Hilda Wade, a Woman with Tenacity of Purpose Part 26

"Well, there you are, then! That's just it! Your Jomini, or Hominy, or whatever you call him, not only understood Napoleon's temperament, but understood war and understood tactics. It was all a question of the lie of the land, and strategy, and so forth. If _I_ had been asked, I could never have answered a quarter as well as Jomini Piccolomini--could I, baby? Jomini would have been worth a good many me's. There, there, a dear, motherless darling! Why, she crows just as if she hadn't lost all her family!"

"But, Hilda, we must be serious. I count upon you to help us in this matter. We are still in danger. Even now these Matabele may attack and destroy us."

She laid the child on her lap, and looked grave. "I know it, Hubert; but I must leave it now to you men. I am no tactician. Don't take ME for one of Napoleon's generals."

"Still," I said, "we have not only the Matabele to reckon with, recollect. There is Sebastian as well. And, whether you know your Matabele or not, you at least know your Sebastian."

She shuddered. "I know him; yes, I know him.... But this case is so difficult. We have Sebastian--complicated by a rabble of savages, whose habits and manners I do not understand. It is THAT that makes the difficulty."

"But Sebastian himself?" I urged. "Take him first, in isolation."

She paused for a full minute, with her chin on her hand and her elbow on the table. Her brow gathered. "Sebastian?" she repeated.

"Sebastian?--ah, there I might guess something. Well, of course, having once begun this attempt, and being definitely committed, as it were, to a policy of killing us, he will go through to the bitter end, no matter how many other lives it may cost. That is Sebastian's method."

"You don't think, having once found out that I saw and recognised him, he would consider the game lost, and slink away to the coast again?"

"Sebastian? Oh, no; that is the absolute antipodes of his type and temperament."

"He will never give up because of a temporary check, you think?"

"No, never. The man has a will of sheer steel--it may break, but it will not bend. Besides, consider: he is too deeply involved. You have seen him; you know; and he knows you know. You may bring this thing home to him. Then what is his plain policy? Why, to egg on the natives whose confidence he has somehow gained into making a further attack, and cutting off all Salisbury. If he had succeeded in getting you and me ma.s.sacred at Klaas's, as he hoped, he would no doubt have slunk off to the coast at once, leaving his black dupes to be shot down at leisure by Rhodes's soldiers."

"I see; but having failed in that?"

"Then he is bound to go through with it, and kill us if he can, even if he has to kill all Salisbury with us. That, I feel sure, is Sebastian's plan. Whether he can get the Matabele to back him up in it or not is a different matter."

"But taking Sebastian himself; alone?"

"Oh, Sebastian himself alone would naturally say: 'Never mind Buluwayo!

Concentrate round Salisbury, and kill off all there first; when that is done, then you can move on at your ease and cut them to pieces in Charter and Buluwayo.' You see, he would have no interest in the movement, himself, once he had fairly got rid of us here. The Matabele are only the pieces in his game. It is ME he wants, not Salisbury. He would clear out of Rhodesia as soon as he had carried his point. But he would have to give some reasonable ground to the Matabele for his first advice; and it seems a reasonable ground to say, 'Don't leave Salisbury in your rear, so as to put yourselves between two fires. Capture the outpost first; that down, march on undistracted to the princ.i.p.al stronghold.'"

"Who is no tactician?" I murmured, half aloud.

She laughed. "That's not tactics, Hubert; that's plain common sense--and knowledge of Sebastian. Still, it comes to nothing. The question is not, 'What would Sebastian wish?' it is, 'Could Sebastian persuade these angry black men to accept his guidance?'"

"Sebastian!" I cried; "Sebastian could persuade the very devil! I know the man's fiery enthusiasm, his contagious eloquence. He thrilled me through, myself, with his electric personality, so that it took me six years--and your aid--to find him out at last. His very abstractness tells. Why, even in this war, you may be sure, he will be making notes all the time on the healing of wounds in tropical climates, contrasting the African with the European const.i.tution."

