Harley Greenoak's Charge

The ground was like a regular battlefield. Injured men lay around, unconscious some, and breathing heavily.

Others would never breathe again; others, too, recovering from their temporary stunning, were raising themselves labouringly, staring stupidly around, as though anything but sure as to what had happened. Broken kerries lay about, and, here and there, a great smear of blood. Tyala, having filled his pipe from the new and bountiful supply he had just received, lit it and stalked around the scene of the late disorder.

“Au! This is not good, Kulondeka,” he said. “Some will be punished for this. But the fewest lying here are Ndimba’s people. That would seem to tell that ours did not begin the fight.”

“That may or may not be, Councillor of the House of Gaika,” answered Harley Greenoak, drily. “It may only mean that the Amandhlambe are the better fighters.”

“Whau!” cried Tyala, bringing his hand to his mouth with a quizzical laugh. “Now, Kulondeka, I would ask where are better fighters than the men of the House of Gaika? Where?”

“Time will show,” was the sententious reply. And on both faces was the same dry pucker, in both pairs of eyes the same comical glance. They understood each other.

Then the two talked “dark.” Greenoak was anxious to get at the temper and drift of thought of the Gaika clans under the chieftainship of the historic Sandili, all located along the border of the Cape Colony and within the same. Tyala, shrewd and wily, as all native politicians are, was trying to say as much as he could, and yet give away as little. It was a battle of wits. Yet, in actual fact, this chief threw all his influence into the scale for peace.

“Whau, Kulondeka, you know the Great Chief, as who, indeed, among all the peoples do you not know?” he said at last. “Well, then, why does not Ihuvumenté (Government) act accordingly? You know, and Ihuvumenté knows, that the man who has the Great Chief’s ear last has the Great Chief. Sandili does not wish for war, but his young men are hot of blood. Yet his ‘word’ is all-powerful, and the way he will send it forth – for great things are maturing – rests with who has his ear. We are talking, you and I, but what is for four ears is not for more.”

“Oh, it will go no further for me,” answered Greenoak. And then as the innkeeper appeared, with a great steaming kettle of black coffee, to which, when well sweetened, all natives are exceedingly partial, their conference ended.

The old chief’s eyes brightened, as now Dick Selmes began to display before him all the things he intended he should take home with him. There was a new blanket for himself – and for his wives, why, Dick seemed to have cleaned MacFennel’s store out of its whole stock of beads. Mouth accordions too, for the delectation of his younger children, shining things in gorgeous red cases – why, the delight in Tyala’s household promised to be as widespread as it was unexpected. These were made over for porterage to some of Tyala’s tribesmen who were hanging respectfully around, and then the old man got up to go.

“He is young and the son of a great man,” he said, smiling kindly at Dick. “Therefore he is generous.”

“Well, Dick, you’ve met your first Kafir chief,” said Harley Greenoak, as they watched old Tyala jogging away on his under-sized pony, a group of the late rioters in respectful attendance, some mounted, some on foot.

“Jolly old boy,” pronounced Dick, heartily. “Are they all like that?”

For answer there was a laugh. The inquirer had met his first chief; he was destined soon to meet others – men of a very different stamp, and under very different circumstances. Then his question would answer itself.

“Here’s a pretty mess,” declared the innkeeper, glancing discontentedly around. “Talk about a battlefield; why, we’ve got both killed and wounded here.”

“Hallo!” sang out Dick. “Why, my chap has mizzled.”

It was even so. The man, to protect whom Dick had so impulsively interfered, at the risk of his life – at the risk of all their lives – was no longer to be seen. He must have been only temporarily stunned, and, recovering consciousness, for reasons of his own had taken himself off while their attention had been centred on the old chief.

“Ungrateful beggar,” went on Dick. “He might have had the decency to say good-bye to us.”

“Probably he didn’t know anything of what had happened,” said Greenoak. “You must remember he was already unconscious when you put in your oar.”

“Oh – ah, I forgot that,” rejoined Dick. And then he thought no more about it.

“I think we’ll inspan and get on,” said Greenoak. “I’ll report the affair at Komgha, and they’ll send out some police, and the doctor, if he isn’t away over the Kei, that is. Well, Dick, we’ve started you with the sight of a first-class row,” he added.

