Finished, H. Rider Haggard [e reader txt] 📗
- Author: H. Rider Haggard
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We reached the river just before the dawn. To my horror it was very full, so full that the drift looked dangerous, for it had been swollen by the thunder-rain of the previous night. Indeed some wandering Swazis on the further bank shouted to us that we should be drowned if we tried to cross.
“Which means that the only thing to do is to stay until the water runs down,” I said to Anscombe, for the two women, tired out, were asleep.
“I suppose so,” he answered, “unless those Basutos—”
I looked back up the long slope down which we had come and saw no one. Then I raised myself in my stirrups and looked along another track that joined the road just here, leading from the bush-veld, as ours led from the high-veld. The sun was rising now, dispersing the mist that hung about the trees after the wet. Searching among these with my eyes, presently I perceived the light gleaming upon what I knew must be the points of spears projecting above the level of the ground vapour.
“Those devils are after us by the lower road,” I said to Anscombe, adding, “I heard them pass the old cattle kraal last night. They followed our spoor over the edge of the hill, but in the dark lost it among the stones.”
He whistled and asked what was to be done.
“That is for you to decide,” I answered. “For my part I’d rather risk the river than the Basutos,” and I looked at the slumbering Heda.
“Can we bolt back the way we came, Allan?”
“The horses are very spent and we might meet more Basutos,” and again I looked at Heda.
“A hard choice, Allan. It is wonderful how women complicate everything in life, because they are life, I suppose.” He thought a moment and went on, “Let’s try the river. If we fail, it will be soon over, and it is better to drown than be speared.”
“Or be kept alive by savages who hate us,” I exclaimed, with my eyes still fixed upon Heda.
Then I got to business. There were hide riems on the bridles of the leaders. I undid these and knotted their loose ends firmly together. To them I made fast the riem of my own mare, slipping a loop I tied in it, over my right hand and saying—
“Now I will go first, leading the horses. Do you drive after me for all you are worth, even if they are swept off their feet. I can trust my beast to swim straight, and being a mare, I hope that the horses will follow her as they have done all night. Wake up Heda and Kaatje.”
He nodded, and looking very pale, said—
“Heda my dear, I am sorry to disturb you, but we have to get over a river with a rough bottom, so you and Kaatje must hang on and sit tight. Don’t be frightened, you are as safe as a church.”
“God forgive him for that lie,” thought I to myself as, having tightened the girths, I mounted my mare. Then gripping the riem I kicked the beast to a canter, Anscombe flogging up the team as we swung down the bank to the edge of the foaming torrent, on the further side of which the Swazis shouted and gesticulated to us to go back.
We were in it now, for, as I had hoped, the horses followed the mare without hesitation. For the first twenty yards or so all went well, I heading up the stream. Then suddenly I felt that the mare was swimming.
“Flog the horses and don’t let them turn,” I shouted to Anscombe.
Ten more yards and I glanced over my shoulder. The team was swimming also, and behind them the cart rocked and bobbed like a boat swinging in a heavy sea. There came a strain on the riem; the leaders were trying to turn! I pulled hard and encouraged them with my voice, while Anscombe, who drove splendidly, kept their heads as straight as he could. Mercifully they came round again and struck out for the further shore, the water-logged cart floating after them. Would it turn over? That was the question in my mind. Five seconds; ten seconds and it was still upright. Oh! it was going. No, a fierce back eddy caught it and set it straight again. My mare touched bottom and there was hope. It struggled forward, being swept down the stream all the time. Now the horses in the cart also found their footing and we were saved.
No, the wet had caused the knot of one of the riems to slip beneath the strain, or perhaps it broke—I don’t know. Feeling the pull slacken the leaders whipped round on to the wheelers. There they all stood in a heap, their heads and part of their necks above water, while the cart floated behind them on its side. Kaatje screamed and Anscombe flogged. I leapt from my mare and struggled to the leaders, the water up to my chin. Grasping their bits I managed to keep them from turning further. But I could do no more and death came very near to us. Had it not been for some of those brave Swazis on the bank it would have found us, every one. But they plunged in, eight of them, holding each other’s hands, and half-swimming, half-wading, reached us. They got the horses by the head and straightened them out, while Anscombe plied his whip. A dash forward and the wheels were on the bottom again.
Three minutes later we were safe on the further bank, which my mare had already reached, where I lay gasping on my face, ejaculating prayers of thankfulness and spitting out muddy water.
NOMBÉ
The Swazis, shivering, for all these people hate cold, and shaking themselves like a dog when he comes to shore, gathered round, examining me.
“Why!” said one of them, an elderly man who seemed to be their leader, “this is none other than Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, the old friend of all us black people. Surely the spirits of our fathers have been with us who might have risked our lives to save a Boer or a half-breed.” (The Swazis, I may explain, did not like the Boers for reasons they considered sound.)
