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

They reckoned on help from the Amazulu? Well, what then? Even if they got it, where were the Amazulu now? They were no longer a nation. The power of the House of Senzangakona was gone for ever; and even if the splendid army of the last of those Elephants were here to fight on their side – what then? Even more now – ten times more – were the whites able to disperse such, like smoke; for their weapons were ten times better than any they had possessed at the time of the breaking up of the great House.

Whau! was ever such foolishness known!

And for what were the people plotting, these fools? Because they had to pay a little more in taxes than formerly, to pay for their own protection? Their own protection, for how would it have been with them had the Amabuna (Boer) come out best in the late struggle? The rule of the Amangisi (English), when the very worst had been said against it, was mild and merciful compared with what that of the Amabuna would be, were these masters of the land. Under this every man could enjoy his own and be free. And he was free, no man freer. But – under that? Again. Even if these strange preachers who had come among them with this poison under their tongues spoke truly; that the tribes were to combine and drive out the white man – whether Amabuna or Amangisi – what then? Somebody must be chief. There was no such thing as all men, all tribes and nations, being equal. The very idea was foolishness. Who then would be chief. Who then would be king? There was still a son of the House of Senzangakona alive. And the thinker, for his part, preferred the rule of the white man to that of the House of Senzangakona.

All of the above he had put before his people, and that not once only. But they had turned a deaf ear, or had listened but coldly. The spirit of unrest coursed high through their blood. The strange preachers were promising them a great and glorious future – and Babatyana had turned towards them a favourable ear. Zavula was old, they said among themselves; Babatyana was in his prime. He knew. He could walk with the times. The time had come for Zavula to go to sleep. Which sense may have accounted for the fact that Zavula now sat in his hut alone.

So the old chief sat there, gazing blinkingly into his dying fire, wondering why he should not be allowed to lay down his old bones in peace, instead of being hustled by a great crowd of idiots bent on seeking their own death. Had either or both of his two sons been alive how different things would have turned. He had taught them sound commonsense, at any rate, and would have been willing that the leadership of the tribe should devolve upon them. But Babatyana? Whau, Babatyana!

Now he was roused from his musings by a sound outside. It was the voice of someone singing – calling to him the tribal sibongo, or praise. The door of the hut was pushed open and a youth crept in, saying that a stranger craved leave to speak with the chief.

Zavula, though old, and shorn of much of his tribal dignity, had plenty of the latter left – of a personal character. He did not hurry, and after a space of full five minutes he intimated that the stranger might come in.

A man crept in through the low doorway, and raising his right hand gave the chief sibongo. The latter acknowledged it with a murmur, then for a moment there was silence. The new arrival was a middle-aged ringed man, and though he had described himself as a stranger this was only as a term of humility. As a matter of fact he was one of Zavula’s most influential headmen.

“I see you, Nxala,” said the chief. “And now? What is the news?”

There was ever so faint a twinkle in the speaker’s eyes as he asked the question, ever so ironical a soupçon in his tone.

“My father, things are moving. The news is great, but not to be cried aloud. The people are nearly ready.”

“M-m! Nearly ready? Ready – for what?”

“The people are crying aloud for their father, the Chief of the Amahluzi, but he takes no part in their councils. His voice is not heard.”

“The Chief of the Amahluzi takes no part in the councils of fools,” returned the old man in tones of cold irony, looking through the other.

“Of fools?”

“Of fools – and worse. When children listen no more to the counsel of their fathers then are those children undone.”

Again there was silence. Then Zavula raised his voice in a hail. In response two women appeared, and having received an order, returned in a minute or two bearing a large bowl of tywala and two smaller drinking vessels. Into these they poured some of the liquor, which creamed up with a pleasant frothing sound. Then, each having taken the preliminary sip, required by native etiquette, they withdrew.

The headman took a long pull at his beer, and then another. The firelight glowed upon the placid countenance and short white beard of the old chief and upon the shine of the new arrival’s head-ring, and still there was silence. At last the latter spoke.

“The people are tired of the white man’s exactions, my father. They have to pay more and more, and they are tired of it. They wish to hear the voice of their chief.”

