'Tween Snow and Fire, Bertram Mitford [ebook reader with internet browser txt] 📗

to this inferno, whither she consigned her victims. Even then the act of descending into that noisome pit, with the almost certainty of a hand-to-hand struggle with a raging lunatic of enormous strength, was an ordeal calculated to daunt the stoutest of hearts. Certain it is that neither of the other two would have cared to undertake it. More than ever, then, did they endeavour to dissuade him.

“This is my idea,” he said. “I must try and get him round against this side of the hole. Then, while I hold his attention, Josane must drop his blanket over his head. Then I’ll fling the noose round him, and you must all man the reim, and haul him up like a sack. Only it must be done sharp. Directly I sing out ‘Trek,’ you must haul away for dear life.”

“But how about yourself, old chap?”

“Never mind about me. I can wait down there until you’re ready for me. But when you have got him up here you must tie him up as tight as a log, and sharp, too. Now, Josane, is your blanket ready?”

The old Kafir, who had been knotting a small stone into each corner so that the thing should fall quickly, answered in the affirmative. In a second the reim was dropped over the side, and Eustace, sliding down, stood at the bottom of the pit.

The indescribably fearful effluvium fairly choked him. He felt dizzy and faint. The lunatic, still crouching at the other side, made no aggressive movement, merely staring with lack-lustre eyes at the new arrival. Keeping his eye upon him, Eustace took advantage of this welcome truce to feel for his flask and counteract his fast overpowering nausea with a timely pull.

“Tom,” he said, in a most persuasive tone, approaching the wretched being. “Tom—you know me, don’t you?”

Then an awful change came into the maniac’s countenance. His eyes glared through the tangle of his matted hair; the great bushy beard began to bristle and quiver with rage. He rose to his feet and, opening his mouth, emitted that same horrible howl. Those above held their breath.

Well for Eustace was it that he never quailed. Standing there in the middle of the pit—at the mercy of this furious lunatic—he moved not a muscle. But his eyes held those of the demoniac with a piercing and steady gaze.

The crisis was past. Whimpering like a child, the wretched creature sank to the ground, again covering his face with his hands.

This was good enough as a first triumph, but the maniac had to be coaxed round to the other side of the hole. Eustace dared not remove his glance, even for the fraction of a second. His foot struck against something, which yielded suddenly and started away hissing. His pulses stood still with horror, yet he knew better than to remove his eyes from his unhappy kinsman.

“Come, Tom,” he said coaxingly, advancing a couple of steps. “Get up, man, and go and sit over there.”

With an affrighted cry, the other edged away round the wall of his prison, bringing himself much nearer the point where it was intended he should be brought. He cowered, with face averted, moaning like an animal in pain. Not to overdo the thing, Eustace waited a moment, then advanced a step or two nearer. It had the desired effect. The madman shuffled away as before. He must be in the right place now. Still Eustace dared not look up.

“He’s all right now, if you’re ready,” whispered a voice from above.

“Ready!” was the quick reply.

Something dropped. The madman’s head and shoulders disappeared under the voluminous folds of old Josane’s red blanket. Quick as lightning Eustace had sprung to his side and whipped the running noose round him.

“Trek!” he cried, with an energy sufficient to start a dozen spans of oxen.

The body of Tom Carhayes swung into the air. Kicking, struggling, howling, he disappeared over the brink above. Eustace, alone at the bottom of the pit, could hear the sounds of a furious scuffle—sounds, too, which seemed to be receding as though into distance. What did it all mean? They seemed a long time securing the maniac.

Then, as he looked around this horrible dungeon, at the crawling shapes of the serpents gliding hither and thither, hissing with rage over their late disturbance, as he breathed the unspeakably noisome atmosphere, he realised his own utter helplessness. What if anything untoward should occur to prevent his comrades from rescuing him? Life was full of surprises. They might be attacked by a party of Kafirs, brought back there by the missing Hlangani, for instance. What if he had merely exchanged places with his unfortunate kinsman and were to be left there in the darkness and horror? How long would he be able to keep his reason? Hardly longer than the other, he feared. And the perspiration streamed from every pore, as he began to realise what the miserable maniac had undergone.

A silence had succeeded to the tumult above. What did it mean? Every second seemed an hour. Then, with a start of unspeakable relief, he heard Hoste’s voice above.

“Ready to come up, old chap?”

“Very much so. Why have you taken so long?” he asked anxiously.

“We had to tie up poor Tom twice, you know; first with the big reim, then with others. Then we had to undo the big reim again. Here it is,” chucking it over.

Eustace slipped the noose under his armpits, and, having given the word to haul away, a very few moments saw him among them all again. The mad man was securely bound and even gagged, only his feet being loosened sufficiently to enable him to take short steps.

So they started on their return track, longing with a greater longing than words can tell, to breathe the open air, to behold the light of day again.

To their astonishment the poor lunatic became quite tractable. As long as Eustace talked to him, he was quiet enough and walked among the rest as directed. One more repellent ordeal had to be gone through—the serpents’ den, to wit. This they had now almost reached.

