Ward
Jasper Lyle
“Don’t be frightened, my lad,” continued the reckless convict; “I assure you I have no intention of interfering with you, though I must own to a little regard for your girl on account of her white blood. Not that I owe the country I came from anything but a curse; but she is a deuced deal better-looking for her straight nose and smooth hair. The girl has good points, and I have shared the luck if I have not the love, for she makes good cakes, and can wash and mend my clothes as well as any Englishwoman. I should think, too, she was not to be had cheap; but you can afford to give a good lot of cattle for her, eh!” and Lee went on jeering, and puffing dagha (the wild hemp, the seeds of which possess much of the stupefying powers of opium) out of a long wooden pipe, till Gray was too stupified with the vapour to resent the brutality of his companion, who having, at the opening of the conversation, drawn from the deserter all that he could touching his position with Amayeka, suggested finally, with apparent good faith, that in the event of any great crisis suddenly taking place among Umlala’s people, the lovers should make their way to a spot, to be selected by Doda, in the road to the Stormberg. Doda, however, was to imagine the rendezvous was only for Lee and Gray, and under no circumstances to be enlightened as to the part Amayeka was to take in this episode of the young deserter’s life.
Gray was awoke the next morning by the light streaming in through the hut door, which was ajar. He had been late in falling asleep, and was heavy, and disinclined to rise for the day; but he looked out,—the huts were yet closed, the cattle still in the kraals; there was profound silence on the plain,—the sun had just gilded the eastern heights.
Gray closed the door, which had not been carefully drawn to by Lee, who had evidently, without rousing his comrade, departed on his journey; for the “traps” he had set in order to take with him had disappeared. Gray cast himself down in a sort of sullen despair, and weary thoughts of past and future disturbed his aching brain.
Ere long the whole hamlet woke up; the cattle came lowing from the folds, the dogs were giving tongue, the women and girls were astir, preparing for the hard labours of the day, building huts, hewing wood, and tilling the ground. Several youths were assembled on the plain, some to start on a hunting expedition, some on marauding parties, for much fine cattle had been brought in the preceding evening by a foraging band, and was being paraded before Umlala, that he might feast his eyes on the prize. The sight was a strong temptation to the young men to try their luck in an adjoining kloof, where it was expected some colonial cattle had been driven by a neighbouring tribe, ready to swear to the British authorities that they were alike guiltless and ignorant in the matter, though in treaty with Umlala to share the stolen property with him if he would shelter it.
But all these preparations were brought to a standstill by the unexpected appearance of the wizard Amani, whose great clay-painted face first emerged from the low entrance of his hut; he crawled out of it, and stood upright, waving an assegai with his brawny arm. The people stood still at sight of this awful apparition, for he was arrayed in the hideous costume peculiar to these wretches when it is their will and pleasure to call a solemn assembly of the tribe for the purpose of publicly denouncing some unhappy creature, whom it is their interest, or their inclination, to bring to a fearful punishment, by death or torture.
The cattle-drivers went on leisurely with their herds towards the pasture-grounds, but sat down on a near hill-side, to see what would follow. They were mostly boys, and were not of sufficient importance to have incurred the wizard’s displeasure. The women laid their implements of labour at their feet, and their children clung to them with vague dread; the old men trembled as Amani stalked past them, and the youths parted right and left to let him go by. Amayeka, who had been up and out before the rest, and had half-crossed the plain with a bundle of sticks on her head, dropped her burden in great terror, and stood paralysed, for she had her misgivings. The meercat seated himself beside her, and glanced his keen black eyes rapidly to and fro; hers were fixed on Amani, who, advancing to Umlala’s hut, the largest in the Kraal4, drew the chief’s attention to him by a frightful yell.
I have already given you some notion of his aspect, with its savage head-gear. A kaross of lion’s skin was slung about his short but powerful frame, the mane forming a ruff round his huge bull-neck. The kaross was fastened on the right shoulder, leaving the arm free. With this he continued to wave the assegai, its tip of highly-polished iron, and the brazen bangles on the wrist, glinting in the morning sunshine, so brilliant in the Kafir summer-time. The drapery was short enough to display the legs, which, unlike the limbs of a Kafir, were thick and unshapely, and ornamented, like the arms, with bangles of burnished brass; strings of beads, of various colours, and mingled with necklaces of animals’ teeth, garnished his throat, and round his waist, where the kaross opened, was discernible an elastic brazen belt, from which dangled a catskin pouch, a small tortoise-shell and spoon appended for taking snuff, a pipe of tambootie wood, hard almost as iron, and a variety of other articles, an English coin, an old buckle, etc.
