Forging the Blades: A Tale of the Zulu Rebellion

Mitford Bertram

Forging the Blades: A Tale of the Zulu Rebellion

Chapter One.

The Tragedy

The river swirled on through the heat, the sweltering, fever-breathing heat. The long, deep reach made but scant murmur, save where the boughs of a luxuriant vegetation dipped on its surface. Above, on either hand, masses of rolling verdure, tall forest trees, undergrowth in rich profusion, and, high up against the blue sky, battlemented rock walls.

Two dark objects relieved the shimmering smoothness of the surface of the reach – two minute dark objects to the ordinary observer, afloat, motionless. Yet why should these remain motionless instead of floating down with the fairly strong, though smooth, current? Well, there might have been, behind each, about twelve feet of ugly, scaly saurian, whose powerful under-water stroke kept them stationary, while watchful, against the descending stream.

A grassy glade slopes down to the bank, tailing away inland into a path something like a “ride” in an English game covert. Great trees, rising overhead, shade this, in a dimness which shuts out, save in a faint network, the glare of the molten sun. And it is at present occupied by two horses and a man.

The horses still have their saddles on, though the girths are loosened. The animals are grazing, their bridles trailing on the ground. Suddenly both throw up their heads and snort, then walk quickly away, further up the forest path. The man, who is standing up, gazing meditatively out upon the river reach, notices this and turns. Then he advances a step or two, and halts suddenly. For there is a movement in the grass a few yards in front, and immediately from this rises the head and neck of a large green mamba.

Instinctively the man’s hand goes to his revolver, then he pauses. The snake is hissing viciously. More of the long neck appears, waving to and fro as though preparing for a spring. This is a peculiarly fierce and aggressive species when disturbed, and the man knows it. He knows also that the chances of being able to stop its rush with a bullet are small. He abandons the firearm and starts another plan.

He begins whistling in a low but peculiarly clear note. The effect is magical. The angry, excited waving of the sinuous neck ceases. The head, still raised, is motionless as though under some new and enthralling influence. Clearly on the part of its owner hostilities are suspended.

He sustains the spell. Tune after tune trills forth in that clear note, and the reptile, its deadly head still raised, its original fury dulled to an almost placid expression, still listens. To the performer the position now seems ridiculous, then rather interesting. He has never set up as a snake-charmer before. For now, indeed, the horror with which the much dreaded reptile had inspired him has given way to a subtle sort of sympathy. He no longer fears it. He seems to have tamed it, and feels accordingly. It is a strange and appropriate picture: the man and the dreaded serpent, the dim shadowing away of the tangled forest, the two horses snuffing with uneasy curiosity in the background, the river reach, still and deep-flowing, with the muzzles of its two voracious denizens causing a light ripple on its surface.

All thought of destruction has faded from the mind of the human actor in this weird performance. He continues to evolve his natural music, even advancing a few steps nearer to his grim listener. The latter shows no sign of fear or resentment. Then an interruption occurs.

Crash! The motionless, uplifted neck of the serpent seems to fly nearly in half, and the great coils beat and burst convulsively in the grass. The man turns. Another man is standing behind him holding a shotgun, one barrel of which is still smoking.

“What the devil did you do that for?” says the first angrily.

The other laughs, a thick sort of laugh, and by no means a pleasant one.

“Do that for?” he echoes, speaking with somewhat of a Jewish tone and accent. “Can’t I shoot a blighted snake without having to ask your leave?”

“You idiot. I was in the thick of a most interesting experiment, and you’ve spoilt it all by your infernal and officious interference.”

“Interesting experiment? I call it disgusting.”

“Here, drop that gun sharp, or I’ll blow your head into the river.”

The Jewish-looking man with the shotgun starts. The other’s revolver is pointing right at his chest, and there is no mistaking the determination in his steely eyes. He knows full well that there is every reason why his life is in mortal peril. So he drops the gun sullenly into the grass.

“Now, then. Take five steps back from it. If you move otherwise you’re dead.”

There is no alternative but to obey, and this the threatened one does.

