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 —

“You down there, Elvesdon? Well, come up, because it’s getting late, and it’s time to think of getting back.”

The calm, strong, matter of fact tones of Thornhill broke the spell like magic. This was an everyday performance after all, was the effect they conveyed. Elvesdon’s nerve had returned. He was himself again.

“Let’s see. What’s the best way of getting off?” he asked, trying to suppress the tremor in his voice.

“Same as you got on. Grab hold of that root above, there under the stone, and – don’t look down. Look up. That’s all right,” as Elvesdon, panting somewhat, stood once more on the summit beside them.

“Well done,” cried Edala enthusiastically. “You are the only one besides myself who has ever looked over the Sipazi krantz. Several have tried but none of them had the nerve to get as far as the tree. Some wouldn’t even go at all.”

“The only sensible ones of the lot,” said Thornhill shortly. “It’s a fool’s trick, anyway.”

“Have you done it yourself, Thornhill?” asked Elvesdon. “I suppose you have?”

“Not any. Anyone could see that the thing wouldn’t stand my weight for a minute: even if I were such a – ” He checked himself, remembering that his guest had just qualified for the uncomplimentary substantive he had been on the point of defining. “But I’m going to have a charge of dynamite brought up here and the thing blown to blazes. It’s too silly risky.”

Elvesdon was rather astonished. Thornhill was undergoing the process known as ‘working himself up.’ Yet when he himself was down there, his host’s tone had been absolutely level. And Thornhill himself was making up his mind to talk very seriously to Edala on the subject, little thinking that before any opportunity of doing so should come round, that might occur which should put any such idea clean out of his mind.

Chapter Nine.

The Zulu Again

“You’re going to do nothing of the kind, father,” said Edala, taking up the challenge. “I’m not going to have my aerial throne blown to blazes at all. Why it’s a curiosity – one of the sights. I bring everybody up here to see it.”

“And to sit on it?” rejoined Elvesdon, mischievously.

“Only that no one ever has, except you. Tell me. What did it feel like, for the first time?”

Her straight, clear glance was full upon his face. He was thinking that ‘the first time’ felt uncommonly like being the last. But he answered:

“Well, I don’t know. It was a queer experience – for the first time. To be absolutely candid I won’t pretend that I completely enjoyed it.”

“I know you didn’t. I could see that your hand on the bough was not quite steady. That makes it all the more a big thing to have done.”

“What did you yourself feel like the first time, Miss Thornhill, and – what on earth put the idea into your head?”

“I felt just as I do now, how glorious it was being suspended in mid-air,” – the listener felt creepy in the calves of the legs, as the words brought back his own feelings. “What put it into my head? I was up here one day with another girl and it occurred to me it would be good fun to go and sit there, overhanging space. She didn’t believe I meant it, but I just climbed out on to the tree and sat there. She nearly fainted.”

“Well, nerve isn’t a monopoly of our sex. Look at the wonderful things women do – diving from a ghastly height into a narrow tank – or looping the loop on a bicycle, and so on. By George! it’s enough to make your hair stand on end to watch them.”

“We’ve missed the sunset,” cried Edala. “Never mind. You can see plenty of sunsets, but you can’t sit on my aerial throne every day. Why, where’s father?” looking around. “Oh, there; over by that flat rock.”

Thornhill had strolled away while the two were talking and was standing, shading a match to light his pipe, when —

“Inkose!”

He started slightly. The mountain top was flat and he had seen no one on it but themselves. The salute, however, had proceeded from a tall native, who had risen from behind the flat boulder before mentioned.

This man now advanced, and in the limp of his gait, the other recognised him as the Zulu. Then – Heavens and earth! He had wondered where he had seen him before. Now he knew.

But it was ghastly. No, the thing could not be. It was only a striking likeness. Moonlight is untrustworthy – and now, this light up here in the afterglow of the sunset was dusking. The Zulu stood – contemplating him with a faint, ironical grin.

“There are ‘mouths’ on this mountain top,” he began, “waiting to swallow up men – and women,” he added, with a glance at Edala who together with her companion had now come up. “Whau! it is easy to fall into such. There are those that only half swallow, and return their prey, such as that,” – pointing with his knobstick to the mouth of a crevice a few yards on the other side of the boulder. “Yet it may be that the prey though it returns to life does not do so unbitten. There are other ‘mouths’ who do not return their prey at all, and if it is sought for it is too late, for it is already dead.”

