By Veldt and Kopje Part 2

"No, that cannot be," he replied, in a voice broken by emotion; "no woman can go to Emjanyana unless she have 'the sickness'; and then the men and women have to dwell apart."

"_Moimamo_," she wailed. "You cannot leave me--your child quickens even now. You have paid the dowry and I am your wife. I will sit at the gate at Emjanyana until they let me in."

Day was almost breaking when Mangele led Nosembe back into the scrub to the footpath by which she had come. They bade each other farewell, after arranging to meet on the following night in the same way.

Nosembe had not gone very far before she met her father and two of her brothers, who, when they had discovered her absence, guessed where she had gone to and started out to seek for her. She met their railing and reproaches with the utmost composure. However, when night again came she found herself so carefully guarded that escape was impossible, so she was unable to keep the appointment with her lover.

Mangele waited the whole night through, hoping against hope that she would come. He correctly guessed the cause of her absence. When day broke he took his sticks and went forth to carry out a design he had formed in the course of his long vigil.

During the next forty-eight hours he personally visited every one of the lepers belonging to his clan in the district, and arranged with them to meet a day later in the vicinity of the Residency.

In the morning, just after the Magistrate had reached his office, he received a message asking him to meet the lepers under a certain tree, where, by tacit understanding, they had been accustomed to a.s.semble on the rare occasions when they required to communicate direct with the authorities. Soon afterward he walked to the spot, which was situated in a kloof about three hundred yards distant.

There they sat, twenty-four in number. Ten of them were women. All, with the exception of Mangele, were old. What an awful spectacle they afforded, these four-and-twenty human creatures; all save one crushed almost out of human semblance by the wheels of the chariot of pitiless, unregarding Nature. There, against the lovely background of graceful fern and fragrant clematis, beneath the twinkling, poplar-like leaves of the spreading erethryna-tree--through which the blue sky smiled--were huddled these poor sufferers without hope of relief, guiltless vessels marred by the mysterious hand of The Great Potter. Twisted limb and crumbling stump, visages from which the gracious human lines had been obliterated by a slow, fell process more awful than the snake's fang or the lightning's stroke.

Over what remained of nearly every countenance seemed to hover a suggestion of that strange, leonine look which was so strongly marked in the case of Mangele; and to the Magistrate it seemed as if this were the only relief from a horror almost too absolute to look upon for long and keep his senses. It was as though what Schopenhauer called "the genius of the genus" had arisen from the depths of being to protest mutely against this piteous desecration of its temple by unregarding Nature and iron-visaged Fate. It was the very sublimation of tragic pathos, in the presence of which pity seemed to die of its own intensity.

All but Mangele sat upon the ground and endeavoured to hide, so far as possible, their worst individual disfigurements, but he stood forth as though proudly conscious of his almost perfect symmetry, and met the Magistrate's sympathetic glance with his sombre, lion-like gaze. Then, after the usual salutations, Mangele began his speech. As is usual with natives to whom oratory is an inborn art, his delivery was excellent and full of dignity.

"We, men and women who are dead, though living, come to our Father, the Government, to ask for a little thing.

"G.o.d, whom the White Man has taught us to know, smote us with this sickness which has filled our bones with water for marrow, and caused our quick flesh to rot slowly, like dead wood. We acknowledge that it is only right we should be separated from other men, so that we may not give the disease to those who are clean, but we cannot dwell apart from our kindred, our cattle and the fields wherein our fathers saw the corn growing when they were little children--therefore we wish to die now, this day. Then will the sickness die with us, and our Father, the Government, will not be put to any further trouble on our account.

"What we ask of the White Chief, our Magistrate, is this: that he now, before the sun has begun to fall, send hither his policemen with rifles, and bid them shoot us skilfully so that we may suffer little pain.

Then turning to his companions, who had heard him in silence, he added--

"My brothers and sisters--children of my Father--tell our Chief if I have spoken the right word."

An eager murmur of a.s.sent followed.

"Yes, our Chief, he has spoken the one word which is in all our hearts: kill us here, but send us not to dwell apart from our homes and our kindred."

It was some little time before the Magistrate was able to command his feelings sufficiently to admit of his speaking. When they saw that he was about to reply, his miserable hearers leant forward with every appearance of the keenest interest. In his heart he knew that what the poor creatures asked for was for them the best. His compa.s.sion was so deep that he could have slain them with his own hand.

