Hair-Breadth Escapes Part 26

"But you have yourself told me you have power with G.o.d. You have said that He always hears His servants?"

"I have, and I repeat it."

"Then ask Him to take away this disease, and if He complies, then we will be His servants. Will you do this?"

"I will pray to G.o.d that He will be pleased to remove it. Whether He will do so or not, rests with Him."

Chuma hesitated. His belief in De Walden was shaken by what had happened, but not wholly overthrown. Maomo saw his embarra.s.sment, and hastened to interfere.

"Chief," he said, "it is not by prayers, which are but words, that the White Falsehood--man has prevailed on the Evil Spirits to send this curse upon our people. Nor will it be by prayers that he can prevail on them to take it off again. There are sacrifices that he offers to his G.o.ds. I know that he was seen to pour water on Gaike's forehead, and utter some charm while he did so. I know that there are sacrifices which he renders, when he will suffer no one but his white companions to be present. Ask him, and he cannot deny this?"

"How is this?" said Chuma, turning again to De Walden; "you hear what the rainmaker says. Is it true?"

"It is true that we have rites at which none but believers are allowed to be present," returned De Walden.

"Will you offer these to your G.o.ds, that the plague may be removed from the cattle of the Bechuanas?"

"It is not enough that you make him promise that," interposed Maomo again, dreading that De Walden would comply with this request, and so avert, for the time at all events, the chief's anger. "He must do so in public, so that you and all our people may be sure that he really sacrifices to his G.o.d."

"You hear, white man," said Chuma, sternly; "do you consent?"

"I cannot profane holy mysteries in such a manner," was the answer. "I will pray, and offer what you call sacrifices in secret, but not before you."

"You hear him, chief," exclaimed the wizard. "He seeks to put you off with empty words. Now hear me; I will take away this woe. The cattle of the Bechuanas shall not die. But I cannot do this until the White Lie-man has been put to silence. The Spirits will not hearken to me while he lives. Choose, therefore, whether this impostor shall live to work his evil pleasure, and your cattle perish, or whether he shall receive his due punishment, and your cattle shall be saved."

His words were drowned in a cry which burst simultaneously from a hundred lips, "Slay the White Wizard; preserve our cattie."

"Once more, you hear," exclaimed Chuma; "offer sacrifice or you die; which do you choose? Will you sacrifice?"

"My honoured friend and father," said Ernest, addressing De Walden in a low voice apart, as he saw that he was about to offer a final refusal, "need this be? Wherefore not comply with their demand? Did not Elijah so challenge the priests of Baal, and G.o.d upheld him in the trial. And are you not as truly G.o.d's servant as he was; and G.o.d is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever? Why should he not answer you, by healing their diseased oxen, even as he answered Elijah, by consuming the sacrifice?"

"It had been revealed to Elijah that he was to act as he did," returned the missionary in the same tone. "I have received no such intimations, and must not so take upon myself. Our G.o.d is indeed the same, and it may please Him to interpose and save me, or leave me to glorify Him by my death; but I must leave that in His hands." He proceeded aloud, "No, chief, I will not offer the sacrifice you require. I cannot explain my reasons now, but I refuse."

"Then you shall die, and that speedily. Take him to his hut, until the preparations are made; and be careful that he does not escape, or your own lives shall be the penalty. Take the other whites, and keep them in safe custody also. We will determine in the council what is to be done with them presently."

The four Englishmen were dragged off under Kobo's charge, the latter heaping every possible insult upon them during their conveyance to the hut, and ordering the men under his charge to bind them with rhinoceros thongs, which cut them so severely, that even the attendants seemed inclined to remonstrate at such needless severity. But Kobo silenced them by threatening to report their lukewarmness to the chief. Then desiring that the guns and everything belonging to them should be removed, and placed for security in his hut, he withdrew with a parting menace, to take his place at the council about to be held in the chief's residence.

