Haviland's Chum Part 21

Helpless, swathed in coils of thongs wound round them from head to foot, to the accompaniment of many blows and kicks, the unhappy prisoners lay.

"Behold, ye dogs!" jeered one of those who guarded them. "Behold! Is it not good to look upon the face of a friend once more? Behold!"

He pointed to the head of the unfortunate doctor, which, ghastly and dripping, was being borne about on the point of a spear. Raising eyes dull with despair and horror, they saw it and envied him. He was at peace now, or, at worst, was in more merciful hands than those of these fiends; while they themselves--the horrible tortures which had been decreed for them by the slaver chief, and to which end alone they had been spared--why, the bare thought was enough to turn the brain.

"Is there no way, Oakley," said Haviland, "I don't mean of escape, but of escape from what that devil intends to do with us?"

Oakley was silent for a moment.

"There is a way," he said at length. "We might turn Mohammedan."

"What?"

"It has been done before to-day," went on Oakley. "Men have saved their lives that way, and ultimately have escaped."

It was Haviland's turn to be silent.

"No, hang it," he said at last. "I'm not a religious chap, Oakley, I'm sorry to say, but--I kick at that."

"Naturally one does, under ordinary circ.u.mstances; but under these it's different. And it needn't mean anything, you know."

"No; somehow I can't. It seems cowardly," said Haviland. "Perhaps, too, I have an inspiration that it wouldn't help our case much if we were to do such a thing. But, Oakley, it doesn't follow that you're to be bound by my opinion. You're an older chap than me, and if you--"

"If I want to take the chance, I'd better, independently of you. That's what you were going to say, isn't it? No--no, Haviland. We are in this together, and we get out of it together--or not, probably not--even apart from the fact of your having saved my life--"

"Pooh! There was no life-saving about it. Only a chance finding of another fellow in a bit of a difficulty. In any case, there's not much to be grateful for, but just the reverse."

"These dogs have long tongues," said one of the savage guards, striking Haviland with the b.u.t.t of his spear. "Long tongues, but we will cut them out soon. So chatter, jackals, while ye may, for it will not be long."

Not there, however, was their cruel martyrdom to take place, for the word went forth to prepare at once to march. The loot was gathered up and disposed among its respective bearers, and soon the two captives found themselves loaded up like bales of goods, and borne forth by those very abjects who had crowded in, beseeching their pity--the miserable slaves who had been used to bring them to this pa.s.s.

For some hours this cramped and painful locomotion continued, the barbarous horde carrying severed heads on their spear-points, and taking a delight in impressing upon their prisoners what lay in store for them.

At length, towards sundown, they halted, and the prisoners were flung brutally to the ground in such heavy fas.h.i.+on as to knock all the breath out of their bodies. The pity was that this did not happen altogether, they had bitter reason to think, for now they saw a fire being kindled and blown up into a red, roaring flame. The while, thongs had been thrown over the limb of a tree. Their time had come.

Mushad, with two or three others, now approached them.

"What was my promise to you, ye swine?" he began. "Was it not that ye should hang by the heels, that your eyes should be scooped out, and live coals placed in the sockets? Behold. The preparations are even now being made. How like ye them?"

"We like them not at all, O chief," answered Haviland, desperate. "See, now, you are a brave man, and we have fought you fair and you have conquered. We expect death, but we English are not accustomed to torture. Put us therefore to a swift death."

"Ha! Now ye cry for mercy, but before you laughed! It is well,"

answered Mushad. "Yet ye shall not obtain it. What of all my fighting men ye have slain, also many of my slaves?" And, turning, he beckoned to four savage-looking negroes. "Him first," pointing to Haviland.

He was as powerless to move as a log. They seized him by the neck and dragged him towards one of the trees whereon a noose dangled. Their knives were drawn, and as they dragged him along he could see another ruffian kneeling by the fire, extracting a great glowing ember with a pair of rude tongs. Utterly powerless to struggle in his bonds, he felt the noose tightened round his ankles; then he was hauled up, swinging head downwards from the bough. His head was bursting with the rush of blood to it, and yet with his starting eyes he could see the fiend-like forms of his black torturers standing by him with the knife, and the red glowing embers.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

THE INSWANI.