“It just was a first-class one,” answered Dick. “But the after effects are a little beastly, eh? Some of these poor devils must be abominably hurt.”

“That, of course. But John Kafir, like other people, if he wants his fun, has got to pay for it. Such of these fellows as the Police scoop up as soon as they get right again will be put in the tronk for their share in to-day’s racket.”

“The mischief they will! Why? It was a fair fight.”

“That’s all right, Dick. But faction fights, however fair, are not exactly allowed on British territory, which this is. Beyond the Kei it’s a different matter.”

“We’ll go on there, won’t we?”

“Oh yes. The best way will be to join some Police patrol. Chambers, the Inspector in command of A. Troop, is in camp at Komgha now, and he’ll work it for us if any one can. Mind you, although I’m no scaremonger, it would be rather risky going far into the Gcaleka country just now, just the two of us, and I’m responsible to your dad for your safe return, you know, Dick.”

“I say, old chap, suppose we stow that responsibility question for a bit,” laughed Dick. “Makes a fellow feel too much in leading-strings, don’t you know.”

Harley Greenoak said nothing, and the cart being inspanned, they reckoned with the hotel-keeper and took the road again.

Chapter Fourteen.

The Big Gun Practice

“Bang! Boom!”

Rock and frowning krantz rolled back the reverberations in swooping echo as the first seven-pounder spoke, launching its whistling shrapnel across the deep, thickly-bushed valley of the Tsolo River. Hardly had the echoes died away than the second gun spoke.

Simultaneously with its roar, branches and stones were seen to split and fly, on the opposite hillside, some six hundred yards away. Simultaneously, too, a deep-chested ejaculation of wonderment broke from the throats of more than double that number of human beings. But the mere handful of brown-clad, helmeted men stood calm and alert, feeling perhaps a little grim, as they marked the effect of the gun practice upon the ochre-smeared groups which dotted the hillside hard by. More and more Kafirs came hurrying up from near and far, eager to witness the fun of what was to them an entirely new experience. For this was no battle, only a “demonstration” on the part of the Frontier Armed and Mounted Police, whose recently formed battery of artillery was delighted to have a chance of showing the turbulent inhabitants of the Transkei what they might hope to expect in case of – accidents.

With each successful shot – and the new artillerymen were making wonderfully good practice – a gasp of admiring amazement ran through the entranced spectators like the breaking of a wave on the shore. These had increased till there could not have been less than a couple of thousand, reddening the slopes like a swarm of ants. They were not armed, except with sticks; and without his kerrie a Kafir rarely moves. The Police Commandant had sent word to all the principal chiefs, inviting them to witness the gun drill, and some had accepted. Besides the artillery, there were three full troops of mounted men.

Tall and bearded, his stature and smart uniform and shining sword impressing the savages no less than his calm imperturbability of demeanour, the Commandant stood, among three or four Inspectors. Two others made up the group, and these, old friends of ours – Harley Greenoak and his charge, Dick Selmes. A little way from these squatted a knot of chiefs and councillors, eagerly discussing, in a low hum, the effect of every shot. They were all old or elderly men, differing outwardly in no way from the commonest of their people. They wore the same red blanket, and some the massive ivory armlet. But the faces of all were remarkably shrewd and intelligent.

“Well, Greenoak, so you couldn’t induce old Kreli to show up?” said the Commandant, naming the great and paramount chief of all the Transkeian, and also of the Kafir tribes within the Colonial border. “Even you couldn’t manage that, eh?”

“Not even me,” was the laconic reply.

“Well, I never supposed you would. He’s got a long memory, and that warns him that it may be no safer for his father’s son within a white man’s camp than it was for his father before him.”

“Why? What happened to his father, Commandant?” eagerly struck in Dick Selmes, scenting a yarn.

“Shot – ‘while trying to escape.’”

“But wasn’t he trying to escape?” said Dick, upon whom a certain significant cynicism of tone underlying this remark was not lost.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t, and history agrees that he was,” answered the Commandant, drily. “But then, you see, Kreli can’t read history, and wouldn’t believe it if he could. So he’d rather be excused coming to see the new Police artillery make very fair gun practice, and I for one don’t blame him. Why, there’s my old friend, Botmane,” he broke off, as his glance rested on the group of potentates above mentioned. Then to an orderly, “Bring him here, Harris, I must have a talk with him.”

