"Well, you shall see if it is any better now," went on the girl, airily.

"Oh, I do hope none of those stupid men will drop in. I want to have a nice long talk."

"You haven't found them so stupid up till now, Nidia," struck in Susie Bateman. "Why, there isn't an evening some of them haven't been in to cheer us up."

This for the benefit of John Ames, to whom the speaker divined it might in some way not be palatable. He for his part noted that she did not second the invitation, but he had reached that stage when he really didn't care to consider any Susie Bateman overmuch. Wherefore he accepted. But the latter, for her part, was resolved to pursue the campaign, and that vigorously, and to this end she never left them for one moment alone together. Likewise was she rather oftener than necessary very emphatic in referring to "Miss Commerell;" and when, later on, some of "those stupid men" did drop in, her joy was unbounded, equally so that they stayed late enough to leave John Ames no pretext for sitting them out.

Resisting a pressing invite to finish up the evening at the Silver Grill, the latter went back to his quarters in by no means an elated frame of mind. Yet he had to some extent foreseen what had happened.

Nidia had been kind and cordial to him, but there it was--as one of a crowd. There was no longer that sweet day-to-day companionship, they two isolated from the world. We repeat that he had foreseen this eventuality, yet now that it had arrived he liked it not one whit the more; nor was there consolation in the thought that here was another confirmation of the general accuracy of his forecasting faculty.

Already he began to realise the Umlimo's forecast: "There will come a time when you will look back upon these rough wanderings of yours--the two of you--as a dream of paradise." Of a truth that strange being possessed the gift of prophecy to an extraordinary degree.

Now, too, and in the days that followed, he found subject-matter for some very serious thinking, and one of the main subjects of his thoughts was that of the Umlimo. No abstraction, then, was this cult, such as he and others had supposed. Probably it had been originally, but he who now used the t.i.tle had seized the opportunity of turning it into a most formidable weapon against his enemies, in furtherance of one of the most ruthless, daring, and far-reaching schemes of vengeance which the mind of man could ever conceive and foster; and the object of this terrible monomania, the man's own nationality. John Ames was in a quandary.

Here he stood, possessed of most important knowledge, yet powerless to divulge it; cognisant of a fact of most vital moment to those who employed him, and whose pay he was receiving, yet tied and bound by his pledged word.

There was one way out of this difficulty, and that way, not being an unscrupulous man, he decided to take. He resigned his position in the service of the Chartered Company. Even then his mind was by no means at ease. There seemed still to be a duty to perform to humanity in general. Were he to keep this knowledge to himself, how many lives would be sacrificed which otherwise might have been saved? The capture or death of the Umlimo--would it not be effectual to stop the rising?

and was he not in duty bound to further this end in the interests of his fellow-countrymen? Conscience told him he might do this; for with all the care and secrecy that had attended both his entrance to and exit from the cave of mystery, he could not disguise from himself that, by careful calculations as to time and locality, he might be able to find the spot again. But then would rise before him his pledged word. He had given it when in the power of this extraordinary being, when both his own life and that of Nidia had lain in his hand, and he could not now go back on it--no, not on any consideration. His countrymen must take their chance. He had done all that could reasonably be expected of him in resigning his position and its emoluments.

In doing this, however, it was pre-eminently a case of looking to virtue as its own reward. Certainly it brought him no nearer the realisation of his hopes; for so slender were his private means of existence, that only by the exercise of the most rigid economy could he get along at all, and the necessaries of life, be it remembered, were at famine prices. Decidedly, indeed, his prospects were looking blacker and yet more black.

