Harley Greenoak's Charge Part 14

The stoep, railed off, stood about four feet above the ground. In front the said ground, perfectly open, sloped away gently to a _sluit_, const.i.tuting a first-rate arena for a rough-and-tumble. Round on to this now, the warring savages swirled, mad with fury and blood l.u.s.t, some with drink. The three white men--four now--for they had been joined by MacFennel's a.s.sistant, who had prudently locked the canteen door--stood on the stoep watching the tumult.

"How about the rifles, Greenoak?" said d.i.c.k Selmes, in hardly to be repressed excitement.

"No. We mustn't show sign of scare," was the quiet answer. "We've got our pistols, but we needn't show them unless absolutely necessary."

The struggling crowd now had broken up into groups. No attempt at forming sides had been made, twos and threes they fought, and as soon as one individual went down the victors proceeded to batter the life out of him as he lay, unless others sprang to the rescue, which was often the case. Then there would be a renewed scrimmage, with slas.h.i.+ngs and parryings, and soon the ground was scattered with writhing, struggling bodies, and others, indeed, deadly still; the while the strident war whistles rent the air. Black, striving demons, eyes blazing and white teeth bared, seemed to have taken the place of the careless laughing groups of a few minutes ago.

On the left, some thirty yards away from the stoep, where stood the white spectators, was a small orchard, bounded by a low sod wall. For this, one Kafir, hardly pressed, was seen to make, with three others hot on his heels. He gained it, but his foot caught, tumbling him headlong into the ditch on the other side. With a yell his pursuers were on him, and although the spectators could not see him, the nasty crunch of the k.n.o.b-kerries battering out his brains and his life, told its own tale.

d.i.c.k Selmes, who had never seen any real bloodshed before, began to feel rather sick.

"Can't we stop this, Greenoak?" he said, rather quaveringly, as a big savage, hotly pursued by four or five others, came staggering up to the stoep itself, to fall, almost at their very feet, the blood pouring from a wound in his skull.

"It's their own quarrel," answered Greenoak, decisively. But paying no heed to the words, the impetuous d.i.c.k had sprung down the steps and was standing over the prostrate Kafir, his revolver pointed.

"Stand back, you cowardly dogs!" he roared. "Hit a man when he's down, would you? I'll let daylight into you."

Of this they understood, of course, not one word. But there was no sort of misunderstanding the pointed pistol, the flas.h.i.+ng eyes, and the pale, determined face of the young Englishman. Growling, ferocious, like the disappointment of hungry beasts, they halted--calling to those behind them. Many of those swarmed up, kerries raised. This was no white man's business, they roared. Let the white men interfere and they would kill the lot. All of which, of course, d.i.c.k Selmes, for his part, did not understand one word. But Harley Greenoak did.

Quickly he called out to them in their own tongue, urging that it was not worth while their losing many lives for the sake of one, which in all probability was already gone; that they themselves were well armed, and that d.i.c.k Selmes would certainly never be frightened into giving way; and further, that the sound of firing would be sure to bring the Mounted Police down upon them.

For a moment his words seemed to produce the desired effect, then a roar of defiance went up from those further back. The savages were in an ugly and dangerous mood, and their fighting blood was roused. They were armed only with sticks it was true, but they had already demonstrated what a formidable weapon an ordinary hard-wood kerrie can be in the hand of one who knows how to use it; and there were upwards of a hundred of them on the ground already, while more and more were still pressing up along the veldt paths. They seemed to have laid aside their mutual feud, and now with a scowl of hate and defiance upon each grim countenance they crowded up before the white men. And these were but four.

Harley Greenoak had his finger upon the pulse of the crowd. His keen glance in particular took in the expression of those nearest to d.i.c.k.

His hand was closed round the b.u.t.t of his revolver, but not yet had he drawn it. The while d.i.c.k, still pointing his, stood over the fallen man, his eyes upon the savage threatening faces which fronted him, but s.h.i.+ning from them the steeliness of a deadly determination.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

TYALA.

There followed a moment of tense silence. Then a fresh hubbub arose on the outskirts of the crowd, quite a number of which broke away, and made for the lower end of the building. Harley Greenoak and MacFennel's a.s.sistant looked at each other. Both had caught the proposed new move.

"I'll take care of this, Mr Greenoak," said the latter, a rough and ready, powerful young fellow who understood the Kafirs and their language as one of themselves. "Burn the house, will they? We shall see."

He dived inside. Hardly had he done so than a change seemed to come over the fierce and threatening crowd. Anxiously the savages looked this way and that, then broke into groups, conversing more quietly. The electricity of the storm seemed to have spent itself. Harley Greenoak still stood leaning on the railing of the stoep in easy att.i.tude--he had, as yet, shown no weapon. Probably a patrol of Mounted Police had appeared in sight, was the thought in the minds of the others.

There was a thud of horse-hoofs approaching from behind the house, and then--No squad of mounted troopers appeared, only a single Kafir, an old man, riding a sorry-looking and under-sized pony. At sight of him the ma.s.s of hitherto turbulent savages murmured respectful greeting, and a rush was made to hold his stirrup while he dismounted.

"You can put away your pistol now, d.i.c.k," said Harley Greenoak's quiet voice.

"Why? Have the Police turned up?" answered d.i.c.k, as he obeyed. It was significant of the absolute reliance he placed on Greenoak's lightest word in such matters that d.i.c.k Selmes never dreamed of disputing any one of his p.r.o.nouncements.