“Don’t know if you’ve gone mad,” he says. “Fooling with snakes must have sent you off your chump, I reckon.”

“Do you? Well, you chose to fasten yourself on to me for your own purpose – to wit, blackmail. Now you are going to write down, here and now, something which will put it out of your power to try any more blackmail on me for ever.”

“I’ll see you damned first. I’ll see you damned before I write anything.”

“Will you? But you’ll have to wait for that some time – till you’ve had a spell of damnation yourself first. Now, then, are you going to do it?”

“No.”

The pistol cracks. It is a miss. The bullet has grazed the other’s ear. The assailed is standing just on the edge of the bank with his back to the river.

“Don’t move. I’ll give you another chance. I’m aiming lower this time. You’ll get it bang amidships, between wind and water, so to say, and – it’ll hurt more. You were going to stick to me till I came to your price, were you? But you’ve stuck rather too tight.”

“Oh, but – you’ll swing for this,” says the other, between dry, tremulous lips.

“Not much ‘swing.’ Why, nobody will be any the wiser. Not a soul has seen us together. You disappear, that’s all. Well, are you going to do as I tell you? I’ve got everything here – well-filled fountain pen, and paper; strangely out of place in these surroundings, still, here they are.”

The threatened man does not immediately reply. He is calculating his chances, and in a flash it is borne home to him that he has no chances. Opposite him stands a desperate and determined man dictating terms. These he will have to accept, and will feel anything but safe even then; for well he knows that the other has every motive for sending him out of the world.

“Well? Are you going to do it? I’ll count five.”

But hardly has he begun to do so than the situation changes. The man on the river brink suddenly puts his hand behind him, ducking low as he does so, to avoid the shot that simultaneously whizzes over where his chest had been a fraction of a second earlier. A revolver glints in his hand, but he is not quick enough. Before he can get in a shot the other pistol cracks again, this time with effect. He topples heavily into the water.

Yet he is struggling for his chance of life, but a glance is sufficient to show that he can hardly swim a stroke even if unwounded – which he is not. The other points his pistol for a final and decisive shot. But there is something in the wild appealing scream of the drowning wretch that unnerves him, that shatters his callous desperation. And then – the crocodiles.

“Make for this stump,” he shouts, running down the bank. “I’ll give you a hand out. Now I’m going to fire over your head.”

There is nothing now to fire at. The two motionless objects have disappeared, nevertheless he sends a bullet into the water at the place where they had been.

Splashing, kicking, panting, the drowning man makes for the stump indicated. In a moment he will have seized it and the other is running down to help him. A yard further and he will be safe. His hand is already stretched forth to grasp it, when – with a frightful scream of agony and terror he disappears beneath the surface.

The survivor stands on the bank appalled.

“The ‘crocs’ have got him, by God!” he exclaims. A moment back and he himself was ready to take this man’s life – for all he knew he had taken it. But the final method of his death is so revolting, so ghastly that he could wish him safe back again. Well, at any rate he had done what he could to save him. It was not his fault if the fool chose to topple into the river. Yet, but for his own compulsion the said “fool” would not have been standing where he was.

He stands gazing down the reach. Is that blood, floating in a dark patch upon the surface lower down? No. Only the light and shade. And now, what to do next?

If the body should be found the bullet wound would tell its own tale. Even then the natives, already in a state of unrest, would be credited with another outrage. But if, as he surmised, the dead man had been pulled under by crocodiles, why then there would be little enough left of him to tell any tale at all. But – what of his horse?

This is something of a problem, and sitting down with his back against a yellowwood-tree he proceeds to think it out. Shall he shoot the animal and leave it there, for its return anywhere without its rider will, of course, raise an alarm? Then an idea strikes him – rather an original and ghastly one. The dead mamba? Its poison glands are intact. Can he not by some means make the dead head bite the living animal? That would look less suspicious than a bullet hole, in the event of the carcase being found. But he doubts whether the venom will inject under the circumstances. No. He must sacrifice the poor brute to his own sense of self-preservation.

