Chapter Twenty One.
Battle
On regaining the shelter Haviland at once made it known to his followers that they had got to fight, and fight hard. They were already in position; that had been arranged during the parley.
“Can you trust these Arabs of yours, Haviland?” asked Oakley in a low tone. “Will they fight against their own countrymen?”
“Trust them? Rather. Besides, these are not their own countrymen. Another tribe altogether. And they are always fighting among themselves. They enjoy it.”
Kumbelwa, who had been placed in command of the armed bearers, was squatted on the ground, his snuff horn and spoon in his hand, and was taking copious quantities of snuff in the most unperturbed manner. There was no excitement about him now. That was to come.
“They know our strength, or rather our weakness,” said Haviland. “They can judge to a man by our tracks how many real fighters we have got. Somala says they will try rushing us.”
Hardly had the words left his mouth when the rattle of a sudden volley, and a line of smoke from the enemy’s front solved all doubts as to the intentions of the latter. Bullets came singing through the trees, and a shower of twigs fell about their ears in all directions. One, which had fallen just short, ricochetted and struck one of the armed bearers, killing him instantly. But the defenders reserved their fire.
Then it was seen that a crowd of blacks was stealing up from another side, taking advantage of every unevenness in the ground – of shrubs, stones, everything. At the same time the Arabs from their position poured in another volley. It was rather better aimed than the first, but, beyond slightly wounding two men, took no effect. But with a wild, blood-curdling scream, the dark horde which threatened their rear charged forward, and gained a position yet nearer. Then the shooting began. Haviland and Oakley, leaving the other side to the doctor and Somala, had sprung to confront this new peril. Their rifles spoke, and two of the advancing savages pitched forward on their faces. Then Kumbelwa’s turn came, and Kumbelwa was one of the few Zulus who could shoot. Lying full length behind the breastwork, he had got his rifle sighted on to a black head which kept appearing and disappearing behind a shrub. Up it came again, and this time Kumbelwa loosed off. The black head sprang into the air and a huge body beneath it, which last turned a complete somersault, and lay in a huddled still heap beyond. The Zulu’s exultation took the form of a deep humming hiss.
“Well done, Kumbelwa!” cried Oakley in glee. “Three shots, three birds.”
It was no part of our friends’ plan to waste ammunition; besides, they were aware of the effect a sparing fire, and nearly every shot telling, would have, as distinct from a general bout of wild and wide blazing. The black horde which had drawn so near them was evidently impressed, for it lay as though not daring to move.
Then from a new quarter fire was opened upon them. Two porters were struck and killed, and another badly wounded. This one began to screech lustily. In the tumult, unseen by the white leaders, one of the Arabs, at a sign from Somala, stepped behind him and promptly knocked him senseless with a clubbed rifle. They did not want any unnecessary signs of distress to reach the enemy.
And now, taking advantage of this new diversion, the horde of blacks leaped from their cover, and, uttering wild yells, charged forwards. There must have been over a couple of hundred of them, tall, ferocious-looking villains, armed with long spears and heavy axes. Leaping, zigzagging to avoid the bullets aimed at them, they came on in the most determined manner. Haviland and Oakley could not load fast enough, and the armed porters were blazing away in the wildest fashion, and simply doing no damage whatever. Kumbelwa had sent two more down, but still the remnant charged on. The while, on the other side, the doctor and Somala’s party had their hands full in repelling an advance on the part of the Arab section of the attacking force, and that under a hot cross fire.
“Heavens, Oakley, they’ll be on us in a minute!” exclaimed Haviland in a quick whisper, as he jammed fresh cartridges into the hot and smoking breech of his Express. And, indeed, it seemed so. They could not fire fast enough, and in a great mass the savages were already against the breastwork, lunging over it with their long spears. But then came the defenders’ chance. Fools as they were with firearms, even the bearers could not miss point blank, and they poured their fire right into the faces of their swarming assailants. These dropped as though mown down, but with loud yells those behind pressed the foremost on, to be mown down in their turn. The striving, struggling mass would fain have taken flight, but simply could not. And then Kumbelwa, seeing it was time to effect a diversion, concluded to adopt the offensive.
Leaping over the breastwork, covered by his great war-shield, he made for a tall ruffian, whose head was streaming with long black feathers, and who seemed to be directing the charge. Like lightning he was upon him, and beneath the shearing flash of the great assegai, down went the man, his trunk wellnigh ripped in twain.
