Chapter Seventeen.
Nearing the Goal
After this they held on their way without molestation, neither did they come across any further active indications as to the state of the country. Yet, though not active, the volcano was by no means extinct.
They progressed slowly – this partly on account of the ruggedness of the ground, over which nothing but South African built waggons could have travelled without coming in halves, partly because Fleetwood was careful to keep up appearances, and hide the real objective of their trek. Wherefore for days they would outspan near a group of kraals, although of trade there was next to nothing done. At this course of action Wyvern in no wise chafed. He was one of those rare units who recognise that in a given line the other man is an authority while he himself is not, consequently must be allowed an ungrudged free hand. For another thing he was vividly interested. He had fought against the Zulus, and of course except in battles and skirmishes had seen nothing of them. Now he was seeing a great deal of them. There was nothing he enjoyed so much, for instance, as sitting in a cool hut during the hot hours of the day, with three or four fine warriors, who possibly had been foremost in striving to shed his blood during the comparatively recent war, while they told their stories of this or that battle in which he himself had taken part. He was astonished, too, at the readiness with which he followed such narratives, considering that he was as yet very far from at home in the language. Still, gesture, expression, went a long way, and when he was in doubt there was always Fleetwood to help. But he was absorbing the language more and more every day; and the friendly ways of the people, frankly friendly but not servile, independent but always courteous, had long since brought him round to the opinion arrived at by others before him, with opportunities of judging, that the average Zulu is a gentleman. The people, for their part, were strongly attracted to him. His fine stature and presence in the first place appealed powerfully, as it always does to a fine race of warlike savages, in the next, his thoroughbred look, and well-bred ways told too; and the latter, no people are more capable of appreciating than these. As for the part he had taken against them in the late war, no shadow of a grudge or resentment did they bear against him for it; on the contrary, they looked upon him with enhanced respect on the strength of it; even as he himself had predicted to Lalanté would be the case. A man must fight at the “word” of his king, was their way of looking at it. They and the whites had met in fair fight; sometimes one side had got the best of it, and sometimes the other. There was no room for rancour on account of anything so plain and obvious. So Wyvern greatly enjoyed those hours spent in the company of dusky warriors, with a cool bowl of freshly-brewed tywala before him, the clinging cockroaches shimmering in the thatch of the hut overhead, while they vividly recapitulated the stirring times, not so long past, or mapped out with small stones on the floor – and with wonderful accuracy – the scene of more than one pitched battle from the point of view of their own position and tactics. And it might be that the time was coming when this good understanding should stand him in some stead in the hour of his sore peril and need.
And the incidents of the trek, and this in itself, was no mere picnic. There were times when the conditions of the road – though road in anything like the ordinary sense of the word there was none – were frequently such as to render five miles a day the utmost limits of their advance; when they would spend half a day stuck in a river-bed, with the flood steadily rising, the result of that slaty, blue-black curtain of cloud forming the background further up in the hills; when the storm beat down upon them in its terrific crash, and the whole atmosphere seemed tinged with incandescent electricity; and only by a well-nigh superhuman effort of desperation could they at length induce the span to move at the critical moment, failure in which would mean loss of half their outfit and of more than one life. Or when, after a tremendous rain-burst, the wheels would sink in the boggy soil, rendering it necessary to unload the contents of both waggons and dig a way out; and even then it might be necessary to chop a number of great thorn boughs in order to construct a sufficiently firm way. Incidents such as these would constitute a sufficiency of hard labour – in a steaming climate, too – at which an English navvy, if put, would not hesitate to go on strike. No, this trek decidedly was not a picnic. Yet through it all – drenchings, heat, exhaustion, what not – Wyvern never turned a hair. He was always equable, always ready to take things as they came. Fleetwood, less self-contained, was prone to fire off language of a more or less sultry nature upon such occasions.
“I wouldn’t curse so much if I were you, Joe,” laughed Wyvern once. “It must be so infernally additionally exhausting.” And the other had laughed, and, while thoroughly concurring, had explained that he couldn’t help it.
