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+*Project Gutenberg's Etext of Allan's Wife, by H. Rider Haggard*
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+Title:  Allan's Wife
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+Author:  H. Rider Haggard
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+July, 2001  [Etext #2727]
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+Etext prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@ihug.co.nz
+Dagny, dagnyj@hotmail.com
+and Emma Dudding, emma_302@hotmail.com
+
+
+
+
+
+Allan's Wife
+
+by H. Rider Haggard
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+  My Dear Macumazahn,
+
+  It was your native name which I borrowed at the christening of
+  that Allen who has become as well known to me as any other friend
+  I have. It is therefore fitting that I should dedicate to you
+  this, his last tale--the story of his wife, and the history of
+  some further adventures which befell him. They will remind you of
+  many an African yarn--that with the baboons may recall an
+  experience of your own which I did not share. And perhaps they
+  will do more than this. Perhaps they will bring back to you some
+  of the long past romance of days that are lost to us. The country
+  of which Allan Quatermain tells his tale is now, for the most
+  part, as well known and explored as are the fields of Norfolk.
+  Where we shot and trekked and galloped, scarcely seeing the face
+  of civilized man, there the gold-seeker builds his cities. The
+  shadow of the flag of Britain has, for a while, ceased to fall on
+  the Transvaal plains; the game has gone; the misty charm of the
+  morning has become the glare of day. All is changed. The blue gums
+  that we planted in the garden of the "Palatial" must be large
+  trees by now, and the "Palatial" itself has passed from us. Jess
+  sat in it waiting for her love after we were gone. There she
+  nursed him back to life. But Jess is dead, and strangers own it,
+  or perhaps it is a ruin.
+
+  For us too, Macumazahn, as for the land we loved, the mystery and
+  promise of the morning are outworn; the mid-day sun burns
+  overhead, and at times the way is weary. Few of those we knew are
+  left. Some are victims to battle and murder, their bones strew the
+  veldt; death has taken some in a more gentle fashion; others are
+  hidden from us, we know not where. We might well fear to return to
+  that land lest we also should see ghosts. But though we walk apart
+  to-day, the past yet looks upon us with its unalterable eyes.
+  Still we can remember many a boyish enterprise and adventure,
+  lightly undertaken, which now would strike us as hazardous indeed.
+  Still we can recall the long familiar line of the Pretoria Horse,
+  the face of war and panic, the weariness of midnight patrols; aye,
+  and hear the roar of guns echoed from the Shameful Hill.
+
+  To you then, Macumazahn, in perpetual memory of those eventful
+  years of youth which we passed together in the African towns and
+  on the African veldt, I dedicate these pages, subscribing myself
+  now as always,
+Your sincere friend,
+Indanda.
+
+  To Arthur H. D. Cochrane, Esq.
+
+
+
+
+
+ALLAN'S WIFE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+EARLY DAYS
+
+It may be remembered that in the last pages of his diary, written just
+before his death, Allan Quatermain makes allusion to his long dead
+wife, stating that he has written of her fully elsewhere.
+
+When his death was known, his papers were handed to myself as his
+literary executor. Among them I found two manuscripts, of which the
+following is one. The other is simply a record of events wherein Mr.
+Quatermain was not personally concerned--a Zulu novel, the story of
+which was told to him by the hero many years after the tragedy had
+occurred. But with this we have nothing to do at present.
+
+
+
+I have often thought (Mr. Quatermain's manuscript begins) that I would
+set down on paper the events connected with my marriage, and the loss
+of my most dear wife. Many years have now passed since that event, and
+to some extent time has softened the old grief, though Heaven knows it
+is still keen enough. On two or three occasions I have even begun the
+record. Once I gave it up because the writing of it depressed me
+beyond bearing, once because I was suddenly called away upon a
+journey, and the third time because a Kaffir boy found my manuscript
+convenient for lighting the kitchen fire.
+
+But now that I am at leisure here in England, I will make a fourth
+attempt. If I succeed, the story may serve to interest some one in
+after years when I am dead and gone; before that I should not wish it
+to be published. It is a wild tale enough, and suggests some curious
+reflections.
+
+I am the son of a missionary. My father was originally curate in
+charge of a small parish in Oxfordshire. He had already been some ten
+years married to my dear mother when he went there, and he had four
+children, of whom I was the youngest. I remember faintly the place
+where we lived. It was an ancient long grey house, facing the road.
+There was a very large tree of some sort in the garden. It was hollow,
+and we children used to play about inside of it, and knock knots of
+wood from the rough bark. We all slept in a kind of attic, and my
+mother always came and kissed us when we were in bed. I used to wake
+up and see her bending over me, a candle in her hand. There was a
+curious kind of pole projecting from the wall over my bed. Once I was
+dreadfully frightened because my eldest brother made me hang to it by
+my hands. That is all I remember about our old home. It has been
+pulled down long ago, or I would journey there to see it.
+
+A little further down the road was a large house with big iron gates
+to it, and on the top of the gate pillars sat two stone lions, which
+were so hideous that I was afraid of them. Perhaps this sentiment was
+prophetic. One could see the house by peeping through the bars of the
+gates. It was a gloomy-looking place, with a tall yew hedge round it;
+but in the summer-time some flowers grew about the sun-dial in the
+grass plat. This house was called the Hall, and Squire Carson lived
+there. One Christmas--it must have been the Christmas before my father
+emigrated, or I should not remember it--we children went to a
+Christmas-tree festivity at the Hall. There was a great party there,
+and footmen wearing red waistcoats stood at the door. In the dining-
+room, which was panelled with black oak, was the Christmas-tree.
+Squire Carson stood in front of it. He was a tall, dark man, very
+quiet in his manners, and he wore a bunch of seals on his waistcoat.
+We used to think him old, but as a matter of fact he was then not more
+than forty. He had been, as I afterwards learned, a great traveller in
+his youth, and some six or seven years before this date he married a
+lady who was half a Spaniard--a papist, my father called her. I can
+remember her well. She was small and very pretty, with a rounded
+figure, large black eyes, and glittering teeth. She spoke English with
+a curious accent. I suppose that I must have been a funny child to
+look at, and I know that my hair stood up on my head then as it does
+now, for I still have a sketch of myself that my mother made of me, in
+which this peculiarity is strongly marked. On this occasion of the
+Christmas-tree I remember that Mrs. Carson turned to a tall, foreign-
+looking gentleman who stood beside her, and, tapping him
+affectionately on the shoulder with her gold eye-glasses, said--
+
+"Look, cousin--look at that droll little boy with the big brown eyes;
+his hair is like a--what you call him?--scrubbing-brush. Oh, what a
+droll little boy!"
+
+The tall gentleman pulled at his moustache, and, taking Mrs. Carson's
+hand in his, began to smooth my hair down with it till I heard her
+whisper--
+
+"Leave go my hand, cousin. Thomas is looking like--like the
+thunderstorm."
+
+Thomas was the name of Mr. Carson, her husband.
+
+After that I hid myself as well as I could behind a chair, for I was
+shy, and watched little Stella Carson, who was the squire's only
+child, giving the children presents off the tree. She was dressed as
+Father Christmas, with some soft white stuff round her lovely little
+face, and she had large dark eyes, which I thought more beautiful than
+anything I had ever seen. At last it came to my turn to receive a
+present--oddly enough, considered in the light of future events, it
+was a large monkey. Stella reached it down from one of the lower
+boughs of the tree and handed it to me, saying--
+
+"Dat is my Christmas present to you, little Allan Quatermain."
+
+As she did so her sleeve, which was covered with cotton wool, spangled
+over with something that shone, touched one of the tapers and caught
+fire--how I do not know--and the flame ran up her arm towards her
+throat. She stood quite still. I suppose that she was paralysed with
+fear; and the ladies who were near screamed very loud, but did
+nothing. Then some impulse seized me--perhaps instinct would be a
+better word to use, considering my age. I threw myself upon the child,
+and, beating at the fire with my hands, mercifully succeeded in
+extinguishing it before it really got hold. My wrists were so badly
+scorched that they had to be wrapped up in wool for a long time
+afterwards, but with the exception of a single burn upon her throat,
+little Stella Carson was not much hurt.
+
+This is all that I remember about the Christmas-tree at the Hall. What
+happened afterwards is lost to me, but to this day in my sleep I
+sometimes see little Stella's sweet face and the stare of terror in
+her dark eyes as the fire ran up her arm. This, however, is not
+wonderful, for I had, humanly speaking, saved the life of her who was
+destined to be my wife.
+
+The next event which I can recall clearly is that my mother and three
+brothers all fell ill of fever, owing, as I afterwards learned, to the
+poisoning of our well by some evil-minded person, who threw a dead
+sheep into it.
+
+It must have been while they were ill that Squire Carson came one day
+to the vicarage. The weather was still cold, for there was a fire in
+the study, and I sat before the fire writing letters on a piece of
+paper with a pencil, while my father walked up and down the room
+talking to himself. Afterwards I knew that he was praying for the
+lives of his wife and children. Presently a servant came to the door
+and said that some one wanted to see him.
+
+"It is the squire, sir," said the maid, "and he says he particularly
+wishes to see you."
+
+"Very well," answered my father, wearily, and presently Squire Carson
+came in. His face was white and haggard, and his eyes shone so
+fiercely that I was afraid of him.
+
+"Forgive me for intruding on you at such a time, Quatermain," he said,
+in a hoarse voice, "but to-morrow I leave this place for ever, and I
+wish to speak to you before I go--indeed, I must speak to you."
+
+"Shall I send Allan away?" said my father, pointing to me.
+
+"No; let him bide. He will not understand." Nor, indeed, did I at the
+time, but I remembered every word, and in after years their meaning
+grew on me.
+
+"First tell me," he went on, "how are they?" and he pointed upwards
+with his thumb.
+
+"My wife and two of the boys are beyond hope," my father answered,
+with a groan. "I do not know how it will go with the third. The Lord's
+will be done!"
+
+"The Lord's will be done," the squire echoed, solemnly. "And now,
+Quatermain, listen--my wife's gone."
+
+"Gone!" my father answered. "Who with?"
+
+"With that foreign cousin of hers. It seems from a letter she left me
+that she always cared for him, not for me. She married me because she
+thought me a rich English milord. Now she has run through my property,
+or most of it, and gone. I don't know where. Luckily, she did not care
+to encumber her new career with the child; Stella is left to me."
+
+"That is what comes of marrying a papist, Carson," said my father.
+That was his fault; he was as good and charitable a man as ever lived,
+but he was bigoted. "What are you going to do--follow her?"
+
+He laughed bitterly in answer.
+
+"Follow her!" he said; "why should I follow her? If I met her I might
+kill her or him, or both of them, because of the disgrace they have
+brought upon my child's name. No, I never want to look upon her face
+again. I trusted her, I tell you, and she has betrayed me. Let her go
+and find her fate. But I am going too. I am weary of my life."
+
+"Surely, Carson, surely," said my father, "you do not mean----"
+
+"No, no; not that. Death comes soon enough. But I will leave this
+civilized world which is a lie. We will go right away into the wilds,
+I and my child, and hide our shame. Where? I don't know where.
+Anywhere, so long as there are no white faces, no smooth educated
+tongues----"
+
+"You are mad, Carson," my father answered. "How will you live? How can
+you educate Stella? Be a man and wear it down."
+
+"I will be a man, and I will wear it down, but not here, Quatermain.
+Education! Was not she--that woman who was my wife--was not she highly
+educated?--the cleverest woman in the country forsooth. Too clever for
+me, Quatermain--too clever by half! No, no, Stella shall be brought up
+in a different school; if it be possible, she shall forget her very
+name. Good-bye, old friend, good-bye for ever. Do not try to find me
+out, henceforth I shall be like one dead to you, to you and all I
+knew," and he was gone.
+
+"Mad," said my father, with a heavy sigh. "His trouble has turned his
+brain. But he will think better of it."
+
+At that moment the nurse came hurrying in and whispered something in
+his ear. My father's face turned deadly pale. He clutched at the table
+to support himself, then staggered from the room. My mother was dying!
+
+It was some days afterwards, I do not know exactly how long, that my
+father took me by the hand and led me upstairs into the big room which
+had been my mother's bedroom. There she lay, dead in her coffin, with
+flowers in her hand. Along the wall of the room were arranged three
+little white beds, and on each of the beds lay one of my brothers.
+They all looked as though they were asleep, and they all had flowers
+in their hands. My father told me to kiss them, because I should not
+see them any more, and I did so, though I was very frightened. I did
+not know why. Then he took me in his arms and kissed me.
+
+"The Lord hath given," he said, "and the Lord hath taken away; blessed
+be the name of the Lord."
+
+I cried very much, and he took me downstairs, and after that I have
+only a confused memory of men dressed in black carrying heavy burdens
+towards the grey churchyard!
+
+Next comes a vision of a great ship and wide tossing waters. My father
+could no longer bear to live in England after the loss that had fallen
+on him, and made up his mind to emigrate to South Africa. We must have
+been poor at the time--indeed, I believe that a large portion of our
+income went from my father on my mother's death. At any rate we
+travelled with the steerage passengers, and the intense discomfort of
+the journey with the rough ways of our fellow emigrants still remain
+upon my mind. At last it came to an end, and we reached Africa, which
+I was not to leave again for many, many years.
+
+In those days civilization had not made any great progress in Southern
+Africa. My father went up the country and became a missionary among
+the Kaffirs, near to where the town of Cradock now stands, and here I
+grew to manhood. There were a few Boer farmers in the neighbourhood,
+and gradually a little settlement of whites gathered round our mission
+station--a drunken Scotch blacksmith and wheelwright was about the
+most interesting character, who, when he was sober, could quote the
+Scottish poet Burns and the Ingoldsby Legends, then recently
+published, literally by the page. It was from that I contracted a
+fondness for the latter amusing writings, which has never left me.
+Burns I never cared for so much, probably because of the Scottish
+dialect which repelled me. What little education I got was from my
+father, but I never had much leaning towards books, nor he much time
+to teach them to me. On the other hand, I was always a keen observer
+of the ways of men and nature. By the time that I was twenty I could
+speak Dutch and three or four Kaffir dialects perfectly, and I doubt
+if there was anybody in South Africa who understood native ways of
+thought and action more completely than I did. Also I was really a
+very good shot and horseman, and I think--as, indeed, my subsequent
+career proves to have been the case--a great deal tougher than the
+majority of men. Though I was then, as now, light and small, nothing
+seemed to tire me. I could bear any amount of exposure and privation,
+and I never met the native who was my master in feats of endurance. Of
+course, all that is different now, I am speaking of my early manhood.
+
+It may be wondered that I did not run absolutely wild in such
+surroundings, but I was held back from this by my father's society. He
+was one of the gentlest and most refined men that I ever met; even the
+most savage Kaffir loved him, and his influence was a very good one
+for me. He used to call himself one of the world's failures. Would
+that there were more such failures. Every morning when his work was
+done he would take his prayer-book and, sitting on the little stoep or
+verandah of our station, would read the evening psalms to himself.
+Sometimes there was not light enough for this, but it made no
+difference, he knew them all by heart. When he had finished he would
+look out across the cultivated lands where the mission Kaffirs had
+their huts.
+
+But I knew it was not these he saw, but rather the grey English
+church, and the graves ranged side by side before the yew near the
+wicket gate.
+
+It was there on the stoep that he died. He had not been well, and one
+evening I was talking to him, and his mind went back to Oxfordshire
+and my mother. He spoke of her a good deal, saying that she had never
+been out of his mind for a single day during all these years, and that
+he rejoiced to think he was drawing near that land wither she had
+gone. Then he asked me if I remembered the night when Squire Carson
+came into the study at the vicarage, and told him that his wife had
+run away, and that he was going to change his name and bury himself in
+some remote land.
+
+I answered that I remembered it perfectly.
+
+"I wonder where he went to," said my father, "and if he and his
+daughter Stella are still alive. Well, well! I shall never meet them
+again. But life is a strange thing, Allan, and you may. If you ever
+do, give them my kind love."
+
+After that I left him. We had been suffering more than usual from the
+depredations of the Kaffir thieves, who stole our sheep at night, and,
+as I had done before, and not without success, I determined to watch
+the kraal and see if I could catch them. Indeed, it was from this
+habit of mine of watching at night that I first got my native name of
+Macumazahn, which may be roughly translated as "he who sleeps with one
+eye open." So I took my rifle and rose to go. But he called me to him
+and kissed me on the forehead, saying, "God bless you, Allan! I hope
+that you will think of your old father sometimes, and that you will
+lead a good and happy life."
+
+I remember that I did not much like his tone at the time, but set it
+down to an attack of low spirits, to which he grew very subject as the
+years went on. I went down to the kraal and watched till within an
+hour of sunrise; then, as no thieves appeared, returned to the
+station. As I came near I was astonished to see a figure sitting in my
+father's chair. At first I thought it must be a drunken Kaffir, then
+that my father had fallen asleep there.
+
+And so he had,--for he was dead!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE FIRE-FIGHT
+
+When I had buried my father, and seen a successor installed in his
+place--for the station was the property of the Society--I set to work
+to carry out a plan which I had long cherished, but been unable to
+execute because it would have involved separation from my father. Put
+shortly, it was to undertake a trading journey of exploration right
+through the countries now known as the Free State and the Transvaal,
+and as much further North as I could go. It was an adventurous scheme,
+for though the emigrant Boers had begun to occupy positions in these
+territories, they were still to all practical purposes unexplored. But
+I was now alone in the world, and it mattered little what became of
+me; so, driven on by the overmastering love of adventure, which, old
+as I am, will perhaps still be the cause of my death, I determined to
+undertake the journey.
+
+Accordingly I sold such stock and goods as we had upon the station,
+reserving only the two best waggons and two spans of oxen. The
+proceeds I invested in such goods as were then in fashion, for trading
+purposes, and in guns and ammunition. The guns would have moved any
+modern explorer to merriment; but such as they were I managed to do a
+good deal of execution with them. One of them was a single-barrelled,
+smooth bore, fitted for percussion caps--a roer we called it--which
+threw a three-ounce ball, and was charged with a handful of coarse
+black powder. Many is the elephant that I killed with that roer,
+although it generally knocked me backwards when I fired it, which I
+only did under compulsion. The best of the lot, perhaps, was a double-
+barrelled No. 12 shot-gun, but it had flint locks. Also there were
+some old tower muskets, which might or might not throw straight at
+seventy yards. I took six Kaffirs with me, and three good horses,
+which were supposed to be salted--that is, proof against the sickness.
+Among the Kaffirs was an old fellow named Indaba-zimbi, which, being
+translated, means "tongue of iron." I suppose he got this name from
+his strident voice and exhaustless eloquence. This man was a great
+character in his way. He had been a noted witch-doctor among a
+neighbouring tribe, and came to the station under the following
+circumstances, which, as he plays a considerable part in this history,
+are perhaps worth recording.
+
+Two years before my father's death I had occasion to search the
+country round for some lost oxen. After a long and useless quest it
+occurred to me that I had better go to the place where the oxen were
+bred by a Kaffir chief, whose name I forget, but whose kraal was about
+fifty miles from our station. There I journeyed, and found the oxen
+safe at home. The chief entertained me handsomely, and on the
+following morning I went to pay my respects to him before leaving, and
+was somewhat surprised to find a collection of some hundreds of men
+and women sitting round him anxiously watching the sky in which the
+thunder-clouds were banking up in a very ominous way.
+
+"You had better wait, white man," said the chief, "and see the rain-
+doctors fight the lightning."
+
+I inquired what he meant, and learned that this man, Indaba-zimbi, had
+for some years occupied the position of wizard-in-chief to the tribe,
+although he was not a member of it, having been born in the country
+now known as Zululand. But a son of the chief's, a man of about
+thirty, had lately set up as a rival in supernatural powers. This
+irritated Indaba-zimbi beyond measure, and a quarrel ensued between
+the two witch-doctors that resulted in a challenge to trial by
+lightning being given and accepted. These were the conditions. The
+rivals must await the coming of a serious thunderstorm, no ordinary
+tempest would serve their turn. Then, carrying assegais in their
+hands, they must take their stand within fifty paces of each other
+upon a certain patch of ground where the big thunderbolts were
+observed to strike continually, and by the exercise of their occult
+powers and invocations to the lightning, must strive to avert death
+from themselves and bring it on their rival. The terms of this
+singular match had been arranged a month previously, but no storm
+worthy of the occasion had arisen. Now the local weather-prophets
+believed it to be brewing.
+
+I inquired what would happen if neither of the men were struck, and
+was told that they must then wait for another storm. If they escaped
+the second time, however, they would be held to be equal in power, and
+be jointly consulted by the tribe upon occasions of importance.
+
+The prospect of being a spectator of so unusual a sight overcame my
+desire to be gone, and I accepted the chief's invitation to see it
+out. Before mid-day I regretted it, for though the western heavens
+grew darker and darker, and the still air heralded the coming of the
+storm, yet it did not come. By four o'clock, however, it became
+obvious that it must burst soon--at sunset, the old chief said, and in
+the company of the whole assembly I moved down to the place of combat.
+The kraal was built on the top of a hill, and below it the land sloped
+gently to the banks of a river about half a mile away. On the hither
+side of the bank was the piece of land that was, the natives said,
+"loved of the lightning." Here the magicians took up their stand,
+while the spectators grouped themselves on the hillside about two
+hundred yards away--which was, I thought, rather too near to be
+pleasant. When we had sat there for a while my curiosity overcame me,
+and I asked leave of the chief to go down and inspect the arena. He
+said I might do so at my own risk. I told him that the fire from above
+would not hurt white men, and went to find that the spot was a bed of
+iron ore, thinly covered with grass, which of course accounted for its
+attracting the lightning from the storms as they travelled along the
+line of the river. At each end of this iron-stone area were placed the
+combatants, Indaba-zimbi facing the east, and his rival the west, and
+before each there burned a little fire made of some scented root.
+Moreover they were dressed in all the paraphernalia of their craft,
+snakeskins, fish-bladders, and I know not what beside, while round
+their necks hung circlets of baboons' teeth and bones from human
+hands. First I went to the western end where the chief's son stood. He
+was pointing with his assegai towards the advancing storm, and
+invoking it in a voice of great excitement.
+
+"Come, fire, and lick up Indaba-zimbi!
+
+"Hear me, Storm Devil, and lick Indaba-zimbi with your red tongue!
+
+"Spit on him with your rain!
+
+"Whirl him away in your breath!
+
+"Make him as nothing--melt the marrow in his bones!
+
+"Run into his heart and burn away the lies!
+
+"Show all the people who is the true Witch Finder!
+
+"Let me not be put to shame in the eyes of this white man!"
+
+Thus he spoke, or rather chanted, and all the while rubbed his broad
+chest--for he was a very fine man--with some filthy compound of
+medicine or /mouti/.
+
+After a while, getting tired of his song, I walked across the iron-
+stone, to where Indaba-zimbi sat by his fire. He was not chanting at
+all, but his performance was much more impressive. It consisted in
+staring at the eastern sky, which was perfectly clear of cloud, and
+every now and again beckoning at it with his finger, then turning
+round to point with the assegai towards his rival. For a while I
+looked at him in silence. He was a curious wizened man, apparently
+over fifty years of age, with thin hands that looked as tough as wire.
+His nose was much sharper than is usual among these races, and he had
+a queer habit of holding his head sideways like a bird when he spoke,
+which, in addition to the humour that lurked in his eye, gave him a
+most comical appearance. Another strange thing about him was that he
+had a single white lock of hair among his black wool. At last I spoke
+to him:
+
+"Indaba-zimbi, my friend," I said, "you may be a good witch-doctor,
+but you are certainly a fool. It is no good beckoning at the blue sky
+while your enemy is getting a start with the storm."
+
+"You may be clever, but don't think you know everything, white man,"
+the old fellow answered, in a high, cracked voice, and with something
+like a grin.
+
+"They call you Iron-tongue," I went on; "you had better use it, or the
+Storm Devil won't hear you."
+
+"The fire from above runs down iron," he answered, "so I keep my
+tongue quiet. Oh, yes, let him curse away, I'll put him out presently.
+Look now, white man."
+
+I looked, and in the eastern sky there grew a cloud. At first it was
+small, though very black, but it gathered with extraordinary rapidity.
+
+This was odd enough, but as I had seen the same thing happen before it
+did not particularly astonish me. It is by no means unusual in Africa
+for two thunderstorms to come up at the same time from different
+points of the compass.
+
+"You had better get on, Indaba-zimbi," I said, "the big storm is
+coming along fast, and will soon eat up that baby of yours," and I
+pointed to the west.
+
+"Babies sometimes grow to giants, white man," said Indaba-zimbi,
+beckoning away vigorously. "Look now at my cloud-child."
+
+I looked; the eastern storm was spreading itself from earth to sky,
+and in shape resembled an enormous man. There was its head, its
+shoulders, and its legs; yes, it was like a huge giant travelling
+across the heavens. The light of the setting sun escaping from beneath
+the lower edge of the western storm shot across the intervening space
+in a sheet of splendour, and, lighting upon the advancing figure of
+cloud, wrapped its middle in hues of glory too wonderful to be
+described; but beneath and above this glowing belt his feet and head
+were black as jet. Presently, as I watched, an awful flash of light
+shot from the head of the cloud, circled it about as though with a
+crown of living fire, and vanished.
+
+"Aha," chuckled old Indaba-zimbi, "my little boy is putting on his
+man's ring," and he tapped the gum ring on his own head, which natives
+assume when they reach a certain age and dignity. "Now, white man,
+unless you are a bigger wizard than either of us you had better clear
+off, for the fire-fight is about to begin."
+
+I thought this sound advice.
+
+"Good luck go with you, my black uncle," I said. "I hope you don't
+feel the iniquities of a mis-spent life weighing on you at the last."
+
+"You look after yourself, and think of your own sins, young man," he
+answered, with a grim smile, and taking a pinch of snuff, while at
+that very moment a flash of lightning, I don't know from which storm,
+struck the ground within thirty paces of me. That was enough for me, I
+took to my heels, and as I went I heard old Indaba-zimbi's dry chuckle
+of amusement.
+
+I climbed the hill till I came to where the chief was sitting with his
+indunas, or headmen, and sat down near to him. I looked at the man's
+face and saw that he was intensely anxious for his son's safety, and
+by no means confident of the young man's powers to resist the magic of
+Indaba-zimbi. He was talking in a low voice to the induna next to him.
+I affected to take no notice and to be concentrating my attention on
+the novel scene before me; but in those days I had very quick ears,
+and caught the drift of the conversation.
+
+"Hearken!" the chief was saying, "if the magic of Indaba-zimbi
+prevails against my son I will endure him no more. Of this I am sure,
+that when he has slain my son he will slay me, me also, and make
+himself chief in my place. I fear Indaba-zimbi. /Ou!/"
+
+"Black One," answered the induna, "wizards die as dogs die, and, once
+dead, dogs bark no more."
+
+"And once dead," said the chiefs, "wizards work no more spells," and
+he bent and whispered in the induna's ear, looking at the assegai in
+his hand as he whispered.
+
+"Good, my father, good!" said the induna, presently. "It shall be done
+to-night, if the lightning does not do it first."
+
+"A bad look-out for old Indaba-zimbi," I said to myself. "They mean to
+kill him." Then I thought no more of the matter for a while, the scene
+before me was too tremendous.
+
+The two storms were rapidly rushing together. Between them was a gulf
+of blue sky, and from time to time flashes of blinding light passed
+across this gulf, leaping from cloud to cloud. I remember that they
+reminded me of the story of the heathen god Jove and his thunderbolts.
+The storm that was shaped like a giant and ringed with the glory of
+the sinking sun made an excellent Jove, and I am sure that the bolts
+which leapt from it could not have been surpassed even in mythological
+times. Oddly enough, as yet the flashes were not followed by thunder.
+A deadly stillness lay upon the place, the cattle stood silently on
+the hillside, even the natives were awed to silence. Dark shadows
+crept along the bosom of the hills, the river to the right and left
+was hidden in wreaths of cloud, but before us and beyond the
+combatants it shone like a line of silver beneath the narrowing space
+of open sky. Now the western tempest was scrawled all over with lines
+of intolerable light, while the inky head of the cloud-giant to the
+east was continually suffused with a white and deadly glow that came
+and went in pulses, as though a blood of flame was being pumped into
+it from the heart of the storm.
+
+The silence deepened and deepened, the shadows grew blacker and
+blacker, then suddenly all nature began to moan beneath the breath of
+an icy wind. On sped the wind; the smooth surface of the river was
+ruffled by it into little waves, the tall grass bowed low before it,
+and in its wake came the hissing sound of furious rain.
+
+Ah! the storms had met. From each there burst an awful blaze of
+dazzling flame, and now the hill on which we sat rocked at the noise
+of the following thunder. The light went out of the sky, darkness fell
+suddenly on the land, but not for long. Presently the whole landscape
+grew vivid in the flashes, it appeared and disappeared, now everything
+was visible for miles, now even the men at my side vanished in the
+blackness. The thunder rolled and cracked and pealed like the trump of
+doom, whirlwinds tore round, lifting dust and even stones high into
+the air, and in a low, continuous undertone rose the hiss of the
+rushing rain.
+
+I put my hand before my eyes to shield them from the terrible glare,
+and looked beneath it towards the lists of iron-stone. As flash
+followed flash, from time to time I caught sight of the two wizards.
+They were slowly advancing towards one another, each pointing at his
+foe with the assegai in his hand. I could see their every movement,
+and it seemed to me that the chain lightning was striking the iron-
+stone all round them.
+
+Suddenly the thunder and lightning ceased for a minute, everything
+grew black, and, except for the rain, silent.
