The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

Mitford Bertram

The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

Chapter One.

The Camp on the Matya’mhlope

“There! That is Umzilikazi’s grave,” said Christian Sybrandt, pointing out a towering pile of rocks some little way off, across the valley.

“Is it? Let’s go and have a look at it then,” was the prompt reply. But immediately upon having made it, the second speaker knew that he had spoken like a fool, for the first gave a short laugh.

“Go over and have a look at it?” he echoed. “Why we’d all be cut to bits before we got within half a mile. It’s holy ground, man; guarded, picketed by armed majara, rigidly watched, day and night. You couldn’t get near it, no, not at any price.”

“Well, I’ve a great notion to try,” persisted the other, to the imaginative side of whose temperament the place of sepulture of that remarkable savage, the remorseless, all-destroying war-leader, the founder and consolidator of a martial nation, irresistibly appealed, no less than the mystery and peril enshrouding the undertaking did to the adventurous side. “No white man has ever seen it close, I think you said, Sybrandt?”

“That’s so. And you won’t constitute the exception, Blachland. You’ll never get there; and, if you did, you’d never get away.”

“Yet it would be interesting to constitute that exception,” persisted the other. “I like doing things that nobody else has done.”

“Well, even if you escaped the five hundred to one chances against you, you wouldn’t have the satisfaction of talking about it – not as long as you are in this country, at all events; for let even so much as a whisper get about that you had done such a thing, and your life wouldn’t be worth a week’s purchase.”

The two men were riding over the site of the old Mahlahlanhlela Kraal – distinguishable by its great circle of nearly overgrown hut floors, and sherds of rude pottery, erewhile the head-quarters of a favourite regiment of the Great King, whose tomb they were viewing. There it rose, that tomb, away on the right, a great pile standing boldly against the sky – prominent from the outermost edge of the rugged Matopo, all tumbled rocks, and granite boulders and scant tree growth; in front, an undulating sweep, bounded by the Inyoka ridge, the site of old Bulawayo. The two men were dressed in serviceable and well-worn buckskin, and carried rifles. Following a little distance behind them came a group of natives, whose burden, the meat and other spoils of a young sable antelope bull, testified to the nature of the errand from which they were returning.

The countenance of both, darkened by sun and exposure, wore the same expression of blended repose and latent alertness which a roving up-country life seems invariably to produce. Sybrandt – he had dropped the original “Van” – was Dutch by birth, though English by sympathies and associations. Trader, hunter, gold-prospector, adventurer all round, his life had been spent mainly on the confines of civilisation, or far beyond the same; and what he did not know about natives, from the Zambesi to Durban, from Inhambane to Walfisch Bay, nobody else did. He, for his part, was no less known to them. “U’ Klistiaan,” as they called him, in adaptation of his baptismal name, stood to them as a white man who commanded their respect and confidence far and wide. Of cool courage and unflinching resolution, a firm friend, and, while enmity lasted, a determined and dangerous foe, he stood as high in the estimation of the Zulu-speaking races as these qualifications could place him, which is to say at the highest. He was a man of about forty; in outward aspect of medium height and of sturdy and powerful build, his dark hair and pointed beard just turning iron grey. His companion, whom we heard him address by the name of Blachland, was something of a mystery. Nobody knew much, if anything, about him, except that originally he was an English importation with some years of up-country experience, and that he came and went sporadically, disappearing for a time, and turning up again as if he had been away about a week, perfectly unexplanatory, uncommunicative, as to his doings in the interim. He was a tall dark man, who might be any age compatible with a hardy frame and untiring energy. A keen sportsman and keener adventurer, he was ever on the look out for the possibilities underlying up-country life; and, in curious contrast to his normally hard and philosophic nature, was a tendency to fits of almost boyish excitement and recklessness; which would break out when least expected, and with apparently inadequate motive, and which were wont to land their owner in positions of peril or difficulty, but which, by a curious compensating element in nature, were none the less available to extricate him therefrom right at the critical moment.

Now he made no reply to his companion’s very confident and more than ominous forecast. But more than one wistful glance did he send in the direction of the great natural mausoleum. The King’s grave! This rock sepulchre would hold all that was weird and uncommon, and into it no European eye had ever gazed. That was sufficient for one of Hilary Blachland’s temperament.

