Into the Unknown: A Romance of South Africa

by Lawrence Fletcher

  CHAPTER NINETEEN.

  RETRIBUTION.

  Grenville was so obviously suffering from hunger, fatigue, and exposure,that his friends, eager as they were to question him, forebore, for hisappearance was such--especially the corpse-like hue of his face--thatAmaxosa might well be excused from being startled into believing him aghost. Finishing the welcome food placed before him, Grenville went tosleep with the last morsel between his teeth, and would have fallenforward into the fire had the watchful Zulu not interposed his readyarm.

  And now, with their hero amongst them, it was astonishing what a changehad come over the little party. All were once again positivelycheerful, in spite of the depressing effect produced by the sight ofpoor little Rose's body, which had been laid by itself in one of thecaves.

  The mere fact that Grenville's active and energetic personality wasagain present with them was such a relief that all slept peacefully, andat breakfast next morning the re-united ones were, Leigh said, evenhopeful of their ultimate success.

  Grenville smiled peculiarly, but merely told them that he had been inthe water for the whole of one night, and had almost died of exposure;but, though weak and ill, had managed to scramble up the cliffs by arocky path, and had eventually regained the glade, where he had foundpoor Rose's body lying among the tombs. How he had ever reached theplateau in his half-dying condition, still carrying his ghastly burden,was a miracle; but it was one of the finest traits in his character,which went to prove what a combination of pluck and determination theman was.

  Leigh noted, too, that his countenance was harder now, and looked older;and knowing his cousin as he did, he felt certain that he had even nowconceived a fearful vengeance, which nothing short of the cold hand ofdeath would prevent him wreaking upon the wretched Mormons.

  Stern though Grenville was, he fairly broke down and sobbed when Dorabrought him Rose's packet, addressed to himself. "Ay," he said at last,"I will accept it, for her sake; and woe to every Mormon I come across,in any part of the world, now or hereafter. Dearly shall the wholeaccursed brood pay me for the loss of her who loved me so devotedly andgave her life to save me."

  That day Grenville kept all employed in baking huge clay balls, which hefilled with powder, balls, stones, and _debris_ of all sorts--thesebeing the best obtainable substitutes for hand-grenades.

  "They will," he said to Leigh, "not meddle with us just yet; the attackwill, I expect, come off in three or four days' time, the interim beingemployed in the manufacture of more infernal machines--but withoutgunpowder this time, for they haven't a grain of it left, thanks to thesuccess of my gunpowder plot."

  The result proved that he was right, and on the second night Grenvilleled Amaxosa on one side, and held a long and private conference withhim--interrupted now and then, as Leigh and his betrothed could hear, bygenuine bursts of astonishment from the Zulu. "Ow!" they heard him say,"ow, my father, thou art indeed a wise and cunning man, and I, Amaxosa,am thy faithful son." But when the conference terminated, and Grenvillequietly opened the breast of his shirt, and withdrew the charm he hadtaken from Myzukulwa's neck, handing it to the Zulu, the chief's delightknew no bounds, and he poured forth in fluent and sonorous Zulu thethanks of the whole people of the Undi for the preservation of thismighty token, which belonged only to the chiefs of his own most ancienthouse, and which established his own precedence and seniority in thenation beyond the possibility of a doubt, and had indeed "made his heartvery glad."

  What, however, was the surprise of Leigh and Dora when Amaxosa, aftershaking hands cordially with Grenville, gravely saluted them both, tookhis weapons, and disappeared down the face of the rock. Nor would ourfriend answer any of their eager questions, merely telling them that theZulu had gone upon an errand which, though fraught with some littledanger, should, he thought, be easily and speedily executed; and if itwere so, would, he believed, result, not only in the speedy release fromEast Utah of the whole party, but in the most fearful vengeance upon theMormons for the death of poor Rose, whom they had reverently buried thatvery day.

  "Our only difficulty," said he, in conclusion, "will be to hold theplateau long enough to let Amaxosa execute his part of my schemeperfectly; but I could not spare him before, and he will make all thehaste he can--