Plenty of compensations were there, however, for these and other incidents of the road. When they got into the forest country sport was fairly plentiful, and when Wyvern brought down a splendid koodoo bull, shot fair and clean through the heart, it was a moment in his life not the least thrilling that he had known; and instinctively he had gloated over the great spiral horns, picturing them at Seven Kloofs – when he had bought it back, which of course he fully intended to do, as one of the results of their successful quest – and himself and Lalanté, in close juxtaposition, admiring them while he went over some of the incidents of their eventful trek– incidentally, perhaps not for the first time. Then the trek, under the glorious moon with the breaths of night distilling around, the whole atmosphere redolent of life and health-giving openness; or, failing the said moon, the blue-black velvety vault of heaven aglow with myriad stars, seeming to hang down to the earth itself with a luscious brilliance unknown to the severe northern skies; vivid meteors and streak-like falling stars flashing with a frequency only to be appreciated by those whom circumstances lead to passing many nights in the open. So, as they moved on, slowly, but surely as they hoped, towards their goal, these were indeed compensations.
And Lalanté? She was ever in his thoughts, ever enwrapped in every joyous communing with joyous Nature, or in time of toil and hardship, such toil or hardship was being endured for her. Often, at the midnight outspan, when Fleetwood had laughingly declared that he, having nothing particularly pleasant to think about, and being most infernally sleepy, was going to turn in, Wyvern would sit, or pace up and down, hour upon hour, while the Southern Cross turned in the heavens, and give his powers of imagination and recollection play. He pictured her as he saw her last – heart-wrung; as he used to see her every day, sweet, strong, smiling, in the full glow of her splendid youth and health; his, for she had given herself to him; and the thought thrilled him until he could conjure up her presence here, here in this savage solitude, could hear her voice in his ear, as the tiger wolves slunk and howled dismally in the surrounding brake, even as he had heard it again and again on the moonlit stoep at Seven Kloofs. He had received letters from her since he left, until he had been beyond the reach of receiving letters at all – brave, true, loving letters – sweet beyond all conception of sweetness; treasured beyond all earthly possessions, and in his midnight pacings, when all around was still as death except the weird voices of the wild, he would bring out one or other of these and re-read it by the light of the great overhanging moon. Ah, yes! This love was worth a lifetime of toil and pain, and it had come to him, all so suddenly, so naturally. Did he appreciate it the less on that account? Not one whit. He would achieve the object of his quest, and then – and then —
And then came as a refrain certain words he had heard uttered long ago by a very valued friend of his – incidentally, a highly-placed dignitary of the Catholic Church – when he had been remarking upon the position and circumstances of somebody which should leave nothing to be desired, and which for all that, covered “a thorn in the flesh” – “It is not intended that anyone should be perfectly happy in this world.” Wyvern had realised the truth of this then, as indeed none but a fool could have failed to realise it, since it was a truth borne out by all experience. Now it came back to him with force, and alone with the solitude of the wild, he looked reverently up to the moonlit heavens with an aspiration that here might be the exception which should prove the rule.
The young Zulu whom they had rescued had shown no desire to leave them. He had tacitly and naturally fallen in with their party as though one of it, and Fleetwood was not at all unwilling that he should; for he was a fine, active, warrior-like specimen of his race and came of a splendid fighting stock. There was no telling when such advantages might not be of solid use to his rescuers. He was a son – one of many – of a powerful chief whose clan dwelt in the mountainous fastnesses in the north-west of the country, and entirely and whole-heartedly attached to the cause of the exiled and captive King. He, Mtezani, had thrown in his lot with the other side, not through conviction, but to get the better of his brothers, with whom he had quarrelled over the division of certain cattle, their patrimony. Besides, he wanted to tunga, and take a wife – he explained frankly enough to Fleetwood. He had heard that under the chiefs set up by the English, any man was at liberty to do this whenever he chose; whereas his father, Majendwa, was among the most conservative of Zulus, and strongly objected to this young bull-calf setting aside the traditions of the nation, and daring to aspire to the head-ring without leave from the Great Great One – who, of course, was not there to grant it. They had done him out of his cattle, he declared, so that he should have no lobola to offer for any girl.