“Usútu! ’Sútu!” roared the Zulu, as, whirling round, he struck another to the heart with his reeking spear, at the same time bringing another to the earth with a mighty slap of his great shield. Like lightning he moved. Never still for a second, he avoided the lunges made at him, always to strike fatally in his turn, and soon a ring of assailants round him was a ring of ripped and struggling corpses deluging the earth in torrents of blood. Whirling here, darting there, and ever roaring the war-cry of his late king, the towering Zulu was to these dismayed savages the very embodiment of irresistible destruction. With yells of dismay they fled before him in a broken, demoralised crowd, and into their front the fire of those behind the breastwork played upon their thickest masses.
“Come back, Kumbelwa,” commanded Haviland, in Zulu.
Like magic the trained and disciplined warrior halted at the word of his chief. In a second he was within the breastwork again.
“Thou wert being led on too far, my friend,” said Haviland, all aglow with admiration. “In a moment yon dogs would have turned upon thee, and even a lion cannot stand against a hundred dogs.”
“Nkose! Yet had I but half the Umbonambi regiment here with me, we would eat the whole of these jackals at one bite!” exclaimed Kumbelwa, his great chest heaving with excitement and his recent exertions.
“By Jove! I never saw such a sight as that! Magnificent!” cried Oakley, who was taking advantage of the lull to light his pipe.
On the other side, too, hostilities seemed to have slackened, but here, whatever damage had been inflicted by the defenders they were unable to estimate with any certainty. It was evident that Mushâd had chosen that the least esteemed of his followers – the black savages, to wit – should bear the brunt of the first attack, not from any lack of courage, but from sheer cold calculating economy. Their lives were worth the least to him, therefore let them bear the lion’s share of the risk. And this they had assuredly done, if the black bodies which strewed the earth on their side of the breastwork were any criterion. Within, one of Somala’s clansmen had been shot dead; while another, whose hand hung limp and useless, was setting his teeth as Dr Ahern was hastily bandaging the shattered wrist.
“What think you, Somala?” said the doctor, looking up from this operation. “Will they leave us alone now?”
“Not yet, Sidi. The best of Mushâd’s fighters are yonder. They have not done much fighting as yet.”
“If they take it into their heads to invest us, we are done for,” said Haviland, “unless we can break through in the dark. Why, we have hardly enough water to last till then.”
“The battle will be finished before to-night,” said the Arab, decidedly.
“Well, when we have given Mushâd as much fighting as he wants, then I suppose he’ll draw off,” said Oakley. “So the sooner he comes on again the better.”
“You cannot know much about Mushâd, Sidi. He never leaves an enemy once blows have been exchanged,” replied the Arab, darkly. “The battle will be decided before night. But Mushâd will be slain – or – ”
“Or we shall. So be it, Somala. We’ll do our best.”
There followed a lull; ominous, oppressive. Hostilities seemed entirely to have ceased, but they had implicit belief in Somala’s sagacity, and his forecast was not exactly encouraging. They were striving against enormous odds, and, although thus far they had triumphed, the pick of the hostile force had not yet been used against them, even as the Arab had said. The enforced stillness was not good for their nerves. A reaction had set in. The dead and dying within their circle – for three more of the porters had been killed and several of the refugees badly wounded – were groaning in pain; the acrid stench of blood arising on the steamy tropical heat had a tendency to throw a gloom over, at any rate, the white members of the expedition. It was as well, perhaps, that a diversion should occur, and this was supplied by Kumbelwa. A vast and cavernous snore fell upon their ears, then another and another. His great frame stretched at full length upon the ground, his broad blade still sticky with half-dried blood, together with his rifle lying upon his war-shield beside him, the Zulu warrior was fast asleep, slumbering as peacefully and as unconcernedly as though in his own kraal at home, in that crater-like hollow beneath the towering round-topped cone of Ibabanango. Oakley and Haviland burst out laughing.
“Well, he is a cool customer, and no mistake!” cried the former. “I’ve a jolly good mind to follow his example, though. It’s tiring work this holding the fort, with nothing to drink, either.”
“Better have some skoff first,” said Haviland, “such as it is. That hippo-shoot we were going to have to-morrow won’t come off now, however things go.”
But little appetite had any of them for their wretched grain diet. A long hot hour dragged its weary length, then another. The three white men were dozing. The Arabs, their squares of praying carpets spread, and with shoes off, were salaaming in the direction of Mecca, as devoutly as their brethren in the faith and foes in arms were, or should have been doing, out yonder in the opposing lines. Then suddenly the alarm was given. A peril, imminent and wholly unlooked-for, had risen up to confront them. In a moment every man was at his station, wide awake now, alert, expectant.