To the head-dress I have before described, were now added two long feathers of the beautiful Kafir crane; these being drawn upward by the breeze, resembled horns, and gave the wizard an appearance more demoniacal than can be conceived.
He had doubtless been smoking dagha all the night. His eyes glared with unnatural light, his lips were parted, his white teeth gleaming between when he uttered his unearthly cry; and as he advanced, his movements became more excited; and finally, with a tremendous leap in the air, he dropped as from a height before Umlala, and writhed and gibbered like some wretch possessed of a devil.
The chief councillors gathered the people of the Kraal in a great circle fronting Umlala’s dwelling, which was distinguished from the rest by its size. Most of the principal members of the tribe had gone towards the colony as plunderers or spies, or were scattered through the hills and valleys as scouts and messengers; the circle, therefore, was less extensive than usual,—still there was a gathering of some three hundred human beings.
There were none among these startled creatures who would not willingly have fled had they dared, but they knew flight or resistance were alike useless, and they maintained an impressive silence, while Umlala took his seat on the ground in the space within the circle, Amani on his right hand, though slightly in the rear, and a chief councillor on his left, preserving the same respectful distance.
This dread silence of the crowd was only broken by an occasional bitter laugh or wrathful exclamation from the wizard, who, having some days before been summoned by Umlala to prescribe for some trifling ailment, had taken care that the medicine given, a preparation of herbs, should not remedy the disease, but increase it. Umlala, however, had almost forgotten his ailment in his exultation over the cattle brought him by his foraging party. The wizard was determined on reminding him of it, and came to tell him now who had bewitched him, first as regarded his health, and secondly his judgment, which Amani pronounced at fault, from Umlala having permitted Doda to attend the white man on a journey. “Whither was the white man going? Did Umlala know his purpose? The white man’s face was white, but his heart was black, and what but a spy could be the boy left behind?”
Gray, on hearing an unusual stir, crept from his domicile, which bordered a ravine, and, plunging into a tangled copse, made his way unnoticed to a little tuft of orange-trees on the site of an old missionary station, whence he determined on reconnoitring what was going on. He had a just horror of Amani as an impostor, but he had no conception of the power he derived from his misdirected abilities, for Amani was one of the shrewdest of his race, and possessed an evil influence over his chief.
Gray could see the whole face of the plain, and every figure in the semicircle spread out at his feet. He scanned it rapidly and uneasily, and, to his infinite dismay, discovered Amayeka. The grove in which he sat was one of the lovers’ trysting-places; and, though the early morning was not a safe time for meeting, he had hoped to find her there, or within a short distance from it.
An undefinable feeling of horror stole over him; but he had sufficient presence of mind to pause and watch the proceedings. Whatever might be the result, he mourned his wretched position, not entirely for his own sake—indeed at this moment self was farthest from his thoughts. But what could this strange meeting portend? Mischief, he knew; but who was to be the victim? Naturally his alarm was connected with the unhappy girl, who had been his only friend of late. Her father was absent, her mother had years before vanished from the face of the earth, that is, perished in the bush, whither she had been carried in severe sickness, and left there to die or be devoured by the wild beasts roaming there,—it was never ascertained which. After a lapse of time, some scattered bones were found, but these were left to whiten and fall to dust.
Gray climbed the tallest orange-tree, and looked down from its clustering boughs. He could not distinguish Amayeka’s features, but her head drooped, her arms hung listlessly down, and at her side, in the begging attitude so peculiar to these tiny brutes, sat the meercat, as if beseeching pity.
She looked so friendless, so helpless, yet so far above the other girls, who, forgetting their terror in excitement, were chattering and whirling about near her, that Gray could hardly resist his impulse to descend the hill, cross the glen, and hurry to the scene of action; but he had had sufficient experience of Kafir habits to feel that he could do no good by rushing into the midst of the excited assembly.