This was a situation which, we may be sure, strongly appealed to Wyvern, who reflected, whimsically enough, that he himself was much in the same position. He accordingly took a great fancy to Mtezani, and the young Zulu seemed to attach himself to him more than to Fleetwood. He would invariably be with him when a hunt was afoot in the wild and broken forest country they were then traversing; and for more than one successful find of koodoo or impala, Wyvern had to thank Mtezani.
They fell in with no more contending impis. Now and again armed runners would fetch up at their outspan, and when pressed for news would give evasive replies, but these became fewer as, at last, through the great tumbled, rolling forests, the precipitous savage rise of the Lebombo range came into view.
“We are getting there at last, Wyvern,” said Fleetwood one day. “But there’s one thing I must tell you that I hadn’t bargained for, and a most infernal nuisance it is too. I learn that almost bang on the scene of our operations, a particularly obnoxious sweep named Rawson – Bully Rawson – a white man, of course, has planted himself down. Now this fellow is likely to prove a considerable thorn in our side, to give us trouble, in fact.”
“Why? Who is he?”
“Oh, as to that nobody knows, strictly, which likely enough is just as well for him. He’s nominally a trader like myself, but actually he’s a chiefs white man, and that spells gun-runner.”
“Yes? But why should he interfere with us?”
“Well, it’s this way. Being in my own line himself, he knows devilish well that no sane being – and he knows me well enough to credit me with sanity – is going to bring a couple of trade waggons up to a remote and almost uninhabited part of the country, that, too, where trekking with the same is more than pain and grief, as you’ve seen – for trade purposes. No. Well, then, having come to that conclusion, the first thing he’ll say to himself will be – what the devil we’re up here for at all. See?”
“Yes. But what the same devil is he doing up here himself, then, on those terms? You don’t think he has any inkling of Hlabulana’s yarn? Eh?”
“No. I don’t see how he could have,” answered Fleetwood. “He’s cutting timber in the Lumisana forest, and shipping it to the coast, which in all probability spells gun-running for Hamu.”
“For Hamu? Oh, this is Hamu’s country, then?”
“Yes. Well, Rawson was with him before, and they know each other. But here’s where the fun comes in. Once he gets suspicious – and, of course, he will, on the terms I told you before, he’ll stick to us like our shadows night and day, or at any rate take care that someone else does – say, when he’s too drunk to attend to business himself. Then how are we going to set about our prospecting with the care and nicety and, above all, freedom from interruption it requires?”
“When he’s too drunk, I think you said, Joe? I read a saving clause in that. What sort of a type – both outwardly and inwardly – is this very attractive being?”
“Oh, outwardly he’s a thick-set, shaggy, broken-nosed brute whom any jury would hang at sight without retiring from the box. For the other part, he hasn’t a redeeming quality, unless it is that he’s as plucky as they make ’em. The only point on which no one has ever been able to damn Bully Rawson is that of his pluck. On all others, everybody who has ever known him is united in damning him to a lurid degree.”
“H’m! Yes, it’s a nuisance,” mused Wyvern. “One rather reckoned on difficulties at the hands of the noble savage, and now it seems we are likely to find them the thickest at those of a white man and a brother. Well, we are two to one. One or other of us must manage to be one too many for Mr Bully Rawson.”
Here Mtezani interrupted. He had been away on a private prowl of his own, and had come back in a hurry.
“Nkose, there are people coming,” he said. “Impela, they are not very far behind me, and one of them is a white man.”
“A white man! What is he like?” said Fleetwood. “Did you see him?”
“Eh-hi!” And the young Zulu gave a rapid and graphic description.