“They have heard that voice already, Nxala – not only once nor only twice. They have heard it as foolish, rebellious children. They will hear it no more. But the time is very near when they will wish, through blood and through tears, that they had listened to it.”

An unpleasant look flitted across the crafty face of the headman.

“But they murmur, my father,” he said. “They are saying – ‘Lo, our father, Zavula, is old, and he is asleep. But Babatyana is not old, and he is awake.’ So say the people.”

“Whau, Babatyana!”

The infinite contempt in the old man’s tone was quiet and cutting. The evil look deepened in the face of the other. To hide it he took up his drinking vessel again, and drained it. His host at once refilled it from the large bowl, and also his own.

“Has the Chief of the Amahluzi no word for Babatyana?” went on Nxala.

“Whau, Babatyana!”

This time the contempt in the old man’s tone was more cutting than before. The other appreciated it to the full.

“And to the people, father? The people, thy children?”

“The people? Fools – all fools. But to them I have one word – one last word. Let them come here with the rising of to-morrow’s sun and hear it. Fools – because only a fool wants the same word uttered into his ear again and again.”

If it be wondered that during this talk nothing definite was said – no plan propounded – it must be remembered that the colloquial process known as coming straight to the point is an attribute vested in the civilised man. To the savage it is utterly foreign, even abhorrent. These two knew perfectly well what was in each other’s mind. There was no occasion to formulate anything. In matters of moment safety lay that way, a tradition fostered through countless generations. Now Babatyana’s emissary knew that his mission had failed. Babatyana’s chief – the chief of the Amahluzi tribe – was as firm as a rock. Suddenly Nxala’s countenance lit up.

“Whau! The spear! The great spear!” he exclaimed. “That is the spear with which my father met the might of Cetywayo, and slew two warriors. I would fain gaze upon that spear once more.”

Zavula turned his head, following the speaker’s glance. Behind him hung a fine assegai, of the broad-bladed, short-handled Zulu type, which he had wielded with effect at Isandhlwana as leader of the Native Contingent, before he was forced to fly before the weight of numbers. But as he turned his head the hand of Nxala shot out by a quick movement; perhaps two inches, and no more. But Zavula, though old, was not the fool that the other – and, incidentally, the bulk of his people – chose to take him for.

“Ha! The spear?” he answered, in the genial, pleased tones of a veteran invited to enlarge once more on bygone deeds. “It was great, this umkonto, was it not? And now it must be kept bright or it will rust; for there is no more use for it.”

He rose, and turning his back full upon his guest, stood, deliberately taking down the weapon from where it hung behind him. For half a minute he thus stood, gazing lovingly upon it as he held it in his hand. But in a fraction of that half minute the hand of Nxala again shot out till it rested above the chief’s drinking vessel, and as quickly withdrew. The latter sat down again leisurely, the assegai in his hand.

“Yes. It is a great spear,” he went on meditatively, but carefully refraining from handing it to the other. “And there is no more use for it. But – we will drink to its memory.”

He raised the bowl before him. The other watching him, could hardly suppress the gleam of satisfaction which flitted across his face. But it faded in an instant. The bowl dropped from the chief’s hand on to his knees. The liquor gushed forth on to the floor.

“The bowl, my father,” cried Nxala eagerly. “Break it into pieces – in small pieces – for it is bad múti to drop it at the moment of drinking.”

“It is worse múti, sometimes, to drink the moment before dropping it,” answered the old man, tranquilly, setting the bowl beside him. “I will have another brought.” And again he raised his voice in a hail. Again the women appeared, and having supplied another bowl, and also a fresh brew of tywala, withdrew.

Nxala, watching, could scarcely restrain himself. The first part of his diabolical scheme had miscarried. Was it time for the second act? And there before him sat the old chief, the fine assegai in his hand – yet held in a firm grip, he did not fail to notice – crooning words of sibongo to it, as he recalled its deeds in past times. Had the scheme succeeded all would have gone so easy. This kraal of Zavula’s was an insignificant cluster of a dozen huts, whither the old chief loved to retire. He was old – what more natural than that he should die in retirement? Yes – it was time for the second act. He would give the signal.