+
+"It is over one way or the other, chief," I called out into the
+darkness.
+
+"Wait, white man, wait!" answered the chief, in a voice thick with
+anxiety and fear.
+
+Hardly were the words out of his mouth when the heavens were lit up
+again till they literally seemed to flame. There were the men, not ten
+paces apart. A great flash fell between them, I saw them stagger
+beneath the shock. Indaba-zimbi recovered himself first--at any rate
+when the next flash came he was standing bolt upright, pointing with
+his assegai towards his enemy. The chief's son was still on his legs,
+but he was staggering like a drunken man, and the assegai had fallen
+from his hand.
+
+Darkness! then again a flash, more fearful, if possible, than any that
+had gone before. To me it seemed to come from the east, right over the
+head of Indaba-zimbi. At that instant I saw the chief's son wrapped,
+as it were, in the heart of it. Then the thunder pealed, the rain
+burst over us like a torrent, and I saw no more.
+
+The worst of the storm was done, but for a while the darkness was so
+dense that we could not move, nor, indeed, was I inclined to leave the
+safety of the hillside where the lightning was never known to strike,
+and venture down to the iron-stone. Occasionally there still came
+flashes, but, search as we would, we could see no trace of either of
+the wizards. For my part, I believed that they were both dead. Now the
+clouds slowly rolled away down the course of the river, and with them
+went the rain; and now the stars shone in their wake.
+
+"Let us go and see," said the old chief, rising and shaking the water
+from his hair. "The fire-fight is ended, let us go and see who has
+conquered."
+
+I rose and followed him, dripping as though I had swum a hundred yards
+with my clothes on, and after me came all the people of the kraal.
+
+We reached the spot; even in that light I could see where the iron-
+stone had been split and fused by the thunderbolts. While I was
+staring about me, I suddenly heard the chief, who was on my right,
+give a low moan, and saw the people cluster round him. I went up and
+looked. There, on the ground, lay the body of his son. It was a
+dreadful sight. The hair was burnt off his head, the copper rings upon
+his arms were fused, the assegai handle which lay near was literally
+shivered into threads, and, when I took hold of his arm, it seemed to
+me that every bone of it was broken.
+
+The men with the chief stood gazing silently, while the women wailed.
+
+"Great is the magic of Indaba-zimbi!" said a man, at length. The chief
+turned and struck him a heavy blow with the kerrie in his hand.
+
+"Great or not, thou dog, he shall die," he cried, "and so shalt thou
+if thou singest his praises so loudly."
+
+I said nothing, but thinking it probable that Indaba-zimbi had shared
+the fate of his enemy, I went to look. But I could see nothing of him,
+and at length, being thoroughly chilled with the wet, started back to
+my waggon to change my clothes. On reaching it, I was rather surprised
+to see a strange Kaffir seated on the driving-box wrapped up in a
+blanket.
+
+"Hullo! come out of that," I said.
+
+The figure on the box slowly unrolled the blanket, and with great
+deliberation took a pinch of snuff.
+
+"It was a good fire-fight, white man, was it not?" said Indaba-zimbi,
+in his high, cracked voice. "But he never had a chance against me,
+poor boy. He knew nothing about it. See, white man, what becomes of
+presumption in the young. It is sad, very sad, but I made the flashes
+fly, didn't I?"
+
+"You old humbug," I said, "unless you are careful you will soon learn
+what comes of presumption in the old, for your chief is after you with
+an assegai, and it will take all your magic to dodge that."
+
+"Now you don't say so," said Indaba-zimbi, clambering off the waggon
+with rapidity; "and all because of this wretched upstart. There's
+gratitude for you, white man. I expose him, and they want to kill me.
+Well, thank you for the hint. We shall meet again before long," and he
+was gone like a shot, and not too soon, for just then some of the
+chief's men came up to the waggon.
+
+On the following morning I started homewards. The first face I saw on
+arriving at the station was that of Indaba-zimbi.
+
+"How do you do, Macumazahn?" he said, holding his head on one side and
+nodding his white lock. "I hear you are Christians here, and I want to
+try a new religion. Mine must be a bad one seeing that my people
+wanted to kill me for exposing an impostor."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+NORTHWARDS
+
+I make no apology to myself, or to anybody who may happen to read this
+narrative in future, for having set out the manner of my meeting with
+Indaba-zimbi: first, because it was curious, and secondly, because he
+takes some hand in the subsequent events. If that old man was a
+humbug, he was a very clever one. What amount of truth there was in
+his pretensions to supernatural powers it is not for me to determine,
+though I may have my own opinion on the subject. But there was no
+mistake as to the extraordinary influence he exercised over his
+fellow-natives. Also he quite got round my poor father. At first the
+old gentleman declined to have him at the station, for he had a great
+horror of these Kaffir wizards or witch-finders. But Indaba-zimbi
+persuaded him that he was anxious to investigate the truths of
+Christianity, and challenged him to a discussion. The argument lasted
+two years--to the time of my father's death, indeed. At the conclusion
+of each stage Indaba-zimbi would remark, in the words of the Roman
+Governor, "Almost, praying white man, thou persuadest me to become a
+Christian," but he never quite became one--indeed, I do not think he
+ever meant to. It was to him that my father addressed his "Letters to
+a Native Doubter." This work, which, unfortunately, remains in
+manuscript, is full of wise saws and learned instances. It ought to be
+published together with a /précis/ of the doubter's answers, which
+were verbal.
+
+So the talk went on. If my father had lived I believe it would be
+going on now, for both the disputants were quite inexhaustible.
+Meanwhile Indaba-zimbi was allowed to live on the station on condition
+that he practised no witchcraft, which my father firmly believed to be
+a wile of the devil. He said that he would not, but for all that there
+was never an ox lost, or a sudden death, but he was consulted by those
+interested.
+
+When he had been with us a year, a deputation came to him from the
+tribe he had left, asking him to return. Things had not gone well with
+them since he went away, they said, and now the chief, his enemy, was
+dead. Old Indaba-zimbi listened to them till they had done, and, as he
+listened, raked sand into a little heap with his toes. Then he spoke,
+pointing to the little heap, "There is your tribe to-day," he said.
+Then he lifted his heel and stamped the heap flat. "There is your
+tribe before three moons are gone. Nothing is left of it. You drove me
+away: I will have no more to do with you; but when you are being
+killed think of my words."
+
+The messengers went. Three months afterwards I heard that the whole
+community had been wiped out by an Impi of raiding Pondos.
+
+When I was at length ready to start upon my expedition, I went to old
+Indaba-zimbi to say good-bye to him, and was rather surprised to find
+him engaged in rolling up medicine, assegais, and other sundries in
+his blankets.
+
+"Good-bye, Indaba-zimbi," I said, "I am going to trek north."
+
+"Yes, Macumazahn," he answered, with his head on one side; "and so am
+I--I want to see that country. We will go together."
+
+"Will we!" I said; "wait till you are asked, you old humbug."
+
+"You had better ask me, then, Macumazahn, for if you don't you will
+never come back alive. Now that the old chief (my father) is gone to
+where the storms come from," and he nodded to the sky, "I feel myself
+getting into bad habits again. So last night I just threw up the bones
+and worked out about your journey, and I can tell you this, that if
+you don't take me you will die, and, what is more, you will lose one
+who is dearer to you than life in a strange fashion. So just because
+you gave me that hint a couple of years ago, I made up my mind to come
+with you."
+
+"Don't talk stuff to me," I said.
+
+"Ah, very well, Macumazahn, very well; but what happened to my own
+people six months ago, and what did I tell the messengers would
+happen? They drove me away, and they are gone. If you drive me away
+you will soon be gone too," and he nodded his white lock at me and
+smiled. Now I was not more superstitious than other people, but
+somehow old Indaba-zimbi impressed me. Also I knew his extraordinary
+influence over every class of native, and bethought me that he might
+be useful in that way.
+
+"All right," I said: "I appoint you witch-finder to the expedition
+without pay."
+
+"First serve, then ask for wages," he answered. "I am glad to see that
+you have enough imagination not to be altogether a fool, like most
+white men, Macumazahn. Yes, yes, it is want of imagination that makes
+people fools; they won't believe what they can't understand. You can't
+understand my prophecies any more than the fool at the kraal could
+understand that I was his master with the lightning. Well, it is time
+to trek, but if I were you, Macumazahn, I should take one waggon, not
+two."
+
+"Why?" I said.
+
+"Because you will lose your waggons, and it is better to lose one than
+two."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" I said.
+
+"All right, Macumazahn, live and learn." And without another word he
+walked to the foremost waggon, put his bundle into it, and climbed on
+to the front seat.
+
+So having bid an affectionate adieu to my white friends, including the
+old Scotchman who got drunk in honour of the event, and quoted Burns
+till the tears ran down his face, at length I started, and travelled
+slowly northwards. For the first three weeks nothing very particular
+befell me. Such Kaffirs as we came in contact with were friendly, and
+game literally swarmed. Nobody living in those parts of South Africa
+nowadays can have the remotest idea of what the veldt was like even
+thirty years ago.
+
+Often and often I have crept shivering on to my waggon-box just as the
+sun rose and looked out. At first one would see nothing but a vast
+field of white mist suffused towards the east by a tremulous golden
+glow, through which the tops of stony koppies stood up like gigantic
+beacons. From the dense mist would come strange sounds--snorts,
+gruntings, bellows, and the thunder of countless hoofs. Presently this
+great curtain would grow thinner, then it would melt, as the smoke
+from a pipe melts into the air, and for miles on miles the wide
+rolling country interspersed with bush opened to the view. But it was
+not tenantless as it is now, for as far as the eye could reach it
+would be literally black with game. Here to the right might be a herd
+of vilderbeeste that could not number less than two thousand. Some
+were grazing, some gambolled, whisking their white tails into the air,
+while all round the old bulls stood upon hillocks sniffing
+suspiciously at the breeze. There, in front, a hundred yards away,
+though to the unpractised eye they looked much closer, because of the
+dazzling clearness of the atmosphere, was a great herd of springbok
+trekking along in single file. Ah, they have come to the waggon-track
+and do not like the look of it. What will they do?--go back? Not a bit
+of it. It is nearly thirty feet wide, but that is nothing to a
+springbok. See, the first of them bounds into the air like a ball. How
+beautifully the sunshine gleams upon his golden hide! He has cleared
+it, and the others come after him in numberless succession, all except
+the fawns, who cannot jump so far, and have to scamper over the
+doubtful path with a terrified /bah/. What is that yonder, moving
+above the tops of the mimosa, in the little dell at the foot of the
+koppie? Giraffes, by George! three of them; there will be marrow-bones
+for supper to-night. Hark! the ground shakes behind us, and over the
+brow of the rise rush a vast herd of blesbock. On they come at full
+gallop, their long heads held low, they look like so many bearded
+goats. I thought so--behind them is a pack of wild dogs, their fur
+draggled, their tongues lolling. They are in full cry; the giraffes
+hear them and are away, rolling round the koppie like a ship in a
+heavy sea. No marrow-bones after all. See! the foremost dogs are close
+on a buck. He has galloped far and is outworn. One springs at his
+flank and misses him. The buck gives a kind of groan, looks wildly
+round and sees the waggon. He seems to hesitate a moment, then in his
+despair rushes up to it, and falls exhausted among the oxen. The dogs
+pull up some thirty paces away, panting and snarling. Now, boy, the
+gun--no, not the rifle, the shot-gun loaded with loopers.
+
+Bang! bang! there, my friends, two of you will never hunt buck again.
+No, don't touch the buck, for he has come to us for shelter, and he
+shall have it.
+
+Ah, how beautiful is nature before man comes to spoil it!
+
+Such a sight as this have I seen many a hundred times, and I hope to
+see it again before I die.
+
+The first real adventure that befell me on this particular journey was
+with elephants, which I will relate because of its curious
+termination. Just before we crossed the Orange River we came to a
+stretch of forest-land some twenty miles broad. The night we entered
+this forest we camped in a lovely open glade. A few yards ahead
+tambouki grass was growing to the height of a man, or rather it had
+been; now, with the exception of a few stalks here and there, it was
+crushed quite flat. It was already dusk when we camped; but after the
+moon got up I walked from the fire to see how this had happened. One
+glance was enough for me; a great herd of elephants had evidently
+passed over the tall grass not many hours before. The sight of their
+spoor rejoiced me exceedingly, for though I had seen wild elephants,
+at that time I had never shot one. Moreover, the sight of elephant
+spoor to the African hunter is what "colour in the pan" is to the
+prospector of gold. It is by the ivory that he lives, and to shoot it
+or trade it is his chief aim in life. My resolution was soon taken. I
+would camp the waggons for a while in the forest, and start on
+horseback after the elephants.
+
+I communicated my decision to Indaba-zimbi and the other Kaffirs. The
+latter were not loth, for your Kaffir loves hunting, which means
+plenty of meat and congenial occupation, but Indaba-zimbi would
+express no opinion. I saw him retire to a little fire that he had lit
+for himself, and go through some mysterious performances with bones
+and clay mixed with ashes, which were watched with the greatest
+interest by the other Kaffirs. At length he rose, and, coming forward,
+informed me that it was all right, and that I did well to go and hunt
+the elephants, as I should get plenty of ivory; but he advised me to
+go on foot. I said I should do nothing of the sort, but meant to ride.
+I am wiser now; this was the first and last time that I ever attempted
+to hunt elephants on horseback.
+
+Accordingly we started at dawn, I, Indaba-zimbi, and three men; the
+rest I left with the waggons. I was on horseback, and so was my
+driver, a good rider and a skilful shot for a Kaffir, but Indaba-zimbi
+and the others walked. From dawn till mid-day we followed the trail of
+the herd, which was as plain as a high road. Then we off-saddled to
+let the horses rest and feed, and about three o'clock started on
+again. Another hour or so passed, and still there was no sign of
+elephants. Evidently the herd had travelled fast and far, and I began
+to think that we should have to give it up, when suddenly I caught
+sight of a brown mass moving through the thorn-trees on the side of a
+slope about a quarter of a mile away. My heart seemed to jump into my
+mouth. Where is the hunter who has not felt like this at the sight of
+his first elephant?
+
+I called a halt, and then the wind being right, we set to work to
+stalk the bull. Very quietly I rode down the hither side of the slope
+till we came to the bottom, which was densely covered with bush. Here
+I saw the elephants had been feeding, for broken branches and upturned
+trees lay all about. I did not take much notice, however, for all my
+thoughts were fixed upon the bull I was stalking, when suddenly my
+horse gave a violent start that nearly threw me from the saddle, and
+there came a mighty rush and upheaval of something in front of me. I
+looked: there was the hinder part of a second bull elephant not four
+yards off. I could just catch sight of its outstretched ears
+projecting on either side. I had disturbed it sleeping, and it was
+running away.
+
+Obviously the best thing to do would have been to let it run, but I
+was young in those days and foolish, and in the excitement of the
+moment I lifted my "roer" or elephant gun and fired at the great brute
+over my horse's head. The recoil of the heavy gun nearly knocked me
+off the horse. I recovered myself, however, and, as I did so, saw the
+bull lurch forward, for the impact of a three-ounce bullet in the
+flank will quicken the movement even of an elephant. By this time I
+had realized the folly of the shot, and devoutly hoped that the bull
+would take no further notice of it. But he took a different view of
+the matter. Pulling himself up in a series of plunges, he spun round
+and came for me with outstretched ears and uplifted trunk, screaming
+terribly. I was quite defenceless, for my gun was empty, and my first
+thought was of escape. I dug my heels into the sides of my horse, but
+he would not move an inch. The poor animal was paralyzed with terror,
+and he simply stood still, his fore-legs outstretched, and quivering
+all over like a leaf.
+
+On rushed the elephant, awful to see; I made one more vain effort to
+stir the horse. Now the trunk of the great bull swung aloft above my
+head. A thought flashed through my brain. Quick as light I rolled from
+the saddle. By the side of the horse lay a fallen tree, as thick
+through as a man's body. The tree was lifted a little off the ground
+by the broken boughs which took its weight, and with a single
+movement, so active is one in such necessities, I flung myself beneath
+it. As I did so, I heard the trunk of the elephant descend with a
+mighty thud on the back of my poor horse, and the next instant I was
+almost in darkness, for the horse, whose back was broken, fell over
+across the tree under which I lay ensconced. But he did not stop there
+long. In ten seconds more the bull had wound his trunk about my dead
+nag's neck, and, with a mighty effort, hurled him clear of the tree. I
+wriggled backwards as far as I could towards the roots of the tree,
+for I knew what he was after. Presently I saw the red tip of the
+bull's trunk stretching itself towards me. If he could manage to hook
+it round any part of me I was lost. But in the position I occupied,
+that was just what he could not do, although he knelt down to
+facilitate his operations. On came the snapping tip like a great open-
+mouthed snake; it closed upon my hat, which vanished. Again it was
+thrust down, and a scream of rage was bellowed through it within four
+inches of my head. Now it seemed to elongate itself. Oh, heavens! now
+it had me by the hair, which, luckily for myself, was not very long.
+Then it was my turn to scream, for next instant half a square inch of
+hair was dragged from my scalp by the roots. I was being plucked
+alive, as I have seen cruel Kaffir kitchen boys pluck a fowl.
+
+The elephant, however, disappointed with these moderate results,
+changed his tactics. He wound his trunk round the fallen tree and
+lifted. The tree stirred, but fortunately the broken branches embedded
+in the spongy soil, and some roots, which still held, prevented it
+from being turned over, though he lifted it so much that, had it
+occurred to him, he could now easily have drawn me out with his trunk.
+Again he hoisted with all his mighty strength, and I saw that the tree
+was coming, and roared aloud for help. Some shots were fired close by
+in answer, but if they hit the bull, their only effect was to stir his
+energies to more active life. In another few seconds my shelter would
+be torn away, and I should be done for. A cold perspiration burst out
+over me as I realized that I was lost. Then of a sudden I remembered
+that I had a pistol in my belt, which I often used for despatching
+wounded game. It was loaded and capped. By this time the tree was
+lifted so much that I could easily get my hand down to my middle and
+draw the pistol from its case. I drew and cocked it. Now the tree was
+coming over, and there, within three feet of my head, was the great
+brown trunk of the elephant. I placed the muzzle of the pistol within
+an inch of it and fired. The result was instantaneous. Down sunk the
+tree again, giving one of my legs a considerable squeeze, and next
+instant I heard a crashing sound. The elephant had bolted.
+
+By this time, what between fright and struggling, I was pretty well
+tired. I cannot remember how I got from under the fallen tree, or
+indeed anything, until I found myself sitting on the ground drinking
+some peach brandy from a flask, and old Indaba-zimbi opposite to me
+nodding his white lock sagely, while he fired off moral reflections on
+the narrowness of my escape, and my unwisdom in not having taken his
+advice to go on foot. That reminded me of my horse--I got up and went
+to look at it. It was quite dead, the blow of the elephant's trunk had
+fallen on the saddle, breaking the framework, and rendering it
+useless. I reflected that in another two seconds it would have fallen
+on /me/. Then I called to Indaba-zimbi and asked which way the
+elephants had gone.
+
+"There!" he said, pointing down the gully, "and we had better go after
+them, Macumazahn. We have had the bad luck, now for the good."
+
+There was philosophy in this, though, to tell the truth, I did not
+feel particularly sharp set on elephants at the moment. I seemed to
+have had enough of them. However, it would never do to show the white
+feather before the boys, so I assented with much outward readiness,
+and we started, I on the second horse, and the others on foot. When we
+had travelled for the best part of an hour down the valley, all of a
+sudden we came upon the whole herd, which numbered a little more than
+eighty. Just in front of them the bush was so thick that they seemed
+to hesitate about entering it, and the sides of the valley were so
+rocky and steep at this point that they could not climb them.
+
+They saw us at the same moment as we saw them, and inwardly I was
+filled with fears lest they should take it into their heads to charge
+back up the gully. But they did not; trumpeting aloud, they rushed at
+the thick bush which went down before them like corn before a sickle.
+I do not think that in all my experiences I ever heard anything to
+equal the sound they made as they crashed through and over the shrubs
+and trees. Before them was a dense forest belt from a hundred to a
+hundred and fifty feet in width. As they rushed on, it fell, so that
+behind them was nothing but a level roadway strewed with fallen
+trunks, crushed branches, and here and there a tree, too strong even
+for them, left stranded amid the wreck. On they went, and,
+notwithstanding the nature of the ground over which they had to
+travel, they kept their distance ahead of us. This sort of thing
+continued for a mile or more, and then I saw that in front of the
+elephants the valley opened into a space covered with reeds and grass
+--it might have been five or six acres in extent--beyond which the
+valley ran on again.
+
+The herd reached the edge of this expanse, and for a moment pulled up,
+hesitating--evidently they mistrusted it. My men yelled aloud, as only
+Kaffirs can, and that settled them. Headed by the wounded bull, whose
+martial ardour, like my own, was somewhat cooled, they spread out and
+dashed into the treacherous swamp--for such it was, though just then
+there was no water to be seen. For a few yards all went well with
+them, though they clearly found it heavy going; then suddenly the
+great bull sank up to his belly in the stiff peaty soil, and remained
+fixed. The others, mad with fear, took no heed of his struggles and
+trumpetings, but plunged on to meet the same fate. In five minutes the
+whole herd of them were hopelessly bogged, and the more they struggled
+to escape, the deeper they sunk. There was one exception, indeed, a
+cow managed to win back to firm shore, and, lifting her trunk,
+prepared to charge us as we came up. But at that moment she heard the
+scream of her calf, and rushed back to its assistance, only to be
+bogged with the others.
+
+Such a scene I never saw before or since. The swamp was spotted all
+over with the large forms of the elephants, and the air rang with
+their screams of rage and terror as they waved their trunks wildly to
+and fro. Now and then a monster would make a great effort and drag his
+mass from its peaty bed, only to stick fast again at the next step. It
+was a most pitiable sight, though one that gladdened the hearts of my
+men. Even the best natives have little compassion for the sufferings
+of animals.
+
+Well, the rest was easy. The marsh that would not bear the elephants
+carried our weight well enough. Before midnight all were dead, for we
+shot them by moonlight. I would gladly have spared the young ones and
+some of the cows, but to do so would only have meant leaving them to
+perish of hunger; it was kinder to kill them at once. The wounded bull
+I slew with my own hand, and I cannot say that I felt much compunction
+in so doing. He knew me again, and made a desperate effort to get at
+me, but I am glad to say that the peat held him fast.
+
+The pan presented a curious sight when the sun rose next morning.
+Owing to the support given by the soil, few of the dead elephants had
+fallen: there they stood as though they were asleep.
+
+I sent back for the waggons, and when they arrived on the morrow,
+formed a camp, about a mile away from the pan. Then began the work of
+cutting out the elephants' tusks; it took over a week, and for obvious
+reasons was a disgusting task. Indeed, had it not been for the help of
+some wandering bushmen, who took their pay in elephant meat, I do not
+think we could ever have managed it.
+
+At last it was done. The ivory was far too cumbersome for us to carry,
+so we buried it, having first got rid of our bushmen allies. My boys
+wanted me to go back to the Cape with it and sell it, but I was too
+much bent on my journey to do this. The tusks lay buried for five
+years. Then I came and dug them up; they were but little harmed.
+Ultimately I sold the ivory for something over twelve hundred pounds--
+not bad pay for one day's shooting.
+
+This was how I began my career as an elephant hunter. I have shot many
+hundreds of them since, but have never again attempted to do so on
+horseback.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE ZULU IMPI
+
+After burying the elephant tusks, and having taken careful notes of
+the bearings and peculiarities of the country so that I might be able
+to find the spot again, we proceeded on our journey. For a month or
+more I trekked along the line which now divides the Orange Free State
+from Griqualand West, and the Transvaal from Bechuanaland. The only
+difficulties met with were such as are still common to African
+travellers--occasional want of water and troubles about crossing
+sluits and rivers. I remember that I outspanned on the spot where
+Kimberley now stands, and had to press on again in a hurry because
+there was no water. I little dreamed then that I should live to see
+Kimberley a great city producing millions of pounds worth of diamonds
+annually, and old Indaba-zimbi's magic cannot have been worth so much
+after all, or he would have told me.
+
+I found the country almost entirely depopulated. Not very long before
+Mosilikatze the Lion, Chaka's General had swept across it in his
+progress towards what is now Matabeleland. His footsteps were evident
+enough. Time upon time I trekked up to what had evidently been the
+sites of Kaffir kraals. Now the kraals were ashes and piles of tumbled
+stones, and strewn about among the rank grass were the bones of
+hundreds of men, women, and children, all of whom had kissed the Zulu
+assegai. I remember that in one of these desolate places I found the
+skull of a child in which a ground-lark had built its nest. It was the
+twittering of the young birds inside that first called my attention to
+it. Shortly after this we met with our second great adventure, a much
+more serious and tragic one than the first.
+
+We were trekking parallel with the Kolong river when a herd of
+blesbock crossed the track. I fired at one of them and hit it behind.
+It galloped about a hundred yards with the rest of the herd, then lay
+down. As we were in want of meat, not having met with any game for a
+few days past, I jumped on to my horse, and, telling Indaba-zimbi that
+I would overtake the waggons or meet them on the further side of a
+rise about an hour's trek away, I started after the wounded buck. As
+soon as I came within a hundred yards of it, however, it jumped up and
+ran away as fast as though it were untouched, only to lie down again
+at a distance. I followed, thinking that strength would soon fail it.
+This happened three times. On the third occasion it vanished behind a
+ridge, and, though by now I was out of both temper and patience, I
+thought I might as well ride to the crest and see if I could get a
+shot at it on the further side.
+
+I reached the ridge, which was strewn with stones, looked over it, and
+saw--a Zulu Impi!
+
+I rubbed my eyes and looked again. Yes, there was no doubt of it. They
+were halted about a thousand yards away, by the water; some were lying
+down, some were cooking at fires, others were stalking about with
+spears and shields in their hands; there might have been two thousand
+or more of them in all. While I was wondering--and that with no little
+uneasiness--what on earth they could be doing there, suddenly I heard
+a wild cry to the right and left of me. I glanced first one way, then
+the other. From either side a great Zulu was bearing down on me, their
+broad stabbing assegais aloft, and black shields in their left hands.
+The man to the right was about fifteen yards away, he to the left was
+not more than ten. On they came, their fierce eyes almost starting out
+of their heads, and I felt, with a cold thrill of fear, that in
+another three seconds those broad "bangwans" might be buried in my
+vitals. On such occasions we act, I suppose, more from instinct than
+from anything else--there is no time for thought. At any rate, I
+dropped the reins and, raising my gun, fired point blank at the left-
+hand man. The bullet struck him in the middle of his shield, pierced
+it, and passed through him, and over he rolled upon the veldt. I swung
+round in the saddle; most happily my horse was accustomed to standing
+still when I fired from his back, also he was so surprised that he did
+not know which way to shy. The other savage was almost on me; his
+outstretched shield reached the muzzle of my gun as I pulled the
+trigger of the left barrel. It exploded, the warrior sprung high into
+the air, and fell against my horse dead, his spear passing just in
+front of my face.
+
+Without waiting to reload, or even to look if the main body of the
+Zulus had seen the death of their two scouts, I turned my horse and
+drove my heels into his sides. As soon as I was down the slope of the
+rise I pulled a little to the right in order to intercept the waggons
+before the Zulus saw them. I had not gone three hundred yards in this
+new direction when, to my utter astonishment, I struck a trail marked
+with waggon-wheels and the hoofs of oxen. Of waggons there must have
+been at least eight, and several hundred cattle. Moreover, they had
+passed within twelve hours; I could tell that by the spoor. Then I
+understood; the Impi was following the track of the waggons, which, in
+all probability, belonged to a party of emigrant Boers.
+
+The spoor of the waggons ran in the direction I wished to go, so I
+followed it. About a mile further on I came to the crest of a rise,
+and there, about five furlongs away, I saw the waggons drawn up in a
+rough laager upon the banks of the river. There, too, were my own
+waggons trekking down the slope towards them.
+
+In another five minutes I was there. The Boers--for Boers they were--
+were standing about outside the little laager watching the approach of
+my two waggons. I called to them, and they turned and saw me. The very
+first man my eyes fell on was a Boer named Hans Botha, whom I had
+known well years ago in the Cape. He was not a bad specimen of his
+class, but a very restless person, with a great objection to
+authority, or, as he expressed it, "a love of freedom." He had joined
+a party of the emigrant Boers some years before, but, as I learned
+presently, had quarrelled with its leader, and was now trekking away
+into the wilderness to found a little colony of his own. Poor fellow!
+It was his last trek.
+
+"How do you do, Meinheer Botha?" I said to him in Dutch.
+
+The man looked at me, looked again, then, startled out of his Dutch
+stolidity, cried to his wife, who was seated on the box of the
+waggon--
+
+"Come here, Frau, come. Here is Allan Quatermain, the Englishman, the
+son of the 'Predicant.' How goes it, Heer Quatermain, and what is the
+news down in the Cape yonder?"
+
+"I don't know what the news is in the Cape, Hans," I answered,
+solemnly; "but the news here is that there is a Zulu Impi upon your
+spoor and within two miles of the waggons. That I know, for I have
+just shot two of their sentries," and I showed him my empty gun.
+
+For a moment there was a silence of astonishment, and I saw the
+bronzed faces of the men turn pale beneath their tan, while one or two
+of the women gave a little scream, and the children crept to their
+sides.
+
+"Almighty!" cried Hans, "that must be the Umtetwa Regiment that
+Dingaan sent against the Basutus, but who could not come at them
+because of the marshes, and so were afraid to return to Zululand, and
+struck north to join Mosilikatze."
