John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising

True to his promise Pukele returned at sundown, and he had learned something. Jonémi had fallen in with the Matabele, even as he had expected. He had talked with the indunas, and having bidden farewell had walked away. That was about the same time last evening. But Pukele said nothing of the subsequent and stealthy pursuit, and the plunge from the height, for the simple reason that these were among the things he had not learned. The agents concerned in that last tragedy had their own motives for not advertising it abroad.

“Who were the indunas he was talking with?” asked Nidia, suddenly.

“Dey izinduna from Sikumbutana,” replied the warrior, as she thought, evasively; and in truth this was so, for although he would do anything to assist his former master, or one in whom his former master took an interest, Pukele’s native instincts were against revealing too much. There was always in the background a possibility of the whites regaining the upper hand, in which case it was just as well that the prime movers in the rising should not be known to too many by name.

“But if they were his own people they would not harm him?”

“Not harm him, missie. He walk away.”

“Then why is he not here, long before now?” Then, excitedly, “Pukele, you don’t think – they – followed him up in the dark – and – and killed him?”

This again Pukele thought was far from unlikely. But he dissembled. It was more probable, he declared, that Jonemi had taken a longer way to come back in order to throw off his track any who might be following. Or he might have discovered another impi and be forced to travel in the opposite direction to avoid it. He might be back any time.

This for her benefit. But in his heart of hearts the Matabele warrior thought that the chances of his former master being still in the land of the living were so small as to be not worth reckoning with. So he made up the fire, and cooked birds for Nidia and prepared to watch over her safety.

That night weird sounds came floating up to their resting-place, a rhythmical distant roaring, now subsiding into silence, then bursting forth again, till it gathered volume like the rolling of thunder. Fires twinkled forth, too, like eyes in the darkness, among the far windings of the hills.

“What is that, Pukele?” cried Nidia, starting up.

“Matabele make dance, missie. Big dance. Umlimo dance Matabele call him,” replied the savage, who was listening intently.

“Umlimo dance. Ah! I remember. Is there an Umlimo cave down there, where they are?” For she was thinking of the place John Ames had pointed out to her the day before, and his remark that if it wasn’t a real Umlimo cave, it ought to be. And these strange wild sounds seemed to proceed from about that very spot.

“An! Umlimo cave, what dat, missie?” inquired Pukele.

“A cave – a hole – where Umlimo speaks from,” she tried to explain. But the other became suddenly and unaccountably dense.

“Gave? Hole? Oh yes, missie. Plenty hole here. Plenty hole in Matopo. Oh yes. Big mountain, plenty hole.”

The great volume of savage sound came rolling up almost unintermittently till midnight. Then there was silence once more.

The next day, John Ames did not appear, nor the next. Then, in utter despair, Nidia agreed to Pukele’s repeated proposal to guide her out of the hills, and if possible to bring her into Bulawayo itself.

And right well and faithfully did this barbarian fulfil his undertaking. The rebels were coming into the hills now, and every step of the way was fraught with danger. He made her lie hidden during the day, always choosing some apparently inaccessible and least suspicious looking retreat, while he himself would wander forth in search of the means of subsistence. At night they would do their travelling, and here the eyes of the savage were as the eyes of a cat, and actually the eyes of both of them. And throughout, he watched over her safety with the fidelity of a dog.

One great argument which had availed to induce Nidia to yield to her guide’s representations, was that once she was safe in Bulawayo, he would be left free to pursue his search for the missing man. As to which, let him but succeed, she assured him, and he would be a rich man – as his people counted riches – for life.

Thus journeying they had reached the outskirts of the hills, and could now and then obtain glimpses of the open country. Twice had Pukele fallen in with his countrymen, from whom he had gleaned that it was so far open around Bulawayo, but would not be long, for the Umlimo had pronounced in favour of shutting it in, and the impis were massing with that object.