Soon the last resting-place of Umzilikazi, the Great King, was hidden from sight behind. A few miles more and a strange phenomenon as of a mighty cloud of dust and smoke, crowning a distant eminence, broke upon the view in front, and through it a vast cluster of round grass roofs, from the silent throne of the dead the pair had turned to front the throne of the living, pulsating with humanity and its primitive impulses – Bulawayo, the great kraal of Lo Bengula, son of that Umzilikazi whose bones lay within the sombre heart of that great rock pile behind.

Not on this, however, were their steps bent. Down in the valley a camp was set, and the white tents of three waggons rose among the scant bush on the banks of the Matya’mhlope, at the foot of the abrupt ridge of shining stones which gives to that insignificant river its name. And as our two wayfarers gained it the sun dropped, and in this latitude without twilight the night began to fall.

Two other white men were seated in camp as these two arrived. Like Christian Sybrandt, Young and Pemberton were traders and hunters, and looked it; whereas the presence of Hilary Blachland with the outfit was inconsequent. But that word more than rather summed up Hilary Blachland. He was all keenness, however, on anything new and strange, and now the impression had grown and grown upon him that Umzilikazi’s grave came under both these qualifying adjectives.

Wherefore later, when the fire was roaring up brightly with red and cheery glow, and the sable antelope steaks, hot and fizzing, had been transferred from the frying-pan to the metal enamelled camp plates, he must needs drag in the subject again.

Pemberton, the elder of the other two traders, whistled and shook his heavy beard.

“It’s a thing that won’t bear meddling with,” was his laconic dictum.

“Well, I should like to meddle with it to the extent of having a look at it anyway,” persisted Blachland. “Any one here ever seen it close, by the way?”

“No, nor likely to,” answered Young. “I saw it once, about a mile off; near enough to get a good look at it through a glass. It’s a tall cleft, running right up the face of the boulder, and overhung by another boulder like a porch. There’s a tree in front too. I’d just time to see so much when a lot of majara, spotting my binoculars, started for me, yelling like blazes. I judged it wise to take a bee-line for Bulawayo, and get under old Lo Ben’s wing; but they ran me hard all the way – got there nearly as soon as I did, and clamoured to be allowed to kill me. Lo Ben wouldn’t have that, but he hinted to me quietly that the country wouldn’t be healthy for a year or so, and I took the hint. No, take my advice and leave it alone. Apart from the risk, there’s no luck meddling with such places – no, none.”

“Oh, skittles about luck. It’s the risk I take count of, and that only. The fact is, Young, you old up-country men are as superstitious as sailors,” returned Blachland, with that strange, eager restlessness which now and then, and generally unexpectedly, obtruded to give the lie to his ordinarily calm and immobile demeanour. “I’ll risk the majara– luck doesn’t count, – and sooner or later I’ll explore Umzilikazi’s grave.”

Sybrandt was conscious of what, in a less self-contained man, would have been an obvious start at these words. A dark form had glided silently in among them all. It was only one of their camp servants, but – a native of the country. What if he had heard – had understood? He knew some English too!

“Even if you got through the pickets of majara, Blachland,” struck in Sybrandt, when this man had retired; “you’d have another factor to reckon with. The King’s Snake.”

“Eh?”

“The King’s Snake.”

Blachland spluttered. “See here, Sybrandt,” he said. “Are you seriously trying to fill me up? Me, mind? No, it can’t be.”

“Well, the Matabele say there’s a big snake mounting guard over Umzilikazi’s remains. It is the King’s spirit which has passed into the snake. That is why the snake comes in such a lot when they go periodically and give the sibonga at his grave.”

“And you believe that?”

“They say so.”

“What sort of a snake is it?”

“A black imamba. Mind you, I’ve never seen it.”

“Don’t you be so cocksure about everything, Blachland,” grunted Pemberton, who was fast dropping asleep. “Luck or no luck, there’s mighty rum things happen you can’t explain, nor scare up any sort of reason for.”