“That is Inxele,” pronounced Hlabulana, who was squatted near.
Fleetwood turned upon his companion a whimsical look.
“Talk of the devil!” he quoted. “Inxele is their name for Bully Rawson.”
Chapter Eighteen.
Entering the Toils
“Hi – Yup, friends. Glad to see another white man or two in this sooty, flame of fire sort of hole,” sung out the new arrival in rough geniality, as he slid from his pony. “Why, if it isn’t Joe Fleetwood! Hullo, Joe, but I’m glad to see you again; that I am.”
Fleetwood tried to appear as though that sentiment were reciprocated, as they shook hands. Then he introduced Wyvern.
“Glad to meet you, Mister,” extending a great gnarled paw. In taking it an intense and unconquerable aversion came upon Wyvern, an aversion which he believed would have been there in any case, and apart from the doubtful character Fleetwood had just given. Rawson, for his part, was appraising Wyvern. So this was the man he had been instructed to “take care of”; and sizing him up he thought the job would not be a difficult one. True, the object of such attention was tall and broad and strong – for the matter of that, Bully himself was no weakling. But he had a confiding, unsuspicious look which seemed to relieve the undertaking of nine tenths of its difficulties.
“Going through to Swaziland, I suppose, Joe? You’ll not trade a knife to skin a dog with round here, and, if there was any trade – well, you see, old man – this is my pitch.”
For all the boisterous geniality of the tone, there was a distinct note of “warning off” underlying.
“Don’t be anxious, Bully,” said Fleetwood, easily. “I wouldn’t overlap your trade to the tune of a string of beads.”
“Damned if you would! Ha-ha, don’t I know that?” was the boisterous reply. “Joe Fleetwood’s only another name for straight – all the world knows that. Don’t you agree with me, Mister?”
“Absolutely,” answered Wyvern.
“Known him long?”
“Rather,” answered Fleetwood for him. “We fought together in the war up here, and that’s equivalent to knowing a man all his life. Why, I shouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been for him.”
“Oh, shut off that, Joe,” said Wyvern, hastily. “Besides, it’s not quite accurate.”
“I shall cotton to you. Mister,” cried Rawson, “I do like pluck, and you’ve got it, I can see.” He was thinking, however, that the piece of information just obtained brought back all the difficulties. Clearly the attachment existing between these two men was no ordinary one. In dealing with Wyvern, he had also to reckon with Fleetwood, and Fleetwood had the reputation of being an uncommonly useful man to have at one’s back in a crisis, otherwise an awkward customer if taken the wrong way.
Wyvern in no wise felt like reciprocating the compliment. It was all he could do to conceal his disgust for this blatant, loud-mouthed, blasphemous ruffian – the actual text of whose speech has perforce undergone material deletion here. But he laughed good-naturedly and then Fleetwood suggested drinks, a proposal uproariously acclaimed by their visitor.
“Don’t you hurry on, Joe,” said the latter, after a couple had been disposed of, and both fairly stiff. “Trek on and outspan at my place. We can have some roaring games of cards – eh? Had no one to play against for months. Fond of cards, Mister?”
“Hate ’em,” answered Wyvern pleasantly.
“Been skinned too much, maybe?”
“Never gave anyone the chance.”
Rawson stared. This to him was something of a phenomenon.
“Well – well, Joe and I must go at it then. Talking of being skinned, the last fellow I served that way was a half-Dutchman, half-Jew sort of devil. When he’d lost he wouldn’t part – swore I’d cheated. Oh – I went for him, but he flashed off a pistol at me – darned fool couldn’t have hit a haystack. He didn’t get another chance of trying though. I was on him. Lord – Lord – the way I pounded that chap. He couldn’t stand on his legs for ten days after, and as soon as he could I kicked him off the place. Bully Rawson cheated!”
The righteous indignation of this last utterance was so inexpressibly comical to anybody with the most rudimentary knowledge of its utterer’s character, that the effort not to roar out laughing cost Fleetwood physical pain.