+
+"Laager up, Carles! Laager up for your lives, and one of you jump on a
+horse and drive in the cattle."
+
+At this moment my own waggons came up. Indaba-zimbi was sitting on the
+box of the first, wrapped in a blanket. I called him and told him the
+news.
+
+"Ill tidings, Macumazahn," he said; "there will be dead Boers about
+to-morrow morning, but they will not attack till dawn, then they will
+wipe out the laager /so!/" and he passed his hand before his mouth.
+
+"Stop that croaking, you white-headed crow," I said, though I knew his
+words were true. What chance had a laager of ten waggons all told
+against at least two thousand of the bravest savages in the world?
+
+"Macumazahn, will you take my advice this time?" Indaba-zimbi said,
+presently.
+
+"What is it?" I asked.
+
+"This. Leave your waggons here, jump on that horse, and let us two run
+for it as hard as we can go. The Zulus won't follow us, they will be
+looking after the Boers."
+
+"I won't leave the other white men," I said; "it would be the act of a
+coward. If I die, I die."
+
+"Very well, Macumazahn, then stay and be killed," he answered, taking
+a pinch of snuff. "Come, let us see about the waggons," and we walked
+towards the laager.
+
+Here everything was in confusion. However, I got hold of Hans Botha
+and put it to him if it would not be best to desert the waggons and
+make a run for it.
+
+"How can we do it?" he answered; "two of the women are too fat to go a
+mile, one is sick in childbed, and we have only six horses among us.
+Besides, if we did we should starve in the desert. No, Heer Allan, we
+must fight it out with the savages, and God help us!"
+
+"God help us, indeed. Think of the children, Hans!"
+
+"I can't bear to think," he answered, in a broken voice, looking at
+his own little girl, a sweet, curly-haired, blue-eyed child of six,
+named Tota, whom I had often nursed as a baby. "Oh, Heer Allan, your
+father, the Predicant, always warned me against trekking north, and I
+never would listen to him because I thought him a cursed Englishman;
+now I see my folly. Heer Allan, if you can, try to save my child from
+those black devils; if you live longer than I do, or if you can't save
+her, kill her," and he clasped my hand.
+
+"It hasn't come to that yet, Hans," I said.
+
+Then we set to work on the laager. The waggons, of which, including my
+two, there were ten, were drawn into the form of a square, and the
+disselboom of each securely lashed with reims to the underworks of
+that in front of it. The wheels also were locked, and the space
+between the ground and the bed-planks of the waggons was stuffed with
+branches of the "wait-a-bit" thorn that fortunately grew near in
+considerable quantities. In this way a barrier was formed of no mean
+strength as against a foe unprovided with firearms, places being left
+for the men to fire from. In a little over an hour everything was done
+that could be done, and a discussion arose as to the disposal of the
+cattle, which had been driven up close to the camp. Some of the Boers
+were anxious to get them into the laager, small as it was, or at least
+as many of them as it would hold. I argued strongly against this,
+pointing out that the brutes would probably be seized with panic as
+soon as the firing began, and trample the defenders of the laager
+under foot. As an alternative plan I suggested that some of the native
+servants should drive the herd along the valley of the river till they
+reached a friendly tribe or some other place of safety. Of course, if
+the Zulus saw them they would be taken, but the nature of the ground
+was favourable, and it was possible that they might escape if they
+started at once. The proposition was promptly agreed to, and, what is
+more, it was settled that one Dutchman and such of the women and
+children as could travel should go with them. In half an hour's time
+twelve of them started with the natives, the Boer in charge, and the
+cattle. Three of my own men went with the latter, the three others and
+Indaba-zimbi stopped with me in the laager.
+
+The parting was a heart-breaking scene, upon which I do not care to
+dwell. The women wept, the men groaned, and the children looked on
+with scared white faces. At length they were gone, and I for one was
+thankful of it. There remained in the laager seventeen white men, four
+natives, the two Boer fraus who were too stout to travel, the woman in
+childbed and her baby, and Hans Bother's little daughter Tota, whom he
+could not make up his mind to part with. Happily her mother was
+already dead. And here I may state that ten of the women and children,
+together with about half of the cattle, escaped. The Zulu Impi never
+saw them, and on the third day of travel they came to the fortified
+place of a Griqua chief, who sheltered them on receiving half the
+cattle in payment. Thence by slow degrees they journeyed down to the
+Cape Colony, reaching a civilized region within a little more than a
+year from the date of the attack on the laager.
+
+The afternoon was now drawing towards evening, but still there were no
+signs of the Impi. A wild hope struck us that they might have gone on
+about their business. Ever since Indaba-zimbi had heard that the
+regiment was supposed to belong to the Umtetwa tribe, he had, I
+noticed, been plunged in deep thought. Presently he came to me and
+volunteered to go out and spy upon their movements. At first Hans
+Botha was against this idea, saying that he was a "verdomde swartzel"
+--an accursed black creature--and would betray us. I pointed out that
+there was nothing to betray. The Zulus must know where the waggons
+were, but it was important for us to gain information of their
+movements. So it was agreed that Indaba-zimbi should go. I told him
+this. He nodded his white lock, said "All right, Macumazahn," and
+started. I noticed with some surprise, however, that before he did so
+he went to the waggon and fetched his "mouti," or medicine, which,
+together with his other magical apparatus, he always carried in a skin
+bag. I asked him why he did this. He answered that it was to make
+himself invulnerable against the spears of the Zulus. I did not in the
+least believe his explanation, for in my heart I was sure that he
+meant to take the opportunity to make a bolt of it, leaving me to my
+fate. I did not, however, interfere to prevent this, for I had an
+affection for the old fellow, and sincerely hoped that he might escape
+the doom which overshadowed us.
+
+So Indaba-zimbi sauntered off, and as I looked at his retreating form
+I thought I should never see it again. But I was mistaken, and little
+knew that he was risking his life, not for the Boers whom he hated one
+and all, but for me whom in his queer way he loved.
+
+When he had gone we completed our preparations for defence,
+strengthening the waggons and the thorns beneath with earth and
+stones. Then at sunset we ate and drank as heartily as we could under
+the circumstances, and when we had done, Hans Botha, as head of the
+party, offered up prayer to God for our preservation. It was a
+touching sight to see the burly Dutchman, his hat off, his broad face
+lit up by the last rays of the setting sun, praying aloud in homely,
+simple language to Him who alone could save us from the spears of a
+cruel foe. I remember that the last sentence of his prayer was,
+"Almighty, if we must be killed, save the women and children and my
+little girl Tota from the accursed Zulus, and do not let us be
+tortured."
+
+I echoed the request very earnestly in my own heart, that I know, for
+in common with the others I was dreadfully afraid, and it must be
+admitted not without reason.
+
+Then the darkness came on, and we took up our appointed places each
+with a rifle in his hands and peered out into the gloom in silence.
+Occasionally one of the Boers would light his pipe with a brand from
+the smouldering fire, and the glow of it would shine for a few moments
+on his pale, anxious face.
+
+Behind me one of the stout "fraus" lay upon the ground. Even the
+terror of our position could not keep her heavy eyes from their
+accustomed sleep, and she snored loudly. On the further side of her,
+just by the fire, lay little Tota, wrapped in a kaross. She was asleep
+also, her thumb in her mouth, and from time to time her father would
+come to look at her.
+
+So the hours wore on while we waited for the Zulus. But from my
+intimate knowledge of the habits of natives I had little fear that
+they would attack us at night, though, had they done so, they could
+have compassed our destruction with but small loss to themselves. It
+is not the habit of this people, they like to fight in the light of
+day--at dawn for preference.
+
+About eleven o'clock, just as I was nodding a little at my post, I
+heard a low whistle outside the laager. Instantly I was wide awake,
+and all along the line I heard the clicking of locks as the Boers
+cocked their guns.
+
+"Macumazahn," said a voice, the voice of Indaba-zimbi, "are you
+there?"
+
+"Yes," I answered.
+
+"Then hold a light so that I can see how to climb into the laager," he
+said.
+
+"Yah! yah! hold a light," put in one of the Boers. "I don't trust that
+black schepsel of yours, Heer Quatermain; he may have some of his
+countrymen with him." Accordingly a lantern was produced and held
+towards the voice. There was Indaba-zimbi alone. We let him into the
+laager and asked him the news.
+
+"This is the news, white men," he said. "I waited till dark, and
+creeping up to the place where the Zulus are encamped, hid myself
+behind a stone and listened. They are a great regiment of Umtetwas as
+Baas Botha yonder thought. They struck the spoor of the waggons three
+days ago and followed it. To-night they sleep upon their spears,
+to-morrow at daybreak they will attack the laager and kill everybody.
+They are very bitter against the Boers, because of the battle at Blood
+River and the other fights, and that is why they followed the waggons
+instead of going straight north after Mosilikatze."
+
+A kind of groan went up from the group of listening Dutchmen.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Heeren," I said, "instead of waiting to be
+butchered here like buck in a pitfall, let us go out now and fall upon
+the Impi while it sleeps."
+
+This proposition excited some discussion, but in the end only one man
+could be found to vote for it. Boers as a rule lack that dash which
+makes great soldiers; such forlorn hopes are not in their line, and
+rather than embark upon them they prefer to take their chance in a
+laager, however poor that chance may be. For my own part I firmly
+believe that had my advice been taken we should have routed the Zulus.
+Seventeen desperate white men, armed with guns, would have produced no
+small effect upon a camp of sleeping savages. But it was not taken, so
+it is no use talking about it.
+
+After that we went back to our posts, and slowly the weary night wore
+on towards the dawn. Only those who have watched under similar
+circumstances while they waited the advent of almost certain and cruel
+death, can know the torturing suspense of those heavy hours. But they
+went somehow, and at last in the far east the sky began to lighten,
+while the cold breath of dawn stirred the tilts of the waggons and
+chilled me to the bone. The fat Dutchwoman behind me woke with a yawn,
+then, remembering all, moaned aloud, while her teeth chattered with
+cold and fear. Hans Botha went to his waggon and got a bottle of peach
+brandy, from which he poured into a tin pannikin, giving us each a
+stiff dram, and making attempts to be cheerful as he did so. But his
+affected jocularity only seemed to depress his comrades the more.
+Certainly it depressed me.
+
+Now the light was growing, and we could see some way into the mist
+which still hung densely over the river, and now--ah! there it was.
+From the other side of the hill, a thousand yards or more from the
+laager, came a faint humming sound. It grew and grew till it gathered
+to a chant--the awful war chant of the Zulus. Soon I could catch the
+words. They were simple enough:
+
+ "We shall slay, we shall slay! Is it not so, my brothers?
+  Our spears shall blush blood-red. Is it not so, my brothers?
+  For we are the sucklings of Chaka, blood is our milk, my brothers.
+  Awake, children of the Umtetwa, awake!
+  The vulture wheels, the jackal sniffs the air;
+  Awake, children of the Umtetwa--cry aloud, ye ringed men:
+  There is the foe, we shall slay them. Is it not so, my brothers?
+  /S'gee! S'gee! S'gee!/"
+
+Such is a rough translation of that hateful chant which to this very
+day I often seem to hear. It does not look particularly imposing on
+paper, but if, while he waited to be killed, the reader could have
+heard it as it rolled through the still air from the throats of nearly
+three thousand warriors singing all to time, he would have found it
+impressive enough.
+
+Now the shields began to appear over the brow of the rise. They came
+by companies, each company about ninety strong. Altogether there were
+thirty-one companies. I counted them. When all were over they formed
+themselves into a triple line, then trotted down the slope towards us.
+At a distance of a hundred and fifty yards or just out of the shot of
+such guns as we had in those days, they halted and began singing
+again--
+
+ "Yonder is the kraal of the white man--a little kraal, my brothers;
+  We shall eat it up, we shall trample it flat, my brothers.
+  But where are the white man's cattle--where are his oxen, my brothers?"
+
+This question seemed to puzzle them a good deal, for they sang the
+song again and again. At last a herald came forward, a great man with
+ivory rings about his arm, and, putting his hands to his mouth, called
+out to us asking where our cattle were.
+
+Hans Botha climbed on to the top of a waggon and roared out that they
+might answer that question themselves.
+
+Then the herald called again, saying that he saw the cattle had been
+sent away.
+
+"We shall go and find the cattle," he said, "then we shall come and
+kill you, because without cattle you must stop where you are, but if
+we wait to kill you before we get the cattle, they may have trekked
+too far for us to follow. And if you try to run away we shall easily
+catch you white men!"
+
+This struck me as a very odd speech, for the Zulus generally attack an
+enemy first and take his cattle afterwards; still, there was a certain
+amount of plausibility about it. While I was still wondering what it
+all might mean, the Zulus began to run past us in companies towards
+the river. Suddenly a shout announced that they had found the spoor of
+the cattle, and the whole Impi of them started down it at a run till
+they vanished over a rise about a quarter of a mile away.
+
+We waited for half an hour or more, but nothing could we see of them.
+
+"Now I wonder if the devils have really gone," said Hans Botha to me.
+"It is very strange."
+
+"I will go and see," said Indaba-zimbi, "if you will come with me,
+Macumazahn. We can creep to the top of the ridge and look over."
+
+At first I hesitated, but curiosity overcame me. I was young in those
+days and weary with suspense.
+
+"Very well," I said, "we will go."
+
+So we started. I had my elephant gun and ammunition. Indaba-zimbi had
+his medicine bag and an assegai. We crept to the top of the rise like
+sportsmen stalking a buck. The slope on the other side was strewn with
+rocks, among which grew bushes and tall grass.
+
+"They must have gone down the Donga," I said to Indaba-zimbi, "I can't
+see one of them."
+
+As I spoke there came a roar of men all round me. From every rock,
+from every tuft of grass rose a Zulu warrior. Before I could turn,
+before I could lift a gun, I was seized and thrown.
+
+"Hold him! Hold the White Spirit fast!" cried a voice. "Hold him, or
+he will slip away like a snake. Don't hurt him, but hold him fast. Let
+Indaba-zimbi walk by his side."
+
+I turned on Indaba-zimbi. "You black devil, you have betrayed me!" I
+cried.
+
+"Wait and see, Macumazahn," he answered, coolly. "Now the fight is
+going to begin."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE END OF THE LAAGER
+
+I gasped with wonder and rage. What did that scoundrel Indaba-zimbi
+mean? Why had I been drawn out of the laager and seized, and why,
+being seized, was I not instantly killed? They called me the "White
+Spirit." Could it be that they were keeping me to make me into
+medicine? I had heard of such things being done by Zulus and kindred
+tribes, and my blood ran cold at the thought. What an end! To be
+pounded up, made medicine of, and eaten!
+
+However, I had little time for further reflection, for now the whole
+Impi was pouring back from the donga and river-banks where it had
+hidden while their ruse was carried out, and once more formed up on
+the side of the slope. I was taken to the crest of the slope and
+placed in the centre of the reserve line in the especial charge of a
+huge Zulu named Bombyane, the same man who had come forward as a
+herald. This brute seemed to regard me with an affectionate curiosity.
+Now and again he poked me in the ribs with the handle of his assegai,
+as though to assure himself that I was solid, and several times he
+asked me to be so good as to prophesy how many Zulus would be killed
+before the "Amaboona," as they called the Boers, were "eaten up."
+
+At first I took no notice of him beyond scowling, but presently,
+goaded into anger, I prophesied that he would be dead in an hour!
+
+He only laughed aloud. "Oh! White Spirit," he said, "is it so? Well,
+I've walked a long way from Zululand, and shall be glad of a rest."
+
+And he got it shortly, as will be seen.
+
+Now the Zulus began to sing again--
+
+ "We have caught the White Spirit, my brother! my brother!
+  Iron-Tongue whispered of him, he smelt him out, my brother.
+  Now the Maboona are ours--they are already dead, my brother."
+
+So that treacherous villain Indaba-zimbi had betrayed me. Suddenly the
+chief of the Impi, a grey-haired man named Sususa, held up his
+assegai, and instantly there was silence. Then he spoke to some
+indunas who stood near him. Instantly they ran to the right and left
+down the first line, saying a word to the captain of each company as
+they passed him. Presently they were at the respective ends of the
+line, and simultaneously held up their spears. As they did so, with an
+awful roar of "Bulala Amaboona"--"Slay the Boers," the entire line,
+numbering nearly a thousand men, bounded forward like a buck startled
+from its form, and rushed down upon the little laager. It was a
+splendid sight to see them, their assegais glittering in the sunlight
+as they rose and fell above their black shields, their war-plumes
+bending back upon the wind, and their fierce faces set intently on the
+foe, while the solid earth shook beneath the thunder of their rushing
+feet. I thought of my poor friends the Dutchmen, and trembled. What
+chance had they against so many?
+
+Now the Zulus, running in the shape of a bow so as to wrap the laager
+round on three sides, were within seventy yards, and now from every
+waggon broke tongues of fire. Over rolled a number of the Umtetwa, but
+the rest cared little. Forward they sped straight to the laager,
+striving to force a way in. But the Boers plied them with volley after
+volley, and, packed as the Zulus were, the elephant guns loaded with
+slugs and small shot did frightful execution. Only one man even got on
+to a waggon, and as he did so I saw a Boer woman strike him on the
+head with an axe. He fell down, and slowly, amid howls of derision
+from the two lines on the hill-side, the Zulus drew back.
+
+"Let us go, father!" shouted the soldiers on the slope, among whom I
+was, to their chief, who had come up. "You have sent out the little
+girls to fight, and they are frightened. Let us show them the way."
+
+"No, no!" the chief Sususa answered, laughing. "Wait a minute and the
+little girls will grow to women, and women are good enough to fight
+against Boers!"
+
+The attacking Zulus heard the mockery of their fellows, and rushed
+forward again with a roar. But the Boers in the laager had found time
+to load, and they met with a warm reception. Reserving their fire till
+the Zulus were packed like sheep in a kraal, they loosed into them
+with the roers, and the warriors fell in little heaps. But I saw that
+the blood of the Umtetwas was up; they did not mean to be beaten back
+this time, and the end was near. See! six men had leapt on to a
+waggon, slain the man behind it, and sprung into the laager. They were
+killed there, but others followed, and then I turned my head. But I
+could not shut my ears to the cries of rage and death, and the
+terrible /S'gee! S'gee!/ of the savages as they did their work of
+murder. Once only I looked up and saw poor Hans Botha standing on a
+waggon smiting down men with the butt of his rifle. The assegais shot
+up towards him like tongues of steel, and when I looked again he was
+gone.
+
+I turned sick with fear and rage. But alas! what could I do? They were
+all dead now, and probably my own turn was coming, only my death with
+not be so swift.
+
+The fight was ended, and the two lines on the slope broke their order,
+and moved down to the laager. Presently we were there, and a dreadful
+sight it was. Many of the attacking Zulus were dead--quite fifty I
+should say, and at least a hundred and fifty were wounded, some of
+them mortally. The chief Sususa gave an order, the dead men were
+picked up and piled in a heap, while those who were slightly hurt
+walked off to find some one to tie up their wounds. But the more
+serious cases met with a different treatment. The chief or one of his
+indunas considered each case, and if it was in any way bad, the man
+was taken up and thrown into the river which ran near. None of them
+offered any objection, though one poor fellow swam to shore again. He
+did not stop there long, however, for they pushed him back and drowned
+him by force.
+
+The strangest case of all was that of the chief's own brother. He had
+been captain of the line, and his ankle was smashed by a bullet.
+Sususa came up to him, and, having examined the wound, rated him
+soundly for failing in the first onslaught.
+
+The poor fellow made the excuse that it was not his fault, as the
+Boers had hit him in the first rush. His brother admitted the truth of
+this, and talked to him amicably.
+
+"Well," he said at length, offering him a pinch of snuff, "you cannot
+walk again."
+
+"No, chief," said the wounded man, looking at his ankle.
+
+"And to-morrow we must walk far," went on Sususa.
+
+"Yes, chief."
+
+"Say, then, will you sit here on the veldt, or----" and he nodded
+towards the river.
+
+The man dropped his head on his breast for a minute as though in
+thought. Presently he lifted it and looked Sususa straight in the
+face.
+
+"My ankle pains me, my brother," he said; "I think I will go back to
+Zululand, for there is the only kraal I wish to see again, even if I
+creep about it like a snake."[*]
+
+[*] The Zulus believe that after death their spirits enter into the
+    bodies of large green snakes, which glide about the kraals. To
+    kill these snakes is sacrilege.
+
+"It is well, my brother," said the chief. "Rest softly," and having
+shaken hands with him, he gave an order to one of the indunas, and
+turned away.
+
+Then men came, and, supporting the wounded man, led him down to the
+banks of the stream. Here, at his request, they tied a heavy stone
+round his neck, and then threw him into a deep pool. I saw the whole
+sad scene, and the victim never even winced. It was impossible not to
+admire the extraordinary courage of the man, or to avoid being struck
+with the cold-blooded cruelty of his brother the chief. And yet the
+act was necessary from his point of view. The man must either die
+swiftly, or be left to perish of starvation, for no Zulu force will
+encumber itself with wounded men. Years of merciless warfare had so
+hardened these people that they looked on death as nothing, and were,
+to do them justice, as willing to meet it themselves as to inflict it
+on others. When this very Impi had been sent out by the Zulu King
+Dingaan, it consisted of some nine thousand men. Now it numbered less
+than three; all the rest were dead. They, too, would probably soon be
+dead. What did it matter? They lived by war to die in blood. It was
+their natural end. "Kill till you are killed." That is the motto of
+the Zulu soldier. It has the merit of simplicity.
+
+Meanwhile the warriors were looting the waggons, including my own,
+having first thrown all the dead Boers into a heap. I looked at the
+heap; all of them were there, including the two stout fraus, poor
+things. But I missed one body, that of Hans Botha's daughter, little
+Tota. A wild hope came into my heart that she might have escaped; but
+no, it was not possible. I could only pray that she was already at
+rest.
+
+Just then the great Zulu, Bombyane, who had left my side to indulge in
+the congenial occupation of looting, came out of a waggon crying that
+he had got the "little white one." I looked; he was carrying the child
+Tota, gripping her frock in one of his huge black hands. He stalked up
+to where we were, and held the child before the chief. "Is it dead,
+father?" he said, with a laugh.
+
+Now, as I could well see, the child was not dead, but had been hidden
+away, and fainted with fear.
+
+The chief glanced at it carelessly, and said--
+
+"Find out with your kerrie."
+
+Acting on this hint the black devil held up the child, and was about
+to kill it with his knobstick. This was more than I could bear. I
+sprang at him and struck him with all my force in the face, little
+caring if I was speared or not. He dropped Tota on the ground.
+
+"Ou!" he said, putting his hand to his nose, "the White Spirit has a
+hard fist. Come, Spirit, I will fight you for the child."
+
+The soldiers cheered and laughed. "Yes! yes!" they said, "let Bombyane
+fight the White Spirit for the child. Let them fight with assegais."
+
+For a moment I hesitated. What chance had I against this black giant?
+But I had promised poor Hans to save the child if I could, and what
+did it matter? As well die now as later. However, I had wit enough
+left to make a favour of it, and intimated to the chief through
+Indaba-zimbi that I was quite willing to condescend to kill Bombyane,
+on condition that if I did so the child's life should be given to me.
+Indaba-zimbi interpreted my words, but I noticed that he would not
+look on me as he spoke, but covered his face with his hands and spoke
+of me as "the ghost" or the "son of the spirit." For some reason that
+I have never quite understood, the chief consented to the duel. I
+fancy it was because he believed me to be more than mortal, and was
+anxious to see the last of Bombyane.
+
+"Let them fight," he said. "Give them assegais and no shields; the
+child shall be to him who conquers."
+
+"Yes! yes!" cried the soldiers. "Let them fight. Don't be afraid,
+Bombyane; if he is a spirit, he's a very small one."
+
+"I never was frightened of man or beast, and I am not going to run
+away from a White Ghost," answered the redoubtable Bombyane, as he
+examined the blade of his great bangwan or stabbing assegai.
+
+Then they made a ring round us, gave me a similar assegai, and set us
+some ten paces apart. I kept my face as calm as I could, and tried to
+show no signs of fear, though in my heart I was terribly afraid.
+Humanly speaking, my doom was on me. The giant warrior before me had
+used the assegai from a child--I had no experience of the weapon.
+Moreover, though I was quick and active, he must have been at least
+twice as strong as I am. However, there was no help for it, so,
+setting my teeth, I grasped the great spear, breathed a prayer, and
+waited.
+
+The giant stood awhile looking at me, and, as he stood, Indaba-zimbi
+walked across the ring behind me, muttering as he passed, "Keep cool,
+Macumazahn, and wait for him. I will make it all right."
+
+As I had not the slightest intention of commencing the fray, I thought
+this good advice, though how Indaba-zimbi could "make it all right" I
+failed to see.
+
+Heavens! how long that half-minute seemed! It happened many years ago,
+but the whole scene rises up before my eyes as I write. There behind
+us was the blood-stained laager, and near it lay the piles of dead;
+round us was rank upon rank of plumed savages, standing in silence to
+wait the issue of the duel, and in the centre stood the grey-haired
+chief and general, Sususa, in all his war finery, a cloak of leopard
+skin upon his shoulders. At his feet lay the senseless form of little
+Tota, to my left squatted Indaba-zimbi, nodding his white lock and
+muttering something--probably spells; while in front was my giant
+antagonist, his spear aloft and his plumes wavering in the gentle
+wind. Then over all, over grassy slope, river, and koppie, over the
+waggons of the laager, the piles of dead, the dense masses of the
+living, the swooning child, over all shone the bright impartial sun,
+looking down like the indifferent eye of Heaven upon the loveliness of
+nature and the cruelty of man. Down by the river grew thorn-trees, and
+from them floated the sweet scent of the mimosa flower, and came the
+sound of cooing turtle-doves. I never smell the one or hear the other
+without the scene flashing into my mind again, complete in its every
+detail.
+
+Suddenly, without a sound, Bombyane shook his assegai and rushed
+straight at me. I saw his huge form come; like a man in a dream, I saw
+the broad spear flash on high; now he was on me! Then, prompted to it
+by some providential impulse--or had the spells of Indaba-zimbi
+anything to do with the matter?--I dropped to my knee, and quick as
+light stretched out my spear. He drove at me: the blade passed over my
+head. I felt a weight on my assegai; it was wrenched from my hand; his
+great limbs knocked against me. I glanced round. Bombyane was
+staggering along with head thrown back and outstretched arms from
+which his spear had fallen. His spear had fallen, but the blade of
+mine stood out between his shoulders--I had transfixed him. He
+stopped, swung slowly round as though to look at me: then with a sigh
+the giant sank down--/dead/.
+
+For a moment there was silence; then a great cry rose--a cry of
+"Bombyane is dead. The White Spirit has slain Bombyane. Kill the
+wizard, kill the ghost who has slain Bombyane by witchcraft."
+
+Instantly I was surrounded by fierce faces, and spears flashed before
+my eyes. I folded my arms and stood calmly waiting the end. In a
+moment it would have come, for the warriors were mad at seeing their
+champion overthrown thus easily. But presently through the tumult I
+heard the high, cracked voice of Indaba-zimbi.
+
+"Stand back, you fools!" it cried; "can a spirit then be killed?"
+
+"Spear him! spear him!" they roared in fury. "Let us see if he is a
+spirit. How did a spirit slay Bombyane with an assegai? Spear him,
+rain-maker, and we shall see."
+
+"Stand back," cried Indaba-zimbi again, "and I will show you if he can
+be killed. I will kill him myself, and call him back to life again
+before your eyes."
+
+"Macumazahn, trust me," he whispered in my ear in the Sisutu tongue,
+which the Zulus did not understand. "Trust me; kneel on the grass
+before me, and when I strike at you with the spear, roll over like one
+dead; then, when you hear my voice again, get up. Trust me--it is your
+only hope."
+
+Having no choice I nodded my head in assent, though I had not the
+faintest idea of what he was about to do. The tumult lessened
+somewhat, and once more the warriors drew back.
+
+"Great White Spirit--Spirit of victory," said Indaba-zimbi, addressing
+me aloud, and covering his eyes with his hand, "hear me and forgive
+me. These children are blind with folly, and think thee mortal because
+thou hast dealt death upon a mortal who dared to stand against thee.
+Deign to kneel down before me and let me pierce thy heart with this
+spear, then when I call upon thee, arise unhurt."
+
+I knelt down, not because I wished to, but because I must. I had not
+overmuch faith in Indaba-zimbi, and thought it probable that he was in
+truth about to make an end of me. But really I was so worn out with
+fears, and the horrors of the night and day had so shaken my nerves,
+that I did not greatly care what befell me. When I had been kneeling
+thus for about half a minute Indaba-zimbi spoke.
+
+"People of the Umtetwa, children of T'Chaka," he said, "draw back a
+little way, lest an evil fall on you, for now the air is thick with
+ghosts."
+
+They drew back a space, leaving us in a circle about twelve yards in
+diameter.
+
+"Look on him who kneels before you," went on Indaba-zimbi, "and listen
+to my words, to the words of the witch-finder, the words of the rain-
+maker, Indaba-zimbi, whose fame is known to you. He seems to be a
+young man, does he not? I tell you, children of the Umtetwa, he is no
+man. He is the Spirit who gives victory to the white men, he it is who
+gave them assegais that thunder and taught them how to slay. Why were
+the Impis of Dingaan rolled back at the Blood River? Because /he/ was
+there. Why did the Amaboona slay the people of Mosilikatze by the
+thousand? Because /he/ was there. And so I say to you that, had I not
+drawn him from the laager by my magic but three hours ago, you would
+have been conquered--yes, you would have been blown away like the dust
+before the wind; you would have been burnt up like the dry grass in
+the winter when the fire is awake among it. Ay, because he had but
+been there many of your bravest were slain in overcoming a few--a
+pinch of men who could be counted on the fingers. But because I loved
+you, because your chief Sususa is my half-brother--for had we not one
+father?--I came to you, I warned you. Then you prayed me and I drew
+the Spirit forth. But you were not satisfied when the victory was
+yours, when the Spirit, of all you had taken asked but one little
+thing--a white child to take away and sacrifice to himself, to make
+the medicine of his magic of----"
+
+Here I could hardly restrain myself from interrupting, but thought
+better of it.