The two horses have withdrawn some little way, uneasy at the sound of the firing. Now he lounges quietly towards them, and has no difficulty in securing the bridle rein of both, trailing, as that is, upon the grass. He hitches his own mount to a strong sapling and leads the other to the river bank.

But this is not so easy. The horse, by some instinct, grasps that something is wrong, and demurs to leaving its fellow. At last by dint of patience and coolness it is induced to do so, and is led to an overhanging bank similar to that whence its owner took his last plunge. A quick shot. Four kicking hoofs turn convulsively upwards and the lifeless carcase falls into the deep water with a great splash. The man looks after it for a minute or two as it sinks.

“A pity, but necessary,” he reflects. “Too much cannonading, though. Sure to have been heard.” Then he reseats himself on the grass and lights his pipe.

“This is no murder,” run his reflections. “The fool brought it upon himself. He was given every chance.” Then, as the long period of blackmailing to which the dead man has subjected him comes back, he feels ruthless. Yet the tragedy just enacted seems to have left its mark. He has taken life – human life – and somehow the consideration weighs; in spite of the feeling of relief at having rid himself, and the world, of that most pestilent thing alive – a blackmailer. Should the circumstances leak out he would have to stand his trial for murder – an ugly word. But – how should they? This wild, lonely forest valley, seldom visited even by natives, never by whites, would keep its own secret. And nobody had seen them together.

As he sits there the whole situation seems to get upon his nerves, high-strung as they are after the quick excitement of the foregoing events. The whole atmosphere of the tangled forest, of the deep-flowing river, seems to breathe death. The dank, decaying vegetation, the dimness, the very airlessness of the sweltering valley – all this is not merely heat. It is asphyxia. It is strangely silent too; only the murmur of the river, and that remindful of its voracious denizens, breaks upon the fever-breathing stillness. He shivers, then, as with an effort, starts up, and going over to his horse, he hitches it, straps tighter the girths, and mounted, rides away down the dim, overhung path.

But not until six hours later does he remember that the dead man’s shotgun has been left lying just where it was dropped.

Chapter Two.

The Mystery

For some time the thought uppermost in the mind of the survivor was that of relief. An incubus had fallen from him; a plague spot that for the last two or three years had been eating into and embittering his life, and rendering its otherwise achieved success null and void.

He did not regret what he had done. He had given the other every chance, and the other had refused to take it. If ever an act of self-defence had been committed it was this one. Self-defence, yes; for sooner or later the dead man’s exactions would have culminated in his own ruin and suicide. Even from the physical side of it the other had drawn a weapon upon him. And, in sum, what more loathsome and poisonous animal exists in the world than a blackmailer? This one had richly earned his fate.

That was all very well, but in came another side to the situation. How would the law regard it? Well, he supposed that in this wild, out-of-the-way part things were done of which the law never got wind at all. The country, of course, was within the administration of British jurisprudence, but then, as he had told the slain man, they had not been seen together, and he had done his best to destroy all possibility of the discovery of any corpus delicti.

But as he held on through the dark and solemn forest path he grew less elate. The hideous end of the dead man seemed to haunt him, the agony depicted on that livid distorted countenance, the whole seemed to rise up before him again in these gloomy shades. He concentrated his attention on the surroundings, vividly interesting in their wildness and novelty, in their strange denizens, specimens of which in the shape of bird or animal would now and again dash across his way, but still the haunting face was there.

The thing was absurd, he kept saying to himself. Men shot their fellows in battle in defence of their country or of their country’s cause, and thought no more about it. Some even bragged of it. Again, in a naval engagement, when a hostile ship was sunk, did not the other side do all it could to rescue the survivors struggling in the water? Well, this was precisely an analogy as regarded his own case, with this difference, that the rescued in the naval engagement had not the power to injure their rescuers further, whereas the man he had slain had, and certainly had the will. Yet, at the last moment, he had honestly attempted to rescue him, at any rate from that horrible fate.

What was this? Had he taken a wrong path in the course of his reflections? For his way seemed suddenly barred. A fallen trunk, massive and rotting with age lay across it, and there seemed no way round it but cutting one through a dense wall of creepers and coarse grass. Even then the path seemed to end.