Chapter Twenty Two.
The Last Shot
Alarm quickly gave way to amazement. What did this mean? Approaching in a half-circle came a great crowd of natives – miserable, woe begone-looking objects, and entirely unarmed. There were women and children among them too, and as they drew nearer, they uttered the most doleful lamentations, in several different dialects, beseeching pity both by word and gesture.
“What on earth’s the meaning of this?” cried Haviland, fairly puzzled. “Somala, tell them to go away. Tell them we don’t want them. We’ve no use for them.”
Somala’s tone was quick and fierce as he ordered them to halt. But without avail. On they came, howling piteously. Immediately the Arab raised his rifle, and shot down one of the foremost, wounding another.
“Stop that, Somala,” commanded the doctor, who, with the other two white men, was under the brief impression that for some reason or another Mushâd had abandoned his slaves and retired. “The poor devils are not fighting.”
In no wise deterred by what had happened, the miserable crowd ran forward, yelling more piteously than ever. They were within a hundred yards of the defences, then seventy.
“But Mushâd is,” retorted Somala in a growl. “Stand back all of you, or we will kill you all,” he roared, again firing into the densely packed mass of wretched humanity.
The shouts and screams which followed upon the discharge were appalling, but what happened next was more so. Like mown grass the whole crowd of the imaginary refugees fell prone on their faces – thus revealing the bulk and flower of the enemy’s fighting line. With one mighty roar of savage triumph the ferocious Arabs, hitherto concealed behind the advancing slaves, surged over the prostrate heaps, and were up to the breastwork in a moment. The stratagem of Mushâd had been a complete success. The defenders, thus surprised, were simply allowed no time. Several of the Arabs fell before their hurried fire, but not for a second did it delay the fierce, rapid, overwhelming rush. With whirling scimitars the savage Arabs were upon them, hacking, hewing, yelling. The native bearers, in wild panic, threw down their arms and fled out at the other side of the defences, only to be met by the spears of the black auxiliaries waiting there for just such a move, and cut to pieces to a man. The improvised fort was choked with corpses, the frenzied slayers hewing still at the quivering frames, and screaming aloud in a very transport of blood-intoxication.
Back to back in a ring, the three white men and Somala, with his two remaining clansmen, stood. But where was Kumbelwa? Not with them, but yet not far away. And around him, like hounds around a buffalo bull at bay, his swarming enemies, leaping, snarling, yet not able to reach him for the terrific sweeps with that dread weapon, shearing a clear space on every hand.
“Yield thee, thou great fighter!” cried Mushâd, in a dialect very much akin to his own. “Yield thee. Thou at any rate shalt taste our mercy, and shalt fight with us.”
“Au! I yield not. Come, fight with me, O chief! we two alone. Thou wilt not? See, I come to seek thee —Usútu ’Sútu!”
And in lightning-like charge, the splendid warrior dashed through the swarming crowd, straight for Mushâd, clearing his way with his broad blade and resistless rush, his great shield throwing off the blows aimed at him, like the cutwater of a mighty ship ploughing through the waves. The crowd closed behind him, and that was the last of him his white leaders beheld.
As for these, their doom was inevitable. Their enemies could shoot them down with ease at any moment, but refrained. It was clearly their intention to take them alive.
“The last shot for ourselves, remember,” said Haviland, in his voice the hard, set tone of a brave man who has done with hope. “Remember that brute’s promise if we are captured. And he’ll keep it too.”
“I’ve got three left, and here goes one,” said Oakley, discharging his revolver at a prominent Arab. The latter spun round and fell. With a roar of rage, several of his comrades, unable to contain themselves, fired a volley, but with discrimination. The remainder of Somala’s clansmen fell dead, leaving himself and the three white men alone.
“My last shot!” exclaimed the doctor, calmly. “God forgive us if there’s sin in what we do!” And placing the muzzle of his revolver against his heart, he pressed the trigger. His body, instantaneously lifeless, sank heavily, but in doing so fell against Haviland’s legs. He, losing his balance, stumbled heavily against Oakley – upsetting him. A wild stagger, then a fall. Before they could rise, a dozen of their enemies had flung themselves upon them with lightning-like swiftness, pinning them to the earth.
Somala, who had expended his last shot, not on himself, was laying about him vigorously with his ataghan. But, wounded in several places, weakened with loss of blood and exhaustion, he too was at last overpowered. The victory was complete.
