John Ames, Native Commissioner Part 3

"_Our_ cattle are our life. _Their_ life is in other things,"

p.r.o.nounced s.h.i.+minya, who never looked at his interlocutors when he spoke, thus giving his answers an oracular air, as though inspired by the magic stuff into whose black depth he was gazing. "We die. They live."

"_Hau_!" cried the listeners, fully comprehending the hint.

"Not many times will the moon be at full before this death is upon us,"

went on the wizard, still without looking up. "If there are no whites left in the land, then will it be averted."

Again that hollow groan proceeded from the hut. Their feelings worked up to an artificial pitch, the superst.i.tious savages felt something like a shudder run through their frames. But the imperturbable s.h.i.+minya went on:

"There are two who must die--Pukele, the son of Mambane."

"He who is servant to Jonemi?" queried Madula.

"The same."

"Has he done wrong?" said Samvu, for the man named was one of Madula's people, and neither of the brothers liked this edict.

"He knows too much," was the remorseless reply. "The other is Ntatu, formerly wife of Makani."

A measure of relief came into the countenances of the two chiefs. A woman more or less mattered nothing, but they did not like to sacrifice one of their men.

"It is the 'word' of Umlimo," pursued s.h.i.+minya, decisively. "This must be." And for the first time he raised his eyes, and fixed them upon the two chiefs with cruel, snake-like stare.

"What is the life of a man, more or less, when Umlimo has spoken?" said Zazwe, thus throwing in the weight of his influence with the dictum of the sorcerer. "A man, too, who is faithful to one of these whites set over us! _Au_! Umlimo is wise."

This carried the day; and after some more talk, mostly "dark," and consisting of hints, the three chiefs, gathering up their a.s.segais, withdrew.

Left alone, s.h.i.+minya still sat there, satisfied that his sanguinary edict would be carried out. A dead silence reigned over the great thorn thicket, and as though the satanic influence which seemed to brood upon the place imparted itself to wild Nature, even the very birds forbore to flutter and chirp in its immediate vicinity. The sun sank to the western horizon, shedding its arrows of golden light upon the myriad sharp points of the sea of thorns, then dipped below the rim of the world, and still the grim wizard squatted, like a crafty, cruel, bloodthirsty spider, in the midst of his vast web, though indeed the comparison is a libel on the insect, who slays to appease hunger, whereas this human spider was wont to doom his victims out of a sheer diabolical l.u.s.t of cruelty and the power which he could sway through that agency. This day, indeed, he might feel content, for it had not been wasted. But the day was not over yet--oh no--not quite yet.

Still, would it be possible for this satanic being to commit further deeds of atrocity and of blood? Well, is there not the wretched sufferer lying bound and helpless within the hut?

Again that low, vibrating hum sounded forth. It seemed to come from the thick of the thorn palisade. The deeply plotting brain of the wizard was again on the alert, but its owner evinced no eagerness, not even looking up from what he was doing. Some person or persons had unawares touched the hidden communication wire which, situated at the entrance of the narrow labyrinthine pa.s.sage leading to the kraal, signalled such approach.

s.h.i.+minya's discernment was consummate in every sense he possessed; indeed, this faculty had not a little to do with the ascendency he had gained. In the very footsteps of the new comer, shod with the _amanyatelo_--a kind of raw-hide sandal used as protection in th.o.r.n.y country--his keen ear could gather a whole volume of information. They were, in fact, to him an open index of the new comer's mind. While distant they indicated a mind made up, yet not altogether removed from, the verge of wavering; the possession of a purpose, yet not altogether a whole-heartedness in its carrying out. Nearer they revealed the vulgar trepidation attendant upon the mere fact of approaching a place so sinister and redoubtable as the _muti_ den of a renowned sorcerer, and that in the dim hours of night.

For the brief twilight had long since pa.s.sed, and now a golden moon, in its third quarter, hung lamplike in the sky, and, save in the shadows, its soft brilliance revealed every detail almost as clear as in the day.

It fell on the form of a tall, powerfully built savage, standing there in the gateway, naked save for the _mutya_, unarmed save for a short, heavy k.n.o.bstick. This he laid down as he drew near the wizard.

"Greeting, my father," he uttered.

"Greeting, Nanzicele," replied the sorcerer, without looking up.

Divested of his civilised and official trappings, the ex-sergeant of police looked what he was--a barbarian pure and simple, no whit less of a one, in fact, than those over whom he was vested with a little brief authority. Whether this visit was made in the interests of loyalty to his superiors or not may hereinafter appear.