+
+"You said him nay; you said, 'Let him fight with our bravest man, let
+him fight with Bombyane the giant for the child.' And he deigned to
+slay Bombyane as you have seen, and now you say, 'Slay him; he is no
+spirit.' Now I will show you if he is a spirit, for I will slay him
+before your eyes, and call him to life again. But you have brought
+this upon yourselves. Had you believed, had you offered no insult to
+the Spirit, he would have stayed with you, and you should have become
+unconquerable. Now he will arise and leave you, and woe be on you if
+you try to stay him.
+
+"Now all men," he went on, "look for a space upon this assegai that I
+hold up," and he lifted the bangwan of the deceased Bombyane high
+above his head so that all the multitude could see it. Every eye was
+fixed upon the broad bright spear. For a while he held it still, then
+he moved it round and round in a circle, muttering as he did so, and
+still their gaze followed it. For my part, I watched his movements
+with the greatest anxiety. That assegai had already been nearer my
+person than I found at all pleasant, and I had no desire to make a
+further acquaintance with it. Nor, indeed, was I sure that Indaba-
+zimbi was not really going to kill me. I could not understand his
+proceedings at all, and at the best I did not relish playing the
+/corpus vile/ to his magical experiments.
+
+"/Look! look! look!/" he screamed.
+
+Then suddenly the great spear flashed down towards my breast. I felt
+nothing, but, to my sight, it seemed as though it had passed through
+me.
+
+"See!" roared the Zulus. "Indaba-zimbi has speared him; the red
+assegai stands out behind his back."
+
+"Roll over, Macumazahn," Indaba-zimbi hissed in my ear, "roll over and
+pretend to die--quick! quick!"
+
+I lost no time in following these strange instructions, but falling on
+to my side, threw my arms wide, kicked my legs about, and died as
+artistically as I could. Presently I gave a stage shiver and lay
+still.
+
+"See!" said the Zulus, "he is dead, the Spirit is dead. Look at the
+blood upon the assegai!"
+
+"Stand back! stand back!" cried Indaba-zimbi, "or the ghost will haunt
+you. Yes, he is dead, and now I will call him back to life again.
+Look!" and putting down his hand, he plucked the spear from wherever
+it was fixed, and held it aloft. "The spear is red, is it not? Watch,
+men, watch! /it grows white!/"
+
+"Yes, it grows white," they said. "Ou! it grows white."
+
+"It grows white because the blood returns to whence it came," said
+Indaba-zimbi. "Now, great Spirit, hear me. Thou art dead, the breath
+has gone out of thy mouth. Yet hear me and arise. Awake, White Spirit,
+awake and show thy power. Awake! arise unhurt!"
+
+I began to respond cheerfully to this imposing invocation.
+
+"Not so fast, Macumazahn," whispered Indaba-zimbi.
+
+I took the hint, and first held up my arm, then lifted my head and let
+it fall again.
+
+"He lives! by the head of T'Chaka he lives!" roared the soldiers,
+stricken with mortal fear.
+
+Then slowly and with the greatest dignity I gradually arose, stretched
+my arms, yawned like one awaking from heavy sleep, turned and looked
+upon them unconcernedly. While I did so, I noticed that old Indaba-
+zimbi was almost fainting from exhaustion. Beads of perspiration stood
+upon his brow, his limbs trembled, and his breast heaved.
+
+As for the Zulus, they waited for no more. With a howl of terror the
+whole regiment turned and fled across the rise, so that presently we
+were left alone with the dead, and the swooning child.
+
+"How on earth did you do that, Indaba-zimbi?" I asked in amaze.
+
+"Do not ask me, Macumazahn," he gasped. "You white men are very
+clever, but you don't quite know everything. There are men in the
+world who can make people believe they see things which they do not
+see. Let us be going while we may, for when those Umtetwas have got
+over their fright, they will come back to loot the waggons, and then
+perhaps /they/ will begin asking questions that I can't answer."
+
+And here I may as well state that I never got any further information
+on this matter from old Indaba-zimbi. But I have my theory, and here
+it is for whatever it may be worth. I believe that Indaba-zimbi
+/mesmerized/ the whole crowd of onlookers, myself included, making
+them believe that they saw the assegai in my heart, and the blood upon
+the blade. The reader may smile and say, "Impossible;" but I would ask
+him how the Indian jugglers do their tricks unless it is by mesmerism.
+The spectators /seem/ to see the boy go under the basket and there
+pierced with daggers, they /seem/ to see women in a trance supported
+in mid-air upon the point of a single sword. In themselves these
+things are not possible, they violate the laws of nature, as those
+laws are known to us, and therefore must surely be illusion. And so
+through the glamour thrown upon them by Indaba-zimbi's will, that Zulu
+Impi seemed to see me transfixed with an assegai which never touched
+me. At least, that is my theory; if any one has a better, let him
+adopt it. The explanation lies between illusion and magic of a most
+imposing character, and I prefer to accept the first alternative.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+STELLA
+
+I was not slow to take Indaba-zimbi's hint. About a hundred and fifty
+yards to the left of the laager was a little dell where I had hidden
+my horse, together with one belonging to the Boers, and my saddle and
+bridle. Thither we went, I carrying the swooning Tota in my arms. To
+our joy we found the horses safe, for the Zulus had not seen them.
+Now, of course, they were our only means of locomotion, for the oxen
+had been sent away, and even had they been there we could not have
+found time to inspan them. I laid Tota down, caught my horse, undid
+his knee halter, and saddled up. As I was doing so a thought struck
+me, and I told Indaba-zimbi to run to the laager and see if he could
+find my double-barrelled gun and some powder and shot, for I had only
+my elephant "roer" and a few charges of powder and ball with me.
+
+He went, and while he was away, poor little Tota came to herself and
+began to cry, till she saw my face.
+
+"Ah, I have had such a bad dream," she said, in Dutch: "I dreamed that
+the black Kaffirs were going to kill me. Where is my papa?"
+
+I winced at the question. "Your papa has gone on a journey, dear," I
+said, "and left me to look after you. We shall find him one day. You
+don't mind going with Heer Allan, do you?"
+
+"No," she said, a little doubtfully, and began to cry again. Presently
+she remembered that she was thirsty, and asked for water. I led her to
+the river and she drank. "Why is my hand red, Heer Allan?" she asked,
+pointing to the smear of Bombyane's blood-stained fingers.
+
+At this moment I felt very glad that I had killed Bombyane.
+
+"It is only paint, dear," I said; "see, we will wash it and your
+face."
+
+As I was doing this, Indaba-zimbi returned. The guns were all gone; he
+said the Zulus had taken them and the powder. But he had found some
+things and brought them in a sack. There was a thick blanket, about
+twenty pounds weight of biltong or sun-dried meat, a few double-
+handfuls of biscuits, two water-bottles, a tin pannikin, some matches
+and sundries.
+
+"And now, Macumazahn," he said, "we had best be going, for those
+Umtetwas are coming back. I saw one of them on the brow of the rise."
+
+That was enough for me. I lifted little Tota on to the bow of my
+saddle, climbed into it, and rode off, holding her in front of me.
+Indaba-zimbi slipped a reim into the mouth of the best of the Boer
+horses, threw of the sack of sundries on to its back and mounted also,
+holding the elephant gun in his hand. We went eight or nine hundred
+yards in silence till we were quite out of range of sight from the
+waggons, which were in a hollow. Then I pulled up, with such a feeling
+of thankfulness in my heart as cannot be told in words; for now I knew
+that, mounted as we were, those black demons could never catch us. But
+where were we to steer for? I put the question to Indaba-zimbi, asking
+him if he thought that we had better try and follow the oxen which we
+had sent away with the Kaffirs and women on the preceding night. He
+shook his head.
+
+"The Umtetwas will go after the oxen presently," he answered, "and we
+have seen enough of them."
+
+"Quite enough," I answered, with enthusiasm; "I never want to see
+another; but where are we to go? Here we are alone with one gun and a
+little girl in the vast and lonely veldt. Which way shall we turn?"
+
+"Our faces were towards the north before we met the Zulus," answered
+Indaba-zimbi; "let us still keep them to the north. Ride on,
+Macumazahn; to-night when we off-saddle I will look into the matter."
+
+So all that long afternoon we rode on, following the course of the
+river. From the nature of the ground we could only go slowly, but
+before sunset I had the satisfaction of knowing that there must be at
+least twenty-five miles between us and those accursed Zulus. Little
+Tota slept most of the way, the motion of the horse was easy, and she
+was worn out.
+
+At last the sunset came, and we off-saddled in a dell by the river.
+There was not much to eat, but I soaked some biscuit in water for
+Tota, and Indaba-zimbi and I made a scanty meal of biltong. When we
+had done I took off Tota's frock, wrapped her up in a blanket near the
+fire we had made, and lit a pipe. I sat there by the side of the
+sleeping orphaned child, and from my heart thanked Providence for
+saving her life and mine from the slaughter of that day. What a
+horrible experience it had been! It seemed like a nightmare to look
+back upon. And yet it was sober fact, one among those many tragedies
+which dotted the paths of the emigrant Boers with the bones of men,
+women, and children. These horrors are almost forgotten now; people
+living in Natal now, for instance, can scarcely realize that some
+forty years ago six hundred white people, many of them women and
+children, were thus massacred by the Impis of Dingaan. But it was so,
+and the name of the district, /Weenen/, or the Place of Weeping, will
+commemorate them for ever.
+
+Then I fell to reflecting on the extraordinary adroitness old Indaba-
+zimbi had shown in saving my life. It appeared that he himself had
+lived among the Umtetwa Zulus in his earlier manhood, and was a noted
+rain-doctor and witch-finder. But when T'Chaka, Dingaan's brother,
+ordered a general massacre of the witch-finders, he alone had saved
+his life by his skill in magic, and ultimately fled south for reasons
+too long to set out here. When he heard, therefore, that the regiment
+was an Umtetwa regiment, which, leaving their wives and children, had
+broken away from Zululand to escape the cruelties of Dingaan; under
+pretence of spying on them, he took the bold course of going straight
+up to the chief, Sususa, and addressing him as his brother, which he
+was. The chief knew him at once, and so did the soldiers, for his fame
+was still great among them. Then he told them his cock and bull story
+about my being a white spirit, whose presence in the laager would
+render it invincible, and with the object of saving my life in the
+slaughter which he knew must ensue, agreed to charm me out of the
+laager and deliver me into their keeping. How the plan worked has
+already been told; it was a risky one; still, but for it my troubles
+would have been done with these many days.
+
+So I lay and thought with a heart full of gratitude, and as I did so
+saw old Indaba-zimbi sitting by the fire and going through some
+mysterious performances with bones which he produced from his bag, and
+ashes mixed with water. I spoke to him and asked what he was about. He
+replied that he was tracing out the route that we should follow. I
+felt inclined to answer "bosh!" but remembering the very remarkable
+instances which he had given of his prowess in occult matters I held
+my tongue, and taking little Tota into my arms, worn out with toil and
+danger and emotion, I went to sleep.
+
+I awoke just as the dawn was beginning to flame across the sky in
+sheets of primrose and of gold, or rather it was little Tota who woke
+me by kissing me as she lay between sleep and waking, and calling me
+"papa." It wrung my heart to hear her, poor orphaned child. I got up,
+washed and dressed her as best I could, and we breakfasted as we had
+supped, on biltong and biscuit. Tota asked for milk, but I had none to
+give her. Then we caught the horses, and I saddled mine.
+
+"Well, Indaba-zimbi," I said, "now what path do your bones point to?"
+
+"Straight north," he said. "The journey will be hard, but in about
+four days we shall come to the kraal of a white man, an Englishman,
+not a Boer. His kraal is in a beautiful place, and there is a great
+peak behind it where there are many baboons."
+
+I looked at him. "This is all nonsense, Indaba-zimbi," I said.
+"Whoever heard of an Englishman building a house in these wilds, and
+how do you know anything about it? I think that we had better strike
+east towards Port Natal."
+
+"As you like, Macumazahn," he answered, "but it will take us three
+months' journey to get to Port Natal, if we ever get there, and the
+child will die on the road. Say, Macumazahn, have my words come true
+heretofore, or have they not? Did I not tell you not to hunt the
+elephants on horseback? Did I not tell you to take one waggon with you
+instead of two, as it is better to lose one than two?"
+
+"You told me all these things," I answered.
+
+"And so I tell you now to ride north, Macumazahn, for there you will
+find great happiness--yes, and great sorrow. But no man should run
+away from happiness because of the sorrow. As you will, as you will!"
+
+Again I looked at him. In his divinations I did not believe, yet I
+came to the conclusion that he was speaking what he knew to be the
+truth. It struck me as possible that he might have heard of some white
+man living like a hermit in the wilds, but preferring to keep up his
+prophetic character would not say so.
+
+"Very well, Indaba-zimbi," I said, "let us ride north."
+
+Shortly after we started, the river we had followed hitherto turned
+off in a westerly direction, so we left it. All that day we rode
+across rolling uplands, and about an hour before sunset halted at a
+little stream which ran down from a range of hills in front of us. By
+this time I was heartily tired of the biltong, so taking my elephant
+rifle--for I had nothing else--I left Tota with Indaba-zimbi, and
+started to try if I could shoot something. Oddly enough we had seen no
+game all the day, nor did we see any on the subsequent days. For some
+mysterious reason they had temporarily left the district. I crossed
+the little streamlet in order to enter the belt of thorns which grew
+upon the hill-side beyond, for there I hoped to find buck. As I did so
+I was rather disturbed to see the spoor of two lions in the soft sandy
+edge of a pool. Breathing a hope that they might not still be in the
+neighbourhood, I went on into the belt of scattered thorns. For a long
+while I hunted about without seeing anything, except one duiker buck,
+which bounded off with a crash from the other side of a stone without
+giving me a chance. At length, just as it grew dusk, I spied a Petie
+buck, a graceful little creature, scarcely bigger than a large hare,
+standing on a stone, about forty yards from me. Under ordinary
+circumstances I should never have dreamed of firing at such a thing,
+especially with an elephant gun, but we were hungry. So I sat down
+with my back against a rock, and aimed steadily at its head. I did
+this because if I struck it in the body the three-ounce ball would
+have knocked it to bits. At last I pulled the trigger, the gun went
+off with the report of a small cannon, and the buck disappeared. I ran
+to the spot with more anxiety than I should have felt in an ordinary
+way over a koodoo or an eland. To my delight there the little creature
+lay--the huge bullet had decapitated it. Considering all the
+circumstances I do not think I have often made a better shot than
+this, but if any one doubts, let him try his hand at a rabbit's head
+fifty yards away with an elephant gun and a three-ounce ball.
+
+I picked up the Petie in triumph, and returned to the camp. There we
+skinned him and toasted his flesh over the fire. He just made a good
+meal for us, though we kept the hind legs for breakfast.
+
+There was no moon this night, and so it chanced that when I suddenly
+remembered about the lion spoor, and suggested that we had better tie
+up the horses quite close to us, we could not find them, though we
+knew they were grazing within fifty yards. This being so we could only
+make up the fire and take our chance. Shortly afterwards I went to
+sleep with little Tota in my arms. Suddenly I was awakened by hearing
+that peculiarly painful sound, the scream of a horse, quite close to
+the fire, which was still burning brightly. Next second there came a
+noise of galloping hoofs, and before I could even rise my poor horse
+appeared in the ring of firelight. As in a flash of lightning I saw
+his staring eyes and wide-stretched nostrils, and the broken reim with
+which he had been knee-haltered, flying in the air. Also I saw
+something else, for on his back was a great dark form with glowing
+eyes, and from the form came a growling sound. It was a lion.
+
+The horse dashed on. He galloped right through the fire, for which he
+had run in his terror, fortunately, however, without treading on us,
+and vanished into the night. We heard his hoofs for a hundred yards or
+more, then there was silence, broken now and again by distant growls.
+As may be imagined, we did not sleep any more that night, but waited
+anxiously till the dawn broke, two hours later.
+
+As soon as there was sufficient light we rose, and, leaving Tota still
+asleep, crept cautiously in the direction in which the horse had
+vanished. When we had gone fifty yards or so, we made out its remains
+lying on the veldt, and caught sight of two great cat-like forms
+slinking away in the grey light.
+
+To go any further was useless; we knew all about it now, so we turned
+to look for the other horse. But our cup of misfortune was not yet
+full; the horse was nowhere to be found. Terrified by the sight and
+smell of the lions, it had with a desperate effort also burst the reim
+with which it had been knee-haltered, and galloped far away. I sat
+down, feeling as though I could cry like a woman. For now we were left
+alone in these vast solitudes without a horse to carry us, and with a
+child who was not old enough to walk for more than a little way at a
+time.
+
+Well, it was no use giving in, so with a few words we went back to our
+camp, where I found Tota crying because she had woke to find herself
+alone. Then we ate a little food and prepared to start. First we
+divided such articles as we must take with us into two equal parts,
+rejecting everything that we could possibly do without. Then, by an
+afterthought, we filled our water-bottles, though at the time I was
+rather against doing so, because of the extra weight. But Indaba-zimbi
+overruled me in the matter, fortunately for all three of us. I settled
+to look after Tota for the first march, and to give the elephant gun
+to Indaba-zimbi. At length all was ready, and we set out on foot. By
+the help of occasional lifts over rough places, Tota managed to walk
+up the slope of the hill-side where I had shot the Petie buck. At
+length we reached it, and, looking at the country beyond, I gave an
+exclamation of dismay. To say that it was desert would be saying too
+much; it was more like the Karroo in the Cape--a vast sandy waste,
+studded here and there with low shrubs and scattered rocks. But it was
+a great expanse of desolate land, stretching further than the eye
+could reach, and bordered far away by a line of purple hills, in the
+centre of which a great solitary peak soared high into the air.
+
+"Indaba-zimbi," I said, "we can never cross this if we take six days."
+
+"As you will, Macumazahn," he answered; "but I tell you that there"--
+and he pointed to the peak--"there the white man lives. Turn which way
+you like, but if you turn you will perish."
+
+I reflected for a moment, Our case was, humanly speaking, almost
+hopeless. It mattered little which way we went. We were alone, almost
+without food, with no means of transport, and a child to carry. As
+well perish in the sandy waste as on the rolling veldt or among the
+trees of the hill-side. Providence alone could save us, and we must
+trust to Providence.
+
+"Come on," I said, lifting Tota on to my back, for she was already
+tired. "All roads lead to rest."
+
+How am I to describe the misery of the next four days? How am I to
+tell how we stumbled on through that awful desert, almost without
+food, and quite without water, for there were no streams, and we saw
+no springs? We soon found how the case was, and saved almost all the
+water in our bottles for the child. To look back on it is like a
+nightmare. I can scarcely bear to dwell on it. Day after day, by turns
+carrying the child through the heavy sand; night after night lying
+down in the scrub, chewing the leaves, and licking such dew as there
+was from the scanty grass! Not a spring, not a pool, not a head of
+game! It was the third night; we were nearly mad with thirst. Tota was
+in a comatose condition. Indaba-zimbi still had a little water in his
+bottle--perhaps a wine-glassful. With it we moistened our lips and
+blackened tongues. Then we gave the rest to the child. It revived her.
+She awoke from her swoon to sink into sleep.
+
+See, the dawn was breaking. The hills were not more than eight miles
+or so away now, and they were green. There must be water there.
+
+"Come," I said.
+
+Indaba-zimbi lifted Tota into the kind of sling that we had made out
+of the blanket in which to carry her on our backs, and we staggered on
+for an hour through the sand. She awoke crying for water, and alas! we
+had none to give her; our tongues were hanging from our lips, we could
+scarcely speak.
+
+We rested awhile, and Tota mercifully swooned away again. Then Indaba-
+zimbi took her. Though he was so thin the old man's strength was
+wonderful.
+
+Another hour; the slope of the great peak could not be more than two
+miles away now. A couple of hundred yards off grew a large baobab
+tree. Could we reach its shade? We had done half the distance when
+Indaba-zimbi fell from exhaustion. We were now so weak that neither of
+us could lift the child on to our backs. He rose again, and we each
+took one of her hands and dragged her along the road. Fifty yards--
+they seemed to be fifty miles. Ah, the tree was reached at last;
+compared with the heat outside, the shade of its dense foliage seemed
+like the dusk and cool of a vault. I remember thinking that it was a
+good place to die in. Then I remember no more.
+
+
+
+I woke with a feeling as though the blessed rain were falling on my
+face and head. Slowly, and with great difficulty, I opened my eyes,
+then shut them again, having seen a vision. For a space I lay thus,
+while the rain continued to fall; I saw now that I must be asleep, or
+off my head with thirst and fever. If I were not off my head how came
+I to imagine that a lovely dark-eyed girl was bending over me
+sprinkling water on my face? A white girl, too, not a Kaffir woman.
+However, the dream went on.
+
+"Hendrika," said a voice in English, the sweetest voice that I had
+ever heard; somehow it reminded me of wind whispering in the trees at
+night. "Hendrika, I fear he dies; there is a flask of brandy in my
+saddle-bag; get it."
+
+"Ah! ah!" grunted a harsh voice in answer; "let him die, Miss Stella.
+He will bring you bad luck--let him die, I say." I felt a movement of
+air above me as though the woman of my vision turned swiftly, and once
+again I opened my eyes. She had risen, this dream woman. Now I saw
+that she was tall and graceful as a reed. She was angry, too; her dark
+eyes flashed, and she pointed with her hand at a female who stood
+before her, dressed in nondescript kind of clothes such as might be
+worn by either a man or a woman. The woman was young, of white blood,
+very short, with bowed legs and enormous shoulders. In face she was
+not bad-looking, but the brow receded, the chin and ears were
+prominent--in short, she reminded me of nothing so much as a very
+handsome monkey. She might have been the missing link.
+
+The lady was pointing at her with her hand. "How dare you?" she said.
+"Are you going to disobey me again? Have you forgotten what I told
+you, Babyan?"[*]
+
+[*] Baboon.
+
+"Ah! ah!" grunted the woman, who seemed literally to curl and shrivel
+up beneath her anger. "Don't be angry with me, Miss Stella, because I
+can't bear it. I only said it because it was true. I will fetch the
+brandy."
+
+Then, dream or no dream, I determined to speak.
+
+"Not brandy," I gasped in English as well as my swollen tongue would
+allow; "give me water."
+
+"Ah, he lives!" cried the beautiful girl, "and he talks English. See,
+sir, here is water in your own bottle; you were quite close to a
+spring, it is on the other side of the tree."
+
+I struggled to a sitting position, lifted the bottle to my lips, and
+drank from it. Oh! that drink of cool, pure water! never had I tasted
+anything so delicious. With the first gulp I felt life flow back into
+me. But wisely enough she would not let me have much. "No more! no
+more!" she said, and dragged the bottle from me almost by force.
+
+"The child," I said--"is the child dead?"
+
+"I do not know yet," she answered. "We have only just found you, and I
+tried to revive you first."
+
+I turned and crept to where Tota lay by the side of Indaba-zimbi. It
+was impossible to say if they were dead or swooning. The lady
+sprinkled Tota's face with the water, which I watched greedily, for my
+thirst was still awful, while the woman Hendrika did the same office
+for Indaba-zimbi. Presently, to my vast delight, Tota opened her eyes
+and tried to cry, but could not, poor little thing, because her tongue
+and lips were so swollen. But the lady got some water into her mouth,
+and, as in my case, the effect was magical. We allowed her to drink
+about a quarter of a pint, and no more, though she cried bitterly for
+it. Just then old Indaba-zimbi came to with a groan. He opened his
+eyes, glanced round, and took in the situation.
+
+"What did I tell you, Macumazahn?" he gasped, and seizing the bottle,
+he took a long pull at it.
+
+Meanwhile I sat with my back against the trunk of the great tree and
+tried to realize the situation. Looking to my left I saw too good
+horses--one bare-backed, and one with a rudely made lady's saddle on
+it. By the side of the horses were two dogs, of a stout greyhound
+breed, that sat watching us, and near the dogs lay a dead Oribé buck,
+which they had evidently been coursing.
+
+"Hendrika," said the lady presently, "they must not eat meat just yet.
+Go look up the tree and see if there is any ripe fruit on it."
+
+The woman ran swiftly into the plain and obeyed. Presently she
+returned. "I see some ripe fruit," she said, "but it is high, quite at
+the top."
+
+"Fetch it," said the lady.
+
+"Easier said than done," I thought to myself; but I was much mistaken.
+Suddenly the woman bounded at least three feet into the air and caught
+one of the spreading boughs in her large flat hands; then came a swing
+that would have filled an acrobat with envy--and she was on it.
+
+"Now there is an end," I thought again, for the next bough was beyond
+her reach. But again I was mistaken. She stood up on the bough,
+gripping it with her bare feet, and once more sprang at the one above,
+caught it and swung herself into it.
+
+I suppose that the lady saw my expression of astonishment. "Do not
+wonder, sir," she said, "Hendrika is not like other people. She will
+not fall."
+
+I made no answer, but watched the progress of this extraordinary
+person with the most breathless interest. On she went, swinging
+herself from bough to bough, and running along them like a monkey. At
+last she reached the top, and began to swarm up a thin branch towards
+the ripe fruit. When she was near enough she shook the branch
+violently. There was a crack--a crash--it broke. I shut my eyes,
+expecting to see her crushed on the ground before me.
+
+"Don't be afraid," said the lady again, laughing gently. "Look, she is
+quite safe."
+
+I looked, and so she was. She had caught a bough as she fell, clung to
+it, and was now calmly dropping to another. Old Indaba-zimbi had also
+watched this performance with interest, but it did not seem to
+astonish him over-much. "Baboon-woman?" he said, as though such people
+were common, and then turned his attention to soothing Tota, who was
+moaning for more water. Meanwhile Hendrika came down the tree with
+extraordinary rapidity, and swinging by one hand from a bough, dropped
+about eight feet to the ground.
+
+In another two minutes we were all three sucking the pulpy fruit. In
+an ordinary way we should have found it tasteless enough: as it was I
+thought it the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. After three
+days spent without food or water, in the desert, one is not
+particular. While we were still eating the fruit, the lady of my
+vision set her companion to work to partially flay the oribé which her
+dogs had killed, and busied herself in making a fire of fallen boughs.
+As soon as it burned brightly she took strips of the oribé flesh,
+toasted them, and gave them to us on leaves. We ate, and now were
+allowed a little more water. After that she took Tota to the spring
+and washed her, which she sadly needed, poor child! Next came our turn
+to wash, and oh, the joy of it!
+
+I came back to the tree, walking painfully, indeed, but a changed man.
+There sat the beautiful girl with Tota on her knees. She was lulling
+her to sleep, and held up her finger to me enjoining silence. At last
+the child went off into a sound natural slumber--an example that I
+should have been glad to follow had it not been for my burning
+curiosity. Then I spoke.
+
+"May I ask what your name is?" I said.
+
+"Stella," she answered.
+
+"Stella what?" I said.
+
+"Stella nothing," she answered, in some pique; "Stella is my name; it
+is short and easy to remember at any rate. My father's name is Thomas,
+and we live up there," and she pointed round the base of the great
+peak. I looked at her astonished. "Have you lived there long?" I
+asked.
+
+"Ever since I was seven years old. We came there in a waggon. Before
+that we came from England--from Oxfordshire; I can show you the place
+on a big map. It is called Garsingham."
+
+Again I thought I must be dreaming. "Do you know, Miss Stella," I
+said, "it is very strange--so strange that it almost seems as though
+it could not be true--but I also came from Garsingham in Oxfordshire
+many years ago."
+
+She started up. "Are you an English gentleman?" she said. "Ah, I have
+always longed to see an English gentleman. I have never seen but one
+Englishman since we lived here, and he certainly was not a gentleman--
+no white people at all, indeed, except a few wandering Boers. We live
+among black people and baboons--only I have read about English people
+--lots of books--poetry and novels. But tell me what is your name?
+Macumazahn the black man called you, but you must have a white name,
+too."
+
+"My name is Allan Quatermain," I said.
+
+Her face turned quite white, her rosy lips parted, and she looked at
+me wildly with her beautiful dark eyes.
+
+"It is wonderful," she said, "but I have often heard that name. My
+father has told me how a little boy called Allan Quatermain once saved
+my life by putting out my dress when it was on fire--see!"--and she
+pointed to a faint red mark upon her neck--"here is the scar of the
+burn."
+
+"I remember it," I said. "You were dressed up as Father Christmas. It
+was I who put out the fire; my wrists were burnt in doing so."
+
+Then for a space we sat silent, looking at each other, while Stella
+slowly fanned herself with her wide felt hat, in which some white
+ostrich plumes were fixed.
+
+"This is God's doing," she said at last. "You saved my life when I was
+a child; now I have saved yours and the little girl's. Is she your own
+daughter?" she added, quickly.
+
+"No," I answered; "I will tell you the tale presently."
+
+"Yes," she said, "you shall tell me as we go home. It is time to be
+starting home, it will take us three hours to get there. Hendrika,
+Hendrika, bring the horses here!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BABOON-WOMAN
+
+Hendrika obeyed, leading the horses to the side of the tree.