“Who’s he?” asked Dick.

“One of Kreli’s big amapakati, or councillors,” answered Greenoak. “In fact the biggest.”

“Oh!” and he looked with vivid interest as the Kafir, an old man with a pleasant face, rose from his place in the group and strode forward, which interest deepened as he listened to the subsequent conversation. This he was able to do, as the Commandant, though perfectly at home in the vernacular, chose, for reasons of his own, to use an interpreter. But the said conversation was of no political importance, being a mere exchange of compliments, with here and there a reminiscence. The old Kafir expressed unbounded wonder at the gun practice. The white people could do anything – he declared, as he was shown the working of the guns – could kill men as far distant as anybody could see. “What was it done with?”

“Show him the powder,” said the Commandant.

This was done, and the old councillor dipped his fingers, not without awe, into the black, large-grained stuff. No wonder the guns could shoot so far with stuff like that, he remarked.

“Give him a big handful to take borne and show his chief. He can tell him what he has seen to-day,” said the Commandant.

Most savages are more or less like children over the acquisition of a novelty, and now as old Botmane rejoined his brother magnates the whole group of these craned eagerly forward to look at this mysterious and wonderful stuff which he held in the corner of his blanket, and many a deep-toned exclamation of suppressed excitement rose above the hum of animated discussion. The Police looked on in semi-contemptuous amusement.

The practice was over now, and the swarms of red-ochred savages began to melt away; though a goodly proportion remained on the ground to discuss what they had seen. Meanwhile, the Police were mounting for their return march.

With them went Harley Greenoak and Dick Selmes. The bulk of the patrol would return across the Kei to the Colonial side, but A. Troop would remain behind in camp to keep an eye on a particularly unreliable and turbulent chief named Vunisa. The officer in command of this, Inspector Chambers, and Greenoak were old friends, and it was arranged that the latter and his charge should camp with them for awhile.

At that time the Transkei was in a state of simmer, and the same might be said of the tribes inhabiting British Kaffraria. Chiefs were known to be calling in their followers; and this was done by a system that worked with marvellous rapidity. At night mysterious beacons flashed answering messages to each other from this or that lofty hill-top, and it was known that war-dancing on a real scale was going on in this or that disaffected chief’s location; and notably in that of Vunisa, situated in the Gudhluka Reserve. This Vunisa was the chief over an important section of the Gcaleka tribe.

In front of the officers’ mess hut in the A. Troop camp, a group of four sat chatting.

“Pity we can’t find out something more definite, Greenoak,” Inspector Chambers was saying. “I believe I’d be justified in arresting Vunisa on my own responsibility.”

Harley Greenoak laughed drily.

“Don’t you do it, Chambers. You’d stoke up the whole country then and there. Even if you didn’t – what price the Government? Too much zeal isn’t encouraged in the Police any more than in other departments, I take it.”

The Inspector and his sub. laughed ironically.

“Not much,” said the latter. “And these devils are war-dancing every night right bang under our noses. It’s genuine too, for I’ve seen it before, as you know.”

“By Jove! I would like to see a real war-dance,” struck in Dick Selmes. “I say, Inspector, couldn’t some of us go over some night and have a look in? Why not to-night?”

“Tired of life yet, Selmes?” answered Chambers, good-naturedly. “Because if a few of us went to have a look in at it none of us would come back – in their present state of mind. If a lot – why, there’d be no war-dance.”

“Bother!” said Dick.

The conversation rolled on; then came dusk – then dinner. Life in the open makes men drowsy. It was not long before the camp of A. Troop – bar the sentries – was fast asleep.

The night was moonless, but the blue black of the unclouded sky was beautiful with its myriad golden stars, shining as they only can shine in Southern skies. The loom of the hills was perceptibly defined, notably in one direction, where a faint glow brought into relief the V-shaped scarp of converging slopes, constituting, as it were, a portal to the country lying beyond. Hence sounds were borne, distant but indescribably weird. But the Police were accustomed to such by this time. There was war-dancing going on in the Gudhluka Reserve.

