Ward
Jasper Lyle
They stood up, did those three desperate men, in the low and narrow room; the owner of the wild domicile held the book in his hand, for there was a Bible in the chest. They opened the unholy compact with the words “I swear.” As they spoke, their eyes were fixed distrustingly on each other, not on Heaven, the witness they invoked, and Brennard was proceeding to dictate a certain form, with its set phrases of “betrayal of brotherhood,” “rights of partnership,” etc, when the whistle came back from the krantz above, descended gradually down the hill-side, paused, chirruped like a bird, a gay, innocent bird, and a low tap at the door was followed by a voice of most musical sweetness.
“Vuka u zishukumise”—“Awake and be stirring,” said the voice. It was a woman’s.
“Urga lungenalake?”—“Are you ready?” asked Brennard.
“Ewa—urga kuza ni nina?”—“Yes—when are you coming?”
“Dirge za”—“I am coming now,” replied the trader.
On which another voice added, “Lexesha kaloku”—“Now is the time.”
A quick but gentle sound of unshod feet patted past the window, there was silence again in the outer air, and the three Englishmen resumed their attitude; Brennard in the centre with the Bible—it had the names of brothers and sisters beneath his own in the fly-leaf—he had kept it by him in the wilderness—and the two others with their palms spread open on the cover. They went through the formula again, the oath was sealed by a kiss upon the sacred record, sad it was restored to its resting-place, whence it never emerged but on extreme occasions like the present. The fire was extinguished, and once more refreshing themselves with a sip from the flask, the light was extinguished, and all three passed out from the hut, the door was drawn to, as well as its dilapidated condition would allow, and passing through the garden and advancing a few yards to the right, they turned the profile of a hill, descended a steep pathway leading to a dense bush, and in a few minutes distinguished the hurried tread of naked feet upon the crisp leaves and underwood; a group of women pattered through a narrow glade, and, passing our adventurers in silence, led the way into the kloof.
Lee recognised the locality as he advanced, step by step, down a declivity intersected with blocks of granite and tufts of scrub, or low bush; the murmur of a rivulet making its way over the stones was audible, and the distant cry of the jackal hailed the coming of the night. Here Lee remembered well to have rested on shooting excursions in former days; here he had listened to many a tale of Tanner’s, and he could guess the exact spot for which they were bound—the three men in advance, the Kafir girls in Indian file following. So they proceeded, till the darkness of the glen deepened, and putting aside a large alder, they bent their heads, and found themselves beneath a magnificent oak-tree, to a branch of which was fastened a large ox, black as Erebus.
Motionless and patient he stood with his heavy load upon his broad back, for Brennard had intended returning to the spot sooner than circumstances eventually permitted him, and he bent his head in loving recognition of Amayeka, whose sweet voice welcomed her favourite. The unusual roughness of the weather had detained Brennard longer on his expedition than usual, and Amayeka and her companions had kept their watch day by day in the hills.
I know not a more perfect model of obedience and endurance than a Kafir woman. With the white man, she is never thoroughly tamed. You may take her under your care in childhood—you may accustom her to English habits, dress, and religion; but once let her taste of freedom, and she is like a bird on the wing again. True, however, to the instincts of her nature, she bows to the thraldom of her race, wields the pickaxe and the hoe, submits cheerfully to her occupation of “hewer of wood and drawer of water,” yields obedience to her task-masters, abjures her European costume, albeit she delights in a broidery of many-coloured beads, and sits meekly silent when bartered for by a lover, who, as a husband, makes her one of many slaves.
Such was Amayeka, who had been reared from the age of six years at a missionary station, near the Caledon river; but from this she had been withdrawn by her father Doda when she was fourteen, and during the year—for she was now but fifteen, the prime of a Kafir maiden’s life—she had thrown off her European habits in every sense, retaining only the language, which she spoke with the grace so peculiar to her nation when educated.
I specify her age from general calculation; her father could only count her years by connecting her birth with a period of great drought.
