The Triumph of Hilary Blachland Part 34

"No. Go ye now away and leave me. Peace is not far distant and many good words will I speak for you because of this day."

A jeering roar, now of rage, now of disappointment, greeted his words.

At the same time Blachland sighted one of them kneeling down with his piece levelled, and taking deliberate aim at him. An instinct moved him to drop down behind the stone, and the instinct was a true one, for as he did so a bullet sang through the spot where his head and shoulders had been but a fraction of a second before. Two others hummed over him, but high.

He put his hat up above the stone, holding it by the brim. "Whigge!"-- another bullet hummed by, almost grazing it.

"Some devil there can shoot, anyway," he growled to himself. "If only I could get a glint of him. Ah!"

A stratagem had occurred to him. He managed to fix the hat just so that the top of it should project, then creeping to the edge of the boulder, he peered round, his piece sighted and ready. Just as he thought. The head and shoulders of a savage, taking aim at the hat--and then with the crash of his own rifle that savage was spinning round and turning a convulsive somersault, shot fair and square through the head. His slayer set his teeth, with a growl that was half exulting, half a curse.

His foes were going to find that they had cornered a lion indeed--so much he could promise them.

The mutterings of wrath and dismay which arose among them over this neat shot, were drowned in a furious volley. Every man who possessed a firearm seemed animated with a kind of frenzied desire to discharge it as quickly and as often as possible at and around the rock behind which he lay. For a few moments the position was very sultry indeed. It might have been worse but that the moral of that deadly shot rendered his a.s.sailants exceedingly unwilling to leave their cover or expose themselves in any way.

On his right the river bank was but a couple of hundred yards, and running up from this was a bush-fringed donga, which might be any or no depth, but which ended at about half that distance. Upon this Blachland had got his eye and was puzzling out as to how he might turn it to account. Now he discovered that the same idea was occurring to his a.s.sailants, for although the intervening s.p.a.ce was almost devoid of bush, the gra.s.s was long and tangled from the bush line to the chasm, and it was shaking and quivering in a very suspicious manner.

"Great minds jump together," he muttered grimly, all his attention centred on this point, and entirely disregarding a terrific fire which was suddenly opened upon him, with the object, he suspected, of diverting it. "Just as I thought."

One glimpse only, of the naked, crawling savage, flattened to the earth, but even that was sufficient. The thud of the bullet ploughing through ribs and vitals, was music to his ears as that savage flattened out more completely, beating the earth in his death throes; and a very shout of exultant snarling laughter escaped him--mingling with the roar of rage that went up from his enemies. He was growing terrible now--ferocious, bloodthirsty, as his ruthless foes, yet cool and firm as the rock behind which he lay.

"Two shots, two birds!" he exclaimed. "If I can keep on at this rate it's good enough."

The a.s.sailants were now mad with rage. They howled out taunts and jeers, and blood-curdling promises of the vengeance they would wreak upon him when they got him into their power. At this he laughed-- laughed long and loud.

"That will be never!" he cried. "Ho, Ziboza, thou valiant fighting induna. How many of the King's hunting dogs does it take to pull down one lion? Are the Ingubu all killed or have they driven thee from their midst to follow a new leader? But I tell thee, Ziboza, thou art a dead man this day. I may be, but thou art surely."

"Ah--ah--'Sipau!" snarled the chief. "It is easy to boast, but thou art cornered. We have thee now."

"Not yet. And a cornered animal is a dangerous one. Come and take me."

To this interchange of amenities succeeded a lull. Clearly they were planning some fresh surprise. And then Blachland started, with a pang of sharp pain. His left hand was streaming blood. Then his spirits rose again. It was only a cut. A splinter of stone, chipped by one of their bullets, had struck him, but the wound was a trivial one. With the discovery, however, came another, and one which was by no means trivial. The bullet had been fired at a different angle from those hitherto. The ground on the left front rose slightly. His enemies were getting round him on that side. Soon he would be exposed to a complete flanking fire.

The worst of it was that in that direction he could see n.o.body. The cover was too good. He wondered they had not occupied this before, unless it were that they deemed it of the highest importance to cut off all chance of his escape by the river. Yet what chance had he there? A mere choice of deaths, for it was rolling down in flood, and between this and their fire from the bank, why, there was none at all.

And now the sun, which had been s.h.i.+ning warm and glowing above this scene of stern and deadly strife, upon the beleaguered man, desperate, fighting to the last, beset by a swarm of persistent and ruthless foes-- suddenly grew dark. A shadow had curtained its face, black and lowering. Blachland sent a hasty glance upward. One of those storms, almost of daily occurrence now in the rainy season, would shortly break over them. Would it bring him any advantage, however trifling--was his eager thought? At any rate it could not alter his position for the worse. And the hoa.r.s.e and sullen boom of thunder mingled with the vengeful spit of the rifles of his enemies, now more frequent and more deadly because taking him from a new and almost unprotected quarter.

