The Luck of Gerard Ridgeley

(“Look out – look out! The cattle!”)

Like a whirlwind the frantic herd sweeps down the narrow gorge. Bellowing, leaping, throwing up their horns, the maddened beasts plunge onward, hundreds and hundreds of them, shaking the earth with the thunder of their hoofs, smothering and blinding all with the cyclone of their dust, heading for the outlet. There is no staying the headlong course of the stampeded beasts. The whole impi will be crashed to pulp by the horned terror. In dismay the combatants spring helter-skelter up the rocks, and it goes roaring and thundering by, crushing many as it does so.

Whether the move was a spontaneous one, and that the animals, frantic with the shouting and the reek of blood, and all penned up moreover in such small compass, had stampeded of their own accord, or whether it was a last desperate resource on the part of the Igazipuza to crush and destroy the king’s impi, could not at the time be determined. Both parties, for the moment dazed, now rushed at each other with renewed access of fury – but it could not last. The numbers of the Igazipuza had dwindled frightfully; all cohesion among them was at an end. They were now broken up into groups, still fighting desperately.

“Yield, wizards!” roared Sobuza. “To fight on is death.”

“Ha, ha! We laugh at death, leader of the king’s hunting-dogs!” came the jeering reply.

“Taste it, then!” thundered the chief, springing at the largest of these groups, and, whirling a heavy knobkerrie aloft, for his battle-axe was broken, he smashed in the skull of the speaker like an eggshell. With a roar and a rush the king’s impi surged forward, overwhelming the now scattered groups by sheer weight of numbers. The battle was at an end.

In ghastly staring heaps, their splintered weapons still gripped in their dying throes, still half covered by their hacked shields, the corpses of the Igazipuza warriors lay, gashed and streaming with blood. Grimly, sullenly, to the death had they fought, and now there were none left to fight. The king’s troops, too, had suffered severely. Gcopo, the leader of the Ngobamakosi, had been killed, and Matéla, the sub-chief, was badly wounded with assegai thrusts, and many a staunch fighting man of that regiment and of the Udhloko had fallen.

“On, on!” cried Sobuza, waving his arm. “The king’s work is not yet done. Where is Ingonyama? Where is Vunawayo?”

A shout of dismay, of baffled fury, answered him. Rolling their eyes over the groups of slain, the warriors sought the now familiar features of the fighting leader. In vain. Vunawayo was not among them. Had he succeeded in breaking through the lines during the confusion caused by the rush of the cattle? It began to look like it.

Again, roaring out the king’s war-cry, the whole force charged eagerly forward. There stood the small kraal. In a moment it was entirely surrounded.

“Come forth! come forth!” thundered Sobuza, his voice almost drowned by the dismal clamour of shrieks and terrified howling kept up by the women and children hiding away in their huts in terror of their lives. “Come forth, ere the torch is put in! To linger is death!”

Screaming, grovelling in abject fear, the miserable herd crept forth.

“Spare us, father! Crush us not, Foot of the Elephant! Bend us not, Paw of the Lion!” they howled, rolling on the ground before the chief, beside themselves with fear as they looked upon the blood-stained weapons and threatening scowls of the king’s warriors. The old hags, especially, kept up their dismal, quavering screech. The younger women were for the most part less scared or stonily resigned. All, however, expected immediate massacre.

“Peace, witches – night cats!” thundered Sobuza. “Say, while ye may. Where is Ingonyama?”

Whether in the bewilderment of her terror, or out of sheer force of habit, the foremost of the women, a hideous wrinkled hag, to whom the question seemed in particular addressed, replied —

“We know not, father; we know not – ”

“Ha! Ye know not!” said Sobuza, making a sign.

Immediately a warrior stepped forward, and without a word, drove his great assegai through the hag’s body.

“I give you all one more chance,” roared the chief again, cutting short the howl of terror which went up. “Where is Ingonyama?”

“On The Tooth, father. On The Tooth!” eagerly yelled a whole chorus of voices.

“If this is a lie, then shall every one of you be even as she,” said the chief, sternly, pointing with his foot at the corpse of the one who had been ill-advised enough to protest ignorance.

“It is no lie, father!” they cried lustily. “He is there. It is no lie.”

“Ill will it be for yourselves if it is,” said Sobuza, darkly. “And now, witches, this nest of yours shall burn.”