We said that the camp was fast asleep. Dick Selmes constituted an exception. Lying on his blanket outside one of the huts – he preferred to sleep in the open for the sake of freshness – he was planning out an extraordinarily mad scheme. Why should he not steal out, make his way over to Vunisa’s location, and witness the fun? It would be a chance he might never get again. As for the risk, old Chambers was probably exaggerating. Even if he were discovered, they wouldn’t hurt one man all alone. He would just give them tobacco and tell them to go on with the programme; and, acting on this idea, he rose quietly and stole out of the camp.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

Hang it! He had forgotten the confounded sentry.

“Oh, it’s all right, old man,” he answered genially. “It’s only me, and I’m taking a walk. Here, fill your pipe, I’ll be back soon,” putting a coin into the man’s hand.

Trooper Carter was not one of the best men in the Force, and F.A.M. Police pay was none too liberal in those days. The weight of a sovereign felt good.

“All right, sir. Don’t be too long, though.”

Chapter Fifteen.

The Ticking of a Watch

Dick’s spirits rose immeasurably as he found himself clear away, with night and the open veldt around him. He was in the pink of hard training, consequently not long did it take to cover the six or seven miles that lay between the Police camp and Vunisa’s location.

The Tsolo River rippled silvery across his way, reflecting the stars. Cautiously he forded it, the water scarcely above his ankles, but his heart in his mouth lest he should make any undue splash or cause a rattle of stones. But the din in front had now become so near and deafening that it would have drowned such fifty times over.

He was through the defile now, which was not so narrow as it looked. In front a great red glow as of numerous fires, and all his pulses were a-tingle with excitement and anticipation at the thunder of stamping feet, the roar of the rhythmical chant. But – how get near enough to see without being seen?

He glanced around, then upward. The steep slopes were not very thickly bushed, but, by advancing carefully and taking advantage of every bit of cover, he might manage to get well above the scene of the rout. Slowly, tediously, he crawled, for the most part on his hands and knees. The firelight, throwing out a dull glow, reached the hill-slopes – what if the white of his face should show up to the keen-eyed savages? And then, as he reached a point whence the whole scene lay revealed before him, Dick Selmes felt that the risk he had undertaken was amply repaid.

Beneath, in an immense open space, several huge fires were burning – their light showing up clusters of round, conical-roofed huts studded all along the valley. But the broad level was covered with human beings, if so weird and satanic-looking a crew could be defined as human. There must have been considerably over a thousand of them, decided the spectator, allowing for those who were taking part in the performance alone; for, on the outside of the actual arena, squatted several rows of women, who formed a not ineffective sort of accompaniment, by a rhythmical clapping of hands, to the war-chant of the warriors. The latter were arrayed in trappings of the most fantastic nature, tufts of cow-hair flowing from leg and arm; monkey-skins, with here and there that of the leopard; wild-cat tails too, and bunches of crane feathers sticking up from their heads. All seemed bristling with assegais, but there were no shields.

As Dick Selmes took in all this the chant suddenly ceased, and the entire mass stood in motionless silence. Then one man came forward and harangued them. He was of tall, commanding figure, and the spectator wondered if this was Vunisa, the redoubtable chief, himself. Not long, however, did he talk, but more and more did his speech work up to what seemed to the listener the highest pitch of fierce frenzy. Every head was bent forward, eagerly drinking in every word; and the deep-toned murmurs of assent which greeted some of his periods reminded Dick of those which hailed the successful shooting of the Police artillery, the first time he had seen any large number of savages together.

There was a sudden tightening of the ranks. The orator had ceased. Now arose the rhythmical strophes of the war-song, low at first and fierce, then rising till it reached a perfect roar, terror-striking in the degree of ferocity unchained which it expressed, while the stamp of feet, in perfect unison, shook the ground as it were with the rumble of an earthquake. Then the whole mighty mass moved forward in line, and the light of gushing flames gleamed redly on assegai blades as the foremost warriors went through the pantomime of striking down an imaginary foe. Up and down the great open space this was repeated several times, the rear ranks manoeuvring so as to change places with the first and get their turn, in a way that was scarcely perceptible. But – what was this?