To two of the listeners this bit of dark talking was intelligible because they were familiar with the tricks and turns of the Zulu language. The speaker merely meant to convey that some of the crevices were more dangerous than others. But to the third there was nothing ‘dark’ about it. And then, either from the fact – which no one but herself would have noticed – that her father’s voice had lost some of its imperturbability, or by some mysterious conjunction of weird telepathy – Edala began to think there must be some deeper, darker meaning underlying the words. All sorts of ghastly conjectures shot through her mind, but all vague, shadowy, nebulous. Through them she heard the voice of Elvesdon questioning the stranger.

“Who are you?”

“Manamandhla, son of Gwegula.”

“Of the Zulu?”

“Yeh-bo ’Nkose.”

“And your chief – who is he?”

“The Government.”

“But your own chief?”

“The King.”

“Which king?” said Elvesdon, becoming ‘short.’

“Au! are there then two kings? I had not heard that.”

This answer given so quietly and innocently would have caused the other two to smile, only they were in no smiling mood.

“But who is your chief in Zululand, your Zulu chief?” went on Elvesdon, growing impatient. But the deprecatory smile on the other’s face was beautiful to behold. He replied.

“Now Nkose, I would ask – Are there any chiefs in Zululand other than the Government? Not to-day – Government is our chief.”

“Not Mehlo-ka-zulu?”

“He is my relative.”

Elvesdon burst out laughing.

“Confound the fellow, he reminds one of the Irish witness in ‘Handy Andy’,” he said. Then to the Zulu: “Where is your kraal?”

“La-pa. Over there.” And the speaker pointed with his stick in a direction which conveyed the idea that he resided anywhere between the further side of the valley and the North Pole.

Elvesdon did not press the point, knowing perfectly well that he could find out all he wanted from other sources. Then, too, the deft way in which the Zulu fenced all his questions appealed strongly to his sense of the ridiculous. There was, moreover, nothing to be gained in particular by continuing his catechism; and One of the secrets of his success in the handling of natives was that he knew when to humour them and when to draw a tight rein.

“Do you know who I am?” he said.

“Inkose is the magistrate – the new magistrate – at Kwabulazi.”

“That is so. But new only as regards Kwabulazi,” returned Elvesdon meaningly. “So knowing who I am it is not surprising if I ask: ‘What has a Zulu from beyond the border to do in Babatyana’s location on this side?’”

“Inkose– I have always heard that under the King’s rule all men are free, whether white or black, as long as they do no harm. And I am doing no harm.”

“As long as they do no harm,” repeated Elvesdon, with a touch of significance. “That is well, Manamandhla – that is well.” And he turned away.

“Where are these crevices, Miss Thornhill? It’s curious how they occur in some of these mountain ranges. I got into one myself once, but fortunately it wasn’t particularly deep, or I should be there still.”

“Where was that?”

“In the Cape Colony. I was there on leave, and put in a time with an old official pal of mine. We went reebok-shooting in the mountains, and I got into such a hole as one of these, stepped backwards into it. Fortunately my pal was near enough to hear me sing out, or I might not have been able to pull myself up.”

“This is a deep one,” said Edala. “Come and look. If you drop a stone over, you hear it clanging against the sides ever so far down. Listen, now.”

She dropped a stone over, and both stood listening.

“By Jove, but it is deep,” said Elvesdon. “And beastly dangerous too, almost hidden in the grass.”

Thornhill had not joined them. He was seated on the flat rock, puffing away at his pipe. The ghastliness of the situation was known to him and to one other there present – and here was this unthinking girl dropping stones into this particular cleft, of all others on that mountain top – of all others in the world.

“That is one of the ‘mouths’ that gives not back its prey,” said the deep voice of Manamandhla. “Whau! It retains that which it swallows.” Then with a word of farewell greeting he withdrew, but in the opposite direction to that by which they had ascended.

“Hadn’t we better go down?” said Thornhill. “It’ll be dark directly.”

“And it’s shivery now,” said Edala, looking round with a shudder. “Come along.”

By the time they were off the moss-grown natural stairway it was nearly dark. The horses, hitched to a bush by the bridles, shook themselves and whinnied at their approach.

“What would be the effect of your ‘aerial throne’ by starlight, Miss Thornhill?” said Elvesdon, as they passed beneath the mighty cliff, whose loom cut straight and black against the myriad stars which came gushing out into the velvety vault.

“I’ve never tried it. I believe I’d be afraid. You know – the Kafirs say the Sipazi mountain is haunted, that all sorts of tagati sounds float off from the top of it at night.”

“You afraid? Why I don’t believe there’s anything in the world that could scare you, after what I’ve seen.”