The lads were too deeply moved at the approaching execution of their friend, and the danger impending over themselves, to feel the disgust and indignation at Kobo's double-faced treachery, which at another time it would have provoked. They listened reverently to the words addressed to them by De Walden; who warned them that their position was one of the greatest peril, and though he earnestly hoped that their lives might be spared, they would do wisely to be prepared for the worst. "G.o.d's providential care for you," he said, "has been shown so often and so signally of late, that I need not bid you to trust wholly in Him. But it would be no kindness in me not to warn you that your present peril is very great--as great perhaps as it was in the Hottentot village, though at first sight it might not seem to be so."

"Not all of us are in imminent danger, I hope," said Warley. "I know they are angry with me, almost as much as they are with you, but they have no grounds of quarrel with Frank or Gilbert."

"I thought you might suppose so," returned the missionary, "and that was the reason why I spoke. It is plain that they mean to put me to a speedy death--"

"Surely they dare not," interposed Frank. "They know that Charles will be returning, before long, with messengers from the English governor at Cape Town. He is not likely to endure the murder of a British subject without a shadow of justice or reason. And when he hears--"

"Ay, Frank, that is just it," said De Walden. "They will take care that he shall never hear it. They will probably say that I have died of some disease, or have taken my departure from their kraal of my own accord.

But your evidence would disprove their story, and they will have no scruples in securing your silence by the surest of all methods--that is, by putting you to death."

"Then they would have to account for all four of us," observed Gilbert, "and some one in the kraal--Dalili or Gaike, or Mololo perhaps--might tell Charles the truth, and then very signal punishment would probably be exacted."

"You do not know these people," said De Walden. "The influence of this pretended prophet would be greater than ever after his supposed victory over me. They will be too much terrified to venture even on a word. If Kobo had remained faithful to us indeed--"

"The treacherous wretch!" exclaimed Frank, pa.s.sionately. "I feel more indignant with him than with Chuma, or even Maomo himself."

"This is no time for anger, Frank," said the elder man, gravely. "I should not speak of him at all, if it had not been necessary to explain to you your true position. If Kobo had remained faithful, I say, something might have been done. We might have sent him off from the village, and Chuma would have been afraid that he had gone to report what had happened to the English. But that hope does not exist, and there is nothing for it but for us all to prepare ourselves for the worst."

"They may do what they will," said Warley. "If they take your life, I have no wish to keep mine."

"You must not say that, Ernest. G.o.d may have a great work for you to do; and if your life is preserved, I shall feel a.s.sured it is for that purpose. But we have probably but a short time to pa.s.s together; let us make the best use of that."

They all knelt down while the missionary offered up a fervent prayer in behalf of each one of them, in which all heartily joined; and they were still engaged in their prayers, when Kobo re-entered, accompanied by his satellites, to announce to them their sentence, or rather that of De Walden.

This, he gave them to understand, with diabolical exultation, was to be the most painful form of death that imagination could conceive--one which was resorted to only in the instance of enemies captured in war, upon whom they wished to inflict the worst possible sufferings. De Walden was to be eaten alive by ants! He was to be pegged down on his back over one of the large ant-hills, some three feet in height--great numbers of which were to be found at the distance of a mile or two from the village--his neck, wrists, and ankles firmly secured by thongs of rhinoceros hide, so that it would be impossible to move even an inch to the right or left. He was to be left in this position half an hour or so after nightfall, about which time the ants, which had remained in a state of torpor all day, were wont to come out of their nests in such mult.i.tudes as to blacken the whole of the ground round one of their hills. They would be sure to fasten at once on any animal substance near them, and so great was their voracity, that in the course of three or four hours, the largest carca.s.ses would be stripped of every particle of skin or flesh, and be left a bare and whitened skeleton.

This, Kobo informed them, was to be the form of death chosen for the missionary. Some of the councillors had suggested death by poison, or a blow from a heavy club; but Maomo, he gave them to understand--Maomo, supported by himself--had insisted that the Bad Spirits would not be appeased, unless the White Enemy died by a death of the greatest agony.