“Have another drink, Bully,” he said, by way of sparing himself the necessity of comment.
“Right you are, Joe,” reaching over for the square bottle. “You’re a white man, you are, if ever there was one. Bully Rawson cheated!” he went on, returning to the subject. “Mister, you may not know much of me, but I’m honest Bully Rawson has his faults, but all the world’ll tell you he’s honest, damn him! Eh, Joe?”
“Oh, we’re all honest – as long as we’ve got enough dibs and the other fellow hasn’t. It reminds me of a good joke I heard in the Durban Club the other day. There was a difference of opinion among a lot of the men at lunch as to the shadiness or not of some transaction. At last someone appealed to old Colonel Bowker, who hadn’t taken any part in the general jaw, and began in this way – ‘Now, Colonel, as an honest man, what would you say – ’ ‘Eh? as a what?’ ‘Why, an honest man.’ ‘But I don’t know that I am an honest man,’ says the old chap, in that dry, lack-lustre way of his. Of course, there was a big grin all round, and the first fellow expostulates, ‘Oh come – hang it all, Colonel. You don’t know – ’ ‘No, I don’t. I’ve never been in want of a shilling or a breakfast in my life.’ There was a bigger grin then, for it wasn’t a bad way of putting the thing.”
“Haw-haw! damn good!” pronounced Rawson, who had got into the benign stage of potation, preparatory to the quarrelsome one, wherein he was wont to become sometimes a dangerous animal, and at all times a completely objectionable one. “We’ll see now, Joe. You two fellows come up and outspan at my place. We’ll have a roaring, sparking time, by – ” some dozen deities and demons – “we will! I don’t see a white man every day, no by – ” the same over again – “I don’t! Tell your boys to in-span, and – come along.”
“Not to-day, Bully. Can’t move the oxen another inch till they’ve had a good long rest.”
Wyvern could hardly conceal his relief – nor his overmastering disgust Fleetwood’s definition of this noble specimen of civilised humanity recurred to him – “A thick-set, shaggy, broken-nosed brute whom any jury would hang at sight without retiring from the box.” Yes, there was nothing wanting from that definition. And he was doomed to see a great deal more of the subject before him, and knowing this the consciousness sickened him.
“Well, come up and see my place then,” persisted the enemy. “The day’s young yet, and it’s only a matter of five mile; and you’ve got horses. Tell your boys to saddle up, and we’ll all go over together.”
We have said that in anything to do with the expedition Wyvern followed his friend’s lead absolutely; wherefore when the latter agreed to this proposition he made no objection by word or sign, taking for granted that their interests would be better served in the long run by such a course.
“Who’s this?” said Bully Rawson, becoming suddenly alive to the presence of Hlabulana. “He doesn’t belong in these parts. I know all them what does.”
“Oh, he’s an old friend of mine,” answered Fleetwood carelessly. “He fell in with us further down, and seemed to want to come along – just for the fun of the thing apparently. So I let him.”
“Sure he ain’t a spy of those damned Usutus?” said Rawson suspiciously.
“Not he. He’s no sort of a spy at all.”
Even then Rawson eyed the man. Had he guessed the secret that lay within that smooth, shaven, ringed pate as Hlabulana sat, watching the white men with indifferent interest, there was no telling what dark and bloody tragedy might not have been the result. For the acquisition of such wealth as this there was no crime, however treacherous, at which that white savage would have stuck; no bloodshed, however wholesale. But the copper-hued savage knew how to guard his secret, as well as he had known whom to entrust with it.
The first living object to meet them as they drew in sight of Rawson’s kraal, was a young native, and to him the meeting seemed not palatable. It seemed, in fact, a terror. He was coming along the path at a trot, and at sight of them pulled up short and looked wildly around as though about to take to headlong flight Rawson, spurring his horse, went for him like an arrow.
