Maiwa's Revenge; Or, The War of the Little Hand, H. Rider Haggard [reading list .TXT] 📗

“‘I am not of the Matuku,’ she answered as soon as we were out of hearing of the men. ‘I am of the people of Nala, whose tribe is the Butiana tribe, and who lives there,’ and she pointed over the mountain. ‘Also I am one of the wives of Wambe,’ and her eyes flashed as she said the name.

“‘And how did you come here?’

“‘On my feet,’ she answered laconically.

“We reached the packs, and undoing one of them, I extracted a handful of beads. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘a gift for a gift. Hand over the mealies.’

“She took the beads without even looking at them, which struck me as curious, and setting the basket of mealies on the ground, emptied it.

“At the bottom of the basket were some curiously-shaped green leaves, rather like the leaves of the gutta-percha tree in shape, only somewhat thicker and of a more fleshy substance. As though by hazard, the girl picked one of these leaves out of the basket and smelt it. Then she handed it to me. I took the leaf, and supposing that she wished me to smell it also, was about to oblige her by doing so, when my eye fell upon some curious red scratches on the green surface of the leaf.

“‘Ah,’ said the girl (whose name, by the way, was Maiwa), speaking beneath her breath, ‘read the signs, white man.’

“Without answering her I continued to stare at the leaf. It had been scratched or rather written upon with a sharp tool, such as a nail, and wherever this instrument had touched it, the acid juice oozing through the outer skin had turned a rusty blood colour. Presently I found the beginning of the scrawl, and read this in English, and covering the surface of the leaf and of two others that were in the basket.

“‘I hear that a white man is hunting in the Matuku country. This is to warn him to fly over the mountain to Nala. Wambe sends an impi at daybreak to eat him up, because he has hunted before bringing hongo. For God’s sake, whoever you are, try to help me. I have been the slave of this devil Wambe for nearly seven years, and am beaten and tortured continually. He murdered all the rest of us, but kept me because I could work iron. Maiwa, his wife, takes this; she is flying to Nala her father because Wambe killed her child. Try to get Nala to attack Wambe; Maiwa can guide them over the mountain. You won’t come for nothing, for the stockade of Wambe’s private kraal is made of elephants’ tusks. For God’s sake, don’t desert me, or I shall kill myself. I can bear this no longer.

“‘John Every.’

“‘Great heavens!’ I gasped. ‘Every!—why, it must be my old friend.’ The girl, or rather the woman Maiwa, pointed to the other side of the leaf, where there was more writing. It ran thus—‘I have just heard that the white man is called Macumazahn. If so, it must be my friend Quatermain. Pray Heaven it is, for I know he won’t desert an old chum in such a fix as I am. It isn’t that I’m afraid of dying, I don’t care if I die, but I want to get a chance at Wambe first.’

“‘No, old boy,’ thought I to myself, ‘it isn’t likely that I am going to leave you there while there is a chance of getting you out. I have played fox before now—there’s still a double or two left in me. I must make a plan, that’s all. And then there’s that stockade of tusks. I am not going to leave that either.’ Then I spoke to the woman.

“‘You are called Maiwa?’

“‘It is so.’

“‘You are the daughter of Nala and the wife of Wambe?’

“‘It is so.’

“‘You fly from Wambe to Nala?’

“‘I do.’

“‘Why do you fly? Stay, I would give an order,’—and calling to Gobo, I ordered him to get the men ready for instant departure. The woman, who, as I have said, was quite young and very handsome, put her hand into a little pouch made of antelope hide which she wore fastened round the waist, and to my horror drew from it the withered hand of a child, which evidently had been carefully dried in the smoke.

“‘I fly for this cause,’ she answered, holding the poor little hand towards me. ‘See now, I bore a child. Wambe was its father, and for eighteen months the child lived and I loved it. But Wambe loves not his children; he kills them all. He fears lest they should grow up to slay one so wicked, and he would have killed this child also, but I begged its life. One day, some soldiers passing the hut saw the child and saluted him, calling him the “chief who soon shall be.” Wambe heard, and was mad. He smote the babe, and it wept. Then he said that it should weep for good cause. Among the things that he had stolen from the white men whom he slew is a trap that will hold lions. So strong is the trap that four men must stand on it, two on either side, before it can be opened.’”

Here old Quatermain broke off suddenly.

“Look here, you fellows,” he said, “I can’t bear to go on with this part of the story, because I never could stand either seeing or talking of the sufferings of children. You can guess what that devil did, and what the poor mother was forced to witness. Would you believe it, she told me the tale without a tremor, in the most matter-of-fact way. Only I noticed that her eyelid quivered all the time.

“‘Well,’ I said, as unconcernedly as though I had been talking of the death of a lamb, though inwardly I was sick with horror and boiling with rage, ‘and what do you mean to do about the matter, Maiwa, wife of Wambe?’

“‘I mean to do this, white man,’ she answered, drawing herself up to her full height, and speaking in tones as hard as steel and cold as ice—‘I mean to work, and work, and work, to bring this to pass, and to bring that to pass, until at length it comes to pass that with these living eyes I behold Wambe dying the death that he gave to his child and my child.’