Pukele was returning from a solitary hunt, bringing with him the carcase of a klip-springer. He was under no restriction as to who heard the report of his rifle, and being a fair shot, and as stealthy and active as the game itself, he seldom returned from such empty handed. Moreover, he knew where to find grain when it was wanted, wherefore his charge suffered no disadvantage by reason of short commons. He was returning along the base of a large granite kopje. The ground was open immediately in front, but on his left was a straggling line of trees and undergrowth. Singing softly to himself he was striding along when —

Just the faintest suspicion of a tinkling sound. His quick ears caught it. At any other time he would have swerved and with the rapidity of a snake would have glided and disappeared among the granite boulders. Now, however, he stood his ground.

Three mounted men – white men – dashed from the cover, with revolvers drawn. Pukele dropped his weapons and held forth his arms.

“Fire not, Amakiwa!” he said, in his own tongue. “I was seeking for such as ye.”

But the mounted volunteers, for such they were, understood next to nothing of that tongue. They only saw before them, a native, a savage, a rebel, fully armed, with rifle and assegais, and in war-gear.

Pukele being a native, and having such an important communication to make as that a refugee white woman was under his charge whom he desired to place under theirs, it was not in him to make it in three words, nor would these have understood him if he had. He, however, stood waiting for their answer. A fourth trooper dashed from the bush.

“What are you waiting for, you blanked idiots?” he yelled. “Here’s a bloody nigger, ain’t there? Well, then – Remember Hollingworth’s!”

With the words he discharged his revolver almost point-blank into Pukele’s chest. Another echoing the vengeful shout, “Remember Hollingworth’s!” fired his into the body of the faithful protector of the only survivor of Hollingworth’s, which slowly sank to the earth, then toppled forward on its face.

The troopers looked upon the slain man with hate and execration. They, be it remembered, had looked upon the bodies of their own countrymen and women and children, lying stark under all the circumstances of a hideous and bloody death. Then the first man who had fired, dismounted and seized the dead warrior’s weapons, administering a savage kick to the now motionless corpse. So Pukele met with his reward.

“Get into cover again. There may be more of ’em!” he enjoined. And scarcely had they done so than the rest of the troop – for which these had been acting as flying scouts – having heard the firing, came hurrying up.

The affair was reported. Those in command jocosely remarking that it seemed a devil of a waste of ammunition to fire two shots into one nigger, who was neither fighting nor running away. Orders were given to keep a sharp look-out ahead, in case the slain man should be one of the scouts of an impi, and the troop moved on. It was, in fact, a relief troop which had been formed to search for and rescue such whites in the disturbed districts who had not already been massacred, and of such it had found and rescued some. Now it was returning.

Soon it was reported that the scouts had descried something or somebody, moving among the granite boulders of an adjacent kopje. Field-glasses were got out.

“By George, it’s a woman. A white woman!” cried the officer in command, nearly dropping his glass from his hand. “She looks the worse for wear too, poor thing. Another of these awful experiences, I’ll bet a dollar. She’s seen us. She’s coming down off the kopje. But we don’t want to scare her with all our ugly faces, though. Looks like a lady too, in spite of her tatters, poor thing,” he went on, with his glass still at his eyes. “Moseley, Tarrant – you might step forward and meet her, eh? We don’t need all to mob her in a body.”

“We’ve met her before, I think, colonel,” said the latter, who had also been looking through his field-glasses. “And that was at Hollingworth’s.”

“No!”

“Fact. When we got there she had disappeared, leaving no trace. Great Heaven, where can she have been all this while? Come along, Moseley.”

Great sensation spread through the troop, as it got abroad that this was the girl whose unknown fate had moved them all so profoundly. Several were there, too, who had been present at the discovery of the murdered family, and whose cherished thoughts of vengeance had been deepened tenfold by the thought of this helpless English girl in the power of the very fiends who had perpetrated that atrocity.

Under the circumstances, it was little to be wondered at if the voices of Moseley and Tarrant were a little unsteady as they welcomed the fugitive, and if indeed – as those worthies afterwards admitted to each other – they felt like qualified idiots, when they remembered the bright, sweet, sunny-faced girl, with the stamp of daintiness and refinement from the sole of her little shoe to the uppermost wave of her golden-brown hair. And now they saw a sad-faced woman, wistful-eyed, sun-tanned, in attire bordering on tattered dishevelment. Truly a lump gathered in their throats, as they stood uncovered before her and thought of all she must have gone through.

