Smith and the Pharaohs, and other Tales Part 22

"I _am_ awake," he answered in his deep voice, which shook a little. "I have had a bad dream."

"What did you dream? Did you see two people thrown from the cliff?"

"Something of that sort."

"Oh! Thomas, Thomas, I have been in h.e.l.l. This place is haunted. Don't talk to me of dreams. Tabitha will have seen and heard too. She will be driven mad. Come to her."

"I think not," answered Thomas.

Still he came.

At the door of Tabitha's room they found the woman Ivana, wide-eyed, solemn, silent.

"Have you seen or heard anything, Ivana?" asked Thomas.

"Yes, Teacher," she answered, "I have seen what I expected to see and heard what I expected to hear on this night of full moon, but I am guarded and do not fear."

"The child! The child!" said Dorcas.

"The _Inkosikazi_ Imba sleeps. Disturb her not."

Taking no heed, they thrust past her into the room. There on her little white bed lay Tabitha fast asleep, and looking like an angel in her sleep, for a sweet smile played about her mouth, and while they watched she laughed in her dreams. Then they looked at each other and went back to their own chamber to spend the rest of the night as may be imagined.

Next morning when they emerged, very shaken and upset, the first person they met was Ivana, who was waiting for them with their coffee.

"I have a message for you, Teacher and Lady. Never mind who sends it, I have a message for you to which you will do well to give heed. Sleep no more in this house on the night of full moon, though all other nights will be good for you. Only the little Chieftainess Imba ought to sleep in this house on the night of full moon."

So indeed it proved to be. No suburban villa could have been more commonplace and less disturbed than was their dwelling for twenty-seven nights of every month, but on the twenty-eighth they found a change of air desirable. Once it is true the stalwart Thomas, like Ajax, defied the lightning, or rather other things that come from above--or from below. But before morning he appeared at the hut beneath the koppie announcing that he had come to see how they were getting on, and shaking as though he had a bout of fever.

Dorcas asked him no questions (afterwards she gathered that he had been favoured with quite a new and very varied midnight programme); but Tabitha smiled in her slow way. For Tabitha knew all about this business as she knew everything that pa.s.sed in Sisa-Land. Moreover, she laughed at them a little, and said that _she_ was not afraid to sleep in the mission-house on the night of full moon.

What is more, she did so, which was naughty of her, for on one such occasion she slipped back to the house when her parents were asleep, followed only by her "night-dog," the watchful Ivana, and returned at dawn just as they had discovered that she was missing, singing and laughing and jumping from stone to stone with the agility of her own pet goat.

"I slept beautifully," she cried, "and dreamed I was in heaven all night."

Thomas was furious and rated her till she wept. Then suddenly Ivana became furious too and rated him.

Should he be wrath with the Little Chieftainess Imba, she asked him, because the _Isitunzis_, the spirits of the dead, loved her as did everything else? Did they not understand that the Floweret was unlike them, one adored of dead and living, one to be cherished even in her dreams, one whom "Heaven Above," together with those who had "gone below," built round with a wall of spells?--and more of such talk, which Thomas thought so horrible and blasphemous that he fled before its torrent.

But when he came back calmer he said no more to Tabitha about her escapade.

It was a long while afterwards, at the beginning of the great drought, that another terrible thing happened. On a certain calm and beautiful day Tabitha, who still grew and flourished, had taken some of the Christian children to a spot on the farther side of the koppie, where stood an old fortification originally built for purposes of defence.

Here, among the ancient walls, with the a.s.sistance of the natives, she had made a kind of summer-house as children love to do, and in this house, like some learned eastern pundit in a cell, a very pretty pundit crowned with a wreath of flowers, she sat upon the ground and instructed the infant mind of Sisa-Land.