And what of Nidia herself? As the days went by she seemed to draw no nearer. Seldom now was he suffered to be alone with her, and then only for a minute or so, when an ever-present feeling of _gene_ and flurry would be there to mar the effect of any opportunity he might have had to improve the occasion, and, indeed, he was beginning to regard matters as hopeless. The persistent hostility of Mrs Bateman was ever on the watch to defeat his every move; and as to this, even, there were times when it seemed to him that Nidia was a trifle too acquiescent in the latter's objectionable and scarcely concealed efforts at railing him off. Then, too, Nidia was constantly surrounded by a knot of men, many of them fine gallant-looking fellows, already distinguished for some feat of intrepidity. There was the commander of the relief troop which had brought her in, for instance, and Carb.u.t.t and Tarrant and several others. He, John Ames, so far from being the one to bring her in, as he used to pride himself would be the case, had merely imperilled her the more by his own sheer incautious blundering. Sick at heart, he would fain be lying where he had fallen--a battered, lifeless heap at the base of the great _dwala_.

From this his thoughts would wander to the mysterious rock-dwelling, and to him who inhabited it. Why, and with what object to serve, had the Umlimo spared and tended him? That he might deliver his message to the outside world? Well, he had done that. And then--and the very thought sent a thrill as of needles and pins throughout his whole system. He had delivered the one message, but what of the other enclosure, the one which in some mysterious way concerned himself, the packet marked "B"?

He got it out and eyed it. The Umlimo's words were vividly imprinted in his memory. "The time may come when you will see everything dark around you, and there is no outlook, and life hardly worth prolonging. Then, and then only, open it."

Solemn and weighty now did those words seem. Great Heaven! had not just such a time come? Was not everything dark enough in all conscience, and what outlook did life afford? Yes, he would do it. His heart beat fast as he undid the sealed oilskin wrappings of the packet. What would it contain, and how could such contents in any way conduce to his own welfare? The last wrapping was off, revealing an enclosure. Only a sealed letter, directed to the same names and address as that in the packet marked "A"--a firm in Cape Town--of solicitors or agents, he conjectured. One word of instructions accompanied this, one single word--

"Forward."

"And that is all?" he said to himself, perhaps a trifle disappointedly, turning the enclosure round and round. "Well, that's no trouble. I'll go and do it."

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

THE FIGHT OUTSIDE.

MacFurdon's troop, about two hundred strong, was sweeping up the long slope which ran northward from the township of Bulawayo, and the line it was taking would bring it out a little to the right of Government House and the site of the old kraal.

It was bitterly cold, for the dawn had not yet risen. The insurgents had waxed bolder and yet more bold. They were holding the ridge, and were in calm possession of Government House itself, and now the idea was to teach them that the time had come when they could no longer have everything their own way. To this end it had been decided to get well within striking distance of them at break of day.

MacFurdon's troop was rather a scratch concern, got together in a hurry, but consisting of good material. With it went many volunteers. It was, however, in this instance, as much a reconnoitring party as one for fighting purposes. On its right flank moved a contingent of the Cape Boy corps, feeling the ground towards the Umguza. This, too, was rather a scratch force, composed of every conceivable kind of South African native, but, like the other, of excellent fighting material.

"Say, Ames--what sort of show you think we got?" whispered one of the volunteers aforesaid, as they drew near the crest of the rise. "Now, if they was Indians, I guess we'd boost them out of yon White House of yours in no time, striking them in the dark so."

The speaker was an American, by name Shackleton, commonly called "The Major," by virtue of his having claimed to hold that rank in Uncle Sam's regular army. He likewise claimed to have seen service in the Indian wars on the Plains. In more peaceful times he was a prospector by occupation.

"Show? Oh, the usual thing," answered John Ames. "We shall get in touch with each other, and there'll be a big swap in bullets, and a general hooroosh. They'll all sneak away in the gra.s.s, and we shall get back into camp feeling as if our clothes all wanted letting out. If there are more of them than we can take care of all at once, why, we shan't be feeling so vast."

"That so? You ever fight Matabele before?"

"Yes. I was up here with the column in '93. That used to be the programme then."

The wind was singing in frosty puffs through the gra.s.s, bitterly cold.

Riding along in the darkness, the numbed feet of most there advancing could hardly feel the stirrups. Then upon the raw air arose a sound--a strange, long-drawn wailing sound, not devoid of rhythm, and interspersed every now and then with a kind of humming hiss.