And the scene of it had now become one or indescribable horror – a very nightmare of blood, and hacked corpses in every conceivable attitude of agony and repulsion. And with it all came the convulsive shrieks and groans of a few of the miserable bearers, who had been taken alive, and whom the black contingent was amusing itself roasting to death in the open ground outside the tree belt. Within, the more civilised section of the slave-hunters was looting the stores and property of the expedition. They tore open bales, and battered in boxes and cases. But the authority of Mushâd was absolute, and his commands speedily infused an element of method into the looting process.
Helpless, swathed in coils of thongs wound round them from head to foot, to the accompaniment of many blows and kicks, the unhappy prisoners lay.
“Behold, ye dogs!” jeered one of those who guarded them. “Behold! Is it not good to look upon the face of a friend once more? Behold!”
He pointed to the head of the unfortunate doctor, which, ghastly and dripping, was being borne about on the point of a spear. Raising eyes dull with despair and horror, they saw it and envied him. He was at peace now, or, at worst, was in more merciful hands than those of these fiends; while they themselves – the horrible tortures which had been decreed for them by the slaver chief, and to which end alone they had been spared – why, the bare thought was enough to turn the brain.
“Is there no way, Oakley,” said Haviland, “I don’t mean of escape, but of escape from what that devil intends to do with us?”
Oakley was silent for a moment.
“There is a way,” he said at length. “We might turn Mohammedan.”
“What?”
“It has been done before to-day,” went on Oakley. “Men have saved their lives that way, and ultimately have escaped.”
It was Haviland’s turn to be silent.
“No, hang it,” he said at last. “I’m not a religious chap, Oakley, I’m sorry to say, but – I kick at that.”
“Naturally one does, under ordinary circumstances; but under these it’s different. And it needn’t mean anything, you know.”
“No; somehow I can’t. It seems cowardly,” said Haviland. “Perhaps, too, I have an inspiration that it wouldn’t help our case much if we were to do such a thing. But, Oakley, it doesn’t follow that you’re to be bound by my opinion. You’re an older chap than me, and if you – ”
“If I want to take the chance, I’d better, independently of you. That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? No – no, Haviland. We are in this together, and we get out of it together – or not, probably not – even apart from the fact of your having saved my life – ”
“Pooh! There was no life-saving about it. Only a chance finding of another fellow in a bit of a difficulty. In any case, there’s not much to be grateful for, but just the reverse.”
“These dogs have long tongues,” said one of the savage guards, striking Haviland with the butt of his spear. “Long tongues, but we will cut them out soon. So chatter, jackals, while ye may, for it will not be long.”
Not there, however, was their cruel martyrdom to take place, for the word went forth to prepare at once to march. The loot was gathered up and disposed among its respective bearers, and soon the two captives found themselves loaded up like bales of goods, and borne forth by those very abjects who had crowded in, beseeching their pity – the miserable slaves who had been used to bring them to this pass.
For some hours this cramped and painful locomotion continued, the barbarous horde carrying severed heads on their spear-points, and taking a delight in impressing upon their prisoners what lay in store for them. At length, towards sundown, they halted, and the prisoners were flung brutally to the ground in such heavy fashion as to knock all the breath out of their bodies. The pity was that this did not happen altogether, they had bitter reason to think, for now they saw a fire being kindled and blown up into a red, roaring flame. The while, thongs had been thrown over the limb of a tree. Their time had come.
Mushâd, with two or three others, now approached them.
“What was my promise to you, ye swine?” he began. “Was it not that ye should hang by the heels, that your eyes should be scooped out, and live coals placed in the sockets? Behold. The preparations are even now being made. How like ye them?”
“We like them not at all, O chief,” answered Haviland, desperate. “See, now, you are a brave man, and we have fought you fair and you have conquered. We expect death, but we English are not accustomed to torture. Put us therefore to a swift death.”
“Ha! Now ye cry for mercy, but before you laughed! It is well,” answered Mushâd. “Yet ye shall not obtain it. What of all my fighting men ye have slain, also many of my slaves?” And, turning, he beckoned to four savage-looking negroes. “Him first,” pointing to Haviland.
He was as powerless to move as a log. They seized him by the neck and dragged him towards one of the trees whereon a noose dangled. Their knives were drawn, and as they dragged him along he could see another ruffian kneeling by the fire, extracting a great glowing ember with a pair of rude tongs. Utterly powerless to struggle in his bonds, he felt the noose tightened round his ankles; then he was hauled up, swinging head downwards from the bough. His head was bursting with the rush of blood to it, and yet with his starting eyes he could see the fiend-like forms of his black torturers standing by him with the knife, and the red glowing embers.