"The word you have spoken," he said, "has gone through my heart like the bullet you have asked for. What can I say for your comfort? Go, my poor brothers and sisters whom G.o.d has afflicted so sorely. In the place to which your Father, the Government, is sending you, neither hunger nor cold will afflict you; you will have many friends and your days will be pa.s.sed in peace. The thing you ask for I may not give, for the Law allows it not. My heart will be with you in your exile."

Then a wail of anguished protest went up from the miserable crowd--

"Law--what have we to do with the Law--we who are dead already? We cannot dwell in a strange place. Kill us and put us under the ground on which we have lived our lives. Send the policemen with the rifles to us here at this spot--we will not shrink."

After the Magistrate had withdrawn, the poor creatures continued their lamentations for some time. Then they seemed to fall into a condition of apathy. Mangele sat silently apart, with the corner of his blanket drawn over his head. This, of late, had become his habitual att.i.tude.

Eventually he arose and called for attention--

"Listen, O brothers and sisters of the sickness; the thing which the Magistrate may not do on account of the Law we may yet do for ourselves... To-morrow night at sundown let us meet at the Wizard's Rock. There we may die as painlessly as by a rifle. To-day and to-morrow let us look our last upon our kindred, our cattle, and the land our fathers dwelt in. To-morrow night we will go down with the sun."

_Three_.

The Wizard's Rock derives its name from the circ.u.mstance that in the old days--before the advent of civilised government--it was the place of execution of those hapless creatures who were condemned for the supposed practice of witchcraft.

Before the rule of the European in South Africa there was, among the natives, a strong recrudescence from time to time of the lamentable belief that the land was full of malevolent wizards and witches, who spent most of their time in weaving deadly spells against man and beast.

The consequences were terrible; men and women were put to death upon the flimsiest suspicion; torture of the most horrible kind was freely resorted to, and the wildest confession wrung from the agonised lips of some was taken as absolute confirmation of the most preposterous apprehensions.

Not more than thirty years ago many a dolorous procession wended its way up to this jutting peak, from the base of which, hundreds of feet below, a slope, covered with n.o.ble forest, fell away to a deep and rapid river.

The doomed wretch would be blindfolded and placed, standing, at the edge of the precipice. Then the executioner would deal him a smas.h.i.+ng blow on the side of the head with a heavily k.n.o.bbed stick, and thus hurl him into the abyss.

Among the broken rocks below, the curious may, even at this late day, find fragments of human bones. The place has an evil reputation; no native boy cares to go near it; no bribe would induce one to visit it alone. Now and then a few of the bolder spirits, finding themselves in the forest, make an excursion to the foot of the great rock, but they steal along breathlessly from tree to tree and from stone to stone, taking cover at each and listening fearfully lest the restless "imishologu"--the spirits of the wicked ones who have died violently-- should be unseasonably awake. Then the fall of a dead bough, the rush of a troop of monkeys through the branches, the slightest unfamiliar echo from the beetling crag, will send them flying toward the open in speechless terror, with ashen-grey faces and staring eyes. Afterward they will boast loudly to their friends of the bravery evinced in the visit, omitting, of course, all reference to the invariable panic.

The day following the a.s.sembling of the lepers at the Magistracy died splendidly. To seaward the milk-white thunderclouds which marked the track of the monsoon towered into the deep azure, and when the sun began to sink behind the great mountain range to westward, every stately vapour-turret took on a changing glory, while in the inky vaults between incessant lightnings played.

Since early in the afternoon the poor lepers had been laboriously ascending the mountain by the different footpaths. Many were hardly able to hobble, but these were a.s.sisted by others whose legs were not so badly affected. Mangele bore upon his broad back an old man whose feet had completely crumbled away. Leaving this poor creature at the summit, he returned and helped the weaker among the others to ascend. The sun was still some little distance above the horizon when the last of the self-doomed band sank panting at the edge of the cliff. Of the four-and-twenty who had come to the Residency to interview the Magistrate, twenty had a.s.sembled at the Rock. The others, three women and a man, had felt their courage fail them, so had decided to accept their less violent, though dreaded, fate and go to Emjanyana.

'Mpofu, the oldest of the men, dragged his shapeless frame to a stone, against which he leant, supporting himself by his stick at the same time. He trembled violently and made several attempts before he succeeded in speaking. Then his voice came in a husky quaver. The others turned toward him with an air of expectancy.

