Bertram Mitford

“ And in the noon-tide night, darkened by the black rain-burst which beat down in torrents, and, well-nigh ceaseless, the blue lightning sheeted over the furious boil of brown water and tree trunks and driftwood: and with the awful roar above, even the baffled savages were cowed, for it seemed as though the elements themselves were wrath over the death of a mighty chief.
Strange are the trifles which turn the scale of momentous happenings. Strange, too, and ironical withal, that the body of dead Ziboza should be the means of restoring to life its very nearly dead slayer. ”

“ A thick volume of smoke rolled up as Blachland scrambled over the piled stones, nearly choking him, even in the open air. A sharp, sickening pain shot through his bruised ankle. Was it the fangs of the deadly mamba? Two or three of the great stones, displaced, rattled loosely—but the thunderous Snake song raised below must have drowned the rattle. Heavens! the smoke was parting! Only for a moment though, but in that moment the desperate man caught sight of that which encouraged him. The savages were clustering around the burning holocaust, heaping on piles of grass and brush. ”

“ There had been a touch of frost in the night, and the house, lying back in its enclosure of aloe fence, looked as though roofed with a sheeting of silver in the sparkle of the rising sun. The spreading veldt, too, in the flash of its dewy sheen, seemed to lend a deeper blue to the dazzling, unclouded vault above. The metallic clatter of milk-pails in the cattle-kraal hard by mingled with the deep-toned hum of Kaffir voices; a troop of young ostriches turned loose were darting to and fro, or waltzing, and playfully kicking at each other ”

“ His bruised ankle was painful to a degree, and he was walking lame. That there was no luck in meddling with Umzilikazi’s last resting-place assuredly he had found.
He travelled but slowly, peering cautiously over every rise prior to surmounting it, not needlessly either, for once he came upon a Matabele picket, the glow of whose watch-fire was concealed behind a great rock. The savages were stretched lazily on the ground, their assegais and shields beside them, some asleep, others chatting drowsily. Well for him that he was cautious and that they were drowsy. But—where was Hlangulu? ”

“ The Matabele, however, asked no questions, and if a quick, fleeting look across his mask-like countenance, as they took their way onward through the starlight, betrayed his feelings it was all that did. Just before dawn they turned into a secure hiding-place formed by the angle of two great boulders, walled in in front by another accidental one—to rest throughout the hours of daylight.
And now a sure and certain instinct had taken hold upon Blachland, and the burden of it was that under no circumstances whatever dare he go to sleep. ”

“ Leaning back against the rock wall, Blachland began to attune himself to the situation. At last he had explored the King’s grave, he, all by himself. What a laugh he would have over Sybrandt and Pemberton bye-and-bye—they who had scouted the feat as utterly impossible. Well, he had done it, he alone, had done what no white man had ever done before him—what possibly no white man would ever do again. ”

“ Spence complied, less out of selfishness than an unwillingness to go against the other in any single detail. A curious change had come over him since his rescue—since the man he had wronged, as he thought, had ridden into the very jaws of death to bring him out. He regarded his rescuer now with feelings akin to veneration. He had at the time, expressed his sorrow and regret in shamefaced tones, but Blachland had met him with the equable reassurance that it didn’t matter. ”

“ The kopje up which he had taken his way, ascended by an easy acclivity to a point which commanded an immense view to the south and westward. Range upon range of rolling slope and wooded ridge lay there outspread—vast and scarcely inhabited country, a land given over to wild game and a few shrinking, starving remnants of tribes living in daily fear of the sweep of the terrible Matabele besom. The evening was still, and golden, and beautiful, and, seated under a mahobo-hobo tree, Blachland lit his pipe, and began to think out the position. ”

“ He could not even lay the spurious balm to his soul that “every man for himself” was the maxim which justified everything—that the glorious fascinations of this woman went wholly unappreciated by the man who should have been the one of all others to prize them, and therefore were reserved and destined for another, and that himself. This sort of reasoning somehow would not do. It struck him as desperately thin in the cool judicial hour of waking. He had behaved shabbily towards Blachland, and, the worst of it was, he knew he should go on doing so. ”