“Won’t do – no, not for half a minute,” returned the other, briskly and decisively. “You can explain everything; and as for luck, and all that sort of thing – why, it’s only fit for old women, and the lower orders.”

Pemberton grunted again, and more sleepily still. His pipe at that moment fell out of his mouth, and he lurched over, fast asleep. Sybrandt, too, was nodding, but through his drowsiness he noticed that the native, a low-class Matabele, Hlangulu by name, was moving about, as though trying to sidle up near enough to catch some of the conversation. He was drowsy, however, and soon dropped off.

Blachland, sitting there, felt anything but inclined for sleep. This new idea had caught on to his mind with a powerful hold. It was full of risk, and the object to be attained nil. The snake story he dismissed as sheer savage legend, childish and poor even as such. The luck theory, propounded by Pemberton, smacked of the turnip-fed lore of the average chaw-bacon in rural England. No, the risk lay in the picket-guard. That, to his mind, constituted the real peril, and the only one. It, however, might be avoided; and, the more he thought about it, the more resolved was Hilary Blachland to penetrate the forbidden recess, to explore the tomb of the warrior King, and that at any risk.

Strangely wakeful, he lounged there, filling and lighting pipe after pipe of good Magaliesberg. The stars gleamed forth from the dark vault, so bright and clear and lamp-like in the glow of night in those high, subtropical latitudes, that it seemed as though the hand had but to be stretched forth to grasp them. Away over the veldt, jackals yelped; and the glimmer of the camp fire, dying low, emboldened the hungry little beasts to come nearer and nearer, attracted by the fresh meat brought in during that afternoon. The native followers, their heads in their blankets, had ceased their sonorous hum of gossip, and were mingling their snores with the somewhat discomforting sounds emitted by the nostrils of Pemberton. Away on the northern sky-line, a faint glow still hung, and from time to time a muffled snatch of far-away song. A dance of some sort was in late progress at the King’s kraal, but such had no novelty for Blachland. The exploration of the King’s grave, however, had; and he could think upon nothing else. Yet, could he have foreseen, his companions had uttered words of sound wisdom. He had better have left Umzilikazi’s sepulchre severely alone.

Chapter Two.

Before the King

“Tumble out, Blachland. We’ve got to go up and interview the King.” Thus Sybrandt at an early hour on the following morning. “And,” he added in a low voice, “I hope the indaba will end satisfactorily, that’s all.”

“Why shouldn’t it?” was the rather sleepy rejoinder. And the speaker kicked off his blanket, and, sitting up, yawned and stretched himself.

Three savage-looking Matabele were squatted on the ground just within the camp. They were majara, and were arrayed in full regimentals, i.e. fantastic bedizenments of cowhair and monkey-skin, and their heads crowned with the isiqoba, or ball of feathers; one long plume from the wing of a crested crane stuck into this, pointing aloft like a horn. The expression of their faces was that of truculent contempt, as their glance roamed scornfully from the camp servants, moving about their divers occupations, to the white men, to whom they were bearers of a peremptory summons. It was significant of the ominous character of the latter, no less than of the temper of arrogant hostility felt towards the whites by the younger men of the nation, that these sat there, toying with the blades of their assegais and battle-axes; for a remonstrance from Sybrandt against so gross a violation of etiquette as to enter a friendly camp with weapons in their hands had been met by a curt refusal to disarm, on the ground that they were King’s warriors, and, further, that they were of the King’s bodyguard, and, as such, were armed, even in the presence of the Great Great One himself.

“I only hope no inkling of what we were talking about yesterday has got wind, Blachland,” explained Sybrandt, seriously. “If Lo Ben got such a notion into his head – why then, good night. As to which, do you happen to notice that one of our fellows is missing? No, no; don’t say his name. Those three jokers have got their ears wide open, and are smart at putting two and two together.”

Thoroughly awake now, Blachland, looking around, became aware of the significance of the other’s statement. One of the “boys” was missing, and that the one who had seemed to be overhearing when they had talked on that dangerous topic – Hlangulu, the Matabele.

“Hurry now, Amakiwa,” growled one of the messengers. “Is not the Great Great One waiting?”