Suddenly a warning cry went up from Josane, who recoiled a step.

“Au! Kangéla!” (“Look there!”)

A face was peering at them from over a rock slab a few feet overhead. A black face, with glazing eyes and half-parted lips, and such a scowl of hate upon the distorted features, in the darkness, as was perfectly devilish. Quickly every weapon was aimed at the head and as quickly lowered. For they realised that it was the head of a dead man.

“Why, it’s Hlangani! Let’s see where we pinked him,” said Shelton, climbing up to the ledge, followed by Hoste. “By Jove! he’s plugged himself where we plugged him,” he went on. “That accounts for his leaving no blood spoor.”

He had. There were two great holes in the dead man’s ribs, where the bullets had entered. Both wounds were mortal. But, with the desperate endurance of his race, the stricken warrior had rent off fragments of his blanket and had deliberately plugged the gaping orifices. Then, crawling away, the fierce savage had sought out a position where he might lurk in ambush, and had found it, too. Here he lay, a broad assegai still grasped in his hand, waiting to strike one fell and fatal blow at his slayers ere death should come upon him. But death had overtaken him too quickly; and luckily, indeed, for the objects of his enmity that it had.

“Why, how’s this?” cried Shelton in amazement. “I could have sworn I hit him, and yet there are only two bullet holes!”

“So could I,” said Hoste emphatically. “Sure there are only two?”

“Dead certain,” replied the other, after a second investigation.

“I think I can solve the mystery,” cut in Eustace quietly. “You both hit, all right. The fact is, I never fired.”

“Never fired!” they echoed. “And why the deuce not?”

“Well, you see, this very Hlangani saved my life. I might have been put down there with poor Tom, but for him. Whatever he had done I couldn’t bring myself to ‘draw’ on a fellow who had done that much for me.”

There was something in that, yet Eustace thought he detected a curious look pass between his two friends. But it mattered nothing.

Leaving the body of the dead Gcaléka, the two climbed down from the ledge again. Further surprise was in store for them. Josane had disappeared.

“He’ll be back directly,” said Eustace. “He said he had forgotten something.”

Whether it was that the sight of the dead warrior’s body had inspired in him one of those unreasoning and unaccountable outbreaks of savagery to which all barbarian natures are more or less suddenly liable, or whether he had misgivings on his own account as to the completeness of his vengeance, is uncertain. But rapidly muttering: “Au! Ixeshane! I have not drunk enough blood. Wait here until I return,” he had seized his assegai and disappeared in the direction of the pit again. Those under his guidance had no alternative but to await his return, with what patience they might.

Meanwhile Josane was speeding along the gloomy tunnel, eagerly, fiercely, like a retriever on the track of a wounded partridge. His head was bent forward and his hand still grasped the broad assegai, clotted with the blood of the witch-doctress. Humming a low, ferocious song of vengeance, he gained the brink of the now empty pit. Seizing one of the lighted candles, which still burned—no one having thought it worth while to put them out—he turned his steps into the lateral gallery. A fiendish chuckle escaped him. He stopped short, threw the light in front of him, then held it over his head and looked again. Again he chuckled.

“Au!” he cried, “there is more revenge, more blood. I thirst for more blood. Ha! The witch is not dead yet. Where art thou, Ngcenika, spawn of a she-Fingo dog? Where art thou, that my broad umkonto may drink again of thy foul blood? Lo!”

The last ejaculation escaped him in a quick gasp. Just outside the circle of light he beheld a shadowy object, which seemed to move. It was the form of the wretched witch-doctress. He gathered himself together like a tiger on the spring.

“Ho! Ngcenika,” he cried, in a tone of exultation mingled with suppressed fury. “Thou art not dead yet—toad—carrion bird!”

He was standing over the inanimate form, his assegai uplifted in his right hand, in his left the dim and sputtering candle. He made a feint to plunge it into her body, then as rapidly withdrew it.

“Ha! I have a better plan. Thou shalt take Umlilwane’s place.”

He stuck his candle on a projecting slab of rock, then bending down he laid hold of the witch-doctress by the feet and began to drag her along the ground. She was massive in her proportions, and he did not make rapid headway; the more so that the wretched creature began to struggle, though feebly, for she had lost an enormous quantity of blood, and indeed but for the endurance of her race, which dies as hard as it lives, life would have been extinct in her long ago. It was a horrible scene. The almost nude body of the hag was one mass of blood, which, coagulated over a dozen ghastly wounds, now began to well forth afresh; the muscular, half-bent form of the grim old warrior, glistening with perspiration, as with the blaze of unsatiated revenge burning in his eyes he dragged her along that grisly cavern floor. Tugging, hauling, perspiring, growling, he at length reached the brow of the pit with his ghastly freight. Then pausing a moment, with a devilish grin on his face, to contemplate the object of his deadly rancour, he pushed the body over. A dull thud and a smothered groan told that it had reached the bottom.

“Hau! hell cat—toad’s spawn!” he cried. “How do you feel down there? Where is the great witch-doctress of the Gcaléka nation now? Where is Sarili’s great councillor of the Spirit-world