Indistinct sounds reached him, and he could see the people were every moment becoming more earnest as they watched the wizard, who continued to rock himself to and fro, gibbering and screeching. At length Amani suddenly sprang up, and rolled his fierce orbs round the circle.
Miserable victims of a power, which owns no law, a superstition based on cruelty and vice! How many quailed before the assegai as it was again waved aloft! Unhappy wretch! who risked thy life to bring the poor settlers’ cattle to thy selfish chieftain’s kraal, dost thou think thou art discovered—doomed—because thou hast secreted in a wooded glen part of the plunder for thyself wherewith to buy thy wife? Thou boy warrior, of the strong arm and supple limbs, in form like a young Apollo, does the fearful wizard know, too, that thou hast fixed thy will upon the child of one of his foes, for he has many? Thou girl of a laughing eye and merry voice, does thy blood turn cold as thou rememberest the day when, resting from thy tillage in the meelie garden, thou didst mock the wizard, forgetting those were near thee who would seek his favour by betraying thee? Aged woman, with palsied head and shrivelled features, almost blind, too, but not deaf, art thou dreading his vengeance, because thou call’st to mind that he, by whose rude couch thou hast been watching all the night, and striving to aid in pain and sickness with thy poor herbal medicines, is one whom Amani hates? Thou mother, with a baby on thy shoulder, why are thy lips compressed, thy brow with anguish stamped? Dost thou quail at thought of thy tall son, who is betrothed to Umlala’s daughter, the child of that Gaika wife, whose feet the great chief gashed and crippled, searing the gory wounds with red-hot assegais, because Amani, the wizard, denounced her as untrue?
Such scenes as these had at times been partially detailed to Gray, but he had had no evidence of their reality.
The crowd, in their eager fear, spread out like a fan, as though each member meditated an escape; but a loud summons from the principal councillor drew them round their chief, and all doubts were soon dispelled as to the real victim of the day.
Amani, having held his incantations over the Hottentot’s skull and its contents, dipped the assegai therein, and, drawing it out dripping with the fiendish potion, began to wave it slowly before him. Tormentor that he was! he pointed it for a minute or two at the trembling girlish mimic. Did he know of her delinquency? She bore the ordeal with the insensibility of a statue, and the wizard passed her by. Some, utterly unconscious of offence, were inwardly startled when they found the sharp-bladed weapon within an inch of their breasts; but their dignity never forsook them. Each awaited his fate with outwardly unshaken nerves, and then watched the weapon as it passed them by to tantalise or condemn another victim.
All this could be distinctly seen by Gray. He was breathless—cold dews poured down his face—his teeth chattered with horror and suspense—he covered his face with his hands. A shout!—was it of exultation?—pierced the air, and penetrated his very brain. He looked again,
Amayeka was in the hands of two fiendish women, witch-doctresses, confederates with Amani. The circle was broken—the throng were gathered closely together. Amani was standing up, gibbering and declaiming to the nearest listeners. Gray could distinguish a shrill scream from Amayeka.
Once again he bent his gaze upon the frightful picture.
Amani’s glittering wand was again in motion, the witches were tearing open Amayeka’s dress, the bead bodice, of which she had been so proud, was scattered in shreds on the ground; and oh, unhappy Gray! behold the proof—the witness in Amani’s accusation. They draw from the depths of her bosom, appended to a bit of reim secured round her waist, the steel chain thou gavest her last night!
He comprehended all instantly, dropped from his leafy covert, leaped into the ravine, and, scrambling through bush and briar, rushed across the plain, and overtook the hags as they were bearing off their victim to a fire in a hollow behind Umlala’s great hut.
Shocked, frightened, bewildered, unarmed, still he followed with the crowd. He could hear Amayeka’s cries of agony, and the poor meercat seeing him stopped, awaiting his white friend’s approach with an eye of wonderment and fear.
Once only the eye of Gray met Amayeka’s; as the unhappy girl was dragged to the bottom of the hollow, she caught a glimpse of her lover on the mound above. She made a desperate struggle to shake off her persecutors; but had she succeeded, not one of the tribe—partly from superstition, partly from dread of the consequences to themselves—dared have lifted a finger to assist her.