"Oh, yes; of course. Whatever he does, he will never forget the interests of science. He is true to his lady-love, to whomever else he plays false. That is his saving virtue."

"And he will talk down the Matabele," I went on, "even if he doesn't know their language. But I suspect he does; for, you must remember, he was three years in South Africa as a young man, on a scientific expedition, collecting specimens. He can ride like a trooper; and he knows the country. His masterful ways, his austere face, will cow the natives. Then, again, he has the air of a prophet; and prophets always stir the negro. I can imagine with what air he will bid them drive out the intrusive white men who have usurped their land, and draw them flattering pictures of a new Matabele empire about to arise under a new chief, too strong for these gold-grubbing, diamond-hunting mobs from over sea to meddle with."

She reflected once more. "Do you mean to say anything of our suspicions in Salisbury, Hubert?" she asked at last.

"It is useless," I answered. "The Salisbury folk believe there is a white man at the bottom of this trouble already. They will try to catch him; that's all that is necessary. If we said it was Sebastian, people would only laugh at us. They must understand Sebastian, as you and I understand him, before they would think such a move credible. As a rule in life, if you know anything which other people do not know, better keep it to yourself; you will only get laughed at as a fool for telling it."

"I think so, too. That is why I never say what I suspect or infer from my knowledge of types--except to a few who can understand and appreciate. Hubert, if they all arm for the defence of the town, you will stop here, I suppose, to tend the wounded?"

Her lips trembled as she spoke, and she gazed at me with a strange wistfulness. "No, dearest," I answered at once, taking her face in my hands. "I shall fight with the rest. Salisbury has more need to-day of fighters than of healers."

"I thought you would," she answered, slowly. "And I think you do right."

Her face was set white; she played nervously with the baby. "I would not urge you; but I am glad you say so. I want you to stop; yet I could not love you so much if I did not see you ready to play the man at such a crisis."

"I shall give in my name with the rest," I answered.

"Hubert, it is hard to spare you--hard to send you to such danger.

But for one other thing, I am glad you are going.... They must take Sebastian alive; they must NOT kill him."

"They will shoot him red-handed if they catch him," I answered confidently. "A white man who sides with the blacks in an insurrection!"

"Then YOU must see that they do not do it. They must bring him in alive, and try him legally. For me--and therefore for you--that is of the first importance."

"Why so, Hilda?"

"Hubert, you want to marry me." I nodded vehemently. "Well, you know I can only marry you on one condition--that I have succeeded first in clearing my father's memory. Now, the only man living who can clear it is Sebastian. If Sebastian were to be shot, it could NEVER be cleared--and then, law of Medes and Persians, I could never marry you."

"But how can you expect Sebastian, of all men, to clear it, Hilda?" I cried. "He is ready to kill us both, merely to prevent your attempting a revision; is it likely you can force him to confess his crime, still less induce him to admit it voluntarily?"

She placed her hands over her eyes and pressed them hard with a strange, prophetic air she often had about her when she gazed into the future. "I know my man," she answered, slowly, without uncovering her eyes. "I know how I can do it--if the chance ever comes to me. But the chance must come first. It is hard to find. I lost it once at Nathaniel's. I must not lose it again. If Sebastian is killed skulking here in Rhodesia, my life's purpose will have failed; I shall not have vindicated my father's good name; and then, we can never marry."

"So I understand, Hilda, my orders are these: I am to go out and fight for the women and children, if possible; that Sebastian shall be made prisoner alive, and on no account to let him be killed in the open!"

"I give you no orders, Hubert. I tell you how it seems best to me.

But if Sebastian is shot dead--then you understand it must be all over between us. I NEVER can marry you until, or unless, I have cleared my father."

"Sebastian shall not be shot dead," I cried, with my youthful impetuosity. "He shall be brought in alive, though all Salisbury as one man try its best to lynch him."