+
+"Now, Mr. Allan," said Stella, "you must ride on my horse, and the old
+black man must ride on the other. I will walk, and Hendrika will carry
+the child. Oh, do not be afraid, she is very strong, she could carry
+you or me."
+
+Hendrika grunted assent. I am sorry that I cannot express her method
+of speech by any more polite term. Sometimes she grunted like a
+monkey, sometimes she clicked like a Bushman, and sometimes she did
+both together, when she became quite unintelligible.
+
+I expostulated against this proposed arrangement, saying that we could
+walk, which was a fib, for I do not think that I could have done a
+mile; but Stella would not listen, she would not even let me carry my
+elephant gun, but took it herself. So we mounted with some difficulty,
+and Hendrika took up the sleeping Tota in her long, sinewy arms.
+
+"See that the 'Baboon-woman' does not run away into the mountains with
+the little white one," said Indaba-zimbi to me in Kaffir, as he
+climbed slowly on to the horse.
+
+Unfortunately Hendrika understood his speech. Her face twisted and
+grew livid with fury. She put down Tota and literally sprang at
+Indaba-zimbi as a monkey springs. But weary and worn as he was, the
+old gentleman was too quick for her. With an exclamation of genuine
+fright he threw himself from the horse on the further side, with the
+somewhat ludicrous result that all in a moment Hendrika was occupying
+the seat which he had vacated. Just then Stella realized the position.
+
+"Come down, you savage, come down!" she said, stamping her foot.
+
+The extraordinary creature flung herself from the horse and literally
+grovelled on the ground before her mistress and burst into tears.
+
+"Pardon, Miss Stella," she clicked and grunted in villainous English,
+"but he called me 'Babyan-frau' (Baboon-woman)."
+
+"Tell your servant that he must not use such words to Hendrika, Mr.
+Allan," Stella said to me. "If he does," she added, in a whisper,
+"Hendrika will certainly kill him."
+
+I explained this to Indaba-zimbi, who, being considerably frightened,
+deigned to apologize. But from that hour there was hate and war
+between these two.
+
+Harmony having been thus restored, we started, the dogs following us.
+A small strip of desert intervened between us and the slope of the
+peak--perhaps it was two miles wide. We crossed it and reached rich
+grass lands, for here a considerable stream gathered from the hills;
+but it did not flow across the barren lands, it passed to the east
+along the foot of the hills. This stream we had to cross by a ford.
+Hendrika walked boldly through it, holding Tota in her arms. Stella
+leapt across from stone to stone like a roebuck; I thought to myself
+that she was the most graceful creature that I had ever seen. After
+this the track passed around a pleasantly-wooded shoulder of the peak,
+which was, I found, known as Babyan Kap, or Baboon Head. Of course we
+could only go at a foot pace, so our progress was slow. Stella walked
+for some way in silence, then she spoke.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Allan," she said, "how it was that I came to find you
+dying in the desert?"
+
+So I began and told her all. It took an hour or more to do so, and she
+listened intently, now and again asking a question.
+
+"It is all very wonderful," she said when I had done, "very wonderful
+indeed. Do you know I went out this morning with Hendrika and the dogs
+for a ride, meaning to get back home by mid-day, for my father is ill,
+and I do not like to leave him for long. But just as I was going to
+turn, when we were about where we are now--yes, that was the very bush
+--an oribé got up, and the dogs chased it. I followed them for the
+gallop, and when we came to the river, instead of turning to the left
+as bucks generally do, the oribé swam the stream and took to the Bad
+Lands beyond. I followed it, and within a hundred yards of the big
+tree the dogs killed it. Hendrika wanted to turn back at once, but I
+said that we would rest under the shade of the tree, for I knew that
+there was a spring of water near. Well, we went; and there I saw you
+all lying like dead; but Hendrika, who is very clever in some ways,
+said no--and you know the rest. Yes, it is very wonderful."
+
+"It is indeed," I said. "Now tell me, Miss Stella, who is Hendrika?"
+
+She looked round before answering to see that the woman was not near.
+
+"Hers is a strange story, Mr. Allan. I will tell you. You must know
+that all these mountains and the country beyond are full of baboons.
+When I was a girl of about ten I used to wander a great deal alone in
+the hills and valleys, and watch the baboons as they played among the
+rocks. There was one family of baboons that I watched especially--they
+used to live in a kloof about a mile from the house. The old man
+baboon was very large, and one of the females had a grey face. But the
+reason why I watched them so much was because I saw that they had with
+them a creature that looked like a girl, for her skin was quite white,
+and, what was more, that she was protected from the weather when it
+happened to be cold by a fur belt of some sort, which was tied round
+her throat. The old baboons seemed to be especially fond of her, and
+would sit with their arms round her neck. For nearly a whole summer I
+watched this particular white-skinned baboon till at last my curiosity
+quite overmastered me. I noticed that, though she climbed about the
+cliffs with the other monkeys, at a certain hour a little before
+sundown they used to put her with one or two other much smaller ones
+into a little cave, while the family went off somewhere to get food,
+to the mealie fields, I suppose. Then I got an idea that I would catch
+this white baboon and bring it home. But of course I could not do this
+by myself, so I took a Hottentot--a very clever man when he was not
+drunk--who lived on the stead, into my confidence. He was called
+Hendrik, and was very fond of me; but for a long while he would not
+listen to my plan, because he said that the babyans would kill us. At
+last I bribed him with a knife that had four blades, and one afternoon
+we started, Hendrik carrying a stout sack made of hide, with a rope
+running through it so that the mouth could be drawn tight.
+
+"Well, we got to the place, and, hiding ourselves carefully in the
+trees at the foot of the kloof, watched the baboons playing about and
+grunting to each other, till at length, according to custom, they took
+the white one and three other little babies and put them in the cave.
+Then the old man came out, looked carefully round, called to his
+family, and went off with them over the brow of the kloof. Now very
+slowly and cautiously we crept up over the rocks till we came to the
+mouth of the cave and looked in. All the four little baboons were fast
+asleep, with their backs towards us, and their arms round each other's
+necks, the white one being in the middle. Nothing could have been
+better for our plans. Hendrik, who by this time had quite entered into
+the spirit of the thing, crept along the cave like a snake, and
+suddenly dropped the mouth of the hide bag over the head of the white
+baboon. The poor little thing woke up and gave a violent jump which
+caused it to vanish right into the bag. Then Hendrik pulled the string
+tight, and together we knotted it so that it was impossible for our
+captive to escape. Meanwhile the other baby baboons had rushed from
+the cave screaming, and when we got outside they were nowhere to be
+seen.
+
+"'Come on, Missie,' said Hendrik; 'the babyans will soon be back.' He
+had shouldered the sack, inside of which the white baboon was kicking
+violently, and screaming like a child. It was dreadful to hear its
+shrieks.
+
+"We scrambled down the sides of the kloof and ran for home as fast as
+we could manage. When we were near the waterfall, and within about
+three hundred yards of the garden wall, we heard a voice behind us,
+and there, leaping from rock to rock, and running over the grass, was
+the whole family of baboons headed by the old man.
+
+"'Run, Missie, run!' gasped Hendrik, and I did, like the wind, leaving
+him far behind. I dashed into the garden, where some Kaffirs were
+working, crying, 'The babyans! the babyans!' Luckily the men had their
+sticks and spears by them and ran out just in time to save Hendrik,
+who was almost overtaken. The baboons made a good fight for it,
+however, and it was not till the old man was killed with an assegai
+that they ran away.
+
+"Well, there is a stone hut in the kraal at the stead where my father
+sometimes shuts up natives who have misbehaved. It is very strong, and
+has a barred window. To this hut Hendrik carried the sack, and, having
+untied the mouth, put it down on the floor, and ran from the place,
+shutting the door behind him. In another moment the poor little thing
+was out and dashing round the stone hut as though it were mad. It
+sprung at the bars of the window, clung there, and beat its head
+against them till the blood came. Then it fell to the floor, and sat
+upon it crying like a child, and rocking itself backwards and
+forwards. It was so sad to see it that I began to cry too.
+
+"Just then my father came in and asked what all the fuss was about. I
+told him that we had caught a young white baboon, and he was angry,
+and said that it must be let go. But when he looked at it through the
+bars of the window he nearly fell down with astonishment.
+
+"'Why!' he said, 'this is not a baboon, it is a white child that the
+baboons have stolen and brought up!'
+
+"Now, Mr. Allan, whether my father is right or wrong, you can judge
+for yourself. You see Hendrika--we named her that after Hendrik, who
+caught her--she is a woman, not a monkey, and yet she has many of the
+ways of monkeys, and looks like one too. You saw how she can climb,
+for instance, and you hear how she talks. Also she is very savage, and
+when she is angry or jealous she seems to go mad, though she is as
+clever as anybody. I think that she must have been stolen by the
+baboons when she was quite tiny and nurtured by them, and that is why
+she is so like them.
+
+"But to go on. My father said that it was our duty to keep Hendrika at
+any cost. The worst of it was, that for three days she would eat
+nothing, and I thought that she would die, for all the while she sat
+and wailed. On the third day, however, I went to the bars of the
+window place, and held out a cup of milk and some fruit to her. She
+looked at it for a long while, then crept up moaning, took the milk
+from my hand, drank it greedily, and afterwards ate the fruit. From
+that time forward she took food readily enough, but only if I would
+feed her.
+
+"But I must tell you of the dreadful end of Hendrik. From the day that
+we captured Hendrika the whole place began to swarm with baboons which
+were evidently employed in watching the kraals. One day Hendrik went
+out towards the hills alone to gather some medicine. He did not come
+back again, so the next day search was made. By a big rock which I can
+show you, they found his scattered and broken bones, the fragments of
+his assegai, and four dead baboons. They had set upon him and torn him
+to pieces.
+
+"My father was very much frightened at this, but still he would not
+let Hendrika go, because he said that she was human, and that it was
+our duty to reclaim her. And so we did--to a certain extent, at least.
+After the murder of Hendrik, the baboons vanished from the
+neighbourhood, and have only returned quite recently, so at length we
+ventured to let Hendrika out. By this time she had grown very fond of
+me; still, on the first opportunity she ran away. But in the evening
+she returned again. She had been seeking the baboons, and could not
+find them. Shortly afterwards she began to speak--I taught her--and
+from that time she has loved me so that she will not leave me. I think
+it would kill her if I went away from her. She watches me all day, and
+at night sleeps on the floor of my hut. Once, too, she saved my life
+when I was swept down the river in flood; but she is jealous, and
+hates everybody else. Look, how she is glaring at you now because I am
+talking to you!"
+
+I looked. Hendrika was tramping along with the child in her arms and
+staring at me in a most sinister fashion out of the corners of her
+eyes.
+
+While I was reflecting on the Baboon-woman's strange story, and
+thinking that she was an exceedingly awkward customer, the path took a
+sudden turn.
+
+"Look!" said Stella, "there is our home. Is it not beautiful?"
+
+It was beautiful indeed. Here on the western side of the great peak a
+bay had been formed in the mountain, which might have measured eight
+hundred or a thousand yards across by three-quarters of a mile in
+depth. At the back of this indentation the sheer cliff rose to the
+height of several hundred feet, and behind it and above it the great
+Babyan Peak towered up towards the heavens. The space of ground,
+embraced thus in the arms of the mountain, as it were, was laid out,
+as though by the cunning hand of man, in three terraces that rose one
+above the other. To the right and left of the topmost terrace were
+chasms in the cliff, and down each chasm fell a waterfall, from no
+great height, indeed, but of considerable volume. These two streams
+flowed away on either side of the enclosed space, one towards the
+north, and the other, the course of which we had been following, round
+the base of the mountain. At each terrace they made a cascade, so that
+the traveller approaching had a view of eight waterfalls at once.
+Along the edge of the stream to our left were placed Kaffir kraals,
+built in orderly groups with verandahs, after the Basutu fashion, and
+a very large part of the entire space of land was under cultivation.
+All of this I noted at once, as well as the extraordinary richness and
+depth of the soil, which for many ages past had been washed down from
+the mountain heights. Then following the line of an excellent waggon
+road, on which we now found ourselves, that wound up from terrace to
+terrace, my eye lit upon the crowning wonder of the scene. For in the
+centre of the topmost platform or terrace, which may have enclosed
+eight or ten acres of ground, and almost surrounded by groves of
+orange trees, gleamed buildings of which I had never seen the like.
+There were three groups of them, one in the middle, and one on either
+side, and a little to the rear, but, as I afterwards discovered, the
+plan of all was the same. In the centre was an edifice constructed
+like an ordinary Zulu hut--that is to say, in the shape of a beehive,
+only it was five times the size of any hut I ever saw, and built of
+blocks of hewn white marble, fitted together with extraordinary
+knowledge of the principles and properties of arch building, and with
+so much accuracy and finish that it was often difficult to find the
+joints of the massive blocks. From this centre hut ran three covered
+passages, leading to other buildings of an exactly similar character,
+only smaller, and each whole block was enclosed by a marble wall about
+four feet in height.
+
+Of course we were as yet too far off to see all these details, but the
+general outline I saw at once, and it astonished me considerably. Even
+old Indaba-zimbi, whom the Baboon-woman had been unable to move,
+deigned to show wonder.
+
+"Ou!" he said; "this is a place of marvels. Who ever saw kraals built
+of white stone?"
+
+Stella watched our faces with an expression of intense amusement, but
+said nothing.
+
+"Did your father build those kraals?" I gasped, at length.
+
+"My father! no, of course not," she answered. "How would it have been
+possible for one white man to do so, or to have made this road? He
+found them as you see."
+
+"Who built them, then?" I said again.
+
+"I do not know. My father thinks that they are very ancient, for the
+people who live here now do not know how to lay one stone upon
+another, and these huts are so wonderfully constructed that, though
+they must have stood for ages, not a stone of them had fallen. But I
+can show you the quarry where the marble was cut; it is close by and
+behind it is the entrance to an ancient mine, which my father thinks
+was a silver mine. Perhaps the people who worked the mine built the
+marble huts. The world is old, and no doubt plenty of people have
+lived in it and been forgotten."[*]
+
+[*] Kraals of a somewhat similar nature to those described by Mr.
+    Quatermain have been discovered in the Marico district of the
+    Transvaal, and an illustration of them is to be found in Mr.
+    Anderson's "Twenty-five Years in a Waggon," vol. ii. p. 55. Mr.
+    Anderson says, "In this district are the ancient stone kraals
+    mentioned in an early chapter; but it requires a fuller
+    description to show that these extensive kraals must have been
+    erected by a white race who understood building in stone and at
+    right angles, with door-posts, lintels, and sills, and it required
+    more than Kaffir skill to erect the stone huts, with stone
+    circular roofs, beautifully formed and most substantially erected;
+    strong enough, if not disturbed, to last a thousand years."--
+    Editor.
+
+Then we rode on in silence. I have seen many beautiful sights in
+Africa, and in such matters, as in others, comparisons are odious and
+worthless, but I do not think that I ever saw a lovelier scene. It was
+no one thing--it was the combination of the mighty peak looking forth
+on to the everlasting plains, the great cliffs, the waterfalls that
+sparkled in rainbow hues, the rivers girdling the rich cultivated
+lands, the gold-specked green of the orange trees, the flashing domes
+of the marble huts, and a thousand other things. Then over all brooded
+the peace of evening, and the infinite glory of the sunset that filled
+heaven with changing hues of splendour, that wrapped the mountain and
+cliffs in cloaks of purple and of gold, and lay upon the quiet face of
+the water like the smile of a god.
+
+Perhaps also the contrast, and the memory of those three awful days
+and nights in the hopeless desert, enhanced the charm, and perhaps the
+beauty of the girl who walked beside me completed it. For of this I am
+sure, that of all sweet and lovely things that I looked on then, she
+was the sweetest and the loveliest.
+
+Ah, it did not take me long to find my fate. How long will it be
+before I find her once again?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE MARBLE KRAALS
+
+At length the last platform, or terrace, was reached, and we pulled up
+outside the wall surrounding the central group of marble huts--for so
+I must call them, for want of a better name. Our approach had been
+observed by a crowd of natives, whose race I have never been able to
+determine accurately; they belonged to the Basutu and peaceful section
+of the Bantu peoples rather than to the Zulu and warlike. Several of
+these ran up to take the horses, gazing on us with astonishment, not
+unmixed with awe. We dismounted--speaking for myself, not without
+difficulty--indeed, had it not been for Stella's support I should have
+fallen.
+
+"Now you must come and see my father," she said. "I wonder what he
+will think of it, it is all so strange. Hendrika, take the child to my
+hut and give her milk, then put her into my bed; I will come
+presently."
+
+Hendrika went off with a somewhat ugly grin to do her mistress's
+bidding, and Stella led the way through the narrow gateway in the
+marble wall, which may have enclosed nearly half an "erf," or three-
+quarters of an acre of ground in all. It was beautifully planted as a
+garden, many European vegetables and flowers were growing in it,
+besides others with which I was not acquainted. Presently we came to
+the centre hut, and it was then that I noticed the extraordinary
+beauty and finish of the marble masonry. In the hut, and facing the
+gateway, was a modern door, rather rudely fashioned of Buckenhout, a
+beautiful reddish wood that has the appearance of having been
+sedulously pricked with a pin. Stella opened it, and we entered. The
+interior of the hut was the size of a large and lofty room, the walls
+being formed of plain polished marble. It was lighted somewhat dimly,
+but quite effectively, by peculiar openings in the roof, from which
+the rain was excluded by overhanging eaves. The marble floor was
+strewn with native mats and skins of animals. Bookcases filled with
+books were placed against the walls, there was a table in the centre,
+chairs seated with rimpi or strips of hide stood about, and beyond the
+table was a couch on which a man was lying reading.
+
+"Is that you, Stella?" said a voice, that even after so many years
+seemed familiar to me. "Where have you been, my dear? I began to think
+that you had lost yourself again."
+
+"No, father, dear, I have not lost myself, but I have found somebody
+else."
+
+At that moment I stepped forward so that the light fell on me. The old
+gentleman on the couch rose with some difficulty and bowed with much
+courtesy. He was a fine-looking old man, with deep-set dark eyes, a
+pale face that bore many traces of physical and mental suffering, and
+a long white beard.
+
+"Be welcome, sir," he said. "It is long since we have seen a white
+face in these wilds, and yours, if I am not mistaken, is that of an
+Englishman. There has been but one Englishman here for twelve years,
+and he, I grieve to say, was an outcast flying from justice," and he
+bowed again and stretched out his hand.
+
+I looked at him, and then of a sudden his name flashed back into my
+mind. I took his hand.
+
+"How do you do, Mr. Carson?" I said.
+
+He started as though he had been stung.
+
+"Who told you that name?" he cried. "It is a dead name. Stella, is it
+you? I forbade you to let it pass your lips."
+
+"I did not speak it, father. I have never spoken it," she answered.
+
+"Sir," I broke in, "if you will allow me I will show you how I came to
+know your name. Do you remember many years ago coming into the study
+of a clergyman in Oxfordshire and telling him that you were going to
+leave England for ever?"
+
+He bowed his head.
+
+"And do you remember a little boy who sat upon the hearthrug writing
+with a pencil?"
+
+"I do," he said.
+
+"Sir, I was that boy, and my name is Allan Quatermain. Those children
+who lay sick are all dead, their mother is dead, and my father, your
+old friend, is dead also. Like you he emigrated, and last year he died
+in the Cape. But that is not all the story. After many adventures, I,
+one Kaffir, and a little girl, lay senseless and dying in the Bad
+Lands, where we had wandered for days without water, and there we
+should have perished, but your daughter, Miss----"
+
+"Call her Stella," he broke in, hastily. "I cannot bear to hear that
+name. I have forsworn it."
+
+"Miss Stella found us by chance and saved our lives."
+
+"By chance, did you say, Allan Quatermain?" he answered. "There is
+little chance in all this; such chances spring from another will than
+ours. Welcome, Allan, son of my old friend. Here we live as it were in
+a hermitage, with Nature as our only friend, but such as we have is
+yours, and for as long as you will take it. But you must be starving;
+talk no more now. Stella, it is time to eat. To-morrow we will talk."
+
+To tell the truth I can recall very little of the events of that
+evening. A kind of dizzy weariness overmastered me. I remember sitting
+at a table next to Stella, and eating heartily, and then I remember
+nothing more.
+
+I awoke to find myself lying on a comfortable bed in a hut built and
+fashioned on the same model as the centre one. While I was wondering
+what time it was, a native came bringing some clean clothes on his
+arm, and, luxury of luxuries, produced a bath hollowed from wood. I
+rose, feeling a very different man, my strength had come back again to
+me; I dressed, and following a covered passage found myself in the
+centre hut. Here the table was set for breakfast with all manner of
+good things, such as I had not seen for many a month, which I
+contemplated with healthy satisfaction. Presently I looked up, and
+there before me was a more delightful sight, for standing in one of
+the doorways which led to the sleeping huts was Stella, leading little
+Tota by the hand.
+
+She was very simply dressed in a loose blue gown, with a wide collar,
+and girdled in at the waist by a little leather belt. In the bosom of
+her robe was a bunch of orange blooms, and her rippling hair was tied
+in a single knot behind her shapely head. She greeted me with a smile,
+asking how I had slept, and then held Tota up for me to kiss. Under
+her loving care the child had been quite transformed. She was neatly
+dressed in a garment of the same blue stuff that Stella wore, her fair
+hair was brushed; indeed, had it not been for the sun blisters on her
+face and hands, one would scarcely have believed that this was the
+same child whom Indaba-zimbi and I had dragged for hour after hour
+through the burning, waterless desert.
+
+"We must breakfast alone, Mr. Allan," she said; "my father is so upset
+by your arrival that he will not get up yet. Oh, you cannot tell how
+thankful I am that you have come. I have been so anxious about him of
+late. He grows weaker and weaker; it seems to me as though the
+strength were ebbing away from him. Now he scarcely leaves the kraal,
+I have to manage everything about the farm; he does nothing but read
+and think."
+
+Just then Hendrika entered, bearing a jug of coffee in one hand and of
+milk in the other, which she set down upon the table, casting a look
+of little love at me as she did so.
+
+"Be careful, Hendrika; you are spilling the coffee," said Stella.
+"Don't you wonder how we come to have coffee here, Mr. Allan? I will
+tell you--we grow it. That was my idea. Oh, I have lots of things to
+show you. You don't know what we have managed to do in the time that
+we have been here. You see we have plenty of labour, for the people
+about look upon my father as their chief."
+
+"Yes," I said, "but how do you get all these luxuries of
+civilization?" and I pointed to the books, the crockery, and the
+knives and forks.
+
+"Very simply. Most of the books my father brought with him when we
+first trekked into the wilds; there was nearly a waggon load of them.
+But every few years we have sent an expedition of three waggons right
+down to Port Natal. The waggons are loaded with ivory and other goods,
+and come back with all kinds of things that been sent out from England
+for us. So you see, although we live in this wild place, we are not
+altogether cut off. We can send runners to Natal and back in three
+months, and the waggons get there and back in a year. The last lot
+arrived quite safe about three months ago. Our servants are very
+faithful, and some of them speak Dutch well."
+
+"Have you ever been with the waggons?" I asked.
+
+"Since I was a child I have never been more than thirty miles from
+Babyan's Peak," she answered. "Do you know, Mr. Allan, that you are,
+with one exception, the first Englishman that I have known out of a
+book. I suppose that I must seem very wild and savage to you, but I
+have had one advantage--a good education. My father has taught me
+everything, and perhaps I know some things that you don't. I can read
+French and German, for instance. I think that my father's first idea
+was to let me run wild altogether, but he gave it up."
+
+"And don't you wish to go into the world?" I asked.
+
+"Sometimes," she said, "when I get lonely. But perhaps my father is
+right--perhaps it would frighten and bewilder me. At any rate he would
+never return to civilization; it is his idea, you know, although I am
+sure I do not know where he got it from, nor why he cannot bear that
+our name should be spoken. In short, Mr. Quatermain, we do not make
+our lives, we must take them as we find them. Have you done your
+breakfast? Let us go out, and I will show you our home."
+
+I rose and went to my sleeping-place to fetch my hat. When I returned,
+Mr. Carson--for after all that was his name, though he would never
+allow it to be spoken--had come into the hut. He felt better now, he
+said, and would accompany us on our walk if Stella would give him an
+arm.
+
+So we started, and after us came Hendrika with Tota and old Indaba-
+zimbi whom I found sitting outside as fresh as paint. Nothing could
+tire that old man.
+
+The view from the platform was almost as beautiful as that from the
+lower ground looking up to the peak. The marble kraals, as I have
+said, faced west, consequently all the upper terrace lay in the shadow
+of the great peak till nearly eleven o'clock in the morning--a great
+advantage in that warm latitude. First we walked through the garden,
+which was beautifully cultivated, and one of the most productive that
+I ever saw. There were three or four natives working in it, and they
+all saluted my host as "Baba," or father. Then we visited the other
+two groups of marble huts. One of these was used for stables and
+outbuildings, the other as storehouses, the centre hut having been,
+however, turned into a chapel. Mr. Carson was not ordained, but he
+earnestly tried to convert the natives, most of whom were refugees who
+had come to him for shelter, and he had practised the more elementary
+rites of the church for so long that I think he began to believe that
+he really was a clergyman. For instance, he always married those of
+his people who would consent to a monogamous existence, and baptized
+their children.
+
+When we had examined those wonderful remains of antiquity, the marble
+huts, and admired the orange trees, the vines and fruits which thrive
+like weeds in this marvellous soil and climate, we descended to the
+next platform, and saw the farming operations in full swing. I think
+that it was the best farm I have ever seen in Africa. There was ample
+water for purposes of irrigation, the grass lands below gave pasturage
+for hundreds of head of cattle and horses, and, for natives, the
+people were most industrious. Moreover, the whole place was managed by
+Mr. Carson on the co-operative system; he only took a tithe of the
+produce--indeed, in this land of teeming plenty, what was he to do
+with more? Consequently the tribesmen, who, by the way, called
+themselves the "Children of Thomas," were able to accumulate
+considerable wealth. All their disputes were referred to their
+"father," and he also was judge of offences and crimes. Some were
+punished by imprisonment, whipping, and loss of goods, other and
+graver transgressions by expulsion from the community, a fiat which to
+one of these favoured natives must have seemed as heavy as the decree
+that drove Adam from the Garden of Eden.
+
+Old Mr. Carson leaned upon his daughter's arm and contemplated the
+scene with pride.
+
+"I have done all this, Allan Quatermain," he said. "When renouncing
+civilization, I wandered here by chance; seeking a home in the
+remotest places of the world, I found this lonely spot a wilderness.
+Nothing was to be seen except the site, the domes of the marble huts,
+and the waterfalls. I took possession of the huts. I cleared the path
+of garden land and planted the orange grove. I had only six natives
+then, but by degrees others joined me, now my tribe is a thousand
+strong. Here we live in profound peace and plenty. I have all I need,
+and I seek no more. Heaven has prospered me so far--may it do so to
+the end, which for me draws nigh. And now I am tired and will go back.
+If you wish to see the old quarry and the mouth of the ancient mines,
+Stella will show them to you. No, my love, you need not trouble to
+come, I can manage. Look! some of the headmen are waiting to see me."
+
+So he went; but still followed by Hendrika and Indaba-zimbi, we
+turned, and, walking along the bank of one of the rivers, passed up
+behind the marble kraals, and came to the quarry, whence the material
+of which they were built had been cut in some remote age. The pit
+opened up a very thick seam of the whitest and most beautiful marble.
+I know another like it in Natal. But by whom it had been worked I
+cannot say; not by natives, that is certain, though the builders of
+these kraals had condescended to borrow the shape of native huts for
+their model. By the way, the only relic of those builders that I ever
+saw was a highly finished bronze pick-axe which Stella had found one
+day in the quarry.
+
+After we had examined this quarry we climbed the slope of the hill
+till we came to the mouth of the ancient mines which were situated in
+a gorge. I believe them to have been silver mines. The gorge was long
+and narrow, and the moment we entered it there rose from every side a
+sound of groaning and barking that was almost enough to deafen us. I
+knew what it was at once: the whole place was filled with baboons,
+which clambered down the rocks towards us from every direction, and in
+a manner that struck me as being unnaturally fearless. Stella turned a
+little pale and clung to my arm.
+
+"It is very silly of me," she whispered. "I am not at all nervous, but
+ever since they killed Hendrik I cannot bear the sight of those
+animals. I always think that there is something human about them."
+
+Meanwhile the baboons drew nearer, talking to each other as they came.
+Tota began to cry, and clung to Stella. Stella clung to me, while I
+and Indaba-zimbi put as bold a front on the matter as we could. Only
+Hendrika stood looking at the brutes with an unconcerned smile on her
+monkey face. When the great apes were quite near, she suddenly called
+aloud. Instantly they stopped their hideous clamour as though at a
+word of command. Then Hendrika addressed them: I can only describe it
+so. That is to say, she began to make a noise such as baboons do when
+they converse with each other. I have known Hottentots and Bushmen who
+said that they could talk with the baboons and understand their
+language, but I confess I never heard it done before or since.
+
+From the mouth of Hendrika came a succession of grunts, groans,
+squeals, clicks, and every other abominable noise that can be
+conceived, conveying to my mind a general idea of expostulation. At
+any rate the baboons listened. One of them grunted back some answer,
+and then the whole mob drew off to the rocks.
+
+I stood astonished, and without a word we turned back to the kraal,
+for Hendrika was too close to allow me to speak. When we reached the
+dining hut Stella went in, followed by Hendrika. But Indaba-zimbi
+plucked me by the sleeve, and I stopped outside.