She and her companions, all older than herself, had been sent by Umlala, a petty chief, to convoy the treasonable stores brought from the colony in Brennard’s wagon, and transferred to Zwartz’s back, at a secret station on the banks of Somerset River. This done, a sagacious old Kafir had led Zwartz through an intricate defile to Witches’ Krantz, and fastening him to the “trysting tree,” returned as herdsman to the trading wagon, with its span of draught-oxen, on the banks of Somerset River. For days these poor girls of Kafirland had sat watching the changes of the atmosphere from the mountain slopes. Their food was parched corn and strips of biltongue (meat dried in the sun), supplied by a cleft in the rock, where they had long ago established a simple larder. Apples, from the banks of the Kei and the Gonube rivers, varied their repast occasionally, and a large light basket of sour milk, brought to them from a distant kraal, was a delicious addition. They were very merry; they laughed, they sang, sometimes hymns, taught them by Amayeka; they danced, ate their frugal meals, and slept soundly, pillowed on flowery turf, with heaven’s own canopy of blue and gold above them. If the clouds rose, they withdrew to the caves in the mountain-side, and these recesses were their shelter, when a scout come to tell them that Jocqueenis’ Fingoes were on a march into Dushani’s country, to “eat up” the son of Ixexa. For, however quiet and unpeopled the hills of Kafirland may appear, there are always scouts on the look-out. These tribes carry out the prophecy against the sons of Ishmael, “their hand shall be against every man, and every man’s hand against them,” hence they are ever on the watch. But all this time our adventurous group are waiting together in the glen. Here Brennard unslung his haversack from Zwartz’s yoke, taking out of it such articles of raiment as he chose to retain for his own use, bestowed it, with some acceptable gear, on the convicts. The flask of Cape brandy was added to the stores, and to each was given a small double-barrelled pistol. Thus partially provided for, the three bade each other farewell, for it was necessary to make as much way as they could before morning, and the defile being threaded, some hours of repose might be obtained in a place of security, to which their female guides would direct them.
Brennard, having watched the party as far as the rays of the moon flickering through the tracery of the trees permitted, returned to his domicile, there to accomplish such repairs as he could single-handed; and this done, to return to Somerset River for his wagon, and forward information to the authorities of the delinquency of the Fingo marauders; but long before the trader had noted the outrage on paper, the warriors had stalked through the enemy’s kraal, and possessed themselves of the cattle they called theirs, and crossing a stream about nine miles to the north, soon chanted their song of triumph and defiance from their own territory.
As the reader will readily infer, the compact to which I have alluded involved a treaty of partnership between Brennard, Lee, and Gray, in the secret traffic of arms and ammunition with the tribes to the north-east of the Cape colony. The deputies left by Brennard near the coast held a situation of little danger, since there was no legal restriction on the sale of arms; nevertheless, a certain caution was necessarily observed in the transmission of such stores from Cape Town, lest the eyes of the authorities should be opened to a fact, at present only suspected by the non-commercial settlers. The powder traffic, demanding greater care and secrecy, was not so easily carried on, and it had long been obvious to Brennard that it would be highly advantageous to establish an intermediate agent between the Gonube and the Witches’ Krantz, for the disposal of the gunpowder, and the surer interchange of Kafir goods in return.
This offer Lee readily accepted, with a reservation that, if it suited his purpose hereafter, he should proceed to the locations lately established to the eastward by the disaffected Dutch. As to Gray, a spell seemed to bind him to such measures as Lee chose to propose.
I have shown that Lee had given Brennard only such details of his early acquaintance with Tanner as he thought necessary, and the trader, as he climbed the hill again, wondered, within himself, at the mysterious influence which had thus suddenly been imposed upon him. Who Lee was, or what his position had been in Southern Africa in former days, he could not tell. All he knew was, that he was a runaway convict, that he had been acquainted with Tanner, and that he had a thorough knowledge of that part of the country, and of all the secret nooks for keeping contraband stores.
Brennard also felt quite certain that Lee would not have admitted his real condition as a runaway convict of the wreck of the Trafalgar, had it not been an event of publicity which would elicit close inquiries; and as there would, probably, be some survivors who had witnessed Lee’s escape in the boat, it would at least be conjectured that he had reached terra firma and made his way into the interior, where he might become a dangerous assistant to the Dutch, who were known to welcome such desperadoes to their gloomy councils. In a word, Lee knew himself to be a marked man, and, in such an exigency, there was nothing like binding a useful coadjutor, like Brennard, by ties which, if broken by one, must be the ruin of both.