As for the others, they would probably be p.r.i.c.ked with a lance-head, steeped in the juice of the euphorbia, or the venom of the poison grub.

But that would not be finally decided until the following day; only, anyhow, they were quite sure to undergo death in some painful and lingering shape.

The only drawback to these tidings, he further apprised them, was, that the execution of the missionary's sentence would necessarily be deferred to the following day. A great feast was to take place at sundown on the flesh of the elephants killed that morning, and the chief could not be induced to put that off, even to gratify the anger he had conceived against the White Prophet. Maomo had made the attempt, but in vain.

Nor would he leave the execution of the sentence to the rainmaker, so that the missionary's death was to be put off till sunset on the following day: but, then, Kobo added, most probably the fate of the others would be determined, and all four would be executed together.

Having delivered himself of this outpouring of malice, and once more carefully examined the rhinoceros thongs, to make a.s.surance doubly sure, Kobo relieved them of his presence; and soon afterwards the whole party, overcome by the intense weariness which anxiety and suffering of mind occasion, sank into a heavy and dreamless sleep.

It might have been four or five hours afterwards, when Frank was roused by a p.r.i.c.king feeling as though some one had stabbed him slightly with a knife. He started up. The hut was quite dark, though the stars outside were faintly glimmering. He was about to cry out when a hand was placed on his mouth, and a voice whispered in his ear.

"It me--Kobo. No make noise. I come help you get away." At the same instant he again felt the p.r.i.c.k of the knife, and the leather thong drop from his arm. In a moment the explanation of Kobo's altered demeanour occurred to him. The man had affected the bitter hatred he had expressed, in order that they might be handed over to his custody instead of that of Maomo, as they would have been, had he been suspected of being their friend.

"All right, Kobo," he said softly; "shall I strike a light?"

"No, no. That spoil all. If you have knife, cut the fastenings of your legs. I set prophet free."

The others were roused with the same caution which Frank had received, and in a few minutes they were all at liberty. Then Kobo addressed them, still speaking under his breath.

"Chief and all much drunk. Only rainmaker sober. He suspect me. He watch me while feast go on. I see him, though he not guess it. I seem to drink twice as much as any, but throw it all away on ground. When feast half over, I tumble flat Rainmaker think Kobo drunk, but I creep away in dark. Now all follow me; creep like snake among hedge and bush; lucky no moon to-night."

Following his direction, the whole party emerged one after another from the hut, and crawled on their hands and knees among the dwarf shrubs which lay scattered over the ground, until they had reached Kobo's cottage, which was on the outskirts of the village. Here they found their guns, belts, and flasks, carefully hidden away under a heap of weeds. Having possessed themselves of these, they again hurried on, keeping within the cover of the wood, until they were at least half a mile from the Bechuana village; when the wooded covert gave place to an open plain overspread with large stones, and now and then patches of thorn.

"Get on as fast as we can," was Kobo's direction now. "Too far from kraal for Bechuanas to follow to-night."

"And to-morrow they will none of them be in a condition to undertake any long journey, I expect," observed Nick.

"Rainmaker not drunk. He keep sober," said Kobo. "Very likely he gone to hut to see all safe, and find all gone!" added the savage with a chuckle. "But he no know which way to follow in dark. Not follow till to-morrow."

"You have managed very cleverly, Kobo," said Wilmore; "but I must say I wonder this wizard, or rainmaker, or whatever you call him, consented to leave us in your charge."

"He not do that," answered Kobo, "only he could not help it. I know how plague broke out among Dalili's cows. I see rainmaker putting bad stuff into their sides with a little knife. He know that I saw him, and he 'fraid to speak against Kobo, for fear Kobo speak against him.

Rainmaker bad man. Look, you see that big ant-hill there close by?"

"Yes, we see it plain enough," answered Warley, with a shudder.