+
+"Macumazahn," he said. "Baboon-woman--devil-woman. Be careful,
+Macumazahn. She loves that Star (the natives aptly enough called
+Stella the Star), and is jealous. Be careful, Macumazahn, or the Star
+will set!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"LET US GO IN, ALLAN!"
+
+It is very difficult for me to describe the period of time which
+elapsed between my arrival at Babyan's Peak and my marriage with
+Stella. When I look back on it, it seems sweet as with the odour of
+flowers, and dim as with the happy dusk of summer eves, while through
+the sweetness comes the sound of Stella's voice, and through the gloom
+shines the starlight of her eyes. I think that we loved each other
+from the first, though for a while we said no word of love. Day by day
+I went about the place with her, accompanied by little Tota and
+Hendrika only, while she attended to the thousand and one matters
+which her father's ever-growing weakness had laid upon her; or rather,
+as time drew on, I attended to the business, and she accompanied me.
+All day through we were together. Then after supper, when the night
+had fallen, we would walk together in the garden and come at length to
+hear her father read aloud sometimes from the works of a poet,
+sometimes from history. Or, if he did not feel well, Stella would
+read, and when this was done, Mr. Carson would celebrate a short form
+of prayer, and we would separate till the morning once more brought
+our happy hour of meeting.
+
+So the weeks went by, and with every week I grew to know my darling
+better. Often, I wonder now, if my fond fancy deceives me, or if
+indeed there are women as sweet and dear as she. Was it solitude that
+had given such depth and gentleness to her? Was it the long years of
+communing with Nature that had endowed her with such peculiar grace,
+the grace we find in opening flowers and budding trees? Had she caught
+that murmuring voice from the sound of the streams which fall
+continually about her rocky home? was it the tenderness of the evening
+sky beneath which she loved to walk, that lay like a shadow on her
+face, and the light of the evening stars that shone in her quiet eyes?
+At the least to me she was the realization of that dream which haunts
+the sleep of sin-stained men; so my memory paints her, so I hope to
+find her when at last the sleep has rolled away and the fevered dreams
+are done.
+
+At last there came a day--the most blessed of my life, when we told
+our love. We had been together all the morning, but after dinner Mr.
+Carson was so unwell that Stella stopped in with him. At supper we met
+again, and after supper, when she had put little Tota, to whom she had
+grown much attached, to bed, we went out, leaving Mr. Carson dozing on
+the couch.
+
+The night was warm and lovely, and without speaking we walked up the
+garden to the orange grove and sat down upon a rock. There was a
+little breeze which shook the petals of the orange blooms over us in
+showers, and bore their delicate fragrance far and wide. Silence
+reigned around, broken only by the sound of the falling waterfalls
+that now died to a faint murmur, and now, as the wavering breeze
+turned, boomed loudly in our ears. The moon was not yet visible, but
+already the dark clouds which floated through the sky above us--for
+there had been rain--showed a glow of silver, telling us that she
+shone brightly behind the peak. Stella began to talk in her low,
+gentle voice, speaking to me of her life in the wilderness, how she
+had grown to love it, how her mind had gone on from idea to idea, and
+how she pictured the great rushing world that she had never seen as it
+was reflected to her from the books which she had read. It was a
+curious vision of life that she had: things were out of proportion to
+it; it was more like a dream than a reality--a mirage than the actual
+face of things. The idea of great cities, and especially of London,
+had a kind of fascination for her: she could scarcely realize the
+rush, the roar and hurry, the hard crowds of men and women, strangers
+to each other, feverishly seeking for wealth and pleasure beneath a
+murky sky, and treading one another down in the fury of their
+competition.
+
+"What is it all for?" she asked earnestly. "What do they seek? Having
+so few years to live, why do they waste them thus?"
+
+I told her that in the majority of instances it was actual hard
+necessity that drove them on, but she could barely understand me.
+Living as she had done, in the midst of the teeming plenty of a
+fruitful earth, she did not seem to be able to grasp the fact that
+there were millions who from day to day know not how to stay their
+hunger.
+
+"I never want to go there," she went on; "I should be bewildered and
+frightened to death. It is not natural to live like that. God put Adam
+and Eve in a garden, and that is how he meant their children to live--
+in peace, and looking always on beautiful things. This is my idea of
+perfect life. I want no other."
+
+"I thought you once told me that you found it lonely," I said.
+
+"So I did," she answered, innocently, "but that was before you came.
+Now I am not lonely any more, and it is perfect--perfect as the
+night."
+
+Just then the full moon rose above the elbow of the peak, and her rays
+stole far and wide down the misty valley, gleaming on the water,
+brooding on the plain, searching out the hidden places of the rocks,
+wrapping the fair form of nature as in a silver bridal veil through
+which her beauty shone mysteriously.
+
+Stella looked down the terraced valley; she turned and looked up at
+the scarred face of the golden moon, and then she looked at me. The
+beauty of the night was about her face, the scent of the night was on
+her hair, the mystery of the night shone in her shadowed eyes. She
+looked at me, I looked on her, and all our hearts' love blossomed
+within us. We spoke no word--we had no words to speak, but slowly we
+drew near, till lips were pressed to lips as we kissed our eternal
+troth.
+
+It was she who broke that holy silence, speaking in a changed voice,
+in soft deep notes that thrilled me like the lowest chords of a
+smitten harp.
+
+"Ah, now I understand," she said, "now I know why we are lonely, and
+how we can lose our loneliness. Now I know what it is that stirs us in
+the beauty of the sky, in the sound of water and in the scent of
+flowers. It is Love who speaks in everything, though till we hear his
+voice we understand nothing. But when we hear, then the riddle is
+answered and the gates of our heart are opened, and, Allan, we see the
+way that wends through death to heaven, and is lost in the glory of
+which our love is but a shadow.
+
+"Let us go in, Allan. Let us go before the spell breaks, so that
+whatever overtakes us, sorrow, death, or separation, we may always
+have this perfect memory to save us. Come, dearest, let us go!"
+
+I rose like a man in a dream, still holding her by the hand. But as I
+rose my eye fell upon something that gleamed white among the foliage
+of the orange bush at my side. I said nothing, but looked. The breeze
+stirred the orange leaves, the moonlight struck for a moment full upon
+the white object.
+
+It was the face of Hendrika, the Babyan-woman, as Indaba-zimbi had
+called her, and on it was a glare of hate that made me shudder.
+
+I said nothing; the face vanished, and just then I heard a baboon bark
+in the rocks behind.
+
+Then we went down the garden, and Stella passed into the centre hut. I
+saw Hendrika standing in the shadow near the door, and went up to her.
+
+"Hendrika," I said, "why were you watching Miss Stella and myself in
+the garden?"
+
+She drew her lips up till her teeth gleamed in the moonlight.
+
+"Have I not watched her these many years, Macumazahn? Shall I cease to
+watch because a wandering white man comes to steal her? Why were you
+kissing her in the garden, Macumazahn? How dare you kiss her who is a
+star?"
+
+"I kissed her because I love her, and because she loves me," I
+answered. "What has that to do with you, Hendrika?"
+
+"Because you love her," she hissed in answer; "and do I not love her
+also, who saved me from the babyans? I am a woman as she is, and you
+are a man, and they say in the kraals that men love women better than
+women love women. But it is a lie, though this is true, that if a
+woman loves a man she forgets all other love. Have I not seen it? I
+gather her flowers--beautiful flowers; I climb the rocks where you
+would never dare to go to find them; you pluck a piece of orange bloom
+in the garden and give it to her. What does she do?--she takes the
+orange bloom, she puts it in her breast, and lets my flowers die. I
+call to her--she does not hear me--she is thinking. You whisper to
+some one far away, and she hears and smiles. She used to kiss me
+sometimes; now she kisses that white brat you brought, because you
+brought it. Oh, I see it all--all; I have seen it from the first; you
+are stealing her from us, stealing her to yourself, and those who
+loved her before you came are forgotten. Be careful, Macumazahn, be
+careful, lest I am revenged upon you. You, you hate me; you think me
+half a monkey; that servant of yours calls me Baboon-woman. Well, I
+have lived with baboons, and they are clever--yes, they can play
+tricks and know things that you don't, and I am cleverer than they,
+for I have learnt the wisdom of white people also, and I say to you,
+Walk softly, Macumazahn, or you will fall into a pit," and with one
+more look of malice she was gone.
+
+I stood for a moment reflecting. I was afraid of this strange creature
+who seemed to combine the cunning of the great apes that had reared
+her with the passions and skill of human kind. I foreboded evil at her
+hands. And yet there was something almost touching in the fierceness
+of her jealousy. It is generally supposed that this passion only
+exists in strength when the object loved is of another sex from the
+lover, but I confess that, both in this instance and in some others
+which I have met with, this has not been my experience. I have known
+men, and especially uncivilized men, who were as jealous of the
+affection of their friend or master as any lover could be of that of
+his mistress; and who has not seen cases of the same thing where
+parents and their children are concerned? But the lower one gets in
+the scale of humanity, the more readily this passion thrives; indeed,
+it may be said to come to its intensest perfection in brutes. Women
+are more jealous than men, small-hearted men are more jealous than
+those of larger mind and wider sympathy, and animals are the most
+jealous of all. Now Hendrika was in some ways not far removed from
+animal, which may perhaps account for the ferocity of her jealousy of
+her mistress's affection.
+
+Shaking off my presentiments of evil, I entered the centre hut. Mr.
+Carson was resting on the sofa, and by him knelt Stella holding his
+hand, and her head resting on his breast. I saw at once that she had
+been telling him of what had come about between us; nor was I sorry,
+for it is a task that a would-be son-in-law is generally glad to do by
+deputy.
+
+"Come here, Allan Quatermain," he said, almost sternly, and my heart
+gave a jump, for I feared lest he might be about to require me to go
+about my business. But I came.
+
+"Stella tells me," he went on, "that you two have entered into a
+marriage engagement. She tells me also that she loves you, and that
+you say that you love her."
+
+"I do indeed, sir," I broke in; "I love her truly; if ever a woman was
+loved in this world, I love her."
+
+"I thank Heaven for it," said the old man. "Listen, my children. Many
+years ago a great shame and sorrow fell upon me, so great a sorrow
+that, as I sometimes think, it affected my brain. At any rate, I
+determined to do what most men would have considered the act of a
+madman, to go far away into the wilderness with my only child, there
+to live remote from civilization and its evils. I did so; I found this
+place, and here we have lived for many years, happily enough, and
+perhaps not without doing good in our generation, but still in a way
+unnatural to our race and status. At first I thought I would let my
+daughter grow up in a state of complete ignorance, that she should be
+Nature's child. But as time went on, I saw the folly and the
+wickedness of my plan. I had no right to degrade her to the level of
+the savages around me, for if the fruit of the tree of knowledge is a
+bitter fruit, still it teaches good from evil. So I educated her as
+well as I was able, till in the end I knew that in mind, as in body,
+she was in no way inferior to her sisters, the children of the
+civilized world. She grew up and entered into womanhood, and then it
+came into my mind that I was doing her a bitter wrong, that I was
+separating her from her kind and keeping her in a wilderness where she
+could find neither mate nor companion. But though I knew this, I could
+not yet make up my mind to return to active life; I had grown to love
+this place. I dreaded to return into the world I had abjured. Again
+and again I put my resolutions aside. Then at the commencement of this
+year I fell ill. For a while I waited, hoping that I might get better,
+but at last I realized that I should never get better, that the hand
+of Death was upon me."
+
+"Ah, no, father, not that!" Stella said, with a cry.
+
+"Yes, love, that, and it is true. Now you will be able to forget our
+separation in the happiness of a new meeting," and he glanced at me
+and smiled. "Well, when this knowledge came home to me, I determined
+to abandon this place and trek for the coast, though I well knew that
+the journey would kill me. I should never live to reach it. But Stella
+would, and it would be better than leaving her here alone with savages
+in the wilderness. On the very day that I had made up my mind to take
+this step Stella found you dying in the Bad Lands, Allan Quatermain,
+and brought you here. She brought you, of all men in the world, you,
+whose father had been my dear friend, and who once with your baby
+hands had saved her life from fire, that she might live to save yours
+from thirst. At the time I said little, but I saw the hand of
+Providence in this, and I determined to wait and see what came about
+between you. At the worst, if nothing came about, I soon learned that
+I could trust you to see her safely to the coast after I was gone. But
+many days ago I knew how it stood between you, and now things are
+determined as I prayed they might be. God bless you both, my children;
+may you be happy in your love; may it endure till death and beyond it.
+God bless you both!" and he stretched out his hand towards me.
+
+I took it, and Stella kissed him.
+
+Presently he spoke again--
+
+"It is my intention," he said, "if you two consent, to marry you next
+Sunday. I wish to do so soon, for I do not know how much longer will
+be allowed to me. I believe that such a ceremony, solemnly celebrated
+and entered into before witnesses, will, under the circumstances, be
+perfectly legal; but of course you will repeat it with every formality
+the first moment it lies in your power so to do. And now, there is one
+more thing: when I left England my fortunes were in a shattered
+condition; in the course of years they have recovered themselves, the
+accumulated rents, as I heard but recently, when the waggons last
+returned from Port Natal, have sufficed to pay off all charges, and
+there is a considerable balance over. Consequently you will not marry
+on nothing, for of course you, Stella, are my heiress, and I wish to
+make a stipulation. It is this. That so soon as my death occurs you
+should leave this place and take the first opportunity of returning to
+England. I do not ask you to live there always; it might prove too
+much for people reared in the wilds, as both of you have been; but I
+do ask you to make it your permanent home. Do you consent and promise
+this?"
+
+"I do," I answered.
+
+"And so do I," said Stella.
+
+"Very well," he answered; "and now I am tired out. Again God bless you
+both, and good-night."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+HENDRIKA PLOTS EVIL
+
+On the following morning I had a conversation with Indaba-zimbi. First
+of all I told him that I was going to marry Stella.
+
+"Oh!" he said, "I thought so, Macumazahn. Did I not tell you that you
+would find happiness on this journey? Most men must be content to
+watch the Star from a long way off, to you it is given to wear her on
+your heart. But remember, Macumazahn, remember that stars set."
+
+"Can you not stop your croaking even for a day?" I answered, angrily,
+for his words sent a thrill of fear through me.
+
+"A true prophet must tell the ill as well as the good, Macumazahn. I
+only speak what is on my mind. But what of it? What is life but loss,
+loss upon loss, till life itself be lost? But in death we may find all
+the things that we have lost. So your father taught, Macumazahn, and
+there was wisdom in his gentleness. Ou! I do not believe in death; it
+is change, that is all, Macumazahn. Look now, the rain falls, the
+drops of rain that were one water in the clouds fall side by side.
+They sink into the ground; presently the sun will come out, the earth
+will be dry, the drops will be gone. A fool looks and says the drops
+are dead, they will never be one again, they will never again fall
+side by side. But I am a rain-maker, and I know the ways of rain. It
+is not true. The drops will drain by many paths into the river, and
+will be one water there. They will go up to the clouds again in the
+mists of morning, and there will again be as they have been. We are
+the drops of rain, Macumazahn. When we fall that is our life. When we
+sink into the ground that is death, and when we are drawn up again to
+the sky, what is that, Macumazahn? No! no! when we find we lose, and
+when we seem to lose, then we shall really find. I am not a Christian,
+Macumazahn, but I am old, and have watched and seen things that
+perhaps Christians do not see. There, I have spoken. Be happy with
+your star, and if it sets, wait, Macumazahn, wait till it rises again.
+It will not be long; one day you will go to sleep, then your eyes will
+open on another sky, and there your star will be shining, Macumazahn."
+
+I made no answer at the time. I could not bear to talk of such a
+thing. But often and often in the after years I have thought of
+Indaba-zimbi and his beautiful simile and gathered comfort from it. He
+was a strange man, this old rain-making savage, and there was more
+wisdom in him than in many learned atheists--those spiritual
+destroyers who, in the name of progress and humanity, would divorce
+hope from life, and leave us wandering in a lonesome, self-consecrated
+hell.
+
+"Indaba-zimbi," I said, changing the subject, "I have something to
+say," and I told him of the threats of Hendrika.
+
+He listened with an unmoved face, nodding his white lock at intervals
+as the narrative went on. But I saw that he was disturbed by it.
+
+"Macumazahn," he said at length, "I have told you that this is an evil
+woman. She was nourished on baboon milk, and the baboon nature is in
+her veins. Such creatures should be killed, not kept. She will make
+you mischief if she can. But I will watch her, Macumazahn. Look, the
+Star is waiting for you; go, or she will hate me as Hendrika hates
+you."
+
+So I went, nothing loth, for attractive as was the wisdom of Indaba-
+zimbi, I found a deeper meaning in Stella's simplest word. All the
+rest of that day I passed in her company, and the greater part of the
+two following days. At last came Saturday night, the eve of our
+marriage. It rained that night, so we did not go out, but spent the
+evening in the hut. We sat hand in hand, saying little, but Mr. Carson
+talked a good deal, telling us tales of his youth, and of countries
+that he had visited. Then he read aloud from the Bible, and bade us
+goodnight. I also kissed Stella and went to bed. I reached my hut by
+the covered way, and before I undressed opened the door to see what
+the night was like. It was very dark, and rain was still falling, but
+as the light streamed out into the gloom I fancied that I caught sight
+of a dusky form gliding away. The thought of Hendrika flashed into my
+mind; could she be skulking about outside there? Now I had said
+nothing of Hendrika and her threats either to Mr. Carson or Stella,
+because I did not wish to alarm them. Also I knew that Stella was
+attached to this strange person, and I did not wish to shake her
+confidence in her unless it was absolutely necessary. For a minute or
+two I stood hesitating, then, reflecting that if it was Hendrika,
+there she should stop, I went in and put up the stout wooden bar that
+was used to secure the door. For the last few nights old Indaba-zimbi
+had made a habit of sleeping in the covered passage, which was the
+only other possible way of access. As I came to bed I had stepped over
+him rolled up in his blanket, and to all appearances fast asleep. So
+it being evident that I had nothing to fear, I promptly dismissed the
+matter from my mind, which, as may be imagined, was indeed fully
+occupied with other thoughts.
+
+I got into bed, and for awhile lay awake thinking of the great
+happiness in store for me, and of the providential course of events
+that had brought it within my reach. A few weeks since and I was
+wandering in the desert a dying man, bearing a dying child, and with
+scarcely a possession left in the world except a store of buried ivory
+that I never expected to see again. And now I was about to wed one of
+the sweetest and loveliest women on the whole earth--a woman whom I
+loved more than I could have thought possible, and who loved me back
+again. Also, as though that were not good fortune enough, I was to
+acquire with her very considerable possessions, quite sufficiently
+large to enable us to follow any plan of life we found agreeable. As I
+lay and reflected on all this I grew afraid of my good fortune. Old
+Indaba-zimbi's melancholy prophecies came into my mind. Hitherto he
+had always prophesied truly. What if these should be true also? I
+turned cold as I thought of it, and prayed to the Power above to
+preserve us both to live and love together. Never was prayer more
+needed. While its words were still upon my lips I dropped asleep and
+dreamed a most dreadful dream.
+
+I dreamed that Stella and I were standing together to be married. She
+was dressed in white, and radiant with beauty, but it was a wild,
+spiritual beauty which frightened me. Her eyes shone like stars, a
+pale flame played about her features, and the wind that blew did not
+stir her hair. Nor was this all, for her white robes were death
+wrappings, and the altar at which we stood was formed of the piled-up
+earth from an open grave that yawned between us. So we stood waiting
+for one to wed us, but no one came. Presently from the open grave
+sprang the form of Hendrika. In her hand was a knife, with which she
+stabbed at me, but pierced the heart of Stella, who, without a cry,
+fell backwards into the grave, still looking at me as she fell. Then
+Hendrika leaped after her into the grave. I heard her feet strike
+heavily.
+
+"/Awake, Macumazahn! awake!/" cried the voice of Indaba-zimbi.
+
+I awoke and bounded from the bed, a cold perspiration pouring from me.
+In the darkness on the other side of the hut I heard sounds of furious
+struggling. Luckily I kept my head. Just by me was a chair on which
+were matches and a rush taper. I struck a match and held it to the
+taper. Now in the growing light I could see two forms rolling one over
+the other on the floor, and from between them came the flash of steel.
+The fat melted and the light burnt up. It was Indaba-zimbi and the
+woman Hendrika who were struggling, and, what is more, the woman was
+getting the better of the man, strong as he was. I rushed towards
+them. Now she was uppermost, now she had wrenched herself from his
+fierce grip, and now the great knife she had in her hand flashed up.
+
+But I was behind her, and, placing my hands beneath her arms, jerked
+with all my strength. She fell backwards, and, in her effort to save
+herself, most fortunately dropped the knife. Then we flung ourselves
+upon her. Heavens! the strength of that she-devil! Nobody who has not
+experienced it could believe it. She fought and scratched and bit, and
+at one time nearly mastered the two of us. As it was she did break
+loose. She rushed at the bed, sprung on it, and bounded thence
+straight up at the roof of the hut. I never saw such a jump, and could
+not conceive what she meant to do. In the roof were the peculiar holes
+which I have described. They were designed to admit light, and covered
+with overhanging eaves. She sprung straight and true like a monkey,
+and, catching the edge of the hole with her hands, strove to draw
+herself through it. But here her strength, exhausted with the long
+struggle, failed her. For a moment she swung, then dropped to the
+ground and fell senseless.
+
+"Ou!" gasped Indaba-zimbi. "Let us tie the devil up before she comes
+to life again."
+
+I thought this a good counsel, so we took a reim that lay in the
+corner of the room, and lashed her hands and feet in such a fashion
+that even she could scarcely escape. Then we carried her into the
+passage, and Indaba-zimbi sat over her, the knife in his hand, for I
+did not wish to raise an alarm at that hour of the night.
+
+"Do you know how I caught her, Macumazahn?" he said. "For several
+nights I have slept here with one eye open, for I thought she had made
+a plan. To-night I kept wide awake, though I pretended to be asleep.
+An hour after you got into the blankets the moon rose, and I saw a
+beam of light come into the hut through the hole in the roof.
+Presently I saw the beam of light vanish. At first I thought that a
+cloud was passing over the moon, but I listened and heard a noise as
+though some one was squeezing himself through a narrow space.
+Presently he was through, and hanging by his hands. Then the light
+came in again, and in the middle of it I saw the Babyan-frau swinging
+from the roof, and about to drop into the hut. She clung by both
+hands, and in her mouth was a great knife. She dropped, and I ran
+forward to seize her as she dropped, and gripped her round the middle.
+But she heard me come, and, seizing the knife, struck at me in the
+dark and missed me. Then we struggled, and you know the rest. You were
+very nearly dead to-night, Macumazahn."
+
+"Very nearly indeed," I answered, still panting, and arranging the
+rags of my night-dress round me as best I might. Then the memory of my
+horrid dream flashed into my mind. Doubtless it had been conjured up
+by the sound of Hendrika dropping to the floor--in my dream it had
+been a grave that she dropped into. All of it, then, had been
+experienced in that second of time. Well, dreams are swift; perhaps
+Time itself is nothing but a dream, and events that seem far apart
+really occur simultaneously.
+
+We passed the rest of the night watching Hendrika. Presently she came
+to herself and struggled furiously to break the reim. But the untanned
+buffalo hide was too strong even for her, and, moreover, Indaba-zimbi
+unceremoniously sat upon her to keep her quiet. At last she gave it
+up.
+
+In due course the day broke--my marriage day. Leaving Indaba-zimbi to
+watch my would-be murderess, I went and fetched some natives from the
+stables, and with their aid bore Hendrika to the prison hut--that same
+hut in which she had been confined when she had been brought a baboon-
+child from the rocks. Here we shut her up, and, leaving Indaba-zimbi
+to watch outside, I returned to my sleeping-place and dressed in the
+best garments that the Babyan Kraals could furnish. But when I looked
+at the reflection of my face, I was horrified. It was covered with
+scratches inflicted by the nails of Hendrika. I doctored them up as
+best I could, then went out for a walk to calm my nerves, which, what
+between the events of the past night, and of those pending that day,
+were not a little disturbed.
+
+When I returned it was breakfast time. I went into the dining hut, and
+there Stella was waiting to greet me, dressed in simple white and with
+orange flowers on her breast. She came forward to me shyly enough;
+then, seeing the condition of my face, started back.
+
+"Why, Allan! what have you been doing to yourself?" she asked.
+
+As I was about to answer, her father came in leaning on his stick,
+and, catching sight of me, instantly asked the same question.
+
+Then I told them everything, both of Hendrika's threats and of her
+fierce attempt to carry them into execution. But I did not tell my
+horrid dream.
+
+Stella's face grew white as the flowers on her breast, but that of her
+father became very stern.
+
+"You should have spoken of this before, Allan," he said. "I now see
+that I did wrong to attempt to civilize this wicked and revengeful
+creature, who, if she is human, has all the evil passions of the
+brutes that reared her. Well, I will make an end of it this very day."
+
+"Oh, father," said Stella, "don't have her killed. It is all dreadful
+enough, but that would be more dreadful still. I have been very fond
+of her, and, bad as she is, she has loved me. Do not have her killed
+on my marriage day."
+
+"No," her father answered, "she shall not be killed, for though she
+deserves to die, I will not have her blood upon our hands. She is a
+brute, and has followed the nature of brutes. She shall go back whence
+she came."
+
+No more was said on the matter at the time, but when breakfast--which
+was rather a farce--was done, Mr. Carson sent for his headman and gave
+him certain orders.
+
+We were to be married after the service which Mr. Carson held every
+Sunday morning in the large marble hut set apart for that purpose. The
+service began at ten o'clock, but long before that hour all the
+natives on the place came up in troops, singing as they came, to be
+present at the wedding of the "Star." It was a pretty sight to see
+them, the men dressed in all their finery, and carrying shields and
+sticks in their hands, and the women and children bearing green
+branches of trees, ferns, and flowers. At length, about half-past
+nine, Stella rose, pressed my hand, and left me to my reflections. A
+few minutes to ten she reappeared again with her father, dressed in a
+white veil, a wreath of orange flowers on her dark curling hair, a
+bouquet of orange flowers in her hand. To me she seemed like a dream
+of loveliness. With her came little Tota in a high state of glee and
+excitement. She was Stella's only bridesmaid. Then we all passed out
+towards the church hut. The bare space in front of it was filled with
+hundreds of natives, who set up a song as we came. But we went on into
+the hut, which was crowded with such of the natives as usually
+worshipped there. Here Mr. Carson, as usual, read the service, though
+he was obliged to sit down in order to do so. When it was done--and to
+me it seemed interminable--Mr. Carson whispered that he meant to marry
+us outside the hut in sight of all the people. So we went out and took
+our stand under the shade of a large tree that grew near the hut
+facing the bare space where the natives were gathered.
+
+Mr. Carson held up his hand to enjoin silence. Then, speaking in the
+native dialect, he told them that he was about to make us man and wife
+after the Christian fashion and in the sight of all men. This done, he
+proceeded to read the marriage service over us, and very solemnly and
+beautifully he did it. We said the words, I placed the ring--it was
+her father's signet ring, for we had no other--upon Stella's finger,
+and it was done.
+
+Then Mr. Carson spoke. "Allan and Stella," he said, "I believe that
+the ceremony which has been performed makes you man and wife in the
+sight of God and man, for all that is necessary to make a marriage
+binding is, that it should be celebrated according to the custom of
+the country where the parties to it reside. It is according to the
+custom that has been in force here for fifteen years or more that you
+have been married in the face of all the people, and in token of it
+you will both sign the register that I have kept of such marriages,
+among those of my people who have adopted the Christian Faith. Still,
+in case there should be any legal flaw I again demand the solemn
+promise of you both that on the first opportunity you will cause this
+marriage to be re-celebrated in some civilized land. Do you promise?"
+
+"We do," we answered.
+
+Then the book was brought out and we signed our names. At first my
+wife signed hers "Stella" only, but her father bade her write it
+Stella Carson for the first and last time in her life. Then several of
+the indunas, or headmen, including old Indaba-zimbi, put their marks
+in witness. Indaba-zimbi drew his mark in the shape of a little star,
+in humorous allusion to Stella's native name. That register is before
+me now as I write. That, with a lock of my darling's hair which lies
+between its leaves, is my dearest possession. There are all the names
+and marks as they were written many years ago beneath the shadow of
+the tree at Babyan Kraals in the wilderness, but alas! and alas! where
+are those who wrote them?
+
+"My people," said Mr. Carson, when the signing was done, and we had
+kissed each other before them all--"My people, Macumazahn and the
+Star, my daughter, are now man and wife, to live in one kraal, to eat
+of one bowl, to share one fortune till they reach the grave. Hear now,
+my people, you know this woman," and turning he pointed to Hendrika,
+who, unseen by us, had been led out of the prison hut.
+
+"Yes, yes, we know her," said a little ring of headmen, who formed the
+primitive court of justice, and after the fashion of natives had
+squatted themselves in a circle on the ground in front of us. "We know
+her, she is the white Babyan-woman, she is Hendrika, the body servant
+of the Star."
+
+"You know her," said Mr. Carson, "but you do not know her altogether.
+Stand forward, Indaba-zimbi, and tell the people what came about last
+night in the hut of Macumazahn."
+
+Accordingly old Indaba-zimbi came forward, and, squatting down, told
+his moving tale with much descriptive force and many gestures,
+finishing up by producing the great knife from which his watchfulness
+had saved me.
+
+Then I was called upon, and in a few brief words substantiated his
+story: indeed my face did that in the sight of all men.