"Hast thou brought what I desired of thee, Nanzicele?" said the wizard, coming direct to the point.

Nanzicele, who had squatted himself on the ground opposite the other, now fumbled in a skin bag which was hung around him, and produced a packet. It was small, but solid and heavy.

"What is this?" said s.h.i.+minya, counting out ten Martini-Henry cartridges. "Ten? Only ten! _Au_! When I promised thee vengeance it was not for such poor reward as this."

"They are not easily obtained, my father. The men from whom I got these will be punished to-morrow for not having them; but I care not. Be content with a few, for few are better than none. And--this vengeance?"

"Thou knowest Pukele--the servant of Jonemi?"

"The son of Mambane?"

"The son of Mambane, who helped hoot thee out of his kraal when thou wouldst not offer enough _lobola_ for Nompiza. He is to die."

Nanzicele leaped with delight. "When? How?" he cried. "Now will my eyes have a feast indeed."

"At thy hand. The manner and the time are of thine own choosing. To thee has Umlimo left it."

Nanzicele's glee was dashed. His jaw fell.

"_Au_! I have no wish to dance in the air at the end of a long rope,"

he growled; "and such would a.s.suredly be my fate if I slew Pukele, even as it was that of Fondosa, the son of Mbai, who was an _innyanga_ even as thyself, my father. _Whau_! I saw it with these eyes. All Fondosa's _muti_ did not save him there, my father, and the whites hanged him dead the same as any rotten Maholi."

"Didst thou glance over one shoulder on the way hither, Nanzicele?

Didst thou see Lupiswana following thee, yea, even running at thy side?

I traced thy course from here. I saw thee from the time of leaving Jonemi's. He was waiting for thee was Lupiswana. It is not good for a man when such is the case," said s.h.i.+minya, whose _esprit de corps_ resented the sneering, contemptuous tone which the other had used in speaking of a member of his "cloth."

For the event referred to was the execution of a Mashuna witch-doctor for the murder of a whole family, whose death he had ordered.

The snake-like stare of s.h.i.+minya, the appeal to his superst.i.tions, the sinister a.s.sociations of the place he was in, a stealthy, mysterious sound even then becoming audible--all told, Nanzicele looked somewhat cowed, remembering, too, how his return journey had to be effected alone and by night.

Having, in vulgar and civilised parlance, taken down his man a peg or two, s.h.i.+minya could afford to let the matter of Pukele stand over. Now he said softly--

"And the other ten cartridges, those in thy bag, Nanzicele? Give them to me, for I have a better revenge, here, ready at thy hand, and a safer one."

"_Au_! They were to have been thine, my father; I was but keeping them to the last," replied the ex-police sergeant, shamefacedly and utterly mendaciously, as he placed the packet in the wizard's outstretched hand.

"And now, what is this vengeance?"

s.h.i.+minya rose, and, beckoning the other to follow, opened and crept through the door of the hut behind him. A hollow groan rose from the inside. Nanzicele, halfway in, made an instinctive move to draw back.

Then he recovered himself. "It is not a good omen to draw back when half through a doorway," said s.h.i.+minya, as they both stood upright in the darkness. "Yet--look."

He had struck a match, and lighted a piece of candle. Nanzicele looked down, and a start of surprise leapt through his frame.

"_Whau_!" he cried. "It is Nompiza!"

"And--thy vengeance," murmured the wizard at his side.

But the sufferer heard it, and began to wail aloud--

"Thy promise, Great _Innyanga_! Thy promise. Give me not over to this man, for I fear him. Thou didst swear I should be allowed to depart hence; on the head of Umzilikazi thou didst swear it. Thy promise, O Great _Innyanga_!"

"It shall be kept, sister," said s.h.i.+minya, softly, his eyes fairly scintillating with devilish glee. "I swore to thee that thou shouldst be _taken_ hence, and thou shalt, for this man and I will take thee."

The wretched creature broke into fresh outcries, which were partly drowned, for already they were dragging her, still lashed to the pole, outside.

"Ha, Nompiza!" jeered Nanzicele, bending down and peering into her face as she lay in the moonlight. "Dost remember how I was driven from thy father's kraal with jeers? Ha! Whose jeers were the loudest? Whose mockeries the most biting? Thine. And now Kulula will have to buy another wife. Thou hadst better have been the wife of Nanzicele than of death. Of death, is it not, my father?" turning to s.h.i.+minya, who glared a mirthless smile.