“He can wait a little longer, umfane,” rejoined Pemberton, tranquilly sipping his coffee, which was hot.

“Ah! Who but a madman would provoke the wrath of the Black Bull?” growled the savage.

Pemberton nodded. “The Black Bull in this case is no longer a calf,” he replied. “Therefore he will know that everything cannot be done in a hurry.”

The three savages scowled and muttered. In their heart of hearts they had an immense respect for these cool, imperturbable white men, so entirely but unobtrusively fearless.

At last the latter arose, and, buckling on their bandoliers and taking their rifles, declared that they were ready.

“Put those down. The Great Great One has sent for you. You cannot go before him armed,” said one of the envoys insolently, pointing with his knob stick. But for all the effect the injunction had upon those to whom it was addressed, it might just as well not have been uttered. The slightest possible raising of an eyebrow alone showed that they had so much as heard it. The horses were brought round saddled, and, mounting, they started, a kind of instinct moving them to outmanoeuvre each attempt of their truculent summoners to bring up the rear. But as they moved out of camp the idea was the same in all four minds – whether they were destined ever to re-enter it.

Lo Bengula was, at that time, friendly to the English. Sick of haggling with rival concession-mongers, he had finally concluded terms for the occupation of adjacent Mashunaland, and, having made the best of a bad job, felt relieved that his lines were henceforth cast in peaceful and pleasant places. But he reckoned without the nation which produced Drake and Hawkins, Raleigh and Clive, and – Cecil Rhodes.

He reckoned, also, without his own fighting men. The bumptiousness of these was inordinate, overwhelming. They were fully convinced they could whip all creation – that agglomeration being represented hither to by the inferior tribes, which they had reduced and decimated ever since the exodus from Zululand. Now these troublesome whites were coming into the country by threes and fours – why not make an end of them before they became too numerous? Umzilikazi would have done this – Umzilikazi, that Elephant who had made the nation what it was. So they murmured against Lo Bengula, in so far as they dared, and that was a good deal, for the voice of a nation can make itself heard, even against a despot, when the potentate thinks fit to run counter to its sense.

Now, three out of the four knew the King intimately; the other, Blachland to wit, fairly well. They had frequently visited him at Bulawayo, either spontaneously, or in compliance with a request. But never had they been sent for in such fashion that a trio of armed and insolent youths were thought good enough to be the bearers of the King’s message.

Upon this circumstance, and the disappearance of Hlangulu, Christian Sybrandt was expatiating, as they took their way leisurely along the slope where the business part of the present town of Bulawayo now stands, for Lo Bengula’s great place crowned the rise some two miles to the eastward. And here signs of busy life were already apparent. Files of women, bearers of wood or water, were stepping along; bunches of cattle being driven or herded; here and there, men, in groups or singly, proceeding to, or returning from the great kraal, their deep-toned voices rising upon the air in contrast to the clearer trebles of the feminine ones, though none the less rich and melodious.

And above the immense kraal, with its ring of clustering huts, a blue smoke cloud, drifting lazily to leeward, as though the place were in a state of conflagration. A peaceful, pastoral scene, but that the sun glinted on the blades of the assegais carried by the men, and on the sheen of their miniature shields.

Nor were other symptoms wanting, and those of a far more ominous character, which should bring home to our party the full fact that they were in the heart of a nation of turbulent and ruthless barbarians; for as they drew nearer to the great kraal, a mighty hubbub arose within its precincts, and there emerged from the stockade a dark surging crowd of armed warriors. These, uttering a ferocious shout, made straight for the new arrivals.

“Steady, Blachland,” enjoined Sybrandt, in a low tone. “Don’t lose your head, man; keep cool. It’s the only thing to be done.”

The warning was needed, for he to whom it was addressed had already shown signs of preparing to resist this hostile threatening demonstration. The gravity of the tone in which it was uttered, however, went far to neutralise in his mind the reassuring effect of the imperturbable aspect of his companions.

The swarm of savages came crowding round the four white men, brandishing their assegais and battle-axes, and frightening the horses not a little. But two Bechuana boys who were attendant upon their masters they managed to frighten a good deal more. These turned grey with terror, and really there was some excuse for it.