+
+Then Mr. Carson turned to Hendrika, who stood in sullen silence, her
+eyes fixed upon the ground, and asked her if she had anything to say.
+
+She looked up boldly and answered--
+
+"Macumazahn has robbed me of the love of my mistress. I would have
+robbed him of his life, which is a little thing compared to that which
+I have lost at his hands. I have failed, and I am sorry for it, for
+had I killed him and left no trace the Star would have forgotten him
+and shone on me again."
+
+"Never," murmured Stella in my ear; but Mr. Carson turned white with
+wrath.
+
+"My people," he said, "you hear the words of this woman. You hear how
+she pays me back, me and my daughter whom she swears she loves. She
+says that she would have murdered a man who has done her no evil, the
+man who is the husband of her mistress. We saved her from the babyans,
+we tamed her, we fed her, we taught her, and this is how she pays us
+back. Say, my people, what reward should be given to her?"
+
+"Death," said the circle of indunas, pointing their thumbs downwards,
+and all the multitude beyond echoed the word "Death."
+
+"Death," repeated the head induna, adding, "If you save her, my
+father, we will slay her with our own hands. She is a Babyan-woman, a
+devil-woman; ah, yes, we have heard of such before; let her be slain
+before she works more evil."
+
+Then it was that Stella stepped forward and begged for Hendrika's life
+in moving terms. She pleaded the savagery of the woman's nature, her
+long service, and the affection that she had always shown towards
+herself. She said that I, whose life had been attempted, forgave her,
+and she, my wife, who had nearly been left a widow before she was made
+a bride, forgave her; let them forgive her also, let her be sent away,
+not slain, let not her marriage day be stained with blood.
+
+Now her father listened readily enough, for he had no intention of
+killing Hendrika--indeed, he had already promised not to do so. But
+the people were in a different humour, they looked upon Hendrika as a
+devil, and would have torn her to pieces there and then, could they
+have had their way. Nor were matters mended by Indaba-zimbi, who had
+already gained a great reputation for wisdom and magic in the place.
+Suddenly the old man rose and made quite an impassioned speech, urging
+them to kill Hendrika at once or mischief would come of it.
+
+At last matters got very bad, for two of the Indunas came forward to
+drag her off to execution, and it was not until Stella burst into
+tears that the sight of her grief, backed by Mr. Carson's orders and
+my own remonstrances, carried the day.
+
+All this while Hendrika had been standing quite unmoved. At last the
+tumult ceased, and the leading induna called to her to go, promising
+that if ever she showed her face near the kraals again she should be
+stabbed like a jackal. Then Hendrika spoke to Stella in a low voice
+and in English--
+
+"Better let them kill me, mistress, better for all. Without you to
+love I shall go mad and become a babyan again."
+
+Stella did not answer, and they loosed her. She stepped forward and
+looked at the natives with a stare of hate. Then she turned and walked
+past me, and as she passed whispered a native phrase in my ear, that,
+being literally translated, means, "Till another moon," but which has
+the same significance as the French "au revoir."
+
+It frightened me, for I knew she meant that she had not done with me,
+and saw that our mercy was misplaced. Seeing my face change she ran
+swiftly from me, and as she passed Indaba-zimbi, with a sudden
+movement snatched her great knife from his hand. When she had gone
+about twenty paces she halted, looked long and earnestly on Stella,
+gave one loud cry of anguish, and fled. A few minutes later we saw her
+far away, bounding up the face of an almost perpendicular cliff--a
+cliff that nobody except herself and the baboons could possibly climb.
+
+"Look," said Indaba-zimbi in my ear--"Look, Macumazahn, there goes the
+Babyan-frau. But, Macumazahn, /she will come back again/. Ah, why will
+you not listen to my words. Have they not always been true words,
+Macumazahn?" and he shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
+
+For a while I was much disturbed, but at any rate Hendrika was gone
+for the present, and Stella, my dear and lovely wife, was there at my
+side, and in her smiles I forgot my fears.
+
+For the rest of that day, why should I write of it?--there are things
+too happy and too sacred to be written of.
+
+At last I had, if only for a little while, found that rest, that
+perfect joy which we seek so continually and so rarely clasp.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+GONE!
+
+I wonder if many married couples are quite as happy as we found
+ourselves. Cynics, a growing class, declare that few illusions can
+survive a honeymoon. Well, I do not know about it, for I only married
+once, and can but speak from my limited experience. But certainly our
+illusion, or rather the great truth of which it is the shadow, did
+survive, as to this day it survives in my heart across all the years
+of utter separation, and across the unanswering gulf of gloom.
+
+But complete happiness is not allowed in this world even for an hour.
+As our marriage day had been shadowed by the scene which has been
+described, so our married life was shadowed by its own sorrow.
+
+Three days after our wedding Mr. Carson had a stroke. It had been long
+impending, now it fell. We came into the centre hut to dinner and
+found him lying speechless on the couch. At first I thought that he
+was dying, but this was not so. On the contrary, within four days he
+recovered his speech and some power of movement. But he never
+recovered his memory, though he still knew Stella, and sometimes
+myself. Curiously enough he remembered little Tota best of all three,
+though occasionally he thought that she was his own daughter in her
+childhood, and would ask her where her mother was. This state of
+affairs lasted for some seven months. The old man gradually grew
+weaker, but he did not die. Of course his condition quite precluded
+the idea of our leaving Babyan Kraals till all was over. This was the
+more distressing to me because I had a nervous presentiment that
+Stella was incurring danger by staying there, and also because the
+state of her health rendered it desirable that we should reach a
+civilized region as soon as possible. However, it could not be helped.
+
+At length the end came very suddenly. We were sitting one evening by
+Mr. Carson's bedside in his hut, when to our astonishment he sat up
+and spoke in a strong, full voice.
+
+"I hear you," he said. "Yes, yes, I forgive you. Poor woman! you too
+have suffered," and he fell back dead.
+
+I have little doubt that he was addressing his lost wife, some vision
+of whom had flashed across his dying sense. Stella, of course, was
+overwhelmed with grief at her loss. Till I came her father had been
+her sole companion, and therefore, as may be imagined, the tie between
+them was much closer than is usual even in the case of father and
+daughter. So deeply did she mourn that I began to fear for the effect
+upon her health. Nor were we the only ones to grieve; all the natives
+on the settlement called Mr. Carson "father," and as a father they
+lamented him. The air resounded with the wailing of women, and the men
+went about with bowed heads, saying that "the sun had set in the
+heavens, now only the Star (Stella) remained." Indaba-zimbi alone did
+not mourn. He said that it was best that the Inkoos should die, for
+what was life worth when one lay like a log?--moreover, that it would
+have been well for all if he had died sooner.
+
+On the following day we buried him in the little graveyard near the
+waterfall. It was a sad business, and Stella cried very much, in spite
+of all I could do to comfort her.
+
+That night as I sat outside the hut smoking--for the weather was hot,
+and Stella was lying down inside--old Indaba-zimbi came up, saluted,
+and squatted at my feet.
+
+"What is it, Indaba-zimbi?" I said.
+
+"This, Macumazahn. When are you going to trek towards the coast?"
+
+"I don't know," I answered. "The Star is not fit to travel now, we
+must wait awhile."
+
+"No, Macumazahn, you must not wait, you must go, and the Star must
+take her chance. She is strong. It is nothing. All will be well."
+
+"Why do you say so? why must we go?"
+
+"For this reason, Macumazahn," and he looked cautiously round and
+spoke low. "The baboons have come back in thousands. All the mountain
+is full of them."
+
+"I did not know that they had gone," I said.
+
+"Yes," he answered, "they went after the marriage, all but one or two;
+now they are back, all the baboons in the world, I think. I saw a
+whole cliff back with them."
+
+"Is that all?" I said, for I saw that he had something behind. "I am
+not afraid of a pack of baboons."
+
+"No, Macumazahn, it is not all. The Babyan-frau, Hendrika, is with
+them."
+
+Now nothing had been heard or seen of Hendrika since her expulsion,
+and though at first she and her threats had haunted me somewhat, by
+degrees she to a great extent had passed out of my mind, which was
+fully preoccupied with Stella and my father-in-law's illness. I
+started violently. "How do you know this?" I asked.
+
+"I know it because I saw her, Macumazahn. She is disguised, she is
+dressed up in baboon skins, and her face is stained dark. But though
+she was a long way off, I knew her by her size, and I saw the white
+flesh of her arm when the skins slipped aside. She has come back,
+Macumazahn, with all the baboons in the world, and she has come back
+to do evil. Now do you understand why you should trek?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "though I don't see how she and the baboons can harm
+us, I think that it will be better to go. If necessary we can camp the
+waggons somewhere for a while on the journey. Hearken, Indaba-zimbi:
+say nothing of this to the Star; I will not have her frightened. And
+hearken again. Speak to the headmen, and see that watchers are set all
+round the huts and gardens, and kept there night and day. To-morrow we
+will get the waggons ready, and next day we will trek."
+
+He nodded his white lock and went to do my bidding, leaving me not a
+little disturbed--unreasonably so, indeed. It was a strange story.
+That this woman had the power of conversing with baboons I knew.[*]
+That was not so very wonderful, seeing that the Bushmen claim to be
+able to do the same thing, and she had been nurtured by them. But that
+she had been able to muster them, and by the strength of her human
+will and intelligence muster them in order to forward her ends of
+revenge, seemed to me so incredible that after reflection my fears
+grew light. Still I determined to trek. After all, a journey in an ox
+waggon would not be such a very terrible thing to a strong woman
+accustomed to roughing it, whatever her state of health. And when all
+was said and done I did not like this tale of the presence of Hendrika
+with countless hosts of baboons.
+
+[*] For an instance of this, see Anderson's "Twenty-five Years in a
+    Waggon," vol. i. p. 262.--Editor.
+
+So I went in to Stella, and without saying a word to her of the baboon
+story, told her I had been thinking matters over, and had come to the
+conclusion that it was our duty to follow her father's instructions to
+the letter, and leave Babyan Kraals at once. Into all our talk I need
+not enter, but the end of it was that she agreed with me, and declared
+that she could quite well manage the journey, saying, moreover, that
+now that her dear father was dead she would be glad to get away.
+
+Nothing happened to disturb us that night, and on the following
+morning I was up early making preparations. The despair of the people
+when they learned that we were going to leave them was something quite
+pitiable. I could only console them by declaring that we were but on a
+journey, and would return the following year.
+
+"They had lived in the shadow of their father, who was dead," they
+declared; "ever since they were little they had lived in his shadow.
+He had received them when they were outcasts and wanderers without a
+mat to lie on, or a blanket to cover them, and they had grown fat in
+his shadow. Then he had died, and the Star, their father's daughter,
+had married me, Macumazahn, and they had believed that I should take
+their father's place, and let them live in my shadow. What should they
+do when there was no one to protect them? The tribes were kept from
+attacking them by fear of the white man. If we went they would be
+eaten up," and so on. Alas! there was but too much foundation for
+their fears.
+
+I returned to the huts at mid-day to get some dinner. Stella said that
+she was going to pack during the afternoon, so I did not think it
+necessary to caution her about going out alone, as I did not wish to
+allude to the subject of Hendrika and the baboons unless I was obliged
+to. I told her, however, that I would come back to help her as soon as
+I could get away. Then I went down to the native kraals to sort out
+such cattle as had belonged to Mr. Carson from those which belonged to
+the Kaffirs, for I proposed to take them with us. It was a large herd,
+and the business took an incalculable time. At length, a little before
+sundown, I gave it up, and leaving Indaba-zimbi to finish the job, got
+on my horse and rode homewards.
+
+Arriving, I gave the horse to one of the stable boys, and went into
+the central hut. There was no sign of Stella, though the things she
+had been packing lay about the floor. I passed first into our sleeping
+hut, thence one by one into all the others, but still saw no sign of
+her. Then I went out, and calling to a Kaffir in the garden asked him
+if he had seen his mistress.
+
+He answered "yes." He had seen her carrying flowers and walking
+towards the graveyard, holding the little white girl--my daughter--as
+he called her, by the hand, when the sun stood "there," and he pointed
+to a spot on the horizon where it would have been about an hour and a
+half before. "The two dogs were with them," he added. I turned and ran
+towards the graveyard, which was about a quarter of a mile from the
+huts. Of course there was no reason to be anxious--evidently she had
+gone to lay the flowers on her father's grave. And yet I was anxious.
+
+When I got near the graveyard I met one of the natives, who, by my
+orders, had been set round the kraals to watch the place, and noticed
+that he was rubbing his eyes and yawning. Clearly he had been asleep.
+I asked him if he had seen his mistress, and he answered that he had
+not, which under the circumstances was not wonderful. Without stopping
+to reproach him, I ordered the man to follow me, and went on to the
+graveyard. There, on Mr. Carson's grave, lay the drooping flowers
+which Stella had been carrying, and there in the fresh mould was the
+spoor of Tota's veldschoon, or hide slipper. But where were they?
+
+I ran from the graveyard and called aloud at the top of my voice, but
+no answer came. Meanwhile the native was more profitably engaged in
+tracing their spoor. He followed it for about a hundred yards till he
+came to a clump of mimosa bush that was situated between the stream
+and the ancient marble quarries just over the waterfall, and at the
+mouth of the ravine. Here he stopped, and I heard him give a startled
+cry. I rushed to the spot, passed through the trees, and saw this. The
+little open space in the centre of the glade had been the scene of a
+struggle. There, in the soft earth, were the marks of three pairs of
+human feet--two shod, one naked--Stella's, Tota's, and /Hendrika's/.
+Nor was this all. There, close by, lay the fragments of the two dogs--
+they were nothing more--and one baboon, not yet quite dead, which had
+been bitten in the throat by the dogs. All round was the spoor of
+numberless baboons. The full horror of what had happened flashed into
+my mind.
+
+My wife and Tota had been carried off by the baboons. As yet they had
+not been killed, for if so their remains would have been found with
+those of the dogs. They had been carried off. The brutes, acting under
+the direction of that woman-monkey, Hendrika, had dragged them away to
+some secret den, there to keep them till they died--or kill them!
+
+For a moment I literally staggered beneath the terror of the shock.
+Then I roused myself from my despair. I bade the native run and alarm
+the people at the kraals, telling them to come armed, and bring me
+guns and ammunition. He went like the wind, and I turned to follow the
+spoor. For a few yards it was plain enough--Stella had been dragged
+along. I could see where her heels had struck the ground; the child
+had, I presumed, been carried--at least there were no marks of her
+feet. At the water's edge the spoor vanished. The water was shallow,
+and they had gone along in it, or at least Hendrika and her victim
+had, in order to obliterate the trail. I could see where a moss-grown
+stone had been freshly turned over in the water-bed. I ran along the
+bank some way up the ravine, in the vain hope of catching a sight of
+them. Presently I heard a bark in the cliffs above me; it was answered
+by another, and then I saw that scores of baboons were hidden about
+among the rocks on either side, and were softly swinging themselves
+down to bar the path. To go on unarmed as I was would be useless. I
+should only be torn to pieces as the dogs had been. So I turned and
+fled back towards the huts. As I drew near I could see that my
+messenger had roused the settlement, for natives with spears and
+kerries in their hands were running up towards the kraals. When I
+reached the hut I met old Indaba-zimbi, who wore a very serious face.
+
+"So the evil has fallen, Macumazahn," he said.
+
+"It has fallen," I answered.
+
+"Keep a good heart, Macumazahn," he said again. "She is not dead, nor
+is the little maid, and before they die we shall find them. Remember
+this, Hendrika loves her. She will not harm her, or allow the babyans
+to harm her. She will try to hide her away from you, that is all."
+
+"Pray God that we may find her," I groaned. "The light is going fast."
+
+"The moon rises in three hours," he answered; "we will search by
+moonlight. It is useless to start now; see, the sun sinks. Let us get
+the men together, eat, and make things ready. /Hamba gachla/. Hasten
+slowly, Macumazahn."
+
+As there was no help, I took his advice. I could eat no food, but I
+packed some up to take with us, and made ready ropes, and a rough kind
+of litter. If we found them they would scarcely be able to walk. Ah!
+if we found them! How slowly the time passed! It seemed hours before
+the moon rose. But at last it did rise.
+
+Then we started. In all we were about a hundred men, but we only
+mustered five guns between us, my elephant roer and four that had
+belonged to Mr. Carson.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE MAGIC OF INDABA-ZIMBI
+
+We gained the spot by the stream where Stella had been taken. The
+natives looked at the torn fragments of the dogs, and at the marks of
+violence, and I heard them swearing to each other, that whether the
+Star lived or died they would not rest till they had exterminated
+every baboon on Babyan's Peak. I echoed the oath, and, as shall be
+seen, we kept it.
+
+We started on along the stream, following the spoor of the baboons as
+we best could. But the stream left no spoor, and the hard, rocky banks
+very little. Still we wandered on. All night we wandered through the
+lonely moonlit valleys, startling the silence into a thousand echoes
+with our cries. But no answer came to them. In vain our eyes searched
+the sides of precipices formed of water-riven rocks fantastically
+piled one upon another; in vain we searched through endless dells and
+fern-clad crannies. There was nothing to be found. How could we expect
+to find two human beings hidden away in the recesses of this vast
+stretch of mountain ground, which no man yet had ever fully explored.
+They were lost, and in all human probability lost for ever.
+
+To and fro we wandered hopelessly, till at last dawn found us footsore
+and weary nearly at the spot whence we had started. We sat down
+waiting for the sun to rise, and the men ate of such food as they had
+brought with them, and sent to the kraals for more.
+
+I sat upon a stone with a breaking heart. I cannot describe my
+feelings. Let the reader put himself in my position and perhaps he may
+get some idea of them. Near me was old Indaba-zimbi, who sat staring
+straight before him as though he were looking into space, and taking
+note of what went on there. An idea struck me. This man had some
+occult power. Several times during our adventures he had prophesied,
+and in every case his prophecies had proved true. He it was who, when
+we escaped from the Zulu Impi, had told me to steer north, because
+there we should find the place of a white man who lived under the
+shadow of a great peak that was full of baboons. Perhaps he could help
+in this extremity--at any rate it was worth trying.
+
+"Indaba-zimbi," I said, "you say that you can send your spirit through
+the doors of space and see what we cannot see. At the least I know
+that you can do strange things. Can you not help me now? If you can,
+and will save her, I will give you half the cattle that we have here."
+
+"I never said anything of the sort, Macumazahn," he answered. "I do
+things, I do not talk about them. Neither do I seek reward for what I
+do like a common witch-doctor. It is well that you have asked me to
+use my wisdom, Macumazahn, for I should not have used it again without
+being asked--no, not even for the sake of the Star and yourself, whom
+I love, for if so my Spirit would have been angry. In the other
+matters I had a part, for my life was concerned as well as yours; but
+in this matter I have no part, and therefore I might not use my wisdom
+unless you thought well to call upon my Spirit. However, it would have
+been no good to ask me before, for I have only just found the herb I
+want," and he produced a handful of the leaves of a plant that was
+unfamiliar to me. It had prickly leaves, shaped very much like those
+of the common English nettle.
+
+"Now, Macumazahn," he went on, "bid the men leave us alone, and then
+follow me presently to the little glade down there by the water."
+
+I did so. When I reached the glade I found Indaba-zimbi kindling a
+small fire under the shadow of a tree by the edge of the water.
+
+"Sit there, Macumazahn," he said, pointing to a stone near the fire,
+"and do not be surprised or frightened at anything you see. If you
+move or call out we shall learn nothing."
+
+I sat down and watched. When the fire was alight and burning brightly,
+the old fellow stripped himself stark naked, and, going to the foot of
+the pool, dipped himself in the water. Then he came back shivering
+with the cold, and, leaning over the little fire, thrust leaves of the
+plant I have mentioned into his mouth and began to chew them,
+muttering as he chewed. Most of the remaining leaves he threw on to
+the fire. A dense smoke rose from them, but he held his head in this
+smoke and drew it down his lungs till I saw that he was exhibiting
+every sign of suffocation. The veins in his throat and chest swelled,
+he gasped loudly, and his eyes, from which tears were streaming,
+seemed as though they were going to start from his head. Presently he
+fell over on his side, and lay senseless. I was terribly alarmed, and
+my first impulse was to run to his assistance, but fortunately I
+remembered his caution, and sat quiet.
+
+Indaba-zimbi lay on the ground like a person quite dead. His limbs had
+all the utter relaxation of death. But as I watched I saw them begin
+to stiffen, exactly as though /rigor mortis/ had set in. Then, to my
+astonishment, I perceived them once more relax, and this time there
+appeared upon his chest the stain of decomposition. It spread and
+spread; in three minutes the man, to all appearance, was a livid
+corpse.
+
+I sat amazed watching this uncanny sight, and wondering if any further
+natural process was about to be enacted. Perhaps Indaba-zimbi was
+going to fall to dust before my eyes. As I watched I observed that the
+discoloration was beginning to fade. First it vanished from the
+extremities, then from the larger limbs, and lastly from the trunk.
+Then in turn came the third stage of relaxation, the second stage of
+stiffness or /rigor/, and the first stage of after-death collapse.
+When all these had rapidly succeeded each other, Indaba-zimbi quietly
+woke up.
+
+I was too astonished to speak; I simply looked at him with my mouth
+open.
+
+"Well, Macumazahn," he said, putting his head on one side like a bird,
+and nodding his white lock in a comical fashion, "it is all right; I
+have seen her."
+
+"Seen who?" I said.
+
+"The Star, your wife, and the little maid. They are much frightened,
+but unharmed. The Babyan-frau watches them. She is mad, but the
+baboons obey her, and do not hurt them. The Star was sleeping from
+weariness, so I whispered in her ear and told her not to be
+frightened, for you would soon rescue her, and that meanwhile she must
+seem to be pleased to have Hendrika near her."
+
+"You whispered in her ear?" I said. "How could you whisper in her
+ear?"
+
+"Bah! Macumazahn. How could I seem to die and go rotten before your
+eyes? You don't know, do you? Well, I will tell you one thing. I had
+to die to pass the doors of space, as you call them. I had to draw all
+the healthy strength and life from my body in order to gather power to
+speak with the Star. It was a dangerous business, Macumazahn, for if I
+had let things go a little further they must have stopped so, and
+there would have been an end of Indaba-zimbi. Ah, you white men, you
+know so much that you think you know everything. But you don't! You
+are always staring at the clouds and can't see the things that lie at
+your feet. You hardly believe me now, do you, Macumazahn? Well, I will
+show you. Have you anything on you that the Star has touched or worn?"
+
+I thought for a moment, and said that I had a lock of her hair in my
+pocket-book. He told me to give it him. I did so. Going to the fire,
+he lit the lock of hair in the flame, and let it burn to ashes, which
+he caught in his left hand. These ashes he mixed up in a paste with
+the juice of one of the leaves of the plant I have spoken of.
+
+"Now, Macumazahn, shut your eyes," he said.
+
+I did so, and he rubbed his paste on to my eyelids. At first it burnt
+me, then my head swam strangely. Presently this effect passed off, and
+my brain was perfectly clear again, but I could not feel the ground
+with my feet. Indaba-zimbi led me to the side of the stream. Beneath
+us was a pool of beautifully clear water.
+
+"Look into the pool, Macumazahn," said Indaba-zimbi, and his voice
+sounded hollow and far away in my ears.
+
+I looked. The water grew dark; it cleared, and in it was a picture. I
+saw a cave with a fire burning in it. Against the wall of the cave
+rested Stella. Her dress was torn almost off her, she looked
+dreadfully pale and weary, and her eyelids were red as though with
+weeping. But she slept, and I could almost think that I saw her lips
+shape my name in her sleep. Close to her, her head upon Stella's
+breast, was little Tota; she had a skin thrown over her to keep out
+the night cold. The child was awake, and appeared to be moaning with
+fear. By the fire, and in such a position that the light fell full
+upon her face, and engaged in cooking something in a rough pot shaped
+from wood, sat the Baboon-woman, Hendrika. She was clothed in baboon
+skins, and her face had been rubbed with some dark stain, which was,
+however, wearing off it. In the intervals of her cooking she would
+turn on Stella her wild eyes, in which glared visible madness, with an
+expression of tenderness that amounted to worship. Then she would
+stare at the child and gnash her teeth as though with hate. Clearly
+she was jealous of it. Round the entrance arch of the cave peeped and
+peered the heads of many baboons. Presently Hendrika made a sign to
+one of them; apparently she did not speak, or rather grunt, in order
+not to wake Stella. The brute hopped forward, and she gave it a second
+rude wooden pot which was lying by her. It took it and went. The last
+thing that I saw, as the vision slowly vanished from the pool, was the
+dim shadow of the baboon returning with the pot full of water.
+
+Presently everything had gone. I ceased to feel strange. There beneath
+me was the pool, and at my side stood Indaba-zimbi, smiling.
+
+"You have seen things," he said.
+
+"I have," I answered, and made no further remark on the matter. What
+was there to say?[*] "Do you know the path to the cave?" I added.
+
+[*] For some almost equally remarkable instances of Kaffir magic the
+    reader is referred to a work named "Among the Zulus," by David
+    Leslie.--Editor.
+
+He nodded his head. "I did not follow it all just now, because it
+winds," he said. "But I know it. We shall want the ropes."
+
+"Then let us be starting; the men have eaten."
+
+He nodded his head again, and going to the men I told them to make
+ready, adding that Indaba-zimbi knew the way. They said that was all
+right, if Indaba-zimbi had "smelt her out," they should soon find the
+Star. So we started cheerfully enough, and my spirits were so much
+improved that I was able to eat a boiled mealie cob or two as we
+walked.
+
+We went up the valley, following the course of the stream for about a
+mile; then Indaba-zimbi made a sudden turn to the right, along another
+kloof, of which there were countless numbers in the base of the great
+hill.
+
+On we went through kloof after kloof. Indaba-zimbi, who led us, was
+never at a loss, he turned up gulleys and struck across necks of hills
+with the certainty of a hound on a hot scent. At length, after about
+three hours' march, we came to a big silent valley on the northern
+slope of the great peak. On one side of this valley was a series of
+stony koppies, on the other rose a sheer wall of rock. We marched
+along the wall for a distance of some two miles. Then suddenly Indaba-
+zimbi halted.
+
+"There is the place," he said, pointing to an opening in the cliff.
+This opening was about forty feet from the ground, and ellipse-shaped.
+It cannot have been more than twenty feet high by ten wide, and was
+partially hidden by ferns and bushes that grew about it in the surface
+of the cliff. Keen as my eyes were, I doubt if I should ever have
+noticed it, for there were many such cracks and crannies in the rocky
+face of the great mountain.
+
+We drew near and looked carefully at the place. The first thing I
+noticed was that the rock, which was not quite perpendicular, had been
+worn by the continual passage of baboons; the second, that something
+white was hanging on a bush near the top of the ascent.
+
+It was a pocket-handkerchief.
+
+Now there was no more doubt about the matter. With a beating heart I
+began the ascent. For the first twenty feet it was comparatively easy,
+for the rock shelved; the next ten feet was very difficult, but still
+possible to an active man, and I achieved it, followed by Indaba-
+zimbi. But the last twelve or fifteen feet could only be scaled by
+throwing a rope over the trunk of a stunted tree, which grew at the
+bottom of the opening. This we accomplished with some trouble, and the
+rest was easy. A foot or two above my head the handkerchief fluttered
+in the wind. Hanging to the rope, I grasped it. It was my wife's. As I
+did so I noticed the face of a baboon peering at me over the edge of
+the cleft, the first baboon we had seen that morning. The brute gave a
+bark and vanished. Thrusting the handkerchief into my breast, I set my
+feet against the cliff and scrambled up as hard as I could go. I knew
+that we had no time to lose, for the baboon would quickly alarm the
+others. I gained the cleft. It was a mere arched passage cut by water,
+ending in a gulley, which led to a wide open space of some sort. I
+looked through the passage and saw that the gulley was black with
+baboons. On they came by the hundred. I unslung my elephant gun from
+my shoulders and waited, calling to the men below to come up with all
+possible speed. The brutes streamed on down the gloomy gulf towards
+me, barking, grunting, and showing their huge teeth. I waited till
+they were within fifteen yards. Then I fired the elephant gun, which
+was loaded with slugs, right into the thick of them. In that narrow
+place the report echoed like a cannon shot, but its sound was quickly
+swallowed in the volley of piercing human-sounding groans and screams
+that followed. The charge of heavy slugs had ploughed through the host
+of baboons, of which at least a dozen lay dead or dying in the
+passage. For a moment they hesitated, then they came on again with a
+hideous clamour. Fortunately by this time Indaba-zimbi, who also had a
+gun, was standing by my side, otherwise I should have been torn to
+pieces before I could re-load. He fired both barrels into them, and
+again checked the rush. But they came on again, and notwithstanding
+the appearance of two other natives with guns, which they let off with
+more or less success, we should have been overwhelmed by the great and
+ferocious apes had I not by this time succeeded in re-loading the
+elephant gun. When they were right on us, I fired, with even more
+deadly effect than before, for at that distance every slug told on
+their long line. The howls and screams of pain and rage were now
+something inconceivable. One might have thought that we were doing
+battle with a host of demons; indeed in that light--for the
+overhanging arch of rock made it very dark--the gnashing snouts and
+sombre glowing eyes of the apes looked like those of devils as they
+are represented by monkish fancy. But the last shot was too much for
+them; they withdrew, dragging some of their wounded with them, and
+thus gave us time to get our men up the cliff. In a few minutes all
+were there, and we advanced down the passage, which presently opened
+into a rocky gulley with shelving sides. This gulley had a water-way
+at the bottom of it; it was about a hundred yards long, and the slopes
+on either side were topped by precipitous cliffs. I looked at these
+slopes; they literally swarmed with baboons, grunting, barking,
+screaming, and beating their breasts with their long arms, in fury. I
+looked up the water-way; along it, accompanied by a mob, or, as it
+were, a guard of baboons, ran Hendrika, her long hair flying, madness
+written on her face, and in her arms was the senseless form of little
+Tota.