“‘Well said,’ I answered.

“‘Ay, well said, Macumazahn, well said, and not easily forgotten. Who could forget, oh, who could forget? See where this dead hand rests against my side; so once it rested when alive. And now, though it is dead, now every night it creeps from its nest and strokes my hair and clasps my fingers in its tiny palm. Every night it does this, fearing lest I should forget. Oh, my child! my child! ten days ago I held thee to my breast, and now this alone remains of thee,’ and she kissed the dead hand and shivered, but never a tear did she weep.

“‘See now,’ she went on, ‘the white man, the prisoner at Wambe’s kraal, he was kind to me. He loved the child that is dead, yes, he wept when its father slew it, and at the risk of his life told Wambe, my husband—ah, yes, my husband!—that which he is! He too it was who made a plan. He said to me, “Go, Maiwa, after the custom of thy people, go purify thyself in the bush alone, having touched a dead one. Say to Wambe thou goest to purify thyself alone for fifteen days, according to the custom of thy people. Then fly to thy father, Nala, and stir him up to war against Wambe for the sake of the child that is dead.” This then he said, and his words seemed good to me, and that same night ere I left to purify myself came news that a white man hunted in the country, and Wambe, being mad with drink, grew very wrath, and gave orders that an impi should be gathered to slay the white man and his people and seize his goods. Then did the “Smiter of Iron” (Every) write the message on the green leaves, and bid me seek thee out, and show forth the matter, that thou mightest save thyself by flight; and behold, this thing have I done, Macumazahn, the hunter, the Slayer of Elephants.’

“‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I thank you. And how many men be there in the impi of Wambe?’

“‘A hundred of men and half a hundred.’

“‘And where is the impi?’

“‘There to the north. It follows on thy spoor. I saw it pass yesterday, but myself I guessed that thou wouldst be nigher to the mountain, and came this way, and found thee. To-morrow at the daybreak the slayers will be here.’

“‘Very possibly,’ I thought to myself; ‘but they won’t find Macumazahn. I have half a mind to put some strychnine into the carcases of those elephants for their especial benefit though.’ I knew that they would stop to eat the elephants, as indeed they did, to our great gain, but I abandoned the idea of poisoning them, because I was rather short of strychnine.”

“Or because you did not like to play the trick, Quatermain?” I suggested with a laugh.

“I said because I had not enough strychnine. It would take a great deal of strychnine to poison three elephants effectually,” answered the old gentleman testily.

I said nothing further, but I smiled, knowing that old Allan could never have resorted to such an artifice, however severe his strait. But that was his way; he always made himself out to be a most unmerciful person.

“Well,” he went on, “at that moment Gobo came up and announced that we were ready to march. ‘I am glad that you are ready,’ I said, ‘because if you don’t march, and march quick, you will never march again, that is all. Wambe has an impi out to kill us, and it will be here presently.’

“Gobo turned positively green, and his knees knocked together. ‘Ah, what did I say?’ he exclaimed. ‘Fate walks about loose in Wambe’s country.’

“‘Very good; now all you have to do is to walk a little quicker than he does. No, no, you don’t leave those elephant tusks behind—I am not going to part with them I can tell you.’

“Gobo said no more, but hastily directed the men to take up their loads, and then asked which way we were to run.

“‘Ah,’ I said to Maiwa, ‘which way?’

“‘There,’ she answered, pointing towards the great mountain spur which towered up into the sky some forty miles away, separating the territories of Nala and Wambe—‘there, below that small peak, is one place where men may pass, and one only. Also it can easily be blocked from above. If men pass not there, then they must go round the great peak of the mountain, two days’ journey and half a day.’

“‘And how far is the peak from us?’

“‘All to-night shall you walk and all to-morrow, and if you walk fast, at sunset you shall stand on the peak.’

“I whistled, for that meant a five-and-forty miles trudge without sleep. Then I called to the men to take each of them as much cooked elephant’s meat as he could carry conveniently. I did the same myself, and forced the woman Maiwa to eat some as we went. This I did with difficulty, for at that time she seemed neither to sleep nor eat nor rest, so fiercely was she set on vengeance.

“Then we started, Maiwa guiding us. After going for a half-hour over gradually rising ground, we found ourselves on the further edge of a great bush-clad depression something like the bottom of a lake. This depression, through which we had been travelling, was covered with bush to a very great extent, indeed almost altogether so, except where it was pitted with glades such as that wherein I had shot the elephants.

“At the top of this slope Maiwa halted, and putting her hand over her eyes looked back. Presently she touched me on the arm and pointed across the sea of forest towards a comparatively vacant space of country some six or seven miles away. I looked, and suddenly I saw something flash in the red rays of the setting sun. A pause, and then another quick flash.

“‘What is it?’ I asked.

“‘It is the spears of Wambe’s impi, and they travel fast,’ she answered coolly.

“I suppose that my face showed how little I liked the news, for she went on—

“‘Fear not; they will stay to feast upon the elephants, and while they feast we shall journey. We may yet escape.’

“After that we turned and pushed on again, till at length it grew so dark that we had to wait for the rising of the moon, which lost