He dismounted and, hitching his horse to a bough, climbed on to the fallen tree-trunk to reconnoitre. A snake glided off it, hissing, but too rapidly for him to be able to distinguish the species. No, there was no way beyond the trunk. It had evidently been disused since it was blocked, and some other taken. That other way he must have missed, and the only thing to do would be to find it.

Acting upon this idea he remounted and rode back upon his trail. After going some distance it occurred to him that the surroundings were unfamiliar, for he had neglected that safe rule that in travelling on a strange way for the first time, it is well to look back occasionally to accustom oneself to it from the contrary direction for purposes of return; wherein the simile of the “hand to the plough” emphatically does not hold good.

Ah, here it was! He had left the path even as he had thought. Here was the right one. Accordingly he put his horse into it, and then discovered that his said horse was going lame. Carefully he examined all four hoofs. No, there was no stone or anything of the kind.

This was a blank outlook. The still atmosphere of the forest seemed more fever-breathing than ever, and the sky had darkened. A boom of thunder came rolling through the stillness, not so distant either, then a gleam and then another sullen roll. He started. This was no joke. He was in for a sudden storm, and among all these tall tree-trunks too. If only he could reach some native kraal.

But, then, he had heard that the natives were restless, and that it was not altogether safe for one man alone to go among many. He was well armed, certainly, but what is one among many? He had sufficient food for one meal, and a flask. By way of putting a more cheerful light on the situation he took a pull at the latter.

“A beastly place to camp in,” he said to himself, looking around. “Faugh! It simply reeks of fever. If only one could find somewhere more open.”

Now the lightning began to gleam vividly down through the tree-tops, and the thunder crashed in short, angry barks; but no rain had fallen as yet. It was one of those most dangerous storms of all – a dry storm. Suddenly a big yellowwood, barely thirty yards off, burst into splinters and sparks as a wreath of flame ran down it into the ground. The thunder-crash that accompanied was awful. The wayfarer’s steed started violently and backed, nearly throwing its rider, then stood stock still, trembling and snorting.

“Oh, blazes, that’s nasty!” growled the latter. “Well, I suppose if one has to go under one has, but I’d rather not just at present. Hullo! what’s that?”

Far a sound had reached him from in front – a sound uncommonly like the barking of dogs. The horse had heard it too, for it pricked up its ears and snuffed the air. By now it was going dead lame.

A few big drops came pattering through the trees, then ceased. The thunder-rolls grew less frequent and less loud. The storm was passing over.

Now the barking of dogs sounded nearer and nearer. Instinctively the wayfarer looked to the cartridges in his revolver, then, replacing the weapon, continued to advance, yet very much on the look-out.

The forest ended abruptly. In front, on a bare ridge or spur, running down from a great height, lay a small kraal, numbering four huts, enclosed within a circular thorn stockade. Beyond it again lay an unbroken mass of forest.

The appearance of the wayfarer in the open was the signal for a rush of dogs from the kraal gate. These were not of the ordinary native greyhound breed, but massive bullet-headed brutes of the Boer mastiff type, and as formidable as wolves. There were three of them, and their savage charge and deep-mouthed baying caused the horseman instinctively to grasp the butt of his revolver. He had no fancy for being pulled from his saddle. On the other hand, if he were to shoot one or all of them, would he not have human enemies to deal with scarcely less formidable? And as though to bear out this idea, three tall, savage-looking Zulus, armed with broad assegais, strode through the gate towards him.

The wayfarer began to think he had got into a bad fix. He had six revolver shots and a rifle bullet, as against three human and three four-footed enemies, and the chances were all in favour of the latter, out in the open like this, and mounted as he was on a lame horse. But the natives began by calling off the dogs, which was reassuring; yet they seemed to be barring his way, while talking to him volubly. Here again he was in a quandary, for except for a word or two of ordinary use he could understand no Zulu. There was one argument, however, which he judged to appeal to all mankind, wherefore he produced a capacious tobacco pouch.