When in the cave, after his preservation from shipwreck, Lee had shaped out a somewhat crude plan for the future; he certainly entertained a vision of self-aggrandisement, of leadership among the malcontent Boers, of founding a settlement, and opening a career of rule; but a new incentive to be “up and doing” presented itself unexpectedly before him, and a fresh impetus was at once given to his desires of organising a party among a people ripe for rebellion, by the perusal of a paragraph in an English newspaper, of a comparatively late date, which Brennard had brought with him from the interior, and given to Lee to beguile him on the stealthy march, in company with the unwilling and melancholy Gray, and the dusky maiden guides of Kafirland.
It was on the evening of the first day’s march that the instincts of ambition within the convict’s breast assumed a new direction.
Through what deep and tangled footpaths did those patient maidens lead the party! A curious sight it was to Gray, a stranger in that far country, as, lingering behind the rest, he watched the group wending its slow way, now under the shadow of the great krantzes, now waiting for him, beside some tiny stream, that shone like steel under the “Green willows with the hanging boughs.”
He could not run, and had he been able to do so, he knew not his way. He could only guess by certain constellations, known in both hemispheres, that he was journeying eastward, and he wandered on like a man dreaming that a fiend has fixed an evil eye upon him, and beckons him to a doom he cannot resist. Gray felt that Lee never lost sight of him.
It was at night that their longest marches were made; but when the sun came fairly up, the girls were generally able to point out the established resting-places, where a commissariat of biltongue and Kafir corn lay hid in some rocky storehouse.
In these halting-places all slept through the golden hours of noon, the women at a prescribed distance. There had been five at first starting, and the party had been increased by three more joining them in a kloof, almost impassable from the density of the bush. Zwartz lay like a guardian in the centre of his female friends; they petted and talked to him at times, calling him all manner of endearing names, but Amayeka was his best friend; and Gray, sorrowful and restless, reclined always within arm’s length of the wary Lee.
The latter was the first stirring. It was a sultry afternoon on the first day’s march, and Lee took from the haversack the paper Brennard had slipped into it at the Witches’ Krantz. The paragraph I have alluded to was as follows:
“We regret to learn that the indisposition of our governor, Sir Marmaduke Faulkner, still detains him in England, and that General Sir John Manvers has been requested to take command of the frontier forces at this critical period, when it is pretty well understood, by such as choose to open their eyes to the fact, that the Kafirs are rife for war, and that the Boers to the eastward are only waiting a favourable opportunity to proclaim their disaffection. Sir John may be daily expected from Cape Town.”
“So,” said Lee, his chest heaving, his eye dilating, “he is here! Well, there will come a day when we shall stand face to face, openly, as foes; I may fail of success, I may be beaten for want of a regular force, but I may be revenged—revenged;” and the tone in which he uttered this aroused the sleeping deserter.
Lee held a parley with Gray, but did not enlighten him fully on the subject of his enmity to the man who would soon be first in authority over the wide territory through which they were roaming. He gave him to understand, however, that his final object was not to join a tribe of savages in a fight against his countrymen; once well on the north-eastward, there would be no difficulty in proceeding by degrees to those settlements where many Dutch farmers lay bivouacked, with all their poor household and farm property about them.
The character Lee had assumed for himself and friend was one which quite suited his disposition, and would greatly facilitate his movements; the Kafirs would welcome him as a trader, and pass him safely on as such; while the Dutch would receive him as a confederate, and hail with satisfaction so able an assistant as Gray, a deserter from the Royal Artillery.
Night fell. The Kafir girls re-adjusted Zwartz’s burden; they frequently lightened it by carrying skins of gunpowder on their heads, which they did with perfect ease and grace, and Amayeka, uttering the simple warning, “It is time,” passed on, lingered on the hill-side to point out the smoothest cattle-tracks to Gray, who, as his limbs recovered their elasticity, tried to reconcile himself to his fate by admitting the pleasant influence which the glittering eyes and brilliant smile of Amayeka shed on his moody moments.