“Welcome, Miss Commerell. A hearty, happy welcome,” was all that Moseley could jerk out, as he put out his hand. “Thanks. Oh yes. We have met before,” with a tired smile, in answer to Tarrant’s rather incoherent greeting. “But – where are the rest of you? Ah – I see – over there.”

Soon the officer in command was welcoming her, and the troopers gradually edged in nearer, for curiosity was great and discipline by no means rigid.

“And I am among friends at last, and safe?” looking from one to the other, in a half vacant way, “But where is Pukele?”

“Who is ‘Pukele,’ Miss Commerell?” said Moseley.

“A Matabele. He has guided and taken care of me for the last week. Where is he? Isn’t he here? Didn’t he bring you to me? He went out to find game. I thought I heard him fire two shots, just lately, and came out to see. Then I saw you all. Where can he be?”

Where indeed? A strange, startled look was now on the faces of several of her listeners, including those in command. “Went out to find game.” And the native just shot was in possession of a klip-springer.

Dreamily Nidia continued —

“I feel so tired. Where am I, did you say?” Then passing her hands over her eyes, “How dark it seems” (it was mid forenoon). “I think – I’ll – rest.” And she sank down in a deathly swoon.

“Jee-hoshaphat, Jack!” a trooper in the background was saying. “That was her nigger you chaps bowled over. And now she’s asking for him.”

“What did the fool run up against our guns for, in that cast-iron hurry?” sullenly grumbled the other, who was really sorry for the mistake. “It wasn’t our faults, was it?”

“Of course not, old man,” rejoined the other. “It was nobody’s fault – only the nigger’s misfortune. Accidents will happen.”

Such the epitaph on the faithful, loyal savage, who having watched over the helpless refugee for days and nights that he might restore her to friends and safety, had found his reward. Shot on sight, by those very friends, when in the act of consummating his loyalty, such was his epitaph. “Accidents will happen!”

Chapter Twenty Three.

Entombed

When John Ames at last returned to consciousness, the first thought to take definite shape was that he was dead. There was a rock ceiling overhead. He had been dragged into a cave, he decided, a favourite place of sepulture for natives of rank. His enemies had accorded him that distinction. He could not move his limbs. They had been bound round him.

Then there returned in dim confused fashion the events of the day; the surprise; the visit to Madúla’s camp; the crafty pursuit; the sudden ending of the ground beneath his feet; the plunge through empty air; then – starry void; and remembering it all, the supposed funeral ligatures took the form of a blanket, which, wrapped tightly round him, impeded the use of his limbs. He was not dead, only dreaming, suffering from a bad nightmare. The blanket – the rock overhead! What a blessed relief! All the events, terrible and tragic, he had just gone through, were parts of a dream. Nidia was not left alone in that savage wilderness, but here, within a few yards of him. He was lying across the entrance of her retreat, as usual, that none might imperil her save by passing over him. Filled with an intense thankfulness, he lay and revelled in the realisation that it had all been a dream. Still it should act as a warning one. Never would he be so confiding in their security again.

The light grew and spread. The grey rock above him became less shadowy, more distinct. Whence the languor that seemed to attend his waking hours, the drowsy disinclination to move? Yet there it was. Well, he must combat it; and with this idea he suddenly sat up, only to fall back with a cry of acute anguish. His head was splitting.

For some time he lay, unable to move, thinking the while whether his cry had disturbed Nidia. No; she had not moved. At last an idea took hold of his confused brain. Their camping-ground this time was not a cave. It was in the open. Whence, then, this rock – this rock which somehow seemed to weigh upon him like a tombstone? And – Heavens! What was that over there? A table?

A table! Why, a railway engine would have been no more phenomenal at that moment. A table! Was he dreaming? No. There it stood; a sturdy, if unpretentious four-legged table, right up against a tolerably perpendicular rock-wall.

He stared at it – stared wildly. Surely no such homely and commonplace object had ever been the motive power for such consternation, such despairing, sickening disappointment before. For it conveyed to him that the events of the previous day had been no dream, but dire reality. Where he now was he had no idea, but wherever it might be, it was certainly not in the place where he had parted from Nidia and she would still be undergoing all the horrors of utter solitude. Again he tried to leap up; but this time an invisible hand seemed to press him down, an unseen force to calm and hypnotise him, and in the result everything faded into far-away dimness. Nothing seemed to matter. Once more he dropped off into a soothing, dreamless slumber.