Ha! What was this? Under cover of this last diversion his enemies had been stealing up. They were coming on in dozens, in scores, from the first point of attack. Selecting two of the foremost, one behind the other, he fired--and his aim was true, but at the same time his rifle fell from his grasp, and his arm and shoulder felt as though crushed beneath a waggon wheel. With fiendish yells, drowning the gasping cry of the stricken warriors, the whole body of them poured forward. At the same time, those on the rise behind, left their cover, and charged down upon him, rending the air with their ear-splitting whistles.

He saw what had happened. The rifle had been struck by a bullet, and the concussion had for the moment paralysed him. Only for the moment though. Quick as the vivid flash which flamed down upon him from the now darkened heavens, his mind was made up. With a suddenness and a fleetness which took even his enemies by surprise, he had broken from his cover, and was racing headlong for the point of the donga which led down to the river.

In a second he will gain it. They cannot fire, every nerve is strained to overtake him, to head him off. He sees their foremost line. Now it is in front of him. No, not quite! His revolver is out, and the heavy bullet crashes almost point blank through the foremost. Another springs up in front of him, a gigantic warrior, his broad spear upraised.

Before it can descend the fugitive is upon him, and the momentum is too great. Grappled together they topple over the edge, and go cras.h.i.+ng down, the white man and the savage, into unknown depths.

The bushes close over their heads and they are in almost total darkness.

There is a mighty splash of water and both are engulfed--yet, still grappled, they rise to the surface again, and the blue glare of the lightning, darting down, reveals the slanting earth walls of the chasm, reveals to each the face of the other as they rise above the turgid water, gasping and sputtering. The savage has lost his a.s.segai in the fall, and the white man is groping hungrily, eagerly, for his sheath knife.

"Ah, ah! Ziboza! Did I not tell thee thou wert dead?"

"Not yet, dog Makiwa!" growls the other, in the ferocity of desperation striving to bury his great teeth in his adversary's face. But Blachland is in condition as hard as steel, and far more at home in the water than the Matabele chief, so while gripping the latter by the wrists, he ducks his head beneath the surface, endeavouring to drown him if possible. He dare not let go his hold lest he should be the one grasped, and those above dare not fire down for fear of shooting their chief--even if they could see the contending parties--which they cannot. But the awful reverberations of the thunder-peal boom and s.h.i.+ver within that pit as of h.e.l.l, and the lightnings gleam upon the brown turgid surface, and the straining faces of the combatants are even as those of striving fiends.

They touch ground now, then lose it again, for the bottom is but a foothold of slippery mud. Nearer, nearer to the main stream their struggles have carried them, until the sombre roar of the flood sounds deafening in their ears, and still the awful strife goes on.

"Ah--ah, Ziboza. I told thee thou shouldst meet death this day. _Ha!

Nantzia_! [that is it] _Ha_!"

And with each throaty, bloodthirsty gasp he plunges the knife, which he has at last managed to free, into the body of the nearly exhausted chief, drawing it down finally in a terrible ripping stroke. A single gasping groan, and Ziboza sinks, as his adversary throws him from him.

And then the said adversary knows no more. The swirl of the flood sweeping into the chasm, seems to rope him out, and the body of Hilary Blachland, together with that of his savage antagonist, is borne down within the raging rush of waters, rolling over and over on its way to the Zambesi and the sea.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

"THAT IRRECLAIMABLE SCAMP!"

For some while after his departure from Lannercost, their recent guest occupied a very large share in the conversation and thoughts of its inmates. He had been so long with them, had become so much one of themselves in their quiet, rather isolated life, and now his absence had left a very real void.

He had written to them with fair frequency, telling of up-country doings--of the growing aggressiveness of the Matabele, and of the contemplated expedition, with the object of bringing Lo Bengula to book, then of the actual formation of such expedition, by that time on the eve of a start, and how he and young West had volunteered upon the Salisbury Column, and were to serve in the scouting section. Then correspondence had ceased. The expedition had set out.

It was then that Bayfield found himself importuned to increase the circulation of two or three other newspapers, in addition to those regularly sent him, by one subscriber, in order that no chance might be missed of seeing the very latest concerning the Matabele war, and upon such, Lyn and small Fred would fasten every post day.

"I say, Lyn!" cried the latter, disinterring his nose from a newly opened sheet, "but won't Mr Blachland make Lo Bengula scoot, when once he gets at him? Man! but I'd like to be there."