Having passed through many intricate defiles and glens of indescribable beauty, they emerged, in about a fortnight from the first night march, upon a more open country. These plains were dotted with kraals, from each of which some “Great man” came forth; Amayeka acted as interpreter. A day was fixed for meeting in a secret spot, where a due exchange of goods was to be made. The wagons sent by the agent from the Gonube were already, with hides and horns, waiting there, and these were to be despatched by trusty convoy to the Witches’ Krantz; Doda, the great councillor or the principal chief, firmly believing that unless the tribes kept to their agreement with Brennard, the latter would withhold the supplies and betray the storehouses, or rather storehuts, which held the arms and ammunition of Kafirland.
A stronger would not have distinguished these huts from others of the hamlet, but day and night three dusky guards kept watch and ward around than, for fear of treachery or fire. These guards wove baskets, or shaped out bullet-moulds, or bound the assegai blades to the slender shafts; they did anything apparently but keep sentry over the domicile they so cautiously protected.
On the twelfth day of the journey, having headed the Imkwali river and traversed a plain, our travellers suddenly dipped between two hills, and on ascending the last, found themselves in front of an amphitheatre, over which Umlala’s kraal and pasture-lands were spread. It was the chief residence of Umlala and his hemraaden, or councillors.
Behind this green space rose a range of purple heights; nearer to it, and sheltering the village from the north, was a chain of low hills, and the sides of these were dotted with thousands of beautiful cattle. The whole population of this territory was astir. Over one slope a hunting-party wound its way, below were children riding races on the backs of oxen, far too sleek for such an exertion; girls were laughing and talking together under the noble groups of trees, but the great mass of Kafirs had gathered in a crowd in an angle of the kraal. Amayeka, on perceiving this, bid the convoy await till her father should be sent for.
Doda came, he having, as I have shown, already held communication with Lee on the road, and he now invited him to the front of his hut until Umlala should be ready to receive him. Ere long, a summons arrived, and Lee proceeded to a conference with Umlala.
The chief was seated on the ground, surrounded by several of his hemraaden. The subject of conversation had for many days touched upon the preparations for war, which, for months had been secretly progressing in Kafirland; and the intelligence which Amayeka brought, and which Lee confirmed, was soon conveyed by Doda: he told Umlala that the white men were making ready for battle. Even now, it was said, the white chiefs were beginning to count their red men by tens, for they were many.
No immediate or noisy demonstration followed this announcement. Umlala sat, to all appearance, in deep thought, Doda waiting at his right hand till it should please his chief to address him.
At last, having matured his thought, Umlala said, in a low and distinct voice,
“Amakosa noburoti bona”—“The Amakosa are brave.”
The crowd testified their satisfaction by a murmur of assent that rolled through the assembly like the swell of an ocean wave.
“Our chief is wise,” said Doda; “without him we are as the land in drought—as a bundle of sticks scattered for want of a cord—as people journeying on vast plains without a purpose, without landmarks. It is he who leads us from dark places, and sets our feet on open ground—we are his children—hear him.”
“Umlala,” answered Amani, “is my mouth, let him speak.”
“Our ears are open,” said Doda, and sat down with an uneasy glance at Amani.
For Doda was peacefully inclined—that is to say, though war was in his heart, he had tasted of the blessings of civilisation. He had seen his daughter, “sitting in the sun and eating honey,” living under virtuous influences, in peace and plenty, at the mission station, and it was with inward reluctance that he had obeyed his chief in withdrawing her from thence. It would have been useless, as well as impolitic, to oppose his sentiments openly to Umlala’s inclinations, especially as of late the malcontent Dutch had been tampering with the chiefs, and some mercenary and unprincipled traders had profited by the aspect of affairs to increase their traffic.