Half a dozen warriors sprang eagerly forward, and in as many moments flames were bursting from the straw huts. Disappointed in their hopes of thus smoking out any fighting men who might have crept in there for shelter, the warriors amused themselves by spearing the dogs as they rushed forth, shouting with laughter as a whole cloud of assegais whizzed past some one more fortunate or more fleet than the rest, without transfixing him. But no further violence was offered to the women and children. The king’s sentence had gone forth only against such as should offer resistance, and did not include these.

Chapter Twenty Four.

The Last of the Freebooters

Meanwhile Gerard, with a perfect agony of dread and apprehension at his heart, was speeding with his young Zulu allies in the direction of “The Tooth.” Though they could hardly hope to gain it unobserved, yet by way of neglecting no precaution, they crept along as much as possible under cover of the bush. Fortunately, the approaches were well-known to Gerard, who was thus able to guide his party straight to the point by which alone it was accessible.

“See, there!” exclaimed Nkumbi-ka-zulu, suddenly, touching his arm. “Au! the wizards!”

They had got the face of the great rock pyramid almost in section. Looking up, Gerard beheld with a shudder the hanging bodies, which he had first seen from a distance. They were very near now, quite near enough to make out the features of the tortured victims, who, however, appeared to be dead, for they hung motionless against the cliff. Shuddering again, Gerard recognised in the drawn, ghastly countenances those of the three Swazis.

There were still only the three, yet from this he augured no good thing. That horrible stake on the apex of the mount – he could not see that. Did it, too, hold its tortured writhing victim? What had they done with John Dawes, with Sintoba, Fulani, and the other natives? And then he began to hope that for some purpose they might yet have been spared. If so, it might not be too late.

“Now, Nkumbi,” he whispered eagerly. “Up we go! This is the side. I will be first at the top; do you keep close behind me. There cannot be many up there. The place will not hold more than a few, and besides, all their fighting force will be busy with Sobuza.”

As they drew near the summit of the gruesome rock of death, a strange, unwonted stillness reigned. Could it be that the place was deserted? Had the savages already accomplished their horrible work and gone away? Gerard’s heart beat like a hammer as he climbed the last bit of steep rocky path, and he could hardly see. His brain seemed to swim.

Suddenly a strange, rumbling, scuffling sound met his ears, the sound as of a struggle. Mingling with it were quick, deep-toned ejaculations. A wave of a great relief surged round his heart, for he recognised one of the voices. He was not, then, too late.

In a moment he gained the summit, and this was what he saw.

In the centre of the depressed hollow, arrayed in all the grotesque and hideous paraphernalia of a witch-doctor, the great lion’s skin draping him from head to foot, stood Ingonyana, surrounded by half a dozen warriors. Beside him rose the grim, pointed stake, empty now, and ready to receive another victim. And the victim was there. Struggling in the grasp of four athletic savages, struggling with all the might of a powerful and sinewy frame, bound as he was, straining every nerve and muscle, was a white man. They had passed a reim round his neck, and were trying to draw his head down almost to his knees, in a word, to truss him like a fowl, preparatory to impaling him upon that hideous stake. And in this man, Gerard recognised at a glance John Dawes.

So intent were all upon the execution of their barbarous task, that the approach of the party took place absolutely unheeded. To fling himself upon the warriors who were straggling with his friend was to Gerard the work of a fraction of an instant. To empty his revolver into the head of one, and the body of another was that of the same iota of time. Then as the remaining two with a yell of surprise started back to seize the weapons, which they had dropped while engaged in their straggle with the prisoner, they were speared by the Zulus who had followed close behind Gerard.

“Usútu! Death to the abatagati!” thundered Nkumbi-ka-zulu, hurling a casting assegai full at the chief.

Ingonyama, however, caught it deftly on his shield, and charged forward upon the thrower, followed by his six remaining warriors. Bending the air with their ferocious blood-shout, the Igazipuza, having recovered from their momentary surprise, strove now to bear back the assailants, to press them over the cliff’s brow. But the blood of the young Ngobamakosi warriors was up. Not an inch did they give way, and numerically the odds were in their favour. Hand to hand – slashing, parrying, thrusting – they fought.

