Smith and the Pharaohs, and other Tales Part 20

They looked, and behold the shadowy fabric began to totter, then it seemed to collapse, and last of all down went the spire and vanished in the smoke.

"Have you seen anything, O people?" said Menzi, "for standing behind this smoke I can see nothing. Mark that it is thick, since through it I am invisible to you."

This was true, since they could only perceive the tips of his outstretched fingers appearing upon each side of the smoke-fan.

"Yes," they answered, "we have seen a church fall down and vanish."

"That was my thought," said Menzi; "have I not told you that was the thought my Spirit gave me?"

"This is black magic, and you are a fiend!" shouted Thomas, and was silent.

"Not so, Tombool, though it is true that I have gifts which you clever White people do not understand," answered Menzi.

By degrees the smoke melted away, and there on the ground were the ten or twelve crooked pieces of ebony that they had seen consumed, now to all appearance quite untouched by the flame. There too on their farther side lay Menzi, s.h.i.+ning with perspiration, and in a swoon or sleeping.

"Come away," said Thomas shortly, and they turned to go, but at this moment something happened.

Menzi, it will be remembered, had given Tabitha a kid of a long-haired variety of goat peculiar to these parts. This little creature had already grown attached to its mistress and walked about after her, in the way which pet goats have. It had followed her that morning, but not being interested in tricks or magic, engaged itself in devouring herbs that grew amongst the tumbled stones of the old kraal.

Suddenly Menzi recovered from his faint or seizure and, looking up, directed his attendants to return the magical ebony rods which burned without being consumed to one of the hide bags that contained his medicines. The a.s.sembly began to break up amidst a babel of excited talk.

Tabitha looked round for her goat, and perceiving it at a little distance, ran to fetch it, since the creature, being engaged in eating something to its taste, would not come at her call. She seized it by the neck to drag it away, with the result that its fore-feet, obstinately set upon the wall, overturned a large stone, revealing a great puff adder that was sleeping there.

The reptile thus disturbed instantly struck backwards after the fas.h.i.+on of its species, so that its fangs, just missing Tabitha's hands, sank deep into the kid's neck. She screamed and there was a great disturbance. A native ran forward and pinned down the puff-adder with his walking-stick of which the top was forked. The kid immediately fell on to its side, and lay there bleeding and bleating. Tabitha began to weep, calling out, "My goat is killed," between her sobs.

Menzi, distinguis.h.i.+ng her voice amid the tumult, asked what was the matter. Someone told him, whereon he commanded that the kid should be brought to him and the snake also. This was done, Tabitha following her dying pet with her mother, for by now Thomas had departed, taking no heed of these events, which perhaps he was too disturbed to notice.

"Save my goat! Save my goat, O Menzi!" implored Tabitha.

The old witch-doctor looked at the animal, also at the hideous puff-adder that had been dragged along the ground in the fork of the stick.

"It will be hard, Little Flower," he said, "seeing that the goat is bitten in the neck and this snake is very poisonous. Still for your sake I will try, although I fear that it may prove but a waste of good medicine."

Then he took one of his bags and from it selected a certain packet wrapped in a dried leaf, out of which he shook some grey powder. Seizing the kid, which seemed to be almost dead, he made an incision in its throat over the wound, and into it rubbed some of this powder. Next he spat upon more of the powder, thus turning it into a paste, and opening the kid's mouth, thrust it down its throat, at the same time muttering an invocation or spell.

"Now we must wait," he said, letting the kid fall upon the ground, where it lay to all appearance dead.

"Is that powder any good?" asked Dorcas rather aimlessly.

"Yes, it is very good, Lady; a medicine of power of which I alone have the secret, a magic medicine. See, I will show you. Except the _immamba_, the ring-snake that puffs out its head, this one is the most deadly in our country. Yet I do not fear it. Look!"

Leaning forward, he seized the puff-adder, and drawing it from beneath the fork, suffered it to strike him upon the breast, after which he deliberately killed it with a stone. Then he took some of the grey powder and rubbed it into the punctures; also put more of it into his mouth, which he swallowed.

"Oh!" exclaimed Dorcas, "he will die," and some of the Christian Kaffirs echoed her remark.

But Menzi did not die at all. On the contrary, after s.h.i.+vering a few times he was quite himself, and, indeed, seemed rather brighter than before, like a jaded business man who has drunk a c.o.c.ktail.

"No, Wife of Tombool," he said, "I shall not die; every year I doctor myself with this magic medicine that is called _Dawa_, after which all the snakes in Sisa-Land--remember that they are many, Little Flower--may bite me if they like."

"Is it your magic or is it the medicine that protects you?" asked Dorcas.

"Both, Lady. The medicine _Dawa_ is of no use without the magic words, and the magic words are of no use without the medicine. Therefore alone in all the land I can cure snake bites, who have both medicine and magic. Look at your goat, Little Flower. Look at your goat!"

Tabitha looked, as did everyone else. The kid was rising to its feet.

It rose, it baa'd and presently began to frisk about its mistress, like Menzi apparently rather brighter than before.

V

A year had gone by, during which time, by the most heroic exertions, Thomas Bull had at length succeeded in rebuilding the church. There it stood, a very nice mission-church, constructed of sun-dried bricks neatly plastered over, cool and s.p.a.cious within, for the thatched roof was lofty, beautifully furnished (the font and the pulpit had been imported from England), and finished off with the spire and clock of his dreams, the latter also imported from England and especially adjusted for a hot climate.

Moreover, there was a sweet and loud-throated bell upon which the clock struck, with s.p.a.ce allowed for the addition of others that must wait till Thomas could make up his mind to approach Dorcas as to the provision of the necessary funds. Yes, the church was finished, and the Bishop of those parts had made a special journey to consecrate it at the hottest season of the year, and as a reward for his energy had contracted fever and nearly been washed away in a flooded river.

