shedding its arrows of golden light upon the myriad
sharp points of the sea of thorns, then dipped below the rim of the
world, and still the grim wizard squatted, like a crafty, cruel,
bloodthirsty spider, in the midst of his vast web, though indeed the
comparison is a libel on the insect, who slays to appease hunger,
whereas this human spider was wont to doom his victims out of a sheer
diabolical lust of cruelty and the power which he could sway through
that agency. This day, indeed, he might feel content, for it had not
been wasted. But the day was not over yet--oh no--not quite yet.
Still, would it be possible for this satanic being to commit further
deeds of atrocity and of blood? Well, is there not the wretched
sufferer lying bound and helpless within the hut?
Again that low, vibrating hum sounded forth. It seemed to come from the
thick of the thorn palisade. The deeply plotting brain of the wizard
was again on the alert, but its owner evinced no eagerness, not even
looking up from what he was doing. Some person or persons had unawares
touched the hidden communication wire which, situated at the entrance of
the narrow labyrinthine passage leading to the kraal, signalled such
approach.
Shiminya's discernment was consummate in every sense he possessed;
indeed, this faculty had not a little to do with the ascendency he had
gained. In the very footsteps of the new comer, shod with the
_amanyatelo_--a kind of raw-hide sandal used as protection in thorny
country--his keen ear could gather a whole volume of information. They
were, in fact, to him an open index of the new comer's mind. While
distant they indicated a mind made up, yet not altogether removed from,
the verge of wavering; the possession of a purpose, yet not altogether a
whole-heartedness in its carrying out. Nearer they revealed the vulgar
trepidation attendant upon the mere fact of approaching a place so
sinister and redoubtable as the _muti_ den of a renowned sorcerer, and
that in the dim hours of night.
For the brief twilight had long since passed, and now a golden moon, in
its third quarter, hung lamplike in the sky, and, save in the shadows,
its soft brilliance revealed every detail almost as clear as in the day.
It fell on the form of a tall, powerfully built savage, standing there
in the gateway, naked save for the _mutya_, unarmed save for a short,
heavy knobstick. This he laid down as he drew near the wizard.
"Greeting, my father," he uttered.
"Greeting, Nanzicele," replied the sorcerer, without looking up.
Divested of his civilised and official trappings, the ex-sergeant of
police looked what he was--a barbarian pure and simple, no whit less of
a one, in fact, than those over whom he was vested with a little brief
authority. Whether this visit was made in the interests of loyalty to
his superiors or not may hereinafter appear.
"Hast thou brought what I desired of thee, Nanzicele?" said the wizard,
coming direct to the point.
Nanzicele, who had squatted himself on the ground opposite the other,
now fumbled in a skin bag which was hung around him, and produced a
packet. It was small, but solid and heavy.
"What is this?" said Shiminya, counting out ten Martini-Henry
cartridges. "Ten? Only ten! _Au_! When I promised thee vengeance it
was not for such poor reward as this."
"They are not easily obtained, my father. The men from whom I got these
will be punished to-morrow for not having them; but I care not. Be
content with a few, for few are better than none. And--this vengeance?"
"Thou knowest Pukele--the servant of Jonemi?"
"The son of Mambane?"
"The son of Mambane, who helped hoot thee out of his kraal when thou
wouldst not offer enough _lobola_ for Nompiza. He is to die."
Nanzicele leaped with delight. "When? How?" he cried. "Now will my
eyes have a feast indeed."
"At thy hand. The manner and the time are of thine own choosing. To
thee has Umlimo left it."
Nanzicele's glee was dashed. His jaw fell.
"_Au_! I have no wish to dance in the air at the end of a long rope,"
he growled; "and such would assuredly be my fate if I slew Pukele, even
as it was that of Fondosa, the son of Mbai, who was an _innyanga_ even
as thyself, my father. _Whau_! I saw it with these eyes. All
Fondosa's _muti_ did not save him there, my father, and the whites
hanged him dead the same as any rotten Maholi."
"Didst thou glance over one shoulder on the way hither, Nanzicele?
Didst thou see Lupiswana following thee, yea, even running at thy side?
I traced thy course from here. I saw thee from the time of leaving
Jonemi's. He was waiting for thee was Lupiswana. It is not good for a
man when such is the case," said Shiminya, whose _esprit de corps_
resented the sneering, contemptuous tone which the other had used in
speaking of a member of his "cloth."
For the event referred to was the execution of a Mashuna witch-doctor
for the murder of a whole family, whose death he had ordered.
The snake-like stare of Shiminya, the appeal to his superstitions, the
sinister associations of the place he was in, a stealthy, mysterious
sound even then becoming audible--all told, Nanzicele looked somewhat
cowed, remembering, too, how his return journey had to be effected alone
and by night.
Having, in vulgar and civilised parlance, taken down his man a peg or
two, Shiminya could afford to let the matter of Pukele stand over. Now
he said softly--
"And the other ten cartridges, those in thy bag, Nanzicele? Give them
to me, for I have a better revenge, here, ready at thy hand, and a safer
one."
"_Au_! They were to have been thine, my father; I was but keeping them
to the last," replied the ex-police sergeant, shamefacedly and utterly
mendaciously, as he placed the packet in the wizard's outstretched hand.
"And now, what is this vengeance?"
Shiminya rose, and, beckoning the other to follow, opened and crept
through the door of the hut behind him. A hollow groan rose from the
inside. Nanzicele, halfway in, made an instinctive move to draw back.
Then he recovered himself. "It is not a good omen to draw back when
half through a doorway," said Shiminya, as they both stood upright in
the darkness. "Yet--look."
He had struck a match, and lighted a piece of candle. Nanzicele looked
down, and a start of surprise leapt through his frame.
"_Whau_!" he cried. "It is Nompiza!"
"And--thy vengeance," murmured the wizard at his side.