How long this lasted he could not have told. On awakening, the frightful brain agony had left him. He could now raise his head without falling back again sick with pain. The first thing he noticed was that the place was a rock-chamber of irregular shape; the further wall nearly perpendicular, the ceiling slanting to the side on which he lay. A strange roseate light filled the place, proceeding from whence he knew not. But now he became conscious of a second presence. Standing within this light was a human figure. What – who could it be? It was not that of a native. So much he could see, although the back was towards him. Then it turned. Heavens! though he had not seen it before, the recognition was instantaneous. This was the apparition at their former camp. The tall figure, the weather-worn clothing, the long white beard, and – the face! Turned full upon him, in all its horror, John Ames felt his flesh creep. The blasting, mesmeric power of the eyes, surcharged with hate, seemed to freeze the very marrow of his bones. This, then, was petrifying him. This, with its baleful, basilisk stare, was turning his heart to water. What was it? Man or devil?

There was a spell in the stare. That glance John Ames felt that his own could not leave. It held him enthralled. At all risks he must break the spell. “Where am I?” he exclaimed, astonished at the feebleness of his own voice.

“In luck’s way this time. Perhaps not,” came the reply, in full, deep tones. “What do you think of that, John Ames?”

“You appear to know me; but, I am sorry to say, the advantage is all on your side. Where have we met before?”

The other’s set face relaxed. A ghastly, mirthless laugh proceeded from a scarcely opened mouth. There was that in it which made the listener start, such an echo was it of the mocking laugh thrown back at him out of the darkness when challenging that shadowy figure at their former camp.

“Where have we not met?” came the reply, after a pause. “That would be an easier question to answer.”

“Well, at any rate, it is awfully good of you to have taken care of me like this,” said John Ames, thinking it advisable to waive the question of identity for the present. “Did I fall far?”

“So far that, but for a timely tree breaking your fall, you would hardly have an unbroken bone within you now.”

“But how did I get here? Did you get me here alone?”

“A moment ago you were deciding that curiosity might sometimes be out of place. You are quick at changing your mind, John Ames.”

The latter felt guilty. This was indeed “thought-reading” with a vengeance.

“Yes; but pardon me if it seems to you inquisitive – it is not meant that way,” he said. “The fact is, I am not alone. I have a friend who will be terribly anxious – in fact, terribly frightened at my absence. I suppose you are in hiding, like ourselves?” Again that mirthless laugh.

“In hiding? Yes; in hiding. But not like yourselves.”

“But will you not join us? I know my way about this sort of country fairly well, and it is only a question of a little extra care, and we are bound to come through all right.”

“Such ‘little extra care’ as you displayed only yesterday, John Ames? Yet an evening or so back you thought my presence hardly likely to prove an acquisition.”

The cold, sneering tone scarcely tended to allay the confusion felt by the other at this reminder. This, then, was the apparition seen by Nidia, and he had been able to draw near enough to overhear their conversation with reference to his appearance. The thought was sufficiently uncomfortable. Who could the man be? That he was an eccentricity was self-evident. He went on —

“You were right in saying that your ‘friend’ would be terribly frightened. She has gone through such a night as she hopes never to spend again, and her fears are not over, but this time they are very material, and are for herself. There are shapes stealing upon her down the rocks – dark shapes. Natives? No. Human? No. What then? Beasts. She screams; tries to drive them off. They grow bolder and bolder – and – ”

“Heavens alive, man, don’t drive me mad!” roared John Ames, whirling up from his couch, forgetful alike of aching bones and bruised and shaken frame. “What, is it you see – or know? Are you the devil himself?”

But the face of the seer remained perfectly impassible. Not so much as a finger of his moved. His eyes seemed to open wider, then to close; then to open again, as one awakening from a trance. Their expression was that of slight, unperturbed surprise.