“Yes,” I said, sitting up, “it is I, Macumazahn.”
“Then why,” asked the man, “did you, whom all know to be wise, show yourself to have suddenly become a fool?” and he pointed to the raging river.
“And why,” I asked, “do you show yourself a fool by supposing that I, whom you know to be none, am a fool? Look across the water for your answer.”
He looked and saw the Basutos, fifty or more of them, arriving, just too late.
“Who are these?” he asked.
“They are the people of Sekukuni whom you should know well enough. They have hunted us all night, yes, and before, seeking to murder us; also they have stolen our oxen, thirty-two fine oxen which I give to your king if he can take them back. Now perhaps you understand why we dared the Crocodile River in its rage.”
At the name of Sekukuni the man, who it seemed was the captain of some border guards, stiffened all over like a terrier which perceives a rat. “What!” he exclaimed, “do these dirty Basuto dogs dare to carry spears so near our country? Have they not yet learned their lesson?”
Then he rushed into the water, shaking an assegai he had snatched up, and shouted,
“Bide a while, you fleas from the kaross of Sekukuni, till I can come across and crack you between my thumb and finger. Or at the least wait until Macumazahn has time to get his rifle. No, put down those guns of yours; for every shot you fire I swear that I will cut ten Basuto throats when we come to storm your koppies, as we shall do ere long.”
“Be silent,” I said, “and let me speak.”
Then I, too, called across the river, asking where was that fat captain of theirs, as I would talk with him. One of the men shouted back that he had stopped behind, very sick, because of a ghost that he had seen.
“Ah!” I answered, “a ghost who pricked him in the throat. Well, I was that ghost, and such are the things that happen to those who would harm Macumazahn and his friends. Did you not say last night that he is a leopard who leaps out in the dark, bites and is gone again?”
“Yes,” the man shouted back, “and it is true, though had we known, O Macumazahn, that you were the ghost hiding in those stones, you should never have leapt again. Oh! that white medicine-man who is dead has sent us on a mad errand.”
“So you will think when I come to visit you among your koppies. Go home and take a message from Macumazahn to Sekukuni, who believes that the English have run away from him. Tell him that they will return again and these Swazis with them, and that then he will cease to live and his town will be burnt and his tribe will no more be a tribe. Away now, more swiftly than you came, since the water by which you thought to trap us is falling, and a Swazi impi gathers to make an end of every one of you.”
The man attempted no answer, nor did his people so much as fire on us. They turned tail and crept off like a pack of frightened jackals—pursued by the mocking of the Swazis.
Still in a way they had the laugh of us, seeing that they gave us a terrible fright and stole our wagon and thirty-two oxen. Well, a year or two later I helped to pay them back for that fright and even recovered some of the oxen.
When they had gone the Swazis led us to a kraal about two miles from the river, sending on a runner with orders to make huts and food ready for us. It was just as much as we could do to reach it, for we were all utterly worn out, as were the horses. Still we did get there at last, the hot sun warming us as we went. Arrived at the kraal I helped Heda and Kaatje from the cart—the former could scarcely walk, poor dear—and into the guest hut which seemed clean, where food of a sort and fur karosses were brought to them in which to wrap themselves while their clothes dried.
Leaving them in charge of two old women, I went to see to Anscombe, who as yet could not do much for himself, also to the outspanning of the horses which were put into a cattle kraal, where they lay down at once without attempting to eat the green forage which was given to them. After this I gave our goods into the charge of the kraal-head, a nice old fellow whom I had never met before, and he led Anscombe to another hut close to that where the women were. Here we drank some maas, that is curdled milk, ate a little mutton, though we were too fatigued to be very hungry, and stripping off our wet clothes, threw them out into the sun to dry.
“That was a close shave,” said Anscombe as he wrapped up in the kaross.
“Very,” I answered. “So close that I think you must have been started in life with an extra strong guardian angel well accustomed to native ways.”
“Yes,” he replied, “and, old fellow, I believe that on earth he goes by the name of Allan Quatermain.”
After this I remember no more, for I went to sleep, and so remained for about twenty-four hours. This was not wonderful, seeing that for two days and nights practically I had not rested, during which time I went through much fatigue and many emotions.
When at length I did wake up, the first thing I saw was Anscombe already dressed, engaged in cleaning my clothes with a brush from his toilet case. I remember thinking how smart and incongruous that dressing-bag, made appropriately enough of crocodile hide, looked in this Kaffir hut with its silver-topped bottles and its ivory-handled razors.
“Time to get up, Sir. Bath ready, Sir,” he said in his jolly, drawling voice, pointing to a calabash full of hot water. “Hope you slept as well as I did, Sir.”
“You appear to have
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