The Sign of the Spider Part 30

"Shot if I know. They kept us at some place away in the mountains. Only brought us here a few days back."

"They won't let us out in the daytime," chimed in Holmes. "And it's getting deadly monotonous. But tell us, old chap, how it is they didn't stick you?"

This, however, Laurence, following out a vein of vague instinct, had decided not to do, wherefore he invented some commonplace solution. And it was with strange and mingled feelings he sat there listening to his old confederates. For months he had not heard one word of the English tongue, and now these two, risen, as it were, from the very grave, seemed to bring back all the past, which, under novel and strange conditions, had more and more been fading into the background. He was even constrained to admit to himself that such feelings were not those of unmingled joy. He had almost lost all inclination to escape from among this people, and now these two, by the very a.s.sociations which their presence recalled, were likely to unsettle him again, possibly to his own peril and undoing. Anyway, he resolved to say nothing as to the incident of "The Sign of the Spider."

"Well, you seem to have got round them better than we did, Stanninghame," said Hazon, with a glance at the Express rifle and revolver wherewith the other was armed. "We have hardly been allowed so much as a stick."

"So? Well, I've been teaching some of them to shoot. That may have had a little to do with it. In fact, I've been laying myself out to make thoroughly the best of the situation."

"That's sound sense everywhere," rejoined Hazon. "You can't get Holmes here to see it, though. He's wearing out his soul-case wanting to break away."

This was no more than the truth. Laurence, seated there, narrowly watching his old comrades, was swift to notice that whereas these months of captivity and suspense had left Hazon the same cool, saturnine, philosophical being he had first known him, upon Holmes they had had quite a different effect. There was a restless, eager nervousness about the younger man; a sort of straining to break away even, as the more seasoned adventurer had described it. The fact was, he was getting desperately home-sick.

"I wish I had never had anything to do with this infernal business," he now bursts forth petulantly. "I swear I'd give all we have made to be back safe and snug in Johannesburg, with white faces around us,--even though I were stony broke."

"Especially one 'white face,'" bantered Laurence. "Well, keep up your form, Holmes. You may be back there yet, safe and sound, and not stony broke either."

"No, no. There is a curse upon us, as I said all along. No good will come to us through such gains. We shall never return--never."

And then Laurence looked across at Hazon, and the glance, done into words, read: "What the mischief _is_ to be made of such a prize fool as this?"

The night was spent in talking over past experiences, and making plans for the future, as to which latter Hazon failed not to note, with faint amus.e.m.e.nt, blended with complacency, that the disciple had, if anything, surpa.s.sed his teacher. In other words, Laurence entered into such plans with a luke-warmness which would have been astonis.h.i.+ng to the superficial judgment, but was not so to that of his listener.

Nondwana, the brother of the king, was seated among a group of his followers in the gate as Laurence went forth the next morning to return to his own quarters. This chief, though older than Tyisandhlu in years, was not the son of the princ.i.p.al wife of their common father, wherefore Tyisandhlu, who was, had, in accordance with native custom, succeeded.

There had been whisperings that Nondwana had attempted to oppose the accession, and very nearly with success; but whether from motives of policy or generosity, Tyisandhlu had foreborne to take his life. The former motive may have counted, for Nondwana exercised a powerful influence in the nation. In aspect, he was a tall, fine, handsome man, with all the dignity of manner which characterized his royal brother, yet there was a sinister expression ever lurking in his face--a cruel droop in the corner of the mouth.

"Greeting, Nyonyoba. And is it good once more to behold a white face?"

said the chief, a veiled irony lurking beneath the outward geniality of his tone.

"To behold the face of a friend once more is always good, Branch of a Royal Tree," returned Laurence, sitting down among the group to take snuff.

"Even when it is that of one risen from the dead?"

"But here it was not so, Ndabezita. My 'Spider' told me that these were all the time alive," rejoined Laurence, with mendacity on a truly generous scale.

"Ha! thy Spider? Yet thou art not of the People of the Spider."

"But I bear the sign," touching his breast. "There are many things made clear to me, which may or may not be set forward in the light of all at the fall of the second moon. Farewell now, Son of the Great."

The start of astonishment, the murmur which ran round the group, was not lost upon him. It was all confirmatory of what he had heard. And then, as he walked back to his tent in Silawayo's kraal, it occurred to Laurence that he had probably made a false move. Nondwana, who, of course, was not ignorant of his daughter's partiality, would almost certainly decide that Lindela had betrayed the secret and sinister intent to its unconscious object; and in that event, how would it fare with her? He felt more than anxious. The king might take long in deciding whether to restore his property or not, and etiquette forbade him to refer to the matter again--at any rate for some time to come.

That Nondwana might demand too much _lobola_, or possibly refuse it altogether as coming from him, was a contingency which, strange to say, completely escaped Laurence's scheming mind.

"Greeting, Nyonyoba. Thy thoughts are deep--ever deep."

The voice, soft, rich, bantering, almost made him start as he raised his eyes, to meet the glad laughing ones of the object of his thoughts at that moment, the chief's daughter.

"What do you here, wandering alone, Lindela?" he said.