“Oh isn’t there? I’m rather afraid of lightning, for one thing.”

“Are you?”

“Yes. You see, it’s a thing that no precaution on earth will guard you against. You can stick up conductors on a house, or any sort of building, but you can’t stick one on your hat, when you’re out in the open. I always feel so utterly helpless.”

“Well, of course it’s risky. But you must remember the very small proportion of people who get hit compared with the numbers who spend a large slice of their lives exposed to it.”

“So I do, but somehow it seems poor consolation when everything is fizzing and banging all round you and you expect every second to be knocked to kingdom come. No. I don’t like it a bit – in the open that is. Under cover, though it’s even a Kafir hut, I don’t mind.”

“You wouldn’t like to be seated on the ‘aerial throne’ then, eh?” laughed Elvesdon.

“No, indeed. Look. There’s a fine shooting star.”

A streak like a falling rocket, and the phenomenon disappeared. Elvesdon gratefully admitted to himself that this homeward ride through the soft dews of falling night was wholly delightful. Yes, but – would it have been equally so were he alone, or with any other companion at his side – his host for instance; who had lingered behind to light a pipe, and had not taken the trouble to catch them up again? He was constrained to own to himself that it would not. This girl was of a type wholly outside his experience, so natural, so absolutely unconventional. Her ways and ideas struck him somehow as peculiar to herself – and then her appearance – as striking as it was uncommon. He had not begun to fall in love with her, but could not ignore the possibility that he might, and in that case Heaven help him, for he felt pretty sure he would meet with no reciprocity.

Meanwhile, there was nothing to be gained by discounting potentialities, wherefore he laid himself out to make the most of the present time, and succeeded admirably well. If his host was rather abstracted and silent throughout the evening, Edala more than made up for it. She chatted away on every subject under the sun; and played and sang – both well – so that by the time he went to bed Elvesdon had come to the conclusion that he had never enjoyed himself so much – or got through such a jolly day in his life.

Chapter Ten.

A Chief – out of Date

Zavula sat in his hut smoking, and – blinking.

Zavula was an old man. There were wisps of white beneath and above the dull, uncared for head-ring, for being a Natal native he did not keep his head scrupulously shaved, as the way of the ringed Zulu is. But his eyesight was very weak, wherefore he sat – and blinked. And he was alone.

A small fire burned in the bowl-like hollow in the centre of the hut. Into this Zavula was gazing. Perhaps he was dreaming dreams of the past – when he had been somebody, when he was looked up to and respected by thousands of tribesmen; when, too, he had gallantly led in person these same tribesmen, at the call of the white man’s Government, against the hosts of Cetywayo the Great King, on the red plain of Isandhlwana – only to retire, in helter-skelter rout, together with such of the whites who had it in their power to do likewise, before the on-sweeping wave of the might of Zulu. Then, in those days, his word was law. He had been called upon to assist the Government, and he and his fighting men had done so loyally. It was not their fault if the white leader had been out-generalled by Tyingwayo, who had learned the art of war under Tshaka the Terrible. They had done their best, and had been thanked for it and remembered, when Cetywayo’s power had melted into air, and the horns of that Bull, which had gored where they would, had been blunted and rendered harmless for ever.

And now here were his people engaged in running their heads against a rock. Whau! was ever such foolishness known? His people! He had no sons living. The two he had – both were slain in the waters of Umzinyati while striving to escape from the pursuing spears of the Great King – after Isandhlwana. His people, to whom his word had been law, had now turned to Babatyana. He himself was a chief no more.

Babatyana was his brother’s son, and Babatyana was not old. Since the teaching of the white people had found footing in the land, and, worse still, since the teaching of certain black people from a far off country beyond the salt water, had come among them the old were no longer respected, no longer listened to. He, Zavula, was old, but Babatyana was not; wherefore the people turned to listen to the words of Babatyana. And Babatyana was plotting against the whites – against the Government. Whau! was ever such foolishness known?

What did Babatyana, and the fools who were listening to him, think they would gain – think they would do? The whites, who overthrew for ever the House of Senzangakona and the might of Zulu at the very zenith of its power and glory – were they to be overthrown in their turn by a few unorganised tribes all unskilled and unpractised in the art of war? The whites, who could bring guns to bear, each of which could fire a hundred bullets in every direction while a man could count scarce half that number – why Baba-tyana and his fools might as well run their heads hard against the nearest cliff and strive to beat that down as attempt such a thing as this. Whau! was ever such foolishness known?