"They are holding a war-dance, so there must be plenty of them there,"

whispered John Ames. "Listen! I can hear the words now."

It was even as he said. They were near enough for that. Louder and louder the war-song of Lobengula swelled forth upon the darkness, coming from just beyond the rise--

"Woz 'ubone! Woz 'ubone, kiti kwazula! Woz 'ubone! Nants 'indaba.

Indaba yemkonto--Jji-jji! Jji-jji!

"Nants 'indaba. Indaba yezizwe. Akwazimuntu. Jji-jji! Jji-jji!

Woz 'ubone! Nants 'indaba. Indaba kwa Matyobane. Jji-jji!

Jji-jji!"

["Jji-jji" is the cry on striking a foe.]

A translation of the war-song:

"Come behold, come behold, at the High Place!

Come behold. That is the tale--the tale of the spear.

That is the tale--the tale of the nation. n.o.body knows.

Come behold. That is the tale--the tale of Matyobane."

The barbaric strophes rolled in a wave of sound, rising higher with each repet.i.tion, and to the measured accompaniment of the dull thunder of stamping feet, the effect was weirdly grand in the darkness.

"It makes something very like nonsense if turned into English,"

whispered John Ames, in reply to his comrade's query, "but it contains allusions well understood by themselves. There isn't anything particularly bloodthirsty about it, either. That sort of hiss, every now and then, is what we shall hear if we get to close quarters."

"Their kind of war-whoop, maybe. I recollect at Wounded Knee Creek, when Big Foot's band made believe to come in--"

But what the speaker recollected at Wounded Knee Creek was destined never to be imparted to John Ames, for at that juncture a peremptory word was pa.s.sed for silence in the ranks.

Now the dawn was beginning to show, revealing eager faces, set and grim, and rifles were grasped anew. Then what happened n.o.body seemed to know individually. A straggling volley was poured into the advancing troop from the crest of the rise, and the bugle rang out the order to charge.

As John Ames had described it, there followed a sort of "hooroosh" in which each man was acting very much to his own hand, as, the troop having whirled over the ridge, the order was given to dismount, and the men stood pouring volley upon volley after the loose ma.s.ses of flying savages.

This, however, was not destined to last. The first shock over of surprise and dismay, the Matabele dropped down into cover and began to return the fire with considerable spirit. They were in some force, too, and it behoved the attacking whites to seize what shelter they could, each man taking advantage of whatever lay to his hand, whether stone or bush or ant heap, or even a depression in the ground.

Then, for a s.p.a.ce, things grew very lively. The sharp spit of rifles was never silent, with the singing of missiles overhead. The enemy had the advantage in the matter of cover, and now and then a dark form, gliding like a snake among the gra.s.s and thorns, would be seen to make a convulsive spring and fall over kicking. One trooper was shot dead, and more than one wounded, and meanwhile ma.s.ses of the enemy could be descried working up to the south-west. Reinforcements? It looked like it, remembering that the force at first engaged was not inconsiderable.

The word went forth to retreat.

This was done in good order--at first. But now appeared a great outflanking ma.s.s, pouring up from the northern side, and its object was clear. A long wire fence ran down from the apex of the rise. It was necessary to retreat round the upper end of this. Did this outflanking ma.s.s reach it first, the white force would probably be destroyed, for they could not get their horses through the wire, and would have crushing odds to overwhelm them. It became a race for the end of the fence, which, however, the cool intrepidity and sound judgment of the leaders prevented from being a helter-skelter one.

John Ames and "The Major" and a trooper were on the extreme left flank, now become the right one, all intent on a knot of savages, who were keeping them busily employed from a thick bit of thorn bush, and did not at once become alive to the retreat. When they did, they became alive to something else, and that was that by nothing short of a miracle could they gain the upper end of that fence in time.

"Your horse jump, Ames?" said the American.

"Don't know. Never tried."