"Ha--ha! Now you did well to say my name like that--for--does it not answer your question, 'to wait, to watch for'? And what is meant for two ears is not meant for four or six. I have news, but it is not good."

They were standing in the dip of the path, where a little runlet coursed along between high bush-fringed banks, and the tall, graceful form of the girl stood out in splendid relief from its background of foliage.

Not only for love had she awaited him here, for her eyes were sad and troubled as she narrated her discoveries, which amounted to this: It was next to impossible for Laurence to escape the ordeal--whatever it might be. All of weight and position in the nation were resolved upon it, and none more thoroughly so than Nondwana. The king himself would be powerless to save him, even if he wished, and, indeed, why should he run counter to the desire of a whole nation, and that on behalf of a stranger, some time an enemy?

Laurence, listening, felt his anxiety deepen. The net was closing in around him, had indeed already closed, and from it there was no outlet.

"See now, Lindela," he said gravely, his eyes full upon the troubled face of the girl, "if this thing has got to be, there is no help for it.

And, however it turns out, the world will go on just the same--and the sun rise and set as before. Why grieve about it?"

"Because I love you--love you--do you hear? I know not how it is. We girls of the Ba-gcatya do not love--not like this. We like to be married to men who are great in the nation--powerful indunas--if not too old,--or those who have much cattle, or who will name us for their princ.i.p.al wife; but we know not how to love. Yet you have taught me, Nyonyoba. Say now, is it through the magic of the white people you have done it?"

"It may be so," replied Laurence, smiling queerly to himself, as he thought how exactly, if unconsciously, this alluring child of nature had described her civilized sisters. Then his face became alert and watchful. He was listening intently.

"I, too, heard something," murmured Lindela, scarcely moving her lips.

"I fear lest we have been overlooked. Now, fare thee well, for I must return. But my ears are ever open to what men say, and my father talks much, and talks loud. It may be that I may learn yet more. But, Nyonyoba, delay not in thy first purpose, lest it be too late; and remember, Nondwana has a covetous hand. Fare thee well."

Left alone, Laurence thought he might just as well make sure that no spy had been watching them. Yet though he examined the banks of the stream for some little distance around, he could find no trace of any human presence, no mark even, however faint, of human foot. Still, as he gained his own quarters in Silawayo's kraal, a presentiment lay heavy upon him--a weird, boding presentiment of evil to come--of evil far nearer at hand than he had hitherto deemed.

Long and hard he slept, for he was weary with wakefulness and anxiety.

And when he awoke at dusk, intending to seek an interview with the king, he beheld that which in no wise tended to allay his fears. For as he drew nearer to Imvungayo there issued from its gate a crowd of figures--of black, grotesque, horrible figures, and in the midst a man, whom they were dragging along in grim silence, even as they had hauled Lutali to his unknown doom, and as they disappeared into the gathering darkness, Laurence knew only too well that here was another victim--another hideous sacrifice to the grisly and mysterious demon-G.o.d. No wonder his blood grew chill within him. Would he be the next?

"And you would still become one of us, Nyonyoba?"

"I would, Great Great One; and to this end have I sent much ivory, and many things the white people prize, including three new guns and much ammunition, to Nondwana."

"Ha! Nondwana's hand is large, and opens wide," said the king, with a hearty chuckle. "Yet Lindela is a sprig of a mighty tree. And I think, Nyonyoba, you yourself are sprung from such a root."

"That is no lie, Ruler of the Wise. As a man's whole height is to the length of half his leg, so is the length of my house to that of the kings of the Ba-gcatya, or even to that of Senzangakona[5] himself."

"Ha! That may well be. Thou hast a look that way."

This conversation befell two days after the events just described. The king had refused him an audience on that evening, and indeed since until now. But in the meantime, by royal orders, a great portion of the plunder taken from the slave-hunters' camp had been restored to him, considerably more, indeed, than he had expected. And now he and Tyisandhlu were seated once more together in the royal dwelling, this time alone.

"But to be sprung from an ancient tree avails a man nothing in my country if he is poor," went on Laurence. "Rather is it a disadvantage, and he had better have been born among the meaner sort. That is why I have found my way hither, Ndabezita."

"That is why? And you have gained the desired riches?" said the king, eyeing him narrowly.

"I had--nearly, when the Ba-gcatya fell upon my camp, and killed my people and my slaves. Now, having lost all, I care not to return to my own land."

"But could you return rich you would care so to return?"

"That is so, Root of a Royal Tree. With large possessions it is indeed a pleasant land to dwell in--with no possessions a man might often think longingly of the restful sleep of death."

"That may well be," said Tyisandhlu thoughtfully. "The cold and the gloom and the blackness, the fogs and the smoke--the mean and horrible-looking people who go to make up the larger portion of its inhabitants. _Whau_, Nyonyoba, I know more of your white people and their country than anyone here dreams, and it is as you say. Without that which should raise him above such horrors as this, a man might as well be dead."

"Wherefore I prefer to live in the land of the Ba-gcatya rather than die in my own. But whoever brought hither that description of our land told a wonderfully true tale, Ruler of the Great."