"It is," he said, "a long time since I last stood on this spot. I was then hardly a man; Hintza was Chief. We came here to look upon the killing of Gungubele, who was 'smelt out' for having bewitched his elder brother. I leant my head over the edge of the rock and listened for the thud of his body as it struck the stones, far down. I thought the wind had borne it away, but at length it struck me like a club. Many seasons have since pa.s.sed, but that sound has ever since been in my ears. And now--when my body falls--"

A shudder pa.s.sed through the crouching creatures; one or two of the women began to whimper and a few near the verge drew back with looks of terror. Mangele sprang to his feet.

"What is this?" he cried in an angry voice; "has 'the sickness' filled your heart as well as your bones with water, O 'Mpofu, my father? Is yours the voice that calls dogs thirsty for death back from the fountain? Was it not your word that made me the leader of this army of dead men who are yet alive--and will you now turn them back on the day of battle? Shame on you. Listen to me, oh, my brothers, and not to this old man whose heart shrinks because of a sound he heard on a day before we were born. I am young, and death is more bitter to the young than to the old. My kraal is full of cattle; the dowry has been paid for my bride, yet I stand here to-day and am not afraid to die. Listen now to a new word in a strange tongue, but a word which you nevertheless may understand if you will:

"For a long time I have known that my sickness was like your own--the sickness that no doctor can cure. Through the long nights, when others slept, I have sat alone under the stars, and the voices of the darkness have taught me many things. Now, the greatest and strangest of these things was this: that I loved you who have suffered through your long lives what I am but beginning to suffer, and it is out of that love that I have brought you here to-day to put an end to your pain. Out of the darkness came another strange word--a word which has taught me how to die, to die with my eyes open; but I could not bear to die and leave you helpless in the pain you have endured so long. All this is the wisdom which I have learned from those voices of which the darkness is full."

When Mangele ceased speaking his hearers broke out into loud wailing.

One of the women crept shrinkingly to the verge of the precipice, glanced over the edge, and drew back with a shriek. Then she covered her face with her blanket and lay upon the ground, grovelling. The others, who had silently watched her, broke into renewed and terror-stricken wails as she drew back. Mangele once more began to speak, a note of thunder in his voice; all at once shrank into silence.

"This will I do for the sake of the love I bear you, and for that ye know not your own minds, nor what is good for you; this will I do because my heart is strong where yours is weak: I will hurl you one by one over the rock and then follow you myself. Look your last upon the sun, oh my brothers and sisters whom I love, for you are about to die."

At this the wretched creatures grovelled about Mangele's feet, beseeching him to spare their lives. They would, they said, go to Emjanyana and live peacefully like cattle in the kraal of their father, the Government. Their hearts were full of water; they were old and weak. They would not have minded death by shooting, at the Residency, but this was an evil place which bore a bad name from the most ancient days. The House of Death was cold and the road to it, over the steep cliff and the sharp stone beneath, painful. Even though they were sick they still could feel the warmth of the sun. If he loved them, let Mangele leave them until Death came of his own accord and sought them out.

Mangele stood with bent head in the middle of the prostrate crowd and listened to their piteous pleadings. When at length he lifted his face a change had come over it--a wistful, transfiguring gentleness had taken the place of the look of stern indignation it had borne when he last spoke. Silencing the wailing creatures with a gesture, he said:

"Peace, peace; your words have made me weak. Live, then, since you fear to die."

Mangele stepped from among the crouching throng and took his stand on the very verge of the cliff. The sun was just about to disappear; its last level beams swept across the world and seemed to search out and reveal every n.o.ble curve and graceful line in the ebon limbs and trunk of the splendidly proportioned man who was about to destroy his beauty to save it from loathsome decay--they lit the n.o.ble face and head until these took on a sublime look of leonine anguish and the sombre eyes seemed to glare a tremendous indictment against Nature and Fate.

"Farewell, brothers and sisters who have not been taught how to die.

Tell the girl Nosembe that my thoughts were of her as I sped to the sharp rocks."

As he spoke the last word Mangele sprang backward over the cliff. Old 'Mpofu and a woman shut their eyes and bent their heads sideways toward the verge. A few seconds afterward a heavy thud from below smote on the ears of all. A low groan broke from their lips--

A sound of approaching footsteps and laboured breathing was heard, and just afterward a tall young woman stepped in among the huddled throng.

It was Nosembe, who, having heard a rumour of the impending tragedy, hastened to join the man she loved and die with him.

"Ho, ye who are here," she said, after her eye had swept around the circle, "how is it then that your leader has not come? But there is his blanket and his stick; speak; where is Mangele, my lover?"

No one dared to answer; all sank their faces to the earth.