But even that met with no response. The demeanour of the trio was the reverse of friendly, and behind them the three great, evil-looking brutes were stalking up and down, their hackles raised, and muttering and growling, as though impatient for the word to spring upon the stranger. Then after a consultation among themselves, one of the men turned and went into the kraal again.

The wayfarer was nonplussed. It was obvious that they were incapable of understanding each other, for even to signs they seemed impervious.

At last, however, the other man reappeared, and made it apparent, by very unmistakable signs, that he should dismount and enter.

This he accordingly did, trying not to show the while that he was keenly on his guard against treachery. They signed him to a hut, that he should enter it. He crept through the low door way. The interior was dark after the daylight outside, and he took a minute or two to get accustomed to the semi-gloom. Then he realised that the place contained one man, and he a European.

He was squatted on the floor, native fashion, smoking a pipe. He was an old man apparently, for his hair and thick beard were white, yet the face somehow did not seem quite to correspond. It looked younger, but there was an expression in it which was very curious, one of mingled melancholy and malevolence, at least so decided the stranger. But no word or movement of welcome did he make towards the latter, who, perforce, had to open the conversation.

“Well, this is very jolly,” he began, “stumbling upon a white man. The fact is I can’t talk the lingo, and couldn’t ask the way for one thing.”

“Where are you bound for?”

The voice, dead, dull, expressionless, was peculiar. But it was a refined voice.

“I wanted first to get to Ezulwini.”

“You were going in exactly the contrary direction, that’s all.”

The other started. Had this mysterious personage been aware of his progress all along? he wondered. The thought was rather disquieting under all the circumstances. The man was a puzzle. He seemed to prefer his unexpected guest’s room to his company.

“My horse has gone dead lame,” went on the latter. “He may be all right in the morning. But, meanwhile, I shall have to throw myself upon your hospitality, or camp outside in the veldt.”

The other was silent for a moment. Then he said —

“You are welcome – on one condition.”

“And that?”

“That you pledge me your word of honour – you are a gentleman, I see, and will keep it – that you mention no word to any living soul, under any circumstances whatever, that you have been here, or, in short, that you have ever seen me in your life.”

“Well, of course I will, if you wish it,” answered the traveller, very much mystified.

“But I do wish it,” was the reply, given with some fierceness. “And you will do it. Do you know that at a word from me you would never leave this place alive? You would simply disappear.”

Substantially the very words he had uttered to that other, who had disappeared. There was a creepy suggestiveness about it all that made him feel more than uncomfortable.

“You needn’t threaten me,” he rejoined, rather shortly. “If I pass you my word, as you yourself have just said, I shall keep it.”

“I know you will. And let me tell you that if you had been as some others I know you would not be here at all. In fact, although you have exactly seven bullets at your immediate disposal your friends would never have seen or heard of you again.”

The mystery deepened. The new arrival was conscious of a very uncanny, not to say awe-inspiring effect in the piercing, unfriendly glance from the other’s eyes. The day had been a pretty eventful one and no mistake.

“Look here,” he answered, in a burst of frankness. “This world’s a devilish rum place, and I’ve lived long enough in it, and seen enough devilish rum sides of it, to have learnt enough to respect other people’s secrets. So you may rely upon me when I give you the full undertaking you ask for.”

The other nodded, then uttered a loud hail, in response whereto a native boy appeared, and having received a laconic direction soon reappeared, together with a large bowl of native beer.

“This is the best I can offer you. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but it’s rather good, always provided it’s fresh.”

“Yes, I have once. Thanks awfully. Well, here’s luck.”

The effect on the wayfarer of this homely interchange of good-fellowship was that it seemed to put him and his strange and rather sinister host on a better footing. He took a big drink of the refreshing brew and set down the bowl. Then he lighted his pipe.

He was almost growing confidential under the influence of rest and refreshment. But it occurred to him that this strange being was unusually reticent. For instance, he had not even asked him his name or where he was from, or indeed anything. So taking his cue he confined himself to generalities, and, except that the other was rather laconic, some conversation became possible.