So swift was the attack – so hard pressed by the ferocious and desperate freebooters was Gerard and his allies, that the former had not even so much as a moment of time wherein to release Dawes. He could only stand before him to protect him with his life. Then suddenly seizing his opportunity, he slipped his rifle between the shoulders of two of the striving Ngobamakosi, and hardly taking aim pressed the trigger. Ingonyama leaped in the air, and fell heavily forward, the blood pouring from a small round hole in his forehead.

“Au! Between the eyes has his life been let out!” cried Nkumbi-ka-zulu, unconsciously echoing the words of the dead chief himself, uttered so prophetically over the lion’s skin which he still wore.

And, remembering the words, despair was in the hearts of the bystanders; but despair to the intrepid, almost fanatical Igazipuza meant only a fresh access of desperation. So far from the fall of their chief inspiring them with dismay, it only nerved them to resistance more stubborn, more ferocious than ever.

Three out of the six were already slain, one almost disabled from wounds. Three likewise of the Ngobamakosi were down – so far man for man. The remaining three, pressed back inch by inch, were already at the cliff’s brow. As for asking quarter that was the last thing in the world they would ever have dreamed of. Gerard now found the opportunity to cut the reims which bound his friend, and thrust his revolver into the hand of the latter.

Hardly had he done so when a terrific uproar arose beneath – the royal shout of Usútu. On it came, surging upward, and immediately there sprang upon the apex of The Tooth some five or six warriors. The red circle showed them to be enemies, the panting chests and hacked shields and the quick eager way in which they turned to glance back as soon as they had gained the summit, showed them to be fugitives. A gasp of surprise escaped the two white men as they caught sight of the foremost. It was Vunawayo.

“Ha! Umlúngu!” cried the latter, as he sighted Gerard, “I told you we should meet again on the point of The Tooth! And we have.”

There was something so terrific, so appalling in the very aspect of the gigantic savage, as covered with blood, his evil features working in a most fiendish and malignant grin, he darted like lightning upon Gerard, that even the latter might have been excused if he had felt momentarily unnerved. Unluckily, too, his foot slipped, so that his rifle bullet, instead of meeting his assailant full in the chest, only hummed past the latter’s ear. He was at the mercy of his formidable foe. Parrying with his shield the blow aimed at him by Gerard’s dabbed rifle, Vunawayo made a furious stab. But Gerard, avoiding it, gripped his assailant by the legs and threw him. The agile and powerful Zulu, however, was half up in a moment, and the straggle became a hand-to-hand one. No assistance either could Dawes or the Ngobamakosi give, all their efforts being fully taxed to hold their own against this new accession of strength to the side of their enemies.

“Au, ’mlúngu! I told you our meeting would be a long one,” growled Vunawayo, between his set teeth, as they rolled nearer and nearer to the brow of the cliff. Gerard the while felt every muscle in his powerful young frame cracking, strained as it was to prevent the savage from freeing the hand which held the assegai. Moments seemed years – nearer and nearer to the fatal brink the combatants rolled. Then the fierce and desperate savage, suddenly jerking free his left wrist, seized his adversary by the throat.

Then Gerard felt that his end had come. His eyes seemed squeezed out of his head. The whole world was spinning round with him. A tug – a final effort – his opponent had got him to the edge of the height. He was going – both were going —

The air rang with the deep-throated “Usútu!” as Sobuza and his followers came swarming over the edge of the summit. Gerard was conscious of a spout of warm blood over his face, for the moment blinding him; of the relaxing grip of his adversary; of a plunge and scuffle as the body of the latter crashed over the brink – of the grasp of powerful hands dragging him back to life and safety. Then, half choked, his brain swimming, he rose to his feet, and took in what had happened – what was happening – the last act in the suppression of the redoubtable freebooting clan.

It all took place in a moment. The summit was alive with warriors, with tossing shields and bristling weapons, all pressing forward upon one man.

He was standing fronting them like a stag at bay – standing on a projecting pinnacle of rock, balancing himself right over the abyss. He was a man of large, fine stature, and his eyes flashed with the elation of a heroic courage, as covered by his great shield, and a broad assegai flourished aloft in his right hand, he defied his slayers to approach.

“Ho, hunting-dogs of the king, here is your quarry! Come and seize it,” he shouted, in deep, mocking tones. “What, afraid? The king’s impi afraid of one man! What a sight for the spirit of Tyaka! Ha! I am the last of the Igazipuza, and the whole of the king’s impi fears me – fears me!” he repeated, in a kind of long-drawn chant – a very death-song, in fact.