“Ho, Pakisa!” he roared, as he curled his whiplash round the boy’s naked ribs. “So thou art skulking again, instead of being at the wood-cutting. Now I will flog thee back to it.” And with every few words he flung out the cutting whiplash with painful effect. In vain the victim doubled. The horsemanship of his chastiser was perfect, and reckless with liquor and sheer lust of cruelty the ruffian would turn as quickly as the belaboured one. At last the latter managed to wriggle into a patch of bush where the horse could not enter.
“Keep cool, Wyvern,” Fleetwood took the opportunity of saying in an undertone. “We don’t know, of course, what that young schelm may have been up to.”
“What a sickening sweep!” was Wyvern’s reply, with a set face.
“Well, that young brute’s got what he won’t forget in a hurry,” cried Rawson, rejoining them. “Skulked away from his job directly my back was turned, and slunk up here to cadge some tywala. One of my wives is his sister, you know.”
“One of your what?” said Wyvern.
“Wives,” shouted Bully, with an evil grin, enjoying the other’s look of disgust. “Wives. I’ve only two of ’em at present – I’ve had lots in my time – and I shall have to lick one of ’em for this, too.”
“You seemed rather – well, rough on your brother-in-law,” answered Wyvern, with a sneer he could no longer repress.
“You’ve got to be. Look here, Wyvern,” waxing familiar, “I take it you’re one of them raw, out from home Britishers who think the way to baas niggers is to soft sawder them. You may take it from me then that it ain’t. Oh, Joe there’ll tell you exactly the same for that matter.”
“Is he a Zulu?” with a jerk of the hand in the direction of the vanishment of the licked one.
“Zulu? Not much. He’s a Swazi.”
“I wonder you’re not afraid of them poisoning you.”
“Look here. What the devil d’you mean?”
The man’s face had gone a sort of dirty ash colour. He sat glowering at Wyvern with evil eyes. The latter thought he saw the gnarled dirty hand which held the bridle-rein shake – and it may have done so, for it may have been that a refrain was sounding in this ruffian’s ears: “The Snake-doctor —whau! his múti is great and subtle!”
“What I said. And now look here,” went on Wyvern very stern and decisive, “I suppose I can’t interfere in your domestic affairs, if only that it would make things worse for the poor wretches afterwards. But I don’t choose to be present at any woman-thrashing performance – black or white. So I’ll wish you good-bye.”
The sudden fury that came into the man’s forbidding face was rather terrific. Then as suddenly it faded out.
“Hang it, Wyvern, couldn’t you see that I was only humbugging. That young rip had to be taught a lesson, but you didn’t suppose I was really going to whack a girl, did you? Bully Rawson has his faults, but no one can say he ain’t soft-hearted at bottom. Why, I wouldn’t do such a thing for the world.”
Wyvern did not exactly believe this; still he felt sure that the threatened chastisement would not now take place. And Fleetwood had made no move towards actively supporting him, and his rule of being guided by Fleetwood still held.
“I should hope not,” he answered, but rather shortly, riding on with them again.
“Why, of course not Man alive, but you mustn’t take everything we say up here as serious. Eh, Joe?” returned Rawson, with huge geniality. “Now we’ll go inside and have another drink and then I want to show you my wood-cutting place.”
If it be imagined for a moment that the speaker had been shamed into relenting, either by Wyvern’s words or demeanour, why the notion may immediately be classed among popular delusions. What was behind it was this. It had suddenly been borne in upon him, that to have Wyvern for a friend would render the allotted task of “taking care” of him infinitely easier than if he should sheer off, and hold himself in a state of suspicious and therefore watchful aloofness. Under his own eyes his opportunities would be greater: whereas his intended victim away, and thoroughly on his guard – why, then the matter was not so easy. And, even then, there flashed through his evil brain a hell-sent idea. The wood-cutting place. There would be a royal opportunity there; and with the hideous thought he had blossomed forth into a rugged geniality again. He could not afford to scare away his bird.