“Look here, now,” said John Ames, quickly and decidedly. “You have taken care of me when I was in a bad fix, and most likely saved my life. I am deeply grateful, and hope we shall get to know each: other properly. But just now I must not lose a moment in going back to my friend, and if you won’t go with me, I’ll ask you to put me into my bearings.”

The stranger did not move in his attitude, or relax a muscle.

“You can’t go from here now,” he said; “nor, in fact, until I allow you.”

“Can’t? But I must!” shouted John Ames. “Heavens! I don’t see how you can know all you have been saying; but the bare suggestion that she may be in danger – all alone and helpless – oh, good God, but it’ll drive me mad!”

“How I can know? Well, perhaps I can’t – perhaps I can. Anyway, there’s one thing you can’t do, and that is leave this place without my aid. If you don’t believe me, just take a look round and try.”

He waved his hand with a throw-everything-open sort of gesture. In feverish strides, like those of a newly caged tiger, John Ames quickly explored the apartment, likewise another which opened out of it. His mind fired with Nidia’s helplessness and danger, he gave no thought to the curious nature of this subterranean dwelling; all he thought about was means of egress.

At the further end of the apartment in which he had been lying yawned a deep shaft like that of a disused mine. Air floated up this; clearly, therefore, it gave egress. But the means of descent? He looked around and above. No apparatus rewarded his view – not even a single rope. He explored the further chamber, which, like the first, was lighted by a curious eye-shaped lamp fixed in a hole in the rock-partition wall. Here too were several smaller oubliette-like shafts. But no means of exit.

The while, his host – or gaoler – had been standing immovable, as though these investigations and their results had not the faintest interest for him. John Ames, utterly baffled, gave up the search, and the terrible conviction forced itself upon him that he was shut up in the very heart of the earth with a malevolent lunatic. Yet there was that about the other’s whole personality which was not compatible with the lunatic theory; a strong, mesmeric, compelling force, as far removed from insanity in any known phase as it could possibly be. Power was proclaimed large in every look, in every utterance.

“Was I right?” he said. “But patience, John Ames; you must be pitifully wrapped up in this – ‘friend’ of yours, to lose your head in that unwonted fashion. Unwonted – yes. I know you, you see, better than you do me. Well, I won’t try your patience any longer. Had you not interrupted me it would have been better for you; I was going on to say that while I saw danger I saw, also, succour – rescue – safety.”

“Safety? Rescue?” echoed John Ames, in almost an awed tone, but one that was full of a great thankfulness and relief. “Ah, well, my awful anxiety was deserved. Forgive me the interruption.”

Even then it did not occur to him, the level-headed, the thinking, the judicious, that here was a man – a strange one certainly – who had just told him a cock-and-bull story about events he could not possibly know, with the result of driving him perfectly frantic with anxiety and a sense of his own helplessness. Why not? Because the narrative had been unfolded with a knowledge stamped upon the narrator’s countenance that was as undeniable as the presence of the narrator himself. Strange to say, not for a moment did it occur to him to question it.

He looked at the seer; a steadfast, penetrating, earnest glance. The face was a refined one; handsome, clear-cut, furrowing somewhat with age and hardness; but it was the face of one who had renounced all – hence its power; of one who, for some reason or other, was a bitter hater of his species, yet which as surely bore traces of a great overwhelming sorrow, capabilities of a vast and selfless love. Who was this strange being? What his tragic past? John Ames, thus striving to penetrate it, felt all his repulsion for the other melt away into a warm, indefinable sense of sympathy. Then he replied —

“In using the expression ‘wrapped up in,’ you have used the right one. If harm were to befall her I should feel that life had no more value.”

“Then how will you face the – parting of the ways?”

The question chilled upon its hearer. Was it a prophecy?

“The parting of the ways?” he echoed slowly, comprehending the other’s meaning. “Why should there be any parting?”

“Because it is the way of life.”

And with the harsh, jeering, mirthless laugh which accompanied the cynicism, the stranger’s countenance became once more transformed. The stare of hate and repulsion came into it again, and he turned away. But in the mind of his hearer there arose a vision of that last farewell, and he felt reassured – yet not. Coming from any other, he would have laughed at the utterance as a mere cynical commonplace, but from this one it impressed him as a dire prophecy.