Amani rose. He was the rain-maker, or witch doctor, of the tribe—one of those wicked magicians of the country, who, taking advantage of the Kafir belief in evil agency, manage, with extraordinary tact, to turn the very changes of the elements to bad account. By his cunning and audacity, he had made such predictions and revelations as had obtained for him paramount ascendancy over his chief, and consequently the whole tribe. Doda both despised and dreaded him. He had missed him lately for several days. Amani was supposed to be in the retirement of the hills, preparing charms and incantations for the ceremony they had assembled to witness, the induction of the young warriors into their calling. But Doda, who had his scouts ever on the watch, felt sure that the wizard had made a hurried march to some secret place of meeting with Brennard, who would have given him the last colonial news; and, armed with this, he could easily forestall Amayeka and her white confederates, since Amani could travel faster and by nearer paths than they could traverse in a body, and with Zwartz, encumbered with their contraband stores.
It was soon clear that such was the case.
Amani began his address by saying, that Umlala’s eyes were open. Amani himself had predicted mischief. He had told his chief that the great white captains were coming to speak to them with guns; but as for the red men they had now on the borders of the colony, they could be counted in a day, they were not many. He called on the sons of Congo to sound the war-cry from the highest mountain-top.
“Swear,” said he, “by the bones of Congo’s forefathers, to drive the Amglezi to the sea which spits them up. Behold, we will turn the hail-storm of their fire to water—it shall be as water poured through a broken calabash. What right has the white man to put his foot before us on our war-paths, when we choose to quarrel with the Gaikas about grass? The bad people of Gaika steal from us—he shares the plunder—then we take up arms against him—the white man comes, and tramples down our corn; he begins the war, and will not let us rest in our huts, though our fight with Gaika is no business of his. Gaika calls himself the white man’s friend; he is a liar—he hates the white man—but likes to sit where he will in the colony with his eyes open. He stretches out his hand, and the Amglezi fill it. The Amglezi are fools, and believe him. He does not steal their cattle himself, but sits still upon the hills, and sees it go by to the kloofs in the Amatolas; and quarrels with us when he finds us there waiting to share the plunder that belongs to all the land—our land—a land that will soon be dead to us, for shall we reap the corn we have planted? Gaika is a woman—he will not fight us himself, but lifts up his voice, and cries aloud to the white men, who come among us like locusts, and eat us up, and then pay Gaika in beads and buttons for his treachery to his brothers. Let the Amglezi come—let them kill the last man of us—but let not Umlala’s children put their necks under the foot of Gaika. Better to be dead lions in our own kraals, than live dogs in the Amglezi’s territory. The white man calls himself the protector of the Kafir tribes dwelling on the borders of the country he has made his own; but we are oppressed by his protection, and we will not have it; and we know, too, that some of the Amglezi are with us in heart; for they tell us we are wronged, and bring us arms and powder wherewith to regain our rights.”
Doda thought within himself, “we pay for such stores;” but the thought rested in his breast, for he dared not express it.
Amani proceeded, waving aloft an assegai, which quivered in the grasp of his muscular palm:
“Awake, sons of Congo! shout from the mountain-tops! the valleys are waiting to reply—we have sat still long enough. Behold the children of the foam will multiply, and come and drive us like monkeys into the rocks. Shall we consent to sit there in darkness? Shall our young warriors be mown down like early grass, or be driven into the sea like ashes before the wind? Shall our cattle be taken from us, to languish in new pastures? Shout, young warriors of Kafirland! shout, for the elders of the tribe are women—their hearts grow white. Our old women would laugh at the old men, whose eyes are unclosed, but that their hearts tremble as they think of the strong hand of the Umburghi. Hark! the young women of Kafirland, the daughters of Congo, call to us in our sleep. Answer them, and let the war-cry be echoed back from the Kei to the Amatolas. Let Gaika know that we are men. Then shall he be ashamed—then shall he uncover his face, and turn it towards us, and we shall have light.”
The Kafir girls, armed with assegais, and ranged in a double semicircle behind the councillors, responded to this appeal with a shrill chorus, their weapons rattling like the leaves of a forest in a gale of wind. Amani ceased speaking, but they took up the strain.
“Busa Abantu u ba hlanganise”—“Sound the alarm! gather the people together,”—they chanted over and over again in a tone of triumph and defiance. “Uya biswa go yithlo”—“You are called by your father.”
