The White Hand and the Black: A Story of the Natal Rising

“That’s so,” said the other, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. “Oh he belongs to Mehlo-ka-zulu does he? M’yes. Mehlo-ka-zulu’s a fine fellow but a bit of a firebrand. If anything went wrong here it wouldn’t be long before he had a finger in the pie. At least – so I predict.”

Thus they talked on, airing official matters even as Edala had declared they would. Elvesdon for his part rejoiced at finding a man such as this, right at his very door, so to say; from the well of whose shrewdness and experience he could draw at will. Then they went round to the stables, and soon the slant of the sunbeams told that the heat of the day was passed.

“Well, are we ready for Sipazi? The sun is going off the valley, and we shall have it splendidly cool.”

They turned. Edala was looking fresh, and even, for her, rosy, after her nap. Elvesdon almost started. This dash of colour was all that was needed to render the face absolutely a lovely one.

“Look, Mr Elvesdon,” she went on. “Now is the time when the sun gets on the big krantz, and makes it gleam like fire. Look.”

He did look. The majestic mountain towered up from the sombre moist depths of the now shaded valley below, its slopes striped with tongues of dark bush, shooting up to where they culminated in a sheer wall of cliff, smooth, absolutely perpendicular where not overhanging. Upon this now, the slanting rays of the westering sun were striking at an angle, and the whole face of the gigantic rock wall, scarcely less than three hundred feet sheer, was glowing and sparkling as though it had suddenly burst into flame.

“Wo! Sipazi-pazi!” exclaimed Edala, shading her eyes, in laughing imitation of the natives. “Now, haven’t we got something to be proud of, Mr Elvesdon? Fancy owning such a fragment of the globe as that – you see, I can’t help bragging about it. Now come along and let’s get to the top. Here are the horses.”

Those useful quadrupeds were being driven in by a mounted boy, and soon the saddles were on them and the three were in the saddles. In about half an hour they had dived down through the broad, shaded valley beneath, now delightfully cool, and stumbling up a rugged bush path had gained the tree-lined ridge, or saddle, which connected the splendid mountain with the opposite range.

“We’ll leave the horses here,” said Edala. “You can ride to the top by the other side but it’s an awful long way round, nearly an hour, whereas here we can climb up by a cleft in the rock in about a quarter of an hour. Can you climb, Mr Elvesdon?”

“I believe I can do most things when I’m put to it.”

“Well then come along,” she cried, taking the lead. “There are such jolly maidenhair ferns, too, all the way up.”

“I think I’ll wait for you here and smoke a pipe,” said Thornhill.

“No, no, father. You must come up too.”

“Well, I will then. By the way Elvesdon. Take care how you move about when you’re on top. There are some rock crevices there, hidden away in the long grass, and if you got into some of them we should have to send round to about ten farms before we could get hold of enough combined length of reims to get you out, even if we could then.”

“By Jove, are there?”

“Never mind. I’ll take care of you,” called Edala. “Come on after me.”

And in her lithe agility she drew herself up from rock to rock, now poising for a moment on one foot, then springing higher to another point of vantage.

The place they were now in was a very steep, chimney-like rock gully, such as would be known in Alpine parlance as a ‘couloir.’ To those of weak nerve or dizzily inclined heads it would have looked formidable enough, for, besides its own height, from a little way up it seemed as if it overhung the whole depth of the valley. Above, too, craggy jutting rocks, shooting forth savagely against the sky, looked as though about to fall on and overwhelm the invaders of their mountain solitude. In hard fact it was safe enough, being indeed a gigantic natural stairway thickly coated with oozy moss, while the sides were festooned with masses of beautiful maidenhair fern.

“Here we are at last,” cried Edala as they gained the summit. “Confess. Doesn’t this repay any amount of trouble?”

“I should think it did,” answered Elvesdon, “or would, rather; for getting here has been no trouble at all.”

It was as though they were poised in mid-air. Beneath, the homestead lay, like a group of tiny toy buildings. Around, everywhere billowing masses of mountain, dark recesses of forest grown kloofs, gleaming cliffs now catching the westering sun’s parting kiss; the roll of the mimosa strewn plains seeming absolutely flat from this altitude. Here and there too the circle of a native kraal surmounted by its inevitable thread of blue smoke, and far-away in the distance the dim peaks of the Drakensberg range.

“Come and look over the Sipazi krantz,” said Edala, at length, when the awed silence with which this stupendous panorama could not fail to strike a newcomer, had been broken.

“Look over it!” echoed Elvesdon. “Why it seems to me that the ground slopes down to its brink at a pretty steep angle. You can’t lie flat there. You’d tilt over head first.”

“You’ll see,” was the answer. And the speaker proceeded to climb down, face to the mountain, a very steep grass slope indeed, so steep as to be almost a precipice. Tough roots, however, grew here, strong enough to afford a securer hold than might have been expected; then where the slope ended she stopped. A stunted tree grew here on the very edge of the abyss, and horizontally over the same, shooting first slightly downwards and then up, the bend of its trunk forming a seat. And into this seat did the girl by a deft movement, and without the slightest hesitation, quickly glide.

“This is how you look over the Sipazi krantz,” she laughed up at him, her blue eyes dancing. “It’s the only way in which you can look over it at all. What a drop!”

Holding on to the bough above her shoulder with one hand she sat there, gazing down, her feet dangling over the ghastly abyss. Elvesdon seemed to feel his blood freeze within him, and his knees knocked together. Even the tree shook and trembled beneath her weight.

“Isn’t it rather dangerous?” he called out, striving to master the tremulous anxiety of his voice. “The tree might give way, you know.”

“It never has yet, which of course is not to say it never will – as you were about to remark,” she laughed back. “Well, I’ll come up.”

“Yes do,” he said, bending over the brow of the grass-roll as though to help her. But she needed no help. She sprang up, lithe, agile as a cat, and in a moment was beside him.

“Would you like to try it?” she said eagerly, as if the feat was the most ordinary one in the world. “Would you like to look over Sipazi? I can tell you it’s worth it. It feels like flying. But don’t if you think you can’t,” she added, quick to take in the not to be concealed momentary hesitation.

That challenge settled it; yet the words were not meant as a challenge at all, but as sheer practical warning. She would not have thought an atom the worse of him if he had laughingly declined, but Elvesdon did not know this. Was he going to shrink from a feat which a girl could perform – had often performed? Not he.

“Yes. I think I should,” he answered. “I should like to be able to brag of having looked over Sipazi.”

Yet as he let himself down over the grass and root-hung brow which led to the actual brink, he owned to himself that by no possibility could he ever tell a bigger he, and further, that at that moment he would cheerfully have forfeited a year’s pay to find himself standing safe and sound on the summit again. Well, he would not look down. He would get through the performance as quickly as possible, and return.

He was out on the tree, grasping the branch her hand had held on by. Yet why did the confounded trunk tremble and sway so, and – horror! it seemed to be giving way, actually sinking under him. The ghastly thought darted through his mind that there was all the difference in their weight – that that which would carry her would break down with him. His nerve was tottering. His face grew icy cold, and the hand which held the bough trembled violently. He was perched over that awful height even as she had been. He was not unused to heights, but to be suspended thus between heaven and earth in mid-air – no, to that he was not used. Beneath him the face of the great rock wall sloped away inwards. Anyone falling from here would strike the ground about thirty feet from its base. All the world seemed going round with him – not even the thought that Edala had just done the same thing availed to pull him together. He must go – must hurl himself off and end this agony of nightmare – when —

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