H. Rider Haggard

“ Marie was the first to perceive that I had come to life again. Shaking herself free from the clasp of the young man, she staggered towards me and fell upon her knees at my side, muttering words that I could not catch, for they choked in her throat. Then Hans took in the situation, and wriggling his unpleasant self to my other side, lifted my hand and kissed it. Next my father spoke, saying:
“Praise be to God, he lives! Allan, my son, I am proud of you; you have done your duty as an Englishman should.” ”

“ Long before the dawn I stood in the peach orchard, that orchard where we had first met, and waited. At length Marie came stealing between the tree trunks like a grey ghost, for she was wrapped in some light-coloured garment. Oh! once more we were alone together. Alone in the utter solitude and silence which precede the African dawn, when all creatures that love the night have withdrawn to their lairs and hiding places, and those that love the day still sleep their soundest. ”

“ I do not trust you to interpret, you Tho-maas, whom I know to be a liar,” and he glowered at Halstead.
“I can speak your tongue, though not very well, O king,” I interrupted, “and I can tell you all about the Boers, for I have lived among them.”
“Ow!” said Dingaan, intensely interested. “But perhaps you are also a liar. Or are you a praying man, like that fool yonder, who is named Oweena?”—he meant the missionary Mr. Owen—“whom I spare because it is not lucky to kill one who is mad, although he tries to frighten my soldiers with tales of a fire into which they will go after they are dead. ”

“ Vrouw Prinsloo had her arm about Marie’s waist. Waiting there behind the rock, my courage returned to me, as it sometimes does in the last extremity. I remembered my dream and took comfort. Surely God would not be so cruel as to suffer me to fail and thereby bring all those poor people to their deaths.
Snatching the rifle from Hans, I loaded it myself; nothing must be trusted to another. ”

“ I called Hans and bade him inspan as quickly as possible, explaining to him that yonder was Marais’s camp.
“Why not let the oxen fill themselves first, baas?” he answered. “There is no hurry, for though the wagons are there, no doubt all the people are dead long ago.”
“Do what I bid you, you ill-omened beast,” I said, “instead of croaking of death like a crow. And listen: I am going to walk forward to that camp; you must follow with the wagons as fast as they can travel.”
“No, baas, it is not safe that you should go alone. Kaffirs or wild beasts might take you.” ”

“ At that moment I hated Henri Marais as I had never hated anyone before, not even his nephew Hernan. Almost did I ride to the commandant to complain of him, but reflecting to myself, first that he was undoubtedly half mad, and therefore not responsible for his actions, and secondly that he was better here with us than in the same camp with my wife, I gave up the idea. Yet alas! it is the half-mad who are the most dangerous of lunatics. ”

“ Now say, boy, you clever Watcher by Night; you little white ant, who work in the dark and only peep out at the end of your tunnel when it is finished; you wizard, who by your magic can snatch his prey out of the hand of the greatest king in all the world—for it was magic that killed those vultures on Hloma Amabutu, not your bullets, Macumazahn—say, why should I not make an end of you at once for this trick? ”

“ I recollect lying there in that hut and wondering how the Almighty could have permitted such a deed as I had seen done. How could it be reconciled with any theory of a loving and merciful Father? Those poor Boers, whatever their faults, and they had many, like the rest of us, were in the main good and honest men according to their lights. Yet they had been doomed to be thus brutally butchered at the nod of a savage despot, their wives widowed, their children left fatherless, or, as it proved in the end, in most cases murdered or orphaned! ”

“ So perhaps you will meet this wife of yours here, Macumazahn.”
Now, at these ominous words, that might mean so much or so little, the sweat started to my brow, and a shiver went down my back.
“Perhaps I shall and perhaps I shall not, O king,” I answered. “The world is as full of chances to-day as it was not long ago when I shot at the sacred vultures on Hloma Amabutu. Still, I think that my wife will never be yours, O king.”
“Ow!” said Dingaan; “this little white ant is making another tunnel, thinking that he will come up at my back. ”

“ Then the wounded Pereira raised himself upon one hand.
“I am dying,” he cried; “my life is bleeding away, but before I die I must speak. All that story I told against the Englishman is false. He never plotted with Dingaan against the Boers. It was I who plotted with Dingaan. Although I hated him because he found me out, I did not wish Retief and our people to be killed. But I did wish Allan Quatermain to be killed, because he had won her whom I loved, though, as it happened, all the others were slain, and he alone escaped. ”

“ Kill me, Allan.”
“All right,” I answered, “I will. I have my pistol. One barrel for you and one for me.”
“No, no! Perhaps you might escape after all; but, you see, I am a woman, and dare not risk it. Come now, I am ready,” and she knelt down, opening her arms to receive the embrace of death, and looked up at me with her lovely, pitiful eyes.
“It doesn’t do to kill one’s love and live on oneself,” I answered hoarsely. “We have got to go together,” and I cocked both barrels of the pistol.
The Hottentot, Hans, who was in the place with us, saw and understood. ”