"But he and the King are great friends, Fred."

"Pooh! How can they be friends if they're at war? _Nouw ja_--but he just will scoot old Lo Ben! I'd like to be there."

"I hope they'll take all sorts of proper precautions against surprises,"

said Lyn seriously, for she was just old enough to remember the shudder of gloom which ran through the whole country when the disastrous news of Isandhlwana had come upon it like a storm-burst fourteen years previously. It had struck vividly upon her childish imagination then and she had not forgotten it.

"Surprises! I'd like to see them surprise a commando that Mr Blachland's on," returned Fred, magnificent in his whole-souled contempt that any one could even imagine any such possibility. "And these Matabele chaps ain't a patch on the Zulus. I've heard Mr Blachland say so again and again. _Ja_, he's a fine chap! Won't he make old Lo Ben sit up!"

Lyn would smile at this kind of oft-repeated expression of her young brother's honest and whole-hearted idolatry, in which, although more reticent herself, she secretly shared. And the object of it? He was always in her thoughts. She delighted to think about him--to talk about him. Why not? He was her ideal, this man who had been an inmate of their roof for so long, who had been her daily companion throughout that time and had stored her mind with new thoughts, new ideas, which all unconsciously to herself, had expanded and enlarged it--and not one of which but had improved it. He represented something like perfection to her, this man, no longer young, weather-beaten, somewhat lined, who had come there in the capacity of her father's friend. Strange, you see, but then, life is teeming with eccentricities.

This state of Lyn's mind was not without one interested spectator, and that her father. Half amused, half concerned, he watched it--and put two and two together. That outburst of grief in which he had surprised her had never been repeated, and, watching her with loving care, he failed to descry any symptom of it having been, even in secret. But the girl's clear mind was as open and as honest as a mirror. There was no shadow of hesitation or embarra.s.sment in her manner or speech when they talked of their late guest--even before strangers. George Bayfield was puzzled. But through it all, as an undercurrent, there ran an idea. He recalled the entire pleasure which Blachland had taken in Lyn's society, the frank, open admiration he had never failed to express when she or her doings formed the topic of conversation between them--the excellent and complete understanding between him and the girl. What if--Too old!

Not a bit of it. He himself had married very young, and Blachland was quite half a dozen years his junior. Why, he himself was in his prime-- and as for the other, apart from that shake of fever, he was as hard as nails.

Now this idea, the more and more it struck root in Bayfield's mind, was anything but distasteful to him. The certainty that he must some day lose Lyn, was the one ever-haunting grief of his life. He had pictured some externally showy, but shallow-pated youth--on the principle that such things go by opposites--who should one day carry off his Lyn, and amid new surroundings and new interests, teach her--unconsciously perhaps, but none the less effectually--to forget her old home, and the father who loved and adored her from the crown of her sweet golden head to her little feet. But here was a man whose experience of the world was greater than his own, a man with an exhaustive knowledge of life, who had immediately seen and appreciated this pearl of great price, a strong man who had lived and done--no mere empty-headed, self-sufficient, egotistical youth; and this man was his friend. He was thoroughbred too, and the worst that could be said of him was that he had sown some wild oats. But apart from the culminating stage in the sowing of that crop--and even there probably there were great extenuating circ.u.mstances--nothing mean, nothing dishonourable had ever been laid to Hilary Blachland's charge. Personally, he had an immense liking and regard for him, and, as he had said to himself before, Lyn's instinct was never at fault. He remembered now that Blachland had declared he could never stand English life again--and--he remembered too, something else, up till now forgotten--how Blachland had half chaffingly commissioned him to find out the lowest terms its owner would accept for a certain farm which adjoined Lannercost, and which was for sale, because he believed he would squat down for a little quiet life when he returned from up-country. All this came back to him now, and with a feeling of thankful relief, for it meant, in the event of his idea proving well-founded, that his little Lyn would not be taken right away from him after all.

So the months went by after Hilary Blachland's departure, but still his memory was kept green and fresh within that household of three.

One day, when Bayfield was outside, indulging in some such speculation as the above, out to him ran Lyn, flouris.h.i.+ng one of the newly arrived newspapers. She seemed in a state of quite unwonted excitement, and at her heels came small Fred.

"Father, look, here's news! Look. Read that. Isn't it splendid?"

Bayfield took the paper, but before looking at the paragraph she was trying to point out, he glanced admiringly at the girl, thinking what a sweet picture she made, her golden hair s.h.i.+ning in the sun, her blue eyes wide with animation, and a glow of colour suffusing her lovely clear-cut face. Then he read:

"Gallantry of a Scout."