Now the summit sloped down to the pinnacle of rock whereon the man stood. To attack him hand-to-hand was certain death, for his object was plain – to seize and drag into the abyss with him whoever should approach, and thus to die true to the traditions of his order, an enemy’s life in his hand. Assegais thrown at him from above he only laughed at, parrying them easily with his shield. Sobuza and his warriors were beside themselves with helpless rage. The jeering laughter and contemptuous defiance of the man goaded them to madness. But how to get at him? The chief was too proud to admit himself beaten by asking the aid of the firearms of his white allies, whereas they, in sheer admiration of the man’s desperate intrepidity, forebore to use them. Even John Dawes, notwithstanding his recent rough treatment and narrow escape from the most barbarous of deaths, could hardly bring himself to fire upon this sole survivor of the race which had so abominably ill-used him.

But the difficulty solved itself unexpectedly. The savage, seeing Gerard pushing his way to the front – seeing, too, the rifle in his hand, mistook his intentions. If they were not going to purchase the pleasure of taking his life at the price of losing one of their own, they should not have it for nothing.

“Ho, cowards!” he roared with flashing eyes. “Ho, cowardly dogs who fear one man. Go, tell your king I spit at his head-ring! Igazi – pu – za!” And as the last long-drawn note of the ferocious war-shout of his tribe escaped his lips, he turned and sprang out into empty air, and a dull, heavy thud and the clink of metal upon stones rising upward to the ears of those above, told that the last of the Igazipuza warriors had died even as those who had gone before him had died – fierce, stubborn, formidable to the end, but unyielding.

A gasp of relief, admiration, awe, went up from the spectators of this powerfully tragic scene. Then they turned to leave the mount of death.

“Whau! these are abatagati indeed!” quoth Sobuza. “But they are right valiant fighters.”

“And this, my father, what shall we do with it?” said one of the warriors, designating the body of Ingonyama, which lay just as it had fallen, covered with the great lion’s skin. “Shall we not place it on ‘the point of the Tooth,’ that even the very birds may behold the fate of the enemies of the Great Great One?”

“The king’s orders did not say that,” replied Sobuza, who was not free from motives of class-feeling. “Ingonyama was a chief, and a brave man, and now he is dead. Let him lie in peace, for was he not a chief?”

“What of this?” said Dawes, touching the lion’s skin.

“We want it not,” answered Sobuza. “It, too, looks like tagati. See! The life was let out of it and its wearer by the same hole.”

“That’s a fact,” said Dawes. “But, if you’re so particular, we are not. We are going to have this – eh, Ridgeley?” And he plucked the lion’s skin from the body of the dead chief.

The Zulus stared, then shrugged their shoulders. A white man might do all kinds of things which were not lawful for themselves, wherefore they did not think so very much of the act.

As they descended from the dreadful hill of slaughter, Dawes narrated all that had befallen him since Gerard had left – his jeopardy in the kraal, and how he had held Ingonyama at the point of his revolver, and that within a few yards of his dancing warriors; then his bold attempt at trekking away, the shooting of the councillor, Sonkwana, the fight, and his own recapture. Nothing on earth had saved him from the frightful fate to which he had been adjudged, but the fact of the lateness of the hour – that and the arrival of the king’s impi at dawn. It was too dark to put him to death that evening, and so he had spent the night a close prisoner, with so many hours of silence and darkness before him wherein to look forward to the terrible torture which awaited him the next day.

Before dawn, however, had come tidings that the king’s impi was marching upon the place, and he was dragged forth into the midst of the whole horde of exasperated barbarians, clamouring like wolves for his blood. But it had been decided to send emissaries to the king’s induna, and meanwhile he was taken to the summit of The Tooth.

“It’s a mercy you turned up when you did, Ridgeley,” he concluded. “Five minutes later, and I’d have been kicking on that stake. Faugh!”

Then Gerard, in turn, related his own experiences. Dawes listened attentively – gravely.