“ I answered. “Well, come on, I want to go to the Death-hill yonder.”
“Why, baas, before the time?” asked the Hottentot, shrinking back a little. “It is no place to visit till one is obliged. These Zulus say that ghosts sit there even in the daylight, haunting the rocks where they were made ghosts.”
“Vultures sit or fly there also, Hans; and I would see how they fly, that I may know when and where to shoot at them.”
“That is right, baas,” said the clever Hottentot. “This is not like firing at geese in the Groote Kloof. The geese go straight, like an assegai to its mark. ”

“ Blinded by prejudice and falsehood, and maddened by the dreadful losses their people had suffered during the past few days at the hands of a devilish savage, they believed that I was the instigator of those losses, one who ought to die. Indeed, all, or nearly all the Boers were persuaded that Dingaan was urged to this massacre by the counsels of Englishmen. The mere fact of my own and my servant’s miraculous escape, when all my companions had perished, proved my guilt to them without the evidence of Pereira, which, being no lawyers, they thought sufficient to justify their verdict. ”

“ Now my anger broke out, and, rising, I said:
“Do you mean, Mynheer Marais, that notwithstanding the love between us, which you know is true and deep, and notwithstanding that I alone have been able to drag both of you and the others out of the claws of death, I am never to marry Marie? Do you mean that she is to be given to a braggart who deserted her in her need?”
“And what if I do mean that, Allan?”
“This: although I am still young, as you know well I am a man who can think and act for himself. Also, I am your master here—I have cattle and guns and servants. ”

“ So Marais came, and with him Marie, who blushed and smiled, but to my mind looked more of a grown woman than ever before; one who had left girlhood behind her and found herself face to face with real life and all its troubles. Following her close, very close, as I was quick to notice, was Hernan Pereira. He was even more finely dressed than usual and carried in his hand a beautiful new, single-barrelled rifle, also fitted to take percussion caps, but, as I thought, of a very large bore for the purpose of goose shooting. ”

“ Now the Zulus burst out laughing.
“You! Why, you are but a boy who weighs no more than a fat girl,” exclaimed their captain, a great, bony fellow who was named Kambula.
“That may be so,” I answered; “but sometimes the wisdom of their fathers dwells in the young. I am the son of George who saved these Boers from death far away, and I am taking them back to their own people. We desire to see Dingaan, your king. Be pleased therefore to lead us to him as he has commanded you to do. If you do not believe what I tell you, ask this man who is with me, and his companions who are of your own race. ”

“ Who could have thought that within a little time it would be but a field of blood, that those wagons would be riddled with assegais, and that the women and children who were moving there must most of them lie upon the veld mutilated corpses dreadful to behold? Alas! the Boers, always impatient of authority and confident that their own individual judgment was the best, did not obey their commandant’s order to keep together. ”

“ Now we will see if you are a wizard or a liar. I will make a bet with you. Yonder by your camp is a hill called ‘Hloma Amabutu,’ a hill of stones where evildoers are slain. This afternoon some wicked ones die there, and when they are dead the vultures will come to devour them. Now this is my bet with you. When those vultures come you shall shoot at them, and if you kill three out of the first five on the wing—not on the ground, Macumazahn—then I will spare these Boers. ”

“ Do you understand?”
“I understand that I am one slandered,” replied Pereira. “Still, it is Christian to submit to injuries, and therefore I will do as you wish. As to these bearers of false witness, I leave them to God.”
“And I leave you to the devil,” shouted Vrouw Prinsloo, “who will certainly have you soon or late. Get out of my sight, stinkcat, or I will pull your hair off.” And she rushed at him, flapping her dreadful vatdoek—which she produced from some recess in her raiment—in his face, driving him away as though he were a noxious insect. ”

“ Explain, Henri Marais.”
“Men!” wailed Henri Marais, “they are not men. One is a woman—my only child; and the other is a devil, who, being a devil, will not die. See! he will not die. Give me another gun that I may make him die.”
The commandant looked about him wildly, and his eye fell upon the Vrouw Prinsloo.
“What has chanced, vrouw?” he asked.
“Only this,” she replied in a voice of unnatural calm. “Your murderers whom you set on in the name of law and justice have made a mistake. You told them to murder Allan Quatermain for reasons of your own. ”

“ But when the Boers understood the offer that I had made, Marie, who until now had been silent, grew more angry than ever I had seen her before.
“It shall not be!” she said, stamping her foot. “Father, I have been obedient to you for long, but if you consent to this I will be obedient no more. Allan saved my cousin Hernan’s life, as he saved all our lives. In payment for that good deed Hernan tried to murder him in the kloof—oh! be quiet, Allan; I know all the story. Now he has betrayed him to the Zulus, telling them that he is a terrible and dangerous man who must be killed. ”