The hot night air brooded steamy and close upon the slumbering camp of the slavers, but to these it mattered nothing. Ferocious Arab and bloodthirsty negro alike were plunged in calm and peaceful slumber.

Not so the unhappy captives. To the tortures of their cramping bonds and the bites of innumerable insects from which they were entirely powerless to protect themselves, were added those of antic.i.p.ation. With a refinement of cruelty which was thoroughly Oriental, the slaver chief had decreed a respite. He had caused his victims to undergo in imagination the horrible torments he intended should be their lot on the morrow, and, to this end, he had ordered them to be taken down from the tree and put back as they were before, so that they might have the whole night through to meditate upon what awaited them on the following day.

Haviland had fallen asleep through sheer exhaustion, but his slumbers were fitful, and ever haunted by frightful visions, which would start him wide awake and quaking: for his nerves were unstrung with the awful ordeal he had undergone; and further, the recollection of the sickening ma.s.sacre, the heat and excitement of battle over, was one to haunt. In his broken, unrestful sleep he was back at Saint Kirwin's, and, instead of the Headmaster, it was Mushad, duly arrayed in academicals--which did not seem a bit strange or out of the way in the _bizarre_ reality of his dream--who was about to pa.s.s sentence upon him. And then appeared Cetchy, not as he used to be, but as a big, powerful, full-grown man, and started to punch the spurious Doctor's head, and they fought long and hard, and he watched them in powerless and agonising apprehension, for upon the issue of the contest depended whether he should undergo the hideous fate in store for him or not. And then he awoke.

To the first sense of relief succeeded a quick realisation that the actuality of their position was worse than the make-believe of any dream. Involuntarily a groan escaped him. The savage face of one of his guards shot up noiselessly, with a sleepily malignant grin. But Haviland realised that it was growing almost imperceptibly lighter. The day would soon be here.

It was the hour before dawn, and sleep lay heavy upon the slave-hunters'

camp. Even their sentinels scarcely took the trouble to keep awake.

Why should they? Did they not belong to the great Mushad, whose name was a terror to half a continent, whose deeds a sweeping scourge? Who would dare to a.s.sail or molest such a power as this? So, in the faint lightening of the darkness which preceded the first dawn of day, they slumbered on, heavily, peacefully, unsuspectingly. And then came the awakening. The awakening of death.

The vibrant barking slogan seems to shatter the world, as the destroyers, apparently starting up from nowhere, pour over the silent camp, and each affrighted sleeper leaps up, only to meet the slash of the broad shearing blade which rends his vitals, and hurls him back to the earth, a deluging corpse. Huge figures, fell and dark, hundreds and hundreds of them, and yet more and more, with streaming adornments and mighty s.h.i.+elds and short-handled, broad-bladed spears--this is what the captives behold in that terrible hour of lightening dawn. Their former enemies, overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers, entirely taken by surprise, have not even time to rise and defend themselves. They are struck down, ripped, before they can gain their feet and lay hand upon a weapon. And they themselves? They, too, will be butchered in the helplessness of their bonds, but it will be a swift and sudden death.

But somehow the tide of slaughter seems to surge round them, not over them, to pa.s.s them by. What does it mean? That in the confusion and uncertain light they are counted already dead as they lie there, but even in that case these savages would inevitably rip them with their spears? Something like a glimmer of hope seems to light up the despair at their hearts, as it occurs to them that the surprise and ma.s.sacre of their enemies may mean ultimate rescue for themselves.

Yet who and what are these savages? They are for the most part men of splendid physique, tall and straight, and of a red-brown colour, and their features are of the negroid type. They carry great s.h.i.+elds akin to the Zulu, only more oval in shape, and more ma.s.sive, and the latter is also the case with regard to their short-handled stabbing spears, and their battle-shout is a loud, harsh, inarticulate bark, indescribably terrible when uttered simultaneously by many throats. Here, as uttered by over a thousand, words can hardly express the blood-curdling menace it conveys. But, while thus pondering, the attention of these new arrivals is turned to themselves. Ha! now their time has come. With ready spear two of the savages bend over them. The dark faces are grim and pitiless, and the spears descend, but not to be sheathed in their bodies. The tense thongs, severed in more places than one, fly from them. Their limbs are free.