Only one thing was lacking, a sufficient congregation to fill this fine church, which secretly the Bishop, who was a sensible man, thought would have been of greater value had it been erected in any of several other localities that he could have suggested. For alas! the Christian community of Sisa-Land did not increase. Occasionally Thomas succeeded in converting one of Menzi's followers, and occasionally Menzi s.n.a.t.c.hed a lamb from the flock of Thomas, with the result that the scales remained even neither going up nor down.

The truth was, of course, that the matter was chiefly one of race; those of the Sisas in whom the Basuto blood preponderated became Christian, while those who were of the stubborn Zulu stock, strengthened and inspired by their prophet Menzi, remained unblus.h.i.+ngly heathen.

Still Thomas did not despair. One day, he told himself, there would be a great change, a veritable landslide, and he would see that church filled with every Zulu in the district. Needless to say, he wished him no ill, but Menzi was an old man, and before long it might please Providence to gather that accursed wizard to his fathers. For that he was a wizard of some sort Thomas no longer doubted, a person directly descended from the Witch of Endor, or from some others of her company who were mentioned in the Bible. There was ample authority for wizards, and if they existed then why should they they not continue to do so? Since he could not explain it, Thomas swallowed the magic, much as in his boyhood he used to swallow the pills.

Yes, if only Menzi were removed by the will of Heaven, which really, thought Thomas, must be outraged by such proceedings, his opportunity would come, and "Menzi's herd," as the heathens were called in Sisa-land, would be added to his own. The Bishop, it is true, was not equally sanguine, but said nothing to discourage zeal so laudable and so uncommon.

It was while his Lords.h.i.+p was recovering from the sharp bout of fever which he had developed in a new and mosquito-haunted hut with a damp floor that had been especially erected for his accommodation, that at last the question of the re-building of the mission-house came to a head, which it could not do while all the available local labour, to say nothing of some hired from afar, was employed upon the church.

Thomas, it was true, wished to postpone it further, pointing out that a school was most necessary, and that after all they had grown quite accustomed to the huts and were fairly comfortable in them.

On this point, however, Dorcas was firm; indeed, it would not be too much to say that, having already been disappointed once, she struck with all the vigour of a trade-unionist. She explained that the situation of the huts on the brink of the river was low and most unhealthy, and that in them she was becoming a victim to recurrent attacks of fever. He, Thomas, might be fever-proof, as indeed she thought he was. It was true also that Tabitha had been extraordinarily well and grown much ever since she came to Sisa-Land, which puzzled her, inasmuch as the place was notoriously unhealthy for children, even if they were of native blood. Indeed, in her agitation she added an unwise remark to the effect that she could only explain their daughter's peculiar health by supposing that Menzi had laid a "good charm" upon her, as all the natives believed, and he announced publicly that he had done.

This made Thomas very angry, admittedly not without cause. Forgetting his conversation to a belief in the reality of Menzi's magic, he talked in a loud voice about the disgrace of being infected with vile, heathen superst.i.tions, such as he had never thought to hear uttered by his wife's Christian lips. Dorcas, however, stuck to her point, and enforced it by a domestic example, adding that the creatures which in polite society are called "bed-pests," that haunted the straw of the huts, tormented her while Tabitha never had so much as a single bite.

The end of it was that the matter of mission-house _versus_ huts was referred to the Bishop for his opinion. As the teeth of his Lords.h.i.+p were chattering with ague resulting, he knew full well, from the fever he had contracted in the said huts, Dorcas found in him a most valuable ally. He agreed that a mission-house ought to be built before the school or anything else, and suggested that it should be placed in a higher and better situation, above the mists that rose from the river and the height to which mosquitoes fly.

Bowing to the judgment of his superior, which really he heard with grat.i.tude, although in his zeal and unselfishness he would have postponed his own comfort and that of his family till other duties had been fulfilled, Thomas replied that he knew only one such place which would be near enough to the Chief's town. It was on the koppie itself, about fifty feet above the level of and overhanging the river, where he had noted there was always a breeze, even on the hottest day, since the conformation of this hill seemed to induce an unceasing draught of air.

He added that if his Lords.h.i.+p were well enough, they might go to look at the site.

So they went, all of them. Ascending a sloping, ancient path that was never precipitous, they came to the place, a flat tableland that perhaps measured an acre and a half, which by some freak of nature had been scooped out of the side of the koppie, and was backed by a precipitous cliff in which were caves. The front part of this plateau, that which approached to and overhung the river, was of virgin rock, but the acre or so behind was filled with very rich soil that in the course of centuries had been washed down from the sides of the koppie, or resulted from the decomposition of its material.

"The very place," said the Bishop. "The access is easy. The house would stand here--no need to dig deep foundations in this stone, and behind, when those trees have been cleared away, you could have a beautiful and fertile garden where anything will grow. Also, look, there is a stream of pure water running from some spring above. It is an ideal site for a house, not more than three minutes' walk from the church below, the best I should say in the whole valley. And then, consider the view."

Everyone agreed, and they were leaving the place in high spirits, Dorcas, who had household matters to attend, having already departed, when whom should they encounter but Menzi seated on a stone just where the path began to descend. Thomas would have pa.s.sed him without notice as one with whom he was not on speaking terms, but the Bishop, having been informed by Tabitha who he was, was moved by curiosity to stop and interchange some words with him, as knowing his tongue perfectly, he could do.

"_Sakubona_" (that is, "good day"), he said politely.

Menzi rose and saluted with his habitual courtesy, first the Bishop, then the others, as usual reserving his sweetest smile for Tabitha.

"Great Priest," he said at once, "I understand that the Teacher Tombool intends to build his house upon this place."