Gray was frantic. He rushed back to Umlala, and the white man threw himself at the feet of the brutal savage. He lifted up his hands in humble supplication.
Umlala sat motionless. Not even his eye gave sign that he saw the supplicator; and Amani grinned silently like a demon at his fallen foe. No response, no token of regret; all was stolid indifference on the chief’s part; and, ere long, he rose. The wizard shook his assegai in Gray’s face, and crying, in a loud voice, “Y-enzainhlela i be banzie”—“Make a path: let it be wide,” the throng in front parted to the right and left, the chief moved deliberately onward, Amani at his ear talking rapidly, and to Gray almost incoherently, although he had acquired enough of the language to know that the wizard was intent on keeping Umlala to the dreadful purpose for which the tribe had been summoned together.
All at once two strong women seized Gray from behind, and held him tight. Amayeka saw that, for he heard her shriek. Had they no mercy, these wretches? Were they women? Was he to be immolated with Amayeka? They dragged him down the green slope, slippery with dew, that shone in diamond drops upon flowers of rainbow hues. He heard the fire roaring, and saw boy devils at their impish work. They had bound poor Amayeka’s slender wrists with hard thongs of hide, and were trying to get the bangles over her hands. Had they not succeeded, they would have hacked off the limbs in their impatience to possess themselves of these gauds, so precious to them.
She ceased her cries, poor thing, and lay exhausted on the green-sward, while some of the women, who were foremost in the horrible work, prepared to stretch her out with the soles of her feet towards the flames, already greedy of their prey.
Gray called to her; she made a violent attempt to release herself, but in vain; and he, in his fury, shaking off the Amazons who held him, sprang forward, and would have either attempted to rescue the victim, or insisted on sharing her fearful death; when screams of affright and gestures indicative of warning drew the attention of the people on the plain to the herdsmen on the nearest hill. Some were hastily gathering the cattle together, while others pointed in the direction of Eiland’s glen, an outlet of the ravine which almost encircled the Kraal.
Some alarming object was evidently in sight; but what it was could not be distinguished by the people in the hollow.
They were soon enlightened. A group of Europeans on horseback emerged from a wooded glen, a branch of the ravine running between two hills to the north-west. As they reached the summit of the gorge, and halted between earth and sky, the shining morning light showed them to be heavily-armed, and fully accoutred for a trek; but their horses, though rough, were fresh; and if they were from a distance, they had evidently been resting somewhere within an easy ride of the Kraal. The party swept down the hill at a brisk pace, plunged into the ravine, and were out of sight for a moment. The next, with arms unslung and ready poised, they galloped in close column, in number about thirty, across the open space, to the mound overlooking the hollow, in which the fire had been lit, and where Gray now knelt, releasing, with his good English knife, poor Amayeka from her dreadful fate.
Yet, white men though they were, the unexpected visitants of the Kraal did not pause in their course to notice the unfortunate lovers, but dashed on towards the ravine, where they perceived the cattle and their drivers. The Kafirs, on first observing the farmer’s approach, had whistled off their plunder towards this dense bush, but had not succeeded in collecting the herd sufficiently close to the only gap through which such a body of men and beasts could pass in haste.
Women and children fled into nooks and corners; some found their way to their huts, and the herdsmen on the hills rushed into the adjacent kloofs and valleys. The tribe being, as I have observed, much reduced in numbers, the thirty stout farmers were more than a match for the thieves who had cleared their homesteads. Umlala, paralysed with fear and surprise—for visits from the settlers were, on account of his remote position from the colony, very unusual,—had hastened to conceal himself in a mimosa thicket; and Amani was quaking in a wolf-hole, his favourite retreat in intrigue or danger.
The Kafirs were unprovided with their firearms, some were even without their assegais. A volley of musketry from the settlers sent them screeching into the glen; and a Hottentot guide, catching a glimpse of Amani’s head-gear, recognised him as a wizard, and shot him like a wild beast in his hole.
The cattle, responding to the call of their rightful owners, soon fell quietly into order, and were driven off with no further opposition than a few assegais thrown at random; the enemy calling out to the invaders, from the safe side of the ravine, “Take care of them; we will come for them before the hills grow white,”—alluding to the snow on the mountain ridges.