They could hardly realise it. They stared stupidly upward at the ring of faces gazing down upon them. What did it mean? Then their glance fell upon one among that vast increasing group of towering men. If that was not the ghost of k.u.mbelwa, why it was k.u.mbelwa himself. And then a string of the most extravagant _sibonga_, bursting from the warrior in question, convinced them that this was indeed so.

"In truth, _Amakosi_," he concluded, "well was it for you that Mushad preferred to take his revenge cool, else had these been too late."

"But--who are these, k.u.mbelwa?" said Haviland. "Not the People of the Spider?" gazing at them with renewed interest.

"The Ba-gcatya? No. These are the Inswani; they of whom we were talking just lately."

"What of Mushad, k.u.mbelwa? Have they killed him?"

"He is unhurt. But I think the death he intended for yourselves, _Amakosi_, is sweet sleep by the side of that which the father of this people is keeping for him. Yonder he sits."

Rising, though with difficulty, in the cramped condition of their limbs, the two, together with Somala, looked around for their enemy. The Arab had accepted their rescue with the same philosophy as that wherewith he had met his bonds. "It was written so. G.o.d is great," had been his sole comment.

In the centre of the erewhile camp they found the man they sought. The terrible slaver chief lay as securely bound as they themselves had so lately been. With him, too, and equally helpless, were about three score of his clansmen. They were the sole survivors of the ma.s.sacre, and the site of the camp was literally piled with hacked and mangled corpses. Barbarous as had been their own treatment at the hands of this ruthless desperado, the three Englishmen could not but shudder over the fate in store for him and those who had been taken alive with him. To that end alone had they been spared, for such had been the orders of the King.

"_Ya Allah_!" exclaimed Mushad, his keen eyes seeming to burn, as he glared up at his late captives. "Fate is strange, yet be not in a hurry to triumph, ye dogs, for it may change again."

"We have no desire to triumph over you, Mushad," said Haviland. "That would be the part of a coward, and I hardly think that even you would name us that."

The Arab scowled savagely and relapsed into silence, and they left him.

When k.u.mbelwa asked them about the doctor they felt almost ashamed of how the elation, attendant upon their own unexpected deliverance, had sent their friend's memory into the background. Yet were they destined to miss him at every hour of the day.

"He died like a brave man, k.u.mbelwa," had answered Haviland. "And now, what of ourselves; and how did you escape and come so opportunely to our aid?"

Then k.u.mbelwa sat down, and began to take snuff.

"We had a right good fight up there, _Nkose_, was it not so? But I knew what would be the end of it, for did not you yourself say, 'What can one buffalo bull do against a hundred dogs?' So I cut my way through Mushad's people and made for the open, and well I knew that none there could outrun me, nor indeed could their bullets even strike me, so wild were these men with excitement and victory. The while I thought that one man outside and free was better than all within and bound, wherefore I put much s.p.a.ce between me and the battle so that I might think out some plan. And then, _Nkose_, I know not how, whether it was my snake that whispered it to me, or what it was, but I looked up--and lo! afar off there rose a smoke. 'Now,' thought I, 'whoever is making that smoke, it is no friend to Mushad. Further, it is no weak ones of the tribes left in the path of Mushad, else had they not dared signify their presence so soon after he had pa.s.sed.' And I thought 'Nothing can be worse for those in the hand of Mushad, and it may be better. As things are, they are already dead; but as things may be, who knoweth?' So straight to that smoke I went, and lo! by a fire lay four times ten men--warriors, in full array of battle. I walked into their midst before they seized their spears and came for me. Then I said, 'Who are ye?' And they told me--I standing there and uttering the name of our King. They had heard it, far, far as they dwelt from the land of Zulu; but, where has not the name of Zulu sounded?