For each had been seized by a tall ruffian, who, gripping him by the throat, was making believe to rip him with a great assegai brandished in front of the miserable wretch’s face, every now and then letting him feel the point sufficiently to make him think the stroke already dealt, causing the victim to yell and whine with terror. The while his white masters could do nothing to protect him, their efforts being needed to calm and restrain their badly-frightened horses: an element of the grotesque which evoked roars of bass laughter from the boisterous and bloodthirsty crowd.

“Cease this fooling!” shouted Sybrandt, in the Sindabele tongue. “Is this how you treat the King’s guests? Make way. We are bound upon the King’s business.”

“The King’s business!” echoed the warriors. “The King’s business! Ah! ah! We too are bound upon the King’s business. Come and see, Amakiwa. Come and see how we black ones, the children of the King, the Eater-up of the Disobedient, perform his bidding.”

Then, for the first time, our party became aware that in the midst of the crowd were two men who had been dragged along by raw-hide thongs noosed round their necks; and, their horses having quieted down, they were able to observe what was to follow. That the poor wretches were about to be sacrificed in some hideous and savage fashion was only too obvious, and they themselves could not refuse to witness this horror, for the reason that to do so would be, in the present mood of these fiends, almost tantamount to throwing away their own lives.

“What is their offence, Sikala-kala?” asked Sybrandt, addressing a man he knew.

“Their offence? Au! it is great. They have gone too near the Esibayaneni, the sacred place where the King, the Great Great One, practises mutt. What offence can be greater than such?”

The victims, their countenances set and stony with fear, were now seized and held by many a pair of powerful and willing hands. Then, with the blade of a great assegai, their ears were deliberately shorn from their heads. A roar of delight went up from the barbarous spectators, who shouted lustily in praise of the King.

“So said the Great Great One: ‘They had ears, but their ears heard what it was not lawful they should hear, so they must hear no more!’ Is he not wise? Au! the wisdom of the calf of Matyobane!”

Again the executioners closed around their victims. A moment more and they parted. They were holding up to the crowd their victims’ eyes. The roars of delight rose in redoubled volume.

“So said the Black One: ‘They had eyes, but they saw what it was not lawful for them to look upon. So they must see no more!’ Au! the greatness of the Elephant whose tread shaketh the world!”

There was a tigerish note in the utterance of this horrible paean which might well have made the white spectators shudder. Whatever they felt, however, they must show nothing.

“I shall be deadly sick directly,” muttered Blachland; and all wondered what horror was yet to come.

The two blinded and mutilated wretches were writhing and moaning, and begging piteously for the boon of death to end their terrible sufferings. But their fiendish tormentors were engaged in far too congenial a task to be in any undue hurry to end it. It is only fair to record that to the victims themselves it would have been equally congenial were the positions reversed. At last, however, the executioners again stepped forward.

“So said the Ruler of Nations,” they bellowed, their short-handled heavy knob sticks held aloft: “These two had the power of thought. They used that power to pry into what it is not lawful for them even to think about. A man without brains cannot think. Let them therefore think no more.”

And with these two last words of the King’s sentence – terse, remorseless in the simplicity of its barbarous logic – the heavy knob sticks swept down with a horrid crunch as of the pulverising of bones. Another and another. The sufferings of the miserable wretches were over at last. Their death struggles had ceased, and they lay stark and motionless, their skulls literally battered to pieces.

Not the most hardened and philosophical of the white spectators could entirely conceal the expressions of loathing and repulsion which were stamped upon each countenance as they turned away from this horrid sight. On that of Blachland it was far the most plainly marked, and seemed to afford the ferocious crowd the liveliest satisfaction.

“See there, Amakiwa,” they shouted. “Look and behold. It is not well to pry into forbidden things. Behold the King’s justice.”

And again they chorused forth volleys of sibonga, i.e. the royal praises.

Was it merely a coincidence that their looks and the significance of the remark seemed to be directed peculiarly at Blachland? He himself was not the only one who thought so.

“What do you think now, Blachland?” said Young, dryly. “Better leave that little exploration scheme you were planning strictly alone, eh?”