To this the colonists turned an indifferent ear, and, forbidding the guide to fire again, put their horses to speed, galloped round and round the herd of cattle, whistling, hallooing, and encouraging them forward, for no time was to be lost, as it was not unlikely that the armed Kafir scouts in the valleys might pounce upon them, unawares, by certain short cuts between the hills.
In the bustle and excitement attending the recovery of their property, the farmers had, as I have shown, paid but little attention to the singular situation of the young deserter and the Kafir girl; but, after securing the cattle en masse, five or six of the most daring cantered to the little eminence in rear of Umlala’s hut, and discovered Amayeka stretched on the grass alone. She had fainted, and Gray had left her to procure some water to moisten her parched lips, and was hastening at full speed from a vley in the hollow to tell his miserable tale to the white men.
He could see them from the vley, but they, wholly intent on rescuing the girl—whom, indeed, they were inclined to consider one of the Griqua race, from her soft hair and regular features—were in too great haste and too much excited to await the appearance of a white man, who had vanished, as they supposed, with the rest of the throng, leaving the wretched victim of superstition and fraud to escape as she could, or lie powerless till her tormentors returned.
At the impulse of the moment, a young Boer—the party consisted of Dutch farmers from the Stormberg, who, worn out in trying to obtain redress for accumulated grievances, had taken the law in their own hands—bent from his horse, and, lifting the light, insensible form of Amayeka to his saddle, bore her off.
Another, reckless of danger, lingered to seize a brand from the still burning embers, and, following his comrade with the flaming stick, cast it at random on the roof of a particularly well-built hut, and joined his companions. They sped on, their cheers and laughter rousing the mocking echoes as they retraced their steps up to the mouth of the gorge, whence they had descended on the Kraal.
What made Gray draw back, and fly with extraordinary speed towards the river? What made him shout the Kafir cry “Izapa! Izapa!” to the women and children still occupying the ground?
They looked out from the low doors of their huts, and saw in an instant the cause of his warning.
It was one of the huts containing ammunition which had caught fire from the random brand.
They tried to fly, but some were too late!
The cattle herds on the hills set up a terrific yell, which made the colonists look back from the elevation they had just reached. Gray had crossed the stream, and was at a safe distance from the scene ere the fire touched the flooring of the hut in which the gunpowder was buried. He turned to take a last look of the plain; the poor little meercat was sitting, in its old posture, at the door of Amayeka’s hut, just where the sunlight fell brightest,—a rumbling noise, like the muttering of distant thunder, woke the neighbouring echoes; the wind, which was beginning to gather from all quarters, caught the burning embers, and scattered them in all directions—several huts took fire—the unhappy women and children scoured over the plain, hardly knowing where to go in their blind terror. Some, as I have said, lingering about their dwellings to save their miserable property, and unconscious of the imminence of the peril, paid the penalty of their ignorance; for finally a great tongue of flame shot upwards, a loud explosion shook the earth, and from the mountain ridge Gray beheld the whole Kraal on fire.
He could not help feeling, since he had every hope of Amayeka’s safety, a glow of exultation, as he beheld the destruction of the scene of his late sorrows, and waved his hand in token of a glad farewell to some people huddled together and watching him from the upper drift: horrified as he was at the issue of the day’s events, he was so utterly disgusted at the part both women and children had taken in the torture scene, that he could not pity them as he might have done before it took place.
He resolved at all hazards on delivering himself into the hands of the colonists, and pressed forward to a tuft of trees crowning the apex of the hill.
Shading his eyes from the glare of the sun, he gazed intently into the valley on the other side. It was a scene of perfect repose. There were no groups of cattle to give life to the picture, these had long vanished from the open locations to the dark ravines of Kafirland; the Kraal filling the centre of the valley was deserted, and not even a pauw, or secretary-bird, was to be seen stalking solemnly along in the glow.
It was useless to descend the steep at random; he continued to scan the paths with careful eye. Suddenly he thought he saw the little band of horsemen, with the cattle in front, wending their way on the side of a hill, beneath a krantz of granite. He was not sure of this till they reached the sharp bluff or angle of the mountain range; they turned it, and he was left alone in the wilderness.