“Have you heard, my father; the new song that the people have made?” he said. “The new war-song? Listen. This is how it runs.”

But before he had uttered three words of it a trampling of hoofs was heard outside the hut, and a lusty European voice – though speaking faultless Zulu – enquiring which was the hut of the chief. Following on the answer there came through the low door of the hut a man, a white man – and he was known to both as the magistrate’s clerk from Kwabulazi.

“Greeting to you, father,” he cried, falling into the native idiom, and shaking Zavula heartily by the hand.

“Greeting, my son,” answered the old chief genially. “Sit. Here is tywala. Have you ridden far?”

“Far? Have I not? And I am come to sleep at your kraal, for Kwabulazi is another stage away, and it is night, and my horse is dead lame.”

Nxala, taking in the situation, was beside himself with inward rage, which, in fact, had got nearly to that pitch where the Machiavellian caution of the savage is apt to forget, and lose itself in an outburst of uncontrolled, unthinking blood lust. But he had not overlooked the fact that the new arrival had, slung around him, a remarkably business-like revolver. No, the time was not yet.

A dozen armed savages, lying in wait in the dark bush shadows a little way beyond Zavula’s kraal, had sprung up at the first words of the new war-song, which was to be the signal, but subsided again at the sound of the approaching horse-hoofs. Now, after a muttered consultation, they withdrew to a distance to await their leader’s reappearance and instructions. But there was an armed white man, and he an official, sleeping at Zavula’s kraal, which made all the difference.

Twice that night the life of the chief of the Amahluzi had hung on a hair. It was saved – for the present.

Chapter Eleven.

“Good Night, Zavula!”

Elvesdon was seated in his inner office, busied with his ordinary routine work. It was afternoon and hot, and he had thrown off his coat and waistcoat, and sat in his shirt and light duck trousers smoking a pipe of excellent Magaliesberg. Court was over, he had disposed of the few cases, mostly of a trumpery nature, before lunch, and now the office work was not of a particularly engrossing character; wherefore perhaps it was not strange that his thoughts should go back to his Sunday visit, which, of course, spelt Edala Thornhill.

The worst of it was she had been occupying his thoughts of late, and that even when he had seen her but once. Now he had seen her twice – had spent a whole day in her society. And she was occupying his thoughts more than ever. Yet – why?

He was not in his first youth, nor was she the first of the other sex he had been interested in. He had had experiences, as a fine, well-looking, well set up man of his stamp was bound to have had. Yet the image of this girl had stamped itself upon his mind in a way that the image of no one else had ever been able to do for years; since what he pleasantly liked to term to himself – his salad days. And he did not know what to make of this interest. It was not even budding love – he told himself – only a strong interest in what seemed an interesting character. Yet behind it was an unmistakable longing to see more of her. The feeling rendered him vaguely uncomfortable.

He relit his pipe, and sat back to think. There came a tap at the door and his clerk entered, bringing some official letters to be signed.

“Anything new. Prior?” he asked carelessly, when this process had been accomplished.

“There is, sir. Teliso has come back, and there’s been an infernal rascally Ethiopian preacher stirring up Babatyana’s location. He’s gone on to Nteseni’s.”

“I know. I captured that information from two fellows I was talking with this morning. I’ll see Teliso directly. But what can you do – at this stage of affairs? I’m keeping my eyes open, but you mustn’t be too zealous in our Service, Prior, or you’re bound to come out bottom dog. The chap I want particularly looked after is this Manamandhla. He’s a crafty swine and not over here for any good. I had a talk with him the other day and he’s as slippery as the proverbial eel.”

“Did you, sir? Well, I can tell you something about him. He’s gone to squat on old Thornhill’s farm.”

“To squat?”

“Yes, so they say. It seems fishy, to say the least of it.”

“How so?”

“Why he’s a biggish man over on the other side. What should he want to come and squat here for?”

“What do you mean by ‘squatting,’ Prior? I should say Thornhill was not the sort of man to allow squatters on his place.”

“Well, sir, that’s what I’ve got at through the people. Anyway it simplifies the watching part of the business, for we’ve got Manamandhla bang under our noses.”