For now, behind the surging mass of fantastically arrayed warriors, came a file of women. Each was armed with a tough knob-kerrie, and beat on the ground with a vicious whack now and then during the advance. They were finishing off the wounded after a battle.

For upwards of an hour Dick Selmes lay, witnessing this weird but striking and dramatic scene, in a state of mind little short of entrancement. There was a fascination about it that made him long to rush down the hill and shout and stamp with the rest. No wonder they wanted a strong Police camp in the neighbourhood, he thought, if this sort of thing was going on all over Kafirland; and it struck him uneasily what a mouthful their own particular camp might prove if these and a few more were to hurl themselves upon it while in that state of frenzy. The thought of the camp suggested that it might be high time to think of getting back there.

“Well, I’ve seen something to-night, and no mistake,” he said to himself. “My hat! but I’ll have the grin over Greenoak and old Chambers to-morrow.”

The flame of the fires blazed up higher than ever. As he turned to carry out his intention, he found his way barred, and that by a line of ochre-smeared, brawny savages. He marked the cruel sneer on each broad, dark face, the gleam of uplifted blades, and then realised his utter helplessness. For, fearing to wake Harley Greenoak, who would certainly have prevented his mad trip, he had refrained from going into the hut to fetch his revolver. Now he was totally unarmed.

With quick ejaculations the Kafirs hurried forward, some in crouching attitude, like cats advancing on their prey, others erect, but all with eyes fixed warily upon him, for they expected him to draw a pistol. Then they scattered, spreading out so that some should steal above and behind him.

In that moment Dick Selmes knew what it was to feel that his last hour had come. He had no knowledge of the language, so could not try the effect of parley. So, by way of signifying that he was not there with hostile intent, he extended both hands – open.

The effect was magical. Realising for the first time that he was unarmed, the savages flung themselves upon him. Powerful and in good training as he was, what could he do against numbers? At the same time, a blanket was flung over his head and face, blinding and effectually stifling him in its nauseous folds, and he was borne to the earth and effectually pinioned by many and muscular hands.

Inspector Chambers was an officer of promptitude and decision, and on Harley Greenoak waking him up in the grey of dawn with the news that Dick Selmes was nowhere in the camp, the sentries of the night before were at once called to account, and the truth came out. The young gentleman was not one of themselves, explained the defaulter, who supposed, therefore, that he was not under the same orders. Ordering the man to be put under arrest, the Inspector gave his directions, and in a surprisingly short space of time nearly the whole troop was mounted and heading at a trot for Vunisa’s location.

“That’s where we’ll find him,” pronounced Greenoak, adding grimly, “if we find him at all. He’ll have gone to look at that war-dance, sure as eggs. I ought to have known he’d be trying it and kept my eye on him.”

Pummelled, pushed, hustled, his hands and arms secured with innumerable knots of raw-hide; half suffocated, wholly nauseated by the greasy effluvium of the filthy blanket which still enveloped his head and shoulders, Dick Selmes was hurried down the hill by his captors. To his attempts at speech with them, in the hope that even one among them might understand English, the only reply was a savage growl in their own tongue, accompanied by a dig in the back with the butt end of a kerrie. Still, he did his best to keep his faculties of hearing undimmed, and, listening with all his might, it seemed as though the roar of the war-dance, instead of drawing nearer, became less marked. Whither were they taking him? All sorts of frontier stories of the old wars which he had heard came back to his mind: of the unsparing barbarities practised by these savages on any unfortunate white man who should fall into their hands; of soldiers, straggling from a column, cut off in the thick bush and slowly roasted to death with red-hot stones, or spread naked over a nest of black ants; of settlers, surprised by the suddenness of the outbreak, driven back to perish in the flaming ruins of their own homesteads. And now he himself was in the power of these very fiends! They were dragging him back to put him to some such end, to delight the whole location with the spectacle of his lingering torments. Shuddering with horror at the thought, the unfortunate fellow hardly noticed whither he was being hurried. Then he was suddenly and roughly flung to the ground, his legs tightly tied together at the ankles, by which he was now seized, and unceremoniously dragged through what he guessed to be the door of a hut.