+
+She saw us, and a foam of rage burst from her lips. She screamed
+aloud. To me the sound was a mere inarticulate cry, but the baboons
+clearly understood it, for they began to roll rocks down on to us. One
+boulder leaped past me and struck down a Kaffir behind; another fell
+from the roof of the arch on to a man's head and killed him. Indaba-
+zimbi lifted his gun to shoot Hendrika; I knocked it up, so that the
+shot went over her, crying that he would kill the child. Then I
+shouted to the men to open out and form a line from side to side of
+the shelving gulley. Furious at the loss of their two comrades, they
+obeyed me, and keeping in the water-way myself, together with Indaba-
+zimbi and the other guns, I gave the word to charge.
+
+Then the real battle began. It is difficult to say who fought the most
+fiercely, the natives or the baboons. The Kaffirs charged along the
+slopes, and as they came, encouraged by the screams of Hendrika, who
+rushed to and fro holding the wretched Tota before her as a shield,
+the apes bounded at them in fury. Scores were killed by the assegais,
+and many more fell beneath our gun-shots; but still they came on. Nor
+did we go scathless. Occasionally a man would slip, or be pulled over
+in the grip of a baboon. Then the others would fling themselves upon
+him like dogs on a rat, and worry him to death. We lost five men in
+this way, and I myself received a bite through the fleshy part of the
+left arm, but fortunately a native near me assegaied the animal before
+I was pulled down.
+
+At length, and all of a sudden, the baboons gave up. A panic seemed to
+seize them. Notwithstanding the cries of Hendrika they thought no more
+of fight, but only of escape; some even did not attempt to get away
+from the assegais of the Kaffirs, they simply hid their horrible faces
+in their paws, and, moaning piteously, waited to be slain.
+
+Hendrika saw that the battle was lost. Dropping the child from her
+arms, she rushed straight at us, a very picture of horrible insanity.
+I lifted my gun, but could not bear to shoot. After all she was but a
+mad thing, half ape, half woman. So I sprang to one side, and she
+landed full on Indaba-zimbi, knocking him down. But she did not stay
+to do any more. Wailing terribly, she rushed down the gulley and
+through the arch, followed by a few of the surviving baboons, and
+vanished from our sight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+WHAT HAPPENED TO STELLA
+
+The fight was over. In all we had lost seven men killed, and several
+more severely bitten, while but few had escaped without some tokens
+whereby he might remember what a baboon's teeth and claws are like.
+How many of the brutes we killed I never knew, because we did not
+count, but it was a vast number. I should think that the stock must
+have been low about Babyan's Peak for many years afterwards. From that
+day to this, however, I have always avoided baboons, feeling more
+afraid of them than any beast that lives.
+
+The path was clear, and we rushed forward along the water-course. But
+first we picked up little Tota. The child was not in a swoon, as I had
+thought, but paralyzed by terror, so that she could scarcely speak.
+Otherwise she was unhurt, though it took her many a week to recover
+her nerve. Had she been older, and had she not remembered Hendrika, I
+doubt if she would have recovered it. She knew me again, and flung her
+little arms about my neck, clinging to me so closely that I did not
+dare to give her to any one else to carry lest I should add to her
+terrors. So I went on with her in my arms. The fears that pierced my
+heart may well be imagined. Should I find Stella living or dead?
+Should I find her at all? Well, we should soon know now. We stumbled
+on up the stony watercourse; notwithstanding the weight of Tota I led
+the way, for suspense lent me wings. Now we were through, and an
+extraordinary scene lay before us. We were in a great natural
+amphitheatre, only it was three times the size of any amphitheatre
+ever shaped by man, and the walls were formed of precipitous cliffs,
+ranging from one to two hundred feet in height. For the rest, the
+space thus enclosed was level, studded with park-like trees, brilliant
+with flowers, and having a stream running through the centre of it,
+that, as I afterwards discovered, welled up from the ground at the
+head of the open space.
+
+We spread ourselves out in a line, searching everywhere, for Tota was
+too overcome to be able to tell us where Stella was hidden away. For
+nearly half an hour we searched and searched, scanning the walls of
+rock for any possible openings to a cave. In vain, we could find none.
+I applied to old Indaba-zimbi, but his foresight was at fault here.
+All he could say was that this was the place, and that the "Star" was
+hidden somewhere in a cave, but where the cave was he could not tell.
+At last we came to the top of the amphitheatre. There before us was a
+wall of rock, of which the lower parts were here and there clothed in
+grasses, lichens, and creepers. I walked along it, calling at the top
+of my voice.
+
+Presently my heart stood still, for I thought I heard a faint answer.
+I drew nearer to the place from which the sound seemed to come, and
+again called. Yes, there was an answer in my wife's voice. It seemed
+to come from the rock. I went up to it and searched among the
+creepers, but still could find no opening.
+
+"Move the stone," cried Stella's voice, "the cave is shut with a
+stone."
+
+I took a spear and prodded at the cliff whence the sound came.
+Suddenly the spear sunk in through a mass of lichen. I swept the
+lichen aside, revealing a boulder that had been rolled into the mouth
+of an opening in the rock, which it fitted so accurately that, covered
+as it was by the overhanging lichen, it might well have escaped the
+keenest eye. We dragged the boulder out; it was two men's work to do
+it. Beyond was a narrow, water-worn passage, which I followed with a
+beating heart. Presently the passage opened into a small cave, shaped
+like a pickle bottle, and coming to a neck at the top end. We passed
+through and found ourselves in a second, much larger cave, that I at
+once recognized as the one of which Indaba-zimbi had shown me a vision
+in the water. Light reached it from above--how I know not--and by it I
+could see a form half-sitting, half lying on some skins at the top end
+of the cave. I rushed to it. It was Stella! Stella bound with strips
+of hide, bruised, torn, but still Stella, and alive.
+
+She saw me, she gave one cry, then, as I caught her in my arms, she
+fainted. It was happy indeed that she did not faint before, for had it
+not been for the sound of her voice I do not believe we should ever
+have found that cunningly hidden cave, unless, indeed, Indaba-zimbi's
+magic (on which be blessings) had come to our assistance.
+
+We bore her to the open air, laid her beneath the shade of a tree, and
+cut the bonds loose from her ankles. As we went I glanced at the cave.
+It was exactly as I had seen it in the vision. There burnt the fire,
+there were the rude wooden vessels, one of them still half full of the
+water which I had seen the baboon bring. I felt awed as I looked, and
+marvelled at the power wielded by a savage who could not even read and
+write.
+
+Now I could see Stella clearly. Her face was scratched, and haggard
+with fear and weeping, her clothes were almost torn off her, and her
+beautiful hair was loose and tangled. I sent for water, and we
+sprinkled her face. Then I forced a little of the brandy which we
+distilled from peaches at the kraals between her lips, and she opened
+her eyes, and throwing her arms about me clung to me as little Tota
+had done, sobbing, "Thank God! thank God!"
+
+After a while she grew quieter, and I made her and Tota eat some food
+from the store that we had brought with us. I too ate and was
+thankful, for with the exception of the mealie cobs I had tasted
+nothing for nearly four-and-twenty hours. Then she washed her face and
+hands, and tidied her rags of dress as well as she was able. As she
+did so by degrees I drew her story from her.
+
+It seemed that on the previous afternoon, being wearied with packing,
+she went out to visit her father's grave, taking Tota with her, and
+was followed there by the two dogs. She wished to lay some flowers on
+the grave and take farewell of the dust it covered, for as we had
+expected to trek early on the morrow she did not know if she would
+find a later opportunity. They passed up the garden, and gathering
+some flowers from the orange trees and elsewhere, went on to the
+little graveyard. Here she laid them on the grave as we had found
+them, and then sitting down, fell into a deep and sad reverie, such as
+the occasion would naturally induce. While she sat thus, Tota, who was
+a lively child and active as a kitten, strayed away without Stella
+observing it. With her went the dogs, who also had grown tired of
+inaction; a while passed, and suddenly she heard the dogs barking
+furiously about a hundred and fifty yards away. Then she heard Tota
+scream, and the dogs also yelling with fear and pain. She rose and ran
+as swiftly as she could towards the spot whence the sound came.
+Presently she was there. Before her in the glade, holding the
+screaming Tota in her arms, was a figure in which, notwithstanding the
+rough disguise of baboon skins and colouring matter, she had no
+difficulty in recognizing Hendrika, and all about her were numbers of
+baboons, rolling over and over in two hideous heaps, of which the
+centres were the unfortunate dogs now in process of being rent to
+fragments.
+
+"Hendrika," Stella cried, "what does this mean? What are you doing
+with Tota and those brutes?"
+
+The woman heard her and looked up. Then Stella saw that she was mad;
+madness stared from her eyes. She dropped the child, which instantly
+flew to Stella for protection. Stella clasped it, only to be herself
+clasped by Hendrika. She struggled fiercely, but it was of no use--the
+Babyan-frau had the strength of ten. She lifted her and Tota as though
+they were nothing, and ran off with them, following the bed of the
+stream in order to avoid leaving a spoor. Only the baboons who came
+with her, minus the one the dogs had killed, would not take to the
+water, but kept pace with them on the bank.
+
+Stella said that the night which followed was more like a hideous
+nightmare than a reality. She was never able to tell me all that
+occurred in it. She had a vague recollection of being borne over rocks
+and along kloofs, while around her echoed the horrible grunts and
+clicks of the baboons. She spoke to Hendrika in English and Kaffir,
+imploring her to let them go; but the woman, if I may call her so,
+seemed in her madness to have entirely forgotten these tongues. When
+Stella spoke she would kiss her and stroke her hair, but she did not
+seem to understand what it was she said. On the other hand, she could,
+and did, talk to the baboons, that seemed to obey her implicitly.
+Moreover, she would not allow them to touch either Stella or the child
+in her arms. Once one of them tried to do so, and she seized a dead
+stick and struck it so heavily on the head that it fell senseless.
+Thrice Stella made an attempt to escape, for sometimes even Hendrika's
+giant strength waned and she had to set them down. But on each
+occasion she caught them, and it was in these struggles that Stella's
+clothes were so torn. At length before daylight they reached the
+cliff, and with the first break of light the ascent began. Hendrika
+dragged them up the first stages, but when they came to the
+precipitous place she tied the strips of hide, of which she had a
+supply wound round her waist, beneath Stella's arms. Steep as the
+place was the baboons ascended it easily enough, springing from a
+knock of rock to the trunk of the tree that grew on the edge of the
+crevasse. Hendrika followed them, holding the end of the hide reim in
+her teeth, one of the baboons hanging down from the tree to assist her
+ascent. It was while she was ascending that Stella bethought of
+letting fall her handkerchief in the faint hope that some searcher
+might see it.
+
+By this time Hendrika was on the tree, and grunting out orders to the
+baboons which clustered about Stella below. Suddenly these seized her
+and little Tota who was in her arms, and lifted her from the ground.
+Then Hendrika above, aided by other baboons, put out all her great
+strength and pulled the two of them up the rock. Twice Stella swung
+heavily against the cliff. After the second blow she felt her senses
+going, and was consumed with terror lest she should drop Tota. But she
+managed to cling to her, and together they reached the cleft.
+
+"From that time," Stella went on, "I remember no more till I woke to
+find myself in a gloomy cave resting on a bed of skins. My legs were
+bound, and Hendrika sat near me watching me, while round the edge of
+the cave peered the heads of those horrible baboons. Tota was still in
+my arms, and half dead from terror; her moans were pitiful to hear. I
+spoke to Hendrika, imploring her to release us; but either she has
+lost all understanding of human speech, or she pretends to have done
+so. All she would do was to caress me, and even kiss my hands and
+dress with extravagant signs of affection. As she did so, Tota shrunk
+closer to me. This Hendrika saw and glared so savagely at the child
+that I feared lest she was going to kill her. I diverted her attention
+by making signs that I wanted water, and this she gave me in a wooden
+bowl. As you saw, the cave was evidently Hendrika's dwelling-place.
+There are stores of fruit in it and some strips of dried flesh. She
+gave me some of the fruit and Tota a little, and I made Tota eat some.
+You can never know what I went through, Allan. I saw now that Hendrika
+was quite mad, and but little removed from the brutes to which she is
+akin, and over which she has such unholy power. The only trace of
+humanity left about her was her affection for me. Evidently her idea
+was to keep me here with her, to keep me away from you, and to carry
+out this idea she was capable of the exercise of every artifice and
+cunning. In this way she was sane enough, but in every other way she
+was mad. Moreover, she had not forgotten her horrible jealousy.
+Already I saw her glaring at Tota, and knew that the child's murder
+was only a matter of time. Probably within a few hours she would be
+killed before my eyes. Of escape, even if I had the strength, there
+was absolutely no chance, and little enough of our ever being found.
+No, we should be kept here guarded by a mad thing, half ape, half
+woman, till we perished miserably. Then I thought of you, dear, and of
+all that you must be suffering, and my heart nearly broke. I could
+only pray to God that I might either be rescued or die swiftly.
+
+"As I prayed I dropped into a kind of doze from utter weariness, and
+then I had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Indaba-zimbi stood over
+me nodding his white lock, and spoke to me in Kaffir, telling me not
+to be frightened, for you would soon be with me, and that meanwhile I
+must humour Hendrika, pretending to be pleased to have her near me.
+The dream was so vivid that I actually seemed to see and hear him, as
+I see and hear him now."
+
+Here I looked up and glanced at old Indaba-zimbi, who was sitting
+near. But it was not till afterwards that I told Stella of how her
+vision was brought about.
+
+"At any rate," she went on, "when I awoke I determined to act on my
+dream. I took Hendrika's hand, and pressed it. She actually laughed in
+a wild kind of way with happiness, and laid her head upon my knee.
+Then I made signs that I wanted food, and she threw wood on the fire,
+which I forgot to tell you was burning in the cave, and began to make
+some of the broth that she used to cook very well, and she did not
+seem to have forgotten all about it. At any rate the broth was not
+bad, though neither Tota nor I could drink much of it. Fright and
+weariness had taken away our appetites.
+
+"After the meal was done--and I prolonged it as much as possible--I
+saw Hendrika was beginning to get jealous of Tota again. She glared at
+her and then at the big knife which was tied round her own body. I
+knew the knife again, it was the one with which she had tried to
+murder you, dear. At last she went so far as to draw the knife. I was
+paralyzed with fear, then suddenly I remembered that when she was our
+servant, and used to get out of temper and sulk, I could always calm
+her by singing to her. So I began to sing hymns. Instantly she forgot
+her jealousy and put the knife back into its sheath. She knew the
+sound of the singing, and sat listening to it with a rapt face; the
+baboons, too, crowded in at the entrance of the cave to listen. I must
+have sung for an hour or more, all the hymns that I could remember. It
+was so very strange and dreadful sitting there singing to mad Hendrika
+and those hideous man-like apes that shut their eyes and nodded their
+great heads as I sang. It was a horrible nightmare; but I believe that
+the baboons are almost as human as the Bushmen.
+
+"Well, this went on for a long time till my voice was getting
+exhausted. Then suddenly I heard the baboons outside raise a loud
+noise, as they do when they are angry. Then, dear, I heard the boom of
+your elephant gun, and I think it was the sweetest sound that ever
+came to my ears. Hendrika heard it too. She sprang up, stood for a
+moment, then, to my horror, swept Tota into her arms and rushed down
+the cave. Of course I could not stir to follow her, for my feet were
+tied. Next instant I heard the sound of a rock being moved, and
+presently the lessening of the light in the cave told me that I was
+shut in. Now the sound even of the elephant gun only reached me very
+faintly, and presently I could hear nothing more, straining my ears as
+I would.
+
+"At last I heard a faint shouting that reached me through the wall of
+rock. I answered as loud as I could. You know the rest; and oh, my
+dear husband, thank God! thank God!" and she fell weeping into my
+arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+FIFTEEN YEARS AFTER
+
+Both Stella and Tota were too weary to be moved, so we camped that
+night in the baboons' home, but were troubled by no baboons. Stella
+would not sleep in the cave; she said the place terrified her, so I
+made her up a kind of bed under a thorn-tree. As this rock-bound
+valley was one of the hottest places I ever was in, I thought that
+this would not matter; but when at sunrise on the following morning I
+saw a veil of miasmatic mist hanging over the surface of the ground, I
+changed my opinion. However, neither Stella nor Tota seemed the worse,
+so as soon as was practical we started homewards. I had already on the
+previous day sent some of the men back to the kraals to fetch a
+ladder, and when we reached the cliff we found them waiting for us
+beneath. With the help of the ladder the descent was easy. Stella
+simply got out of her rough litter at the top of the cliff, for we
+found it necessary to carry her, climbed down the ladder, and got into
+it again at the bottom.
+
+Well, we reached the kraals safely enough, seeing nothing more of
+Hendrika, and, were this a story, doubtless I should end it here with
+--"and lived happily ever after." But alas! it is not so. How am I to
+write it?
+
+My dearest wife's vital energy seemed completely to fail her now that
+the danger was past, and within twelve hours of our return I saw that
+her state was such as to necessitate the abandonment of any idea of
+leaving Babyan Kraals at present. The bodily exertion, the anguish of
+mind, and the terror which she had endured during that dreadful night,
+combined with her delicate state of health, had completely broken her
+down. To make matters worse, also, she was taken with an attack of
+fever, contracted no doubt in the unhealthy atmosphere of that
+accursed valley. In time she shook the fever off, but it left her
+dreadfully weak, and quite unfit to face the trial before her.
+
+I think she knew that she was going to die; she always spoke of my
+future, never of /our/ future. It is impossible for me to tell how
+sweet she was; how gentle, how patient and resigned. Nor, indeed, do I
+wish to tell it, it is too sad. But this I will say, I believe that if
+ever a woman drew near to perfection while yet living on the earth,
+Stella Quatermain did so.
+
+The fatal hour drew on. My boy Harry was born, and his mother lived to
+kiss and bless him. Then she sank. We did what we could, but we had
+little skill, and might not hold her back from death. All through one
+weary night I watched her with a breaking heart.
+
+The dawn came, the sun rose in the east. His rays falling on the peak
+behind were reflected in glory upon the bosom of the western sky.
+Stella awoke from her swoon and saw the light. She whispered to me to
+open the door of the hut. I did so, and she fixed her dying eyes on
+the splendour of the morning sky. She looked on me and smiled as an
+angel might smile. Then with a last effort she lifted her hand, and,
+pointing to the radiant heavens, whispered:
+
+"/There, Allan, there!/"
+
+It was done, and I was broken-hearted, and broken-hearted I must
+wander to the end. Those who have endured my loss will know my sorrow;
+it cannot be written. In such peace and at such an hour may I also
+die!
+
+Yes, it is a sad story, but wander where we will about the world we
+can never go beyond the sound of the passing bell. For me, as for my
+father before me, and for the millions who have been and who shall be,
+there is but one word of comfort. "The Lord hath given, and the Lord
+hath taken away." Let us, then, bow our heads in hope, and add with a
+humble heart, "Blessed be the name of the Lord."
+
+
+
+I buried her by her father's side, and the weeping of the people who
+had loved her went up to heaven. Even Indaba-zimbi wept, but I could
+weep no more.
+
+On the second night from her burial I could not sleep. I rose, dressed
+myself, and went out into the night. The moon was shining brightly,
+and by its rays I shaped my course towards the graveyard. I drew near
+silently, and as I came I thought that I heard a sound of moaning on
+the further side of the wall. I looked over it. Crouched by Stella's
+grave, and tearing at its sods with her hands, as though she would
+unearth that which lay within, was /Hendrika/. Her face was wild and
+haggard, her form was so emaciated that when the pelts she wore
+slipped aside, the shoulder-blades seemed to project almost through
+her skin. Suddenly she looked up and saw me. Laughing a dreadful
+maniac laugh, she put her hand to her girdle and drew her great knife
+from it. I thought that she was about to attack me, and prepared to
+defend myself as I best could, for I was unarmed. But she made no
+effort to do so. Lifting the knife on high, for a moment she held it
+glittering in the moonlight, then plunged it into her own breast, and
+fell headlong to the ground.
+
+I sprang over the wall and ran to her. She was not yet dead. Presently
+she opened her eyes, and I saw that the madness had gone out of them.
+
+"Macumazahn," she said, speaking in English and in an thick difficult
+voice like one who half forgot and half remembered--"Macumazahn, I
+remember now. I have been mad. Is she really dead, Macumazahn?"
+
+"Yes," I said, "she is dead, and you killed her."
+
+"I killed her!" the dying woman faltered, "and I loved her. Yes, yes,
+I know now. I became a brute again and dragged her to the brutes, and
+now once more I am a woman, and she is dead, and I killed her--because
+I loved her so. I killed her who saved me from the brutes. I am not
+dead yet, Macumazahn. Take me and torture me to death, slowly, very
+slowly. It was jealousy of you that drove me mad, and I have killed
+her, and now she never can forgive me."
+
+"Ask forgiveness from above," I said, for Hendrika had been a
+Christian, and the torment of her remorse touched me.
+
+"I ask no forgiveness," she said. "May God torture me for ever,
+because I killed her; may I become a brute for ever till she comes to
+find me and forgives me! I only want her forgiveness." And wailing in
+an anguish of the heart so strong that her bodily suffering seemed to
+be forgotten, Hendrika, the Baboon-woman, died.
+
+I went back to the kraals, and, waking Indaba-zimbi, told him what had
+happened, asking him to send some one to watch the body, as I proposed
+to give it burial. But next morning it was gone, and I found that the
+natives, hearing of the event, had taken the corpse and thrown it to
+the vultures with every mark of hate. Such, then, was the end of
+Hendrika.
+
+
+
+A week after Hendrika's death I left Babyan Kraals. The place was
+hateful to me now; it was a haunted place. I sent for old Indaba-zimbi
+and told him that I was going. He answered that it was well. "The
+place has served your turn," he said; "here you have won that joy
+which it was fated you should win, and have suffered those things that
+it was fated you should suffer. Yes, and though you know it not now,
+the joy and the suffering, like the sunshine and the storm, are the
+same thing, and will rest at last in the same heaven, the heaven from
+which they came. Now go, Macumazahn."
+
+I asked him if he was coming with me.
+
+"No," he answered, "our paths lie apart henceforth, Macumazahn. We met
+together for certain ends. Those ends are fulfilled. Now each one goes
+his own way. You have still many years before you, Macumazahn; my
+years are few. When we shake hands here it will be for the last time.
+Perhaps we may meet again, but it will not be in this world.
+Henceforth we have each of us a friend the less."
+
+"Heavy words," I said.
+
+"True words," he answered.
+
+Well, I have little heart to write the rest of it. I went, leaving
+Indaba-zimbi in charge of the place, and making him a present of such
+cattle and goods as I did not want.
+
+Tota, I of course took with me. Fortunately by this time she had
+almost recovered the shock to her nerves. The baby Harry, as he was
+afterwards named, was a fine healthy child, and I was lucky in getting
+a respectable native woman, whose husband had been killed in the fight
+with the baboons, to accompany me as his nurse.
+
+Slowly, and followed for a distance by all the people, I trekked away
+from Babyan Kraals. My route towards Natal was along the edge of the
+Bad Lands, and my first night's outspan was beneath that very tree
+where Stella, my lost wife, had found us as we lay dying of thirst.
+
+I did not sleep much that night. And yet I was glad that I had not
+died in the desert about eleven months before. I felt then, as from
+year to year I have continued to feel while I wander through the
+lonely wilderness of life, that I had been preserved to an end. I had
+won my darling's love, and for a little while we had been happy
+together. Our happiness was too perfect to endure. She is lost to me
+now, but she is lost to be found again.
+
+Here on the following morning I bade farewell to Indaba-zimbi.
+
+"Good-bye, Macumazahn," he said, nodding his white lock at me. "Good-
+bye for a while. I am not a Christian; your father could not make me
+that. But he was a wise man, and when he said that those who loved
+each other shall meet again, he did not lie. And I too am a wise man
+in my way, Macumazahn, and I say it is true that we shall meet again.
+All my prophecies to you have come true, Macumazahn, and this one
+shall come true also. I tell you that you shall return to Babyan
+Kraals and shall not find me. I tell you that you shall journey to a
+further land than Babyan Kraals and shall find me. Farewell!" and he
+took a pinch of snuff, turned, and went.
+
+
+
+Of my journey down to Natal there is little to tell. I met with many
+adventures, but they were of an every-day kind, and in the end arrived
+safely at Port Durban, which I now visited for the first time. Both
+Tota and my baby boy bore the journey well. And here I may as well
+chronicle the destiny of Tota. For a year she remained under my
+charge. Then she was adopted by a lady, the wife of an English
+colonel, who was stationed at the Cape. She was taken by her adopted
+parents to England, where she grew up a very charming and pretty girl,
+and ultimately married a clergyman in Norfolk. But I never saw her
+again, though we often wrote to each other.
+
+Before I returned to the country of my birth, she too had been
+gathered to the land of shadows, leaving three children behind her. Ah
+me! all this took place so long ago, when I was young who now am old.
+
+Perhaps it may interest the reader to know the fate of Mr. Carson's
+property, which should of course have gone to his grandson Harry. I
+wrote to England to claim the estate on his behalf, but the lawyer to
+whom the matter was submitted said that my marriage to Stella, not
+having been celebrated by an ordained priest, was not legal according
+to English law, and therefore Harry could not inherit. Foolishly
+enough I acquiesced in this, and the property passed to a cousin of my
+father-in-law's; but since I have come to live in England I have been
+informed that this opinion is open to great suspicion, and that there
+is every probability that the courts would have declared the marriage
+perfectly binding as having been solemnly entered into in accordance
+with the custom of the place where it was contracted. But I am now so
+rich that it is not worth while to move in the matter. The cousin is
+dead, his son is in possession, so let him keep it.
+
+Once, and once only, did I revisit Babyan Kraals. Some fifteen years
+after my darling's death, when I was a man in middle life, I undertook
+an expedition to the Zambesi, and one night outspanned at the mouth of
+the well-known valley beneath the shadow of the great peak. I mounted
+my horse, and, quite alone, rode up the valley, noticing with a
+strange prescience of evil that the road was overgrown, and, save for
+the music of the waterfalls, the place silent as death. The kraals
+that used to be to the left of the road by the river had vanished. I
+rode towards their site; the mealie fields were choked with weeds, the
+paths were dumb with grass. Presently I reached the place. There,
+overgrown with grass, were the burnt ashes of the kraals, and there
+among the ashes, gleaming in the moonlight, lay the white bones of
+men. Now it was clear to me. The settlement had been fallen on by some
+powerful foe, and its inhabitants put to the assegai. The forebodings
+of the natives had come true; Babyan Kraals were peopled by memories
+alone.
+
+I passed on up the terraces. There shone the roofs of the marble huts.
+They would not burn, and were too strong to be easily pulled down. I
+entered one of them--it had been our sleeping hut--and lit a candle
+which I had with me. The huts had been sacked; leaves of books and
+broken mouldering fragments of the familiar furniture lay about. Then
+I remembered that there was a secret place hollowed in the floor and
+concealed by a stone, where Stella used to hide her little treasures.
+I went to the stone and dragged it up. There was something within
+wrapped in rotting native cloth. I undid it. It was the dress my wife
+had been married in. In the centre of the dress were the withered
+wreath and flowers she had worn, and with them a little paper packet.
+I opened it; it contained a lock of my own hair!
+
+I remembered then that I had searched for this dress when I came away
+and could not find it, for I had forgotten the secret recess in the
+floor.
+
+Taking the dress with me, I left the hut for the last time. Leaving my
+horse tied to a tree, I walked to the graveyard, through the ruined
+garden. There it was a mass of weeds, but over my darling's grave grew
+a self-sown orange bush, of which the scented petals fell in showers
+on to the mound beneath. As I drew near, there was a crash and a rush.
+A great baboon leapt from the centre of the graveyard and vanished
+into the trees. I could almost believe that it was the wraith of
+Hendrika doomed to keep an eternal watch over the bones of the woman
+her jealous rage had done to death.
+
+I tarried there a while, filled with such thoughts as may not be
+written. Then, leaving my dead wife to her long sleep where the waters
+fall in melancholy music beneath the shadow of the everlasting
+mountain, I turned and sought that spot where first we had told our
+love. Now the orange grove was nothing but a tangled thicket; many of
+the trees were dead, choked with creepers, but some still flourished.
+There stood the one beneath which we had lingered, there was the rock
+that had been our seat, and there on the rock sat the wraith of
+/Stella/, the Stella whom I had wed! Ay! there she sat, and on her
+upturned face was that same spiritual look which I saw upon it in the
+hour when we first had kissed. The moonlight shone in her dark eyes,
+the breeze wavered in her curling hair, her breast rose and fell, a
+gentle smile played about her parted lips. I stood transfixed with awe
+and joy, gazing on that lost loveliness which once was mine. I could
+not speak, and she spoke no word; she did not even seem to see me. Now
+her eyes fell. For a moment they met mine, and their message entered
+into me.
+
+Then she was gone. She was gone; nothing was left but the tremulous
+moonlight falling where she had been, the melancholy music of the
+waters, the shadow of the everlasting mountain, and, in my heart, the
+sorrow and the hope.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Allan's Wife, by H. Rider Haggard
+