“It was a lucky day for both of us when you dragged that same Sobuza out of the water, over the Umgeni Falls, and a lucky day for me when Cetywayo took it into his head that it was time to suppress the Igazipuza,” he said seriously. “And it was a lucky day, too, for me the day I ran against you knocking around Maritzburg, down on your luck; for I don’t stick at telling you, Ridgeley, that there’s not a chap in forty would have carried through that blockade-running business with the pluck and dash and, above all, cool soundness of judgment you showed. And but for that, where should I have been?”

Gerard reddened.

“Have you quite done making a speech, Dawes?” he said, laughing confusedly. “Because, if so, let’s talk about other things. What has become of Sintoba, and the rest of them?”

Dawes’s countenance fell.

“Hang me if I know,” he said. “From the time they strapped me up I saw no more of the people. The Swazis were hung over here, poor devils, as you saw; but I didn’t see that. It was done just before they lugged me up. I’m afraid though these brutes have made mincemeat of them.”

“What are we going to do, now?” said Gerard. “I suppose we can trek home again.”

“Do? Why, just this. We’ll go to the king’s kraal and claim compensation for the loss of our time and liberty and all the funk we’ve been put in. And we’ll get it, too.”

“Hadn’t we better let well alone?” suggested Gerard. “We have got our stock back. Would it not be best to inspan quietly, and trek right away out of the country?”

“Perhaps it would be best in this instance,” allowed Dawes, after a moment’s pause; “though I had not intended to do things by halves. By the way, I did show an error of judgment the last time I decided to trek. I ought to have waited quietly until the upshot of your undertaking came off. Yes, I made a mistake that time. It was a direct challenge to them, so to speak. But I say, Ridgeley, what a yarn we’ll have to spin to old Bob Kingsland, when next we see him. Why, he’ll vote us a brace of the biggest liars in Natal.”

Gerard laughed. Then, at the thoughts suggested by the mention of Mr Kingsland, he subsided into silence. Not long, however, was he suffered to enjoy his own thoughts, for as they reached the foot of the pyramid a considerable hubbub greeted them.

The remainder of the king’s impi had come up. In the midst of this, hustled, pushed, occasionally kicked, and threatened at every step by a multitude of spears, were three unfortunate natives.

“Kill them!” “Cut them to pieces!” “They are Igazipuza!” “We saw them in the fight!” “They have washed off their red wizard’s mark!” were some of the tumultuous shouts which went up from the crowd.

“Amakafula? Hau! Only listen to that! No. They are Igazipuza, cowardly dogs, not like the rest, who were brave!” roared the savages, who, having tasted what should have been enough blood, clamoured for more. The lives of the wretched men seemed not worth a moment’s purchase. An exclamation escaped both Dawes and Gerard simultaneously. They elbowed their way right into the excited crowd.

“They speak truth, amadoda!” cried Dawes. “They are not Igazipuza. They are my servants.”

The Zulus stared, then fell back. The delight wherewith the Natal natives hailed their master, who had come to their aid in what they imagined a most critical time, beggars description.

“How did you escape, Sintoba, and where have you been hiding?” said Dawes, wonderingly.

Then Sintoba proceeded to explain how he and Fulani and the boy had been put into a hut together, but, unlike their master, had been left unbound, and fairly well treated in general. But something they had overheard led them to attempt their escape, and in the confusion which had followed daring the mastering of the warriors to resist the invasion of the king’s troops, and the despatching of the women and cattle to a place of safety, they had succeeded in slipping away and hiding among the rocks on the opposite side of the hollow to that whereon the battle had taken place. Here they had been discovered by the victorious impi, and being taken for Igazipuza, would have been massacred on the spot but for the intervention of the sub-chief, Matela, who suggested that they should be led before Sobuza, who, with his advance guard, was then in pursuit of Vunawayo and a few surviving fugitives.

“Whau, Jandosi! Your Amakafula have had a narrow escape from the spears of our people,” said Sobuza, quizzically. “Almost as narrow a one as you yourself had from the bite of The Tooth of the Igazipuza. And now let us stand beneath the rock of death and see if these wizards have been able to take to themselves wings and fly down unhurt.”

All misgivings on that score, however, was soon set at rest. At the foot of the cliff, shattered, shivered into a horrible mangled mass, lay the body of Vunawayo – a great gash over the heart, showing where it had received the stab which had, as by a hair’s breadth, saved Gerard from being dragged over by the fierce and desperate savage. At this ghastly evidence of the terrible fate from which he had so narrowly escaped, Gerard shuddered.