She was supposed to be telling them Bible stories to prepare them for their Sunday School examination, which, indeed, she did with embellishments and in their own poetic and metaphorical fas.h.i.+on. The particular tale upon which she was engaged, by a strange coincidence, was that from the Acts which narrates how St. Paul was bitten by a viper upon the Island of Melita, and how he shook it off into the fire and took no hurt.

"He must have been like Menzi," said Ivana, who was present, whereon Tabitha's other attendant, who was also with her as it was daytime, started an argument, for being a Christian she was no friend to Menzi, whom she called a "dirty old witch-doctor."

Tabitha, who was used to these disputations, listened smiling, and while she listened amused herself by trying to thrust a stone into a hole in the side of her summer-house, which was formed by one of the original walls of the old kraal.

Presently she uttered a scream, and s.n.a.t.c.hed her arm out of the hole. To it, or rather to her hand, was hanging a great hooded snake of the cobra variety such as the Boers call _ringhals_. She shook it off, and the reptile, after sitting up, spitting, hissing and expanding its hood, glided back into the wall. Tabitha sat still, staring at her lacerated finger, which Ivana seized and sucked.

Then, bidding one of the oldest of the children to take her place and continue sucking, Ivana ran to a high rock a few yards away which overlooked Menzi's kraal, that lay upon a plain at a distance of about a quarter of a mile, and called out in the low, ringing voice that Kaffirs can command, which carries to an enormous distance.

"Awake, O Menzi! Come, O Doctor, and bring with you your _Dawa_. The little Chieftainess is bitten in the finger by a hooded snake. The Floweret withers! Imba dies!"

Almost instantly there was a disturbance in the kraal and Menzi appeared, following by a man carrying a bag. He cried back in the same strange voice:

"I hear. I come. Tie string or gra.s.s round the lady Imba's finger below the bite. Tie it hard till she screams with pain."

Meanwhile the Christian nurse had rushed off over the crest of the koppie to fetch Thomas and Dorcas, or either of them. As it chanced she met them both walking to join Tabitha in her bower, and thus it came about that they reached the place at the same moment as did old Menzi bounding up the rocks like a _klipspringer_ buck, or a mountain sheep.

Hearing him, Thomas turned in the narrow gateway of the kraal and asked wildly:

"What has happened, Witch-doctor?"

"This has happened, White-man," answered Menzi, "the Floweret has been bitten by a hooded snake and is about to die. Look at her," and he pointed to Tabitha, who notwithstanding the venom sucking and the gra.s.s tied round her blackened finger, sat huddled-up, s.h.i.+vering and half comatose.

"Let me pa.s.s, White-man, that I may save her if I can," he went on.

"Get back," said Thomas, "I will have none of your black magic practised on my daughter. If she is to live G.o.d will save her."

"What medicines have you, White-man?" asked Menzi.

"None, at least not here. Faith is my medicine."

Dorcas looked at Tabitha. She was turning blue and her teeth were chattering.

"Let the man do his best," she said to Thomas. "There is no other hope."

"He shan't touch her," replied her husband obstinately.

Then Dorcas fired up, meek-natured though she was and accustomed though she was to obey her husband's will.

"I say that he shall," she cried. "I know what he can do. Don't you remember the goat? I will not see my child die as a sacrifice to your pride."

"I have made up my mind," answered Thomas. "If she dies it is so decreed, and the spells and filth of a heathen cannot save her."

Dorcas tried to thrust him aside with her feeble strength, but big and burly, he stood in the path like a rock, blocking the way, with the stone entrance walls of the little pleasure-house on either side of him.

Suddenly the old Zulu, Menzi, became rather terrible; he drew himself up; he seemed to swell in size; his thin face grew set and fierce.

"Out of the path, White-man!" he said, "or by Chaka's head I will kill you," and from somewhere he produced a long, thin-bladed knife of native iron fixed on a buck's horn.

"Kill on, Wizard," shouted Thomas. "Kill if you can."

"Listen," said Dorcas. "If our daughter dies because of you, then I have done with you. We part for ever. Do you understand?"