"No. Better even than that. Tyala has."

"Who's Tyala? Is he a chief?"

"Yes, and one of Sandili's princ.i.p.al councillors. It's a thousand pities he isn't in Sandili's place."

The old man had dismounted now, and was haranguing the a.s.sembled Kafirs, such of them as were left, for quite half of the original rioters had melted away. Here was a thing to have happened, he told them. Children of the Great Chief to fall to rending each other like quarrelsome dogs, and that under the eyes of white men; just now, too, when it behoved them to stand well in the eyes of the white man.

This deliverance, however, was not exactly popular. Even the rank and venerable age of the speaker could not repress a ripple of resentful muttering. White men? Mere dogs, dogs whom they would soon send howling back to their own kraals--was the gist of it. But the old chief continued his rebuke. Let them go home, he concluded, if they could not behave otherwise than as half-grown boys.

"I see before me, my friend, Kulondeka," he added. "Now I am going to talk with a _man_."

"Eulondeka"--meaning "safe"--was the name by which Harley Greenoak was known to all the Bantu tribes south of the Zambesi. The latter greeted the old chief with great cordiality, and in a moment they were deep in conversation.

"I say, I rather like the look of that old chap," said d.i.c.k Selmes, who had skipped up on to the stoep again--he had clean forgotten his late _protege_ now. "Hanged if I won't stand him a drink. Give him a good big one, MacFennel."

"He wouldn't touch it, Mr Selmes; no, not if you gave him twenty cows,"

answered the innkeeper, with a laugh. "He's got such an awful example before him in the shape of his big chief, old Sandili. That old soaker would think nothing of mopping up a whole bucketful of grog, and as much more as you liked to stack under his nose."

"By Jove!" exclaimed d.i.c.k. "We'll give him a yard of 'bacco instead-- no--give him a whole roll, I'll stand the racket."

"Ah, that'll fetch him," said the other, going inside to find the required article.

"I say, Greenoak. Introduce me," sang out d.i.c.k. "First time I've seen a chief, and I must have a jaw with him--through you, of course."

The old man, who wore about him no insignia of chieftains.h.i.+p, unless it were a very old and well-worn suit of European clothes, smiled kindly at the young one; and remarked that he must be the son of a very great man in his own country, for he looked it. Then, as d.i.c.k handed him the big roll of Boer tobacco which MacFennel just then brought, he fairly beamed.

"Oh, MacFennel, I wish you'd give him a lot of beads and things out of your store," went on d.i.c.k, "also on my own account, they'll do fine for his wives. I expect he's got about twenty."

"All right, Mr Selmes. He may have more though."

"Well, give him a good lot for each one. How many has he got, Greenoak?"

This was put, Greenoak explaining that it was the desire of the son of the great English chief to make a present to each, and in the result it transpired that the old Gaika had less than twenty, but certainly more than one.

So they chatted on, Harley Greenoak not omitting to tell the chief how d.i.c.k Selmes had interfered to protect the fallen man at the risk of his own life. The frontier was in a very disturbed state, and there was no telling what might happen. There was no telling, either, of what service the act might not prove to one or both of them in the fortunes of war, and none knew this better than the old campaigner and up-country man.

The ground was like a regular battlefield. Injured men lay around, unconscious some, and breathing heavily.

Others would never breathe again; others, too, recovering from their temporary stunning, were raising themselves labouringly, staring stupidly around, as though anything but sure as to what had happened.

Broken kerries lay about, and, here and there, a great smear of blood.

Tyala, having filled his pipe from the new and bountiful supply he had just received, lit it and stalked around the scene of the late disorder.

"_Au_! This is not good, Kulondeka," he said. "Some will be punished for this. But the fewest lying here are Ndimba's people. That would seem to tell that ours did not begin the fight."

"That may or may not be, Councillor of the House of Gaika," answered Harley Greenoak, drily. "It may only mean that the Amandhlambe are the better fighters."

"_Whau_!" cried Tyala, bringing his hand to his mouth with a quizzical laugh. "Now, Kulondeka, I would ask where are better fighters than the men of the House of Gaika? Where?"

"Time will show," was the sententious reply. And on both faces was the same dry pucker, in both pairs of eyes the same comical glance. They understood each other.

Then the two talked "dark." Greenoak was anxious to get at the temper and drift of thought of the Gaika clans under the chieftains.h.i.+p of the historic Sandili, all located along the border of the Cape Colony and within the same. Tyala, shrewd and wily, as all native politicians are, was trying to say as much as he could, and yet give away as little. It was a battle of wits. Yet, in actual fact, this chief threw all his influence into the scale for peace.

"_Whau_, Kulondeka, you know the Great Chief, as who, indeed, among all the peoples do you not know?" he said at last. "Well, then, why does not _Ihuvumente_ [Government] act accordingly? You know, and _Ihuvumente_ knows, that the man who has the Great Chief's ear last has the Great Chief. Sandili does not wish for war, but his young men are hot of blood. Yet his 'word' is all-powerful, and the way he will send it forth--for great things are maturing--rests with who has his ear. We are talking, you and I, but what is for four ears is not for more."

"Oh, it will go no further for me," answered Greenoak. And then as the innkeeper appeared, with a great steaming kettle of black coffee, to which, when well sweetened, all natives are exceedingly partial, their conference ended.