Elvesdon sat meditatively, burning his middle finger into the bowl of his lighted pipe. More and more was it brought home to him how anything concerning the house of Thornhill spelt interest to him, even vivid interest, he could not but own to himself. And Thornhill was rather a mysterious personality, and his daughter even more out of the commonplace. What did it all mean – what the very deuce did it all mean? Then he said:

“I don’t quite know what to make of it just now, Prior. Things are shaping out. But you keep your ears open. You were born and bred on this frontier, and you know these chaps and their ways a good deal better than I do. You can grip things that I should probably miss entirely. So don’t let anything pass.”

It was just by such frank and hearty appreciation of their capabilities that Elvesdon endeared himself to his subordinates, hence this one’s dictum upon him to Thornhill on a former occasion.

“You may rely upon me, sir,” answered Prior, intensely gratified. “I’ll do my very best – all along the line.”

“And that will be a very good kind of best, Prior, judging from my short experience of you. Hullo! Come in.”

This in response to another knock at the door. It was opened and there entered a native constable.

“Nkose! The chief has arrived. The chief, Zavula. He would have a word with Nkose.”

“Admit him,” said Elvesdon, cramming a fresh fill into his pipe.

There was a sound of light footsteps, made by bare feet, outside, and old Zavula appeared in the doorway. His right hand was uplifted, and he poured forth words of sibongo in the liquid Zulu. Elvesdon arose and shook the old man by the hand. He was always especially courteous to men of rank among the natives – a fact which they fully appreciated.

“Greeting, my father. I am glad to see you,” he said. “Sit. Here is snuff. It is a good accompaniment for a talk.”

Zavula subsided on to the floor – a native of course would be supremely uncomfortable on a chair. Prior, with ready tact, had withdrawn. There were those who said that Elvesdon was too free and easy with natives, that he allowed them too much equality. Well, he had never found his official dignity suffer by the line he took, but that line he knew where to draw, and occasionally did – with effect. But Zavula was one of Nature’s gentlemen.

The old chief, having spent two or three minutes filling up his nostrils with snuff, began —

“It is good to see Nkose again. I have seen him but once when he first arrived here, and could see that the Government had sent us a man – one who could understand us – and my heart felt good. Now I see him again.”

“Those who rule over the people are always welcome, my father,” returned Elvesdon. “What is the news?”

“News? Au! I know not, Ntwezi. Is this a time for news? Or a time for quiet? I am old, very old, and my sons are in the land of the Great Unknown. You, who are young, of the age they would be were they still here, to you comes news from all the world.”

The old man’s eyes shone with a kindly twinkle. He had used Elvesdon’s native nickname – not in itself an uncomplimentary one – instead of the respectful ‘Nkose’ such as he should have used when addressing his magistrate, yet the latter thoroughly appreciated the difference. There was no fear of the old chief encroaching upon his official dignity by this momentary lapse into speaking of him in the same breath as his dead sons.

They talked a little on commonplaces – yet not altogether, for both were fencing up to more serious import. Elvesdon, with his knowledge of native ways, did not hurry his visitor. He knew, instinctively, that the latter had come to see him on some subject of more or less importance: how much so he had yet to learn. He noticed, too, that Zavula had brought in with him a bundle – an ordinary looking bundle of no size, done up in a dingy rag. His quick, deductive instinct had taken this in, where most white men would have overlooked it completely – especially if hide-bound by officialism. A chief of Zavula’s standing did not carry his own loads, however small. Elvesdon’s curiosity was aroused, and grew, with regard to that bundle.

It, now, Zavula proceeded to untie. From the wrapper he produced an ordinary drinking bowl of black, porous clay. It was not a clean bowl either for the inside showed thick smears of dried up tywala. This he placed carefully upon the ground before him. Elvesdon watched this development with growing curiosity.

“Nkose,” said the old man, looking up. “Where is Udokotela?”

This, which was a mere corruption of the English word ‘doctor,’ referred to the District Surgeon.

“You will have far to go to find him, Zavula. Are you then sick?”