I went out to report myself as a volunteer for service. Within the next few hours the whole town had been put in a state of siege, and all available men armed to oppose the insurgent Matabele. Hasty preparations were made for defence. The ox-waggons of settlers were drawn up outside in little circles here and there, so as to form laagers, which acted practically as temporary forts for the protection of the outskirts. In one of these I was posted. With our company were two American scouts, named Colebrook and Doolittle, irregular fighters whose value in South African campaigns had already been tested in the old Matabele war against Lo-Bengula. Colebrook, in particular, was an odd-looking creature--a tall, spare man, bodied like a weasel. He was red-haired, ferret-eyed, and an excellent scout, but sc.r.a.ppier and more inarticulate in his manner of speech than any human being I had ever encountered.

His conversation was a series of rapid interjections, jerked out at intervals, and made comprehensible by a running play of gesture and att.i.tude.

"Well, yes," he said, when I tried to draw him out on the Matabele mode of fighting. "Not on the open. Never! Gra.s.s, if you like. Or bushes. The eyes of them! The eyes!..." He leaned eagerly forward, as if looking for something. "See here, Doctor; I'm telling you. Spots. Gleaming. Among the gra.s.s. Long gra.s.s. And armed, too. A pair of 'em each. One to throw"--he raised his hand as if lancing something--"the other for close fighting. a.s.segais, you know. That's the name of it. Only the eyes.

Creeping, creeping, creeping. No noise. One raised. Waggons drawn up in laager. Oxen out-spanned in the middle. Trekking all day. Tired out; dog tired. Crawl, crawl, crawl! Hands and knees. Might be snakes. A wriggle.

Men sitting about the camp fire. Smoking. Gleam of their eyes! Under the waggons. Nearer, nearer, nearer! Then, the throwing ones in your midst.

Shower of 'em. Right and left. 'Halloa! stand by, boys!' Look up; see 'em swarming, black like ants, over the waggons. Inside the laager.

s.n.a.t.c.h up rifles! All up! Oxen stampeding, men running, blacks sticking 'em like pigs in the back with their a.s.segais. Bad job, the whole thing.

Don't care for it, myself. Very tough 'uns to fight. If they once break laager."

"Then you should never let them get to close quarters," I suggested, catching the general drift of his inarticulate swift pictures.

"You're a square man, you are, Doctor! There you touch the spot.

Never let 'em get at close quarters. Sentries?--creep past 'em.

Outposts?--crawl between. Had Forbes and Wilson like that. Cut 'em off.

Perdition!... But Maxims will do it! Maxims! Never let em get near.

Sweep the ground all round. Durned hard, though, to know just WHEN they're coming. A night; two nights; all clear; only waste ammunition.

Third, they swarm like bees; break laager; all over!"

This was not exactly an agreeable picture of what we had to expect--the more so as our particular laager happened to have no Maxims. However, we kept a sharp lookout for those gleaming eyes in the long gra.s.s of which Colebrook warned us; their flas.h.i.+ng light was the one thing to be seen, at night above all, when the black bodies could crawl unperceived through the tall dry herbage. On our first night out we had no adventures. We watched by turns outside, relieving sentry from time to time, while those of us who slept within the laager slept on the bare ground with our arms beside us. n.o.body spoke much. The tension was too great. Every moment we expected an attack of the enemy.

Next day news reached us by scouts from all the other laagers. None of them had been attacked; but in all there was a deep, half-instinctive belief that the Matabele in force were drawing step by step closer and closer around us. Lo-Bengula's old impis, or native regiments, had gathered together once more under their own indunas--men trained and drilled in all the arts and ruses of savage warfare. On their own ground, and among their native scrub, those rude strategists are formidable. They know the country, and how to fight in it. We had nothing to oppose to them but a handful of the new Matabeleland police, an old regular soldier or two, and a raw crowd of volunteers, most of whom, like myself, had never before really handled a rifle.