“ Then a blue gleam of lightning along the grim granite faces; and a dull boom, re-echoed again and again as the thunder-peal is tossed from crag to crag in a hundred deep-toned reverberations.
Standing just within their ample shelter—which is formed by the overhang of a great boulder—Blachland gazes forth upon the weird and awe-inspiring solitude. Opposite, a huge castellated rock, many hundreds of feet in height, balances on its summit a mighty slab, which it seems would need but the touch of a finger to send crashing into the valley beneath ”

“ Hilary Blachland triumphed.
Turning his steed with a mighty wrench, he rode straight back to the unhorsed trooper. From the ranks of the charging savages, now near enough to recognise him, there arose a mighty roar.
“Isipau! Ha! Isipau!”
“Quick, Spence! Get up behind me. Quick!”
The other needed no second bidding. As the horse with its double burden—either of these, singly, would have been a sufficient one for the poor brute, blown as he was—started once more, the foremost line of the savages was barely two hundred yards distant. ”

“ For a while matters are lively. Massing at this and that point the swarming Matabele will essay a charge, but the deadly machine guns are turned on with telling precision, breaking up every attempt at organised movement, and the veldt is strewn with dark bodies, dead, motionless, or writhing in death—and shields flung around in all directions, for which their owners will never more have use. But within the laager the organisation is complete. Every man has his own duty to do and does it, and has no time or attention to spare for what is going on elsewhere.
“Come along, Blachland!” ”

“ She looked around on the glowing veldt, shimmering in the afternoon heat. Away on yonder rise a line of black objects was moving. She got out the binocular, a clear and powerful glass, and the objects seemed about fifty yards away—a score of sable antelope moving through the low bush, some of them magnificent specimens of that noble buck, and she could clearly distinguish the great scimitar-like horns and black hides, so markedly defined. Yes, this was a grand country for men, but for women, debarred from all outdoor sport and excitement, why it was a living grave. ”

“ He had not always done so, Justin had gathered; and from Hermia’s reminiscences of camp life she seemed to have enjoyed it. If he, Justin, had been in Blachland’s place, not for a single day should she have been away from him. But then, Justin was very young, and all the circumstances and surroundings went to make him think that way.
He had known these people for some months, but of them he knew nothing. The hard, reticent, self-reliant up-country trader was not the man to make a confidant of one whom he regarded as a mere callow youth. ”

“ So, too, are assegai blades. In the midst of that stunning awful crash that seems to split open the world, five Matabele warriors are lying, mangled, fused into all shapes—and shapelessness—while nearly twice that number besides are lying stunned, as though smitten with a blow of a knob-kerrie.
“Mamo!” cries Ziboza, who is just outside the limit of this destruction, himself unsteady from the shock. “Lo, the very heavens above are fighting on the side of these whites!” ”

“ Clair and Blachland.’ Have you forgotten that, Canon?” snorted Sir Luke. “And Blachland! My nephew!”
“How long ago was that?”
“How long ago? Why, you know as well as I do. Six years. Rather over than under.”
“Yes. Six years is a long time. Time enough for a man to recognise that he has made worse than a fool of himself. How do you know that Hilary has not come to recognise that—is not doing all he can to wipe out that sin?”
“Exactly. How do I know? That’s just it. He has never had the grace or decency to let me know that he has—to let me know whether he’s dead or alive.” ”

“ The rifle had been struck by a bullet, and the concussion had for the moment paralysed him. Only for the moment though. Quick as the vivid flash which flamed down upon him from the now darkened heavens, his mind was made up. With a suddenness and a fleetness which took even his enemies by surprise, he had broken from his cover, and was racing headlong for the point of the donga which led down to the river.
In a second he will gain it. They cannot fire, every nerve is strained to overtake him, to head him off. He sees their foremost line. ”

“ High above through a chink between the huge boulders right over the entrance of the cleft, one single spear-like beam found entrance, and, piercing the gloomy shadows of the tomb, struck full upon the fleshless countenance of the dead King, illuminating it with a well-nigh supernatural glow; and with the clearing up of the mystery, the spectator was lost in admiration of the ingenuity that had contrived that the first ray of the rising sun should illuminate the countenance of the Great Great One, whom while living they hailed, among other titles of honour, as “Light of the Sun.” ”