“You are called, you are called,” was repeated many times, till the young hunters paused on the hill paths, and, looking down, waved their muskets, for most of them were thus armed. Some threw their assegais and knob-kierries into the air, and cried, “Izapa, izapa”—“Come on!” Six or seven women, the mothers of the kraal, stood round a skin stretched on sticks to the tightness of a drum; this they began to beat, now loud, now low, now in slow time, and now in quick, accompanying the measure with their feet, and repeating the cry, “Sound the alarm”—“Silathtekile”—“we are lost!”—the strange chorus rising, swelling, dying away into a cry of wailing and despair, and again filling the amphitheatre as it was taken up by the whole population of the valley.
Suddenly some of the newly-elected young warriors, twenty in number, stalked from a hut set a little apart from the others of the kraal, and Lee was thoroughly startled by their appearance. Whitened from head to foot with a preparation of ashes and chalk, their ghastly hue contrasted in a most extraordinary manner with the dusky colour of the rest of the tribe, some of whom drew as near as custom permitted, and united in a shout of welcome.
The faces of the youths were almost concealed by a thatched head-dress of reeds, surmounted by two tall and slender leaves of the palmeet plant; round their waists, and depending to their knees, were kilts of the same texture as the head-gear; brass bangles shone upon their arms and ankles, marking the exquisite contour of their limbs; and, shaking a reed in his hand, for as yet they were not permitted to wield the assegai, a youth advanced in pantomimic fashion. At one moment he would spring forward with a bound like a tiger’s, the next he would glide onward as a bird skims the surface of the earth; then rising suddenly, he would execute a pirouette in a style that would establish the fame of an opera dancer. Anon he would balance himself on tiptoe like a Mercury, then wheeling round, and again springing into the air, would come down with an aplomb that stirred the spectators to loud applause, the men crying “It is good,” the old women drumming loud and sharp in the back-ground, the younger ones advancing, retreating, and chanting shrilly to their accompaniment of rattling assegais; the spectators in the distance adding their meed of admiration, their cries of applause and encouragement echoing along the hills, and dying on the air, till taken up and repeated by the herdsmen in the valleys.
Umlala had been too much excited to hold a parley even on the important question of gunpowder traffic.
The chief and his councillors ceased to speak. Doda led the white men away, Amayeka following at a distance. A hut was set apart for their accommodation, and a huge steak, cut from an ox slaughtered in honour of the young warriors’ installation, was sent to them by Umlala, together with some baskets of sour milk, and a good store of Indian corn. The bearer closed his message with the usual demand of baseila, which Lee answered with an English oath, and Gray responded to by sending the chief some tobacco.
As the night fell, the dark but shapely arm of Amayeka pushed aside the wicker door of the hut, and set within it a small English saucepan containing some fresh eggs, a little pipkin of clear water, a few grains of salt—a great prize—and a cake made of coarsely-ground flour. Gray would have followed her to offer her thanks, but Lee restrained him at the doorway.
Ere closing it for the night, they looked out. The hills were silent, but, between the summits and the sky, a scout at times appeared, moving here and there in communication with others. The watch-fires began to glimmer, the cattle were settling in the kraals for the night, but the hamlet was still astir, and the dull beating of the great primitive drum went on. The stars came out, the Southern Cross shed its light upon the wild scene, and the young warriors still kept up their ghost-like dance upon the dewy turf, one party relieving the other, as did the singing-girls and elder women.
Long after the fire in the centre of the convicts’ hut had been extinguished, did both the inmates, stretched on karosses, try to collect their somewhat scattered senses together. Still the weary drum beat on—still the shrill chorus rose and fell upon the clear night wind, and at times the shout of some excited dancer pierced the air. Lee, in wish, sent them to the infernal regions—whence, indeed, a stranger might infer they came—and tried to frame plans connected with the insurgent operations of the Dutch. Gray strove to pray, but knew not how—poor wretch!
“Ah,” thought he, with a heavy sigh, “would I were once more a soldier, and an honest man!”
And with this vain wish he fell asleep, and dreamed he was a little child again, kneeling on the hearth beside his mother, and repeating to her the simple prayer she used to teach him at eventide.