“Whau! My heart is sick, for there are some who think I have lived too long. It may be that they are right. And – they are of my children too.”

There was infinite pathos in the tone, as the speaker dropped his glance sorrowfully down to the object before him. Elvesdon’s interest kindled vividly. He began to see through the situation now.

“There is death in this,” went on the old chief touching the bowl. “I would like Udokotela to examine it.”

“Leave it with me, Zavula, and I will take care that he does. It will be safe here.”

He unlocked a cupboard and stowed away the vessel carefully. “Now – who is it that thinks their chief has lived too long, Zavula?”

“Au! That will become known. But the time is not yet. What I have shown Nkose is between him and Udokotela.”

Elvesdon promised to respect his confidence and the old man got up to leave. Would he not eat and drink? No. The sun would have dropped before he reached his kraal, and he liked not being abroad in the dark hours. Perhaps he was too old, he added with a whimsical smile. Another day, when he should come over to hear the word of Udokotela as to the hidden múti then he would have more time.

Elvesdon and the clerk stood watching the forms of the old chief and his one scarcely less aged attendant, as they receded up the valley.

“That’s a grand old boy, Prior,” said the former. “A dear old boy. If we had a few more of his sort around here we needn’t have bothered ourselves about the lively times that any fool can see are sticking out ahead of us.”

The two old men held steadily on their way, walking with an ease and elasticity that many a youth might have envied – over rough ground and smooth – now and again sitting down to take snuff, which is far too serious an operation to be performed during the process of locomotion. As nearly as possible they travelled in a direct line, accomplishing this by taking short cuts through the bush by tracks known to themselves, but to a mounted man quite, impracticable, and so faint that a white man would get hopelessly lost.

Following one of these, they were about to come out upon opener ground. The sun had dropped, and in the black gloom of forest trees it would be night in a very few minutes. In front however showed a temporary lightening where the foliage thinned. Overhanging this opener ground was a tumble of rocks and boulders rising to no great height.

“I would fain have been earlier, brother,” murmured Zavula. “My eyes are over old to see in the dark, and – ”

He did not finish his words; instead he dropped to the earth, felled by the murderous blow which had crashed upon his unsuspecting head from behind. His companion sprang aside just in time to dodge a like blow aimed at him, and raising his stick leaped furiously at the foremost assailant, determined that one should die at any rate. It was a futile resistance, for what could an old man with nothing but an ordinary stick do against half a dozen armed miscreants. These sprang at him at once, yet even then so energetic was his defence that they drew back for a moment.

“Have done!” growled a voice from behind these. “Make an end. No – no blood,” as one fiend was poising an assegai for a throw. “Make an end, fools, make an end.”

“It is Nxala who hounds on these cowardly dogs,” jeered this brave old man, recognising the voice out of the darkness. “Whau! Nxala!”

It was his last utterance. A heavy knobstick, hurled with tremendous force, struck him full between the eyes, and he, too, dropped.

The murderers were upon him at once, battering his skull to atoms with their knobsticks, in the fury of their savagery forgetting their instigator’s warning as to the shedding of blood.

While this was happening old Zavula had half raised himself.

“Dog’s son, Nxala,” he exclaimed. “I have found my end. Thine shall be the white man’s rope.”

These were his last words. The murderous fiends, springing upon him, completed their atrocious work – this time effectually. A slight quiver, and the old chief’s body lay still and lifeless.

The tumble of rocks and stones contained, from the very nature of its formation, several holes and caves, and to these now were the bodies dragged. To fling them in, and cover the apertures with stones, was the work of a very short time.

“Hlala-gahle, Zavula! Good night, Zavula!” cried Nxala, raising a hand in mockery. “Rest peacefully. Whau! Our father has left us. We will depart and cry the sibongo to Babatyana the new chief.”

“Yeh-bo! Babatyana the new chief.”

And the cowardly murderers departed from the scene of their abominable deed, and the darkness of black night fell suddenly upon the graves of these two old men, thus barbarously and treacherously done to death; heathen savages both, but estimable and useful according to their lights. And it might well be that the mocking aspiration of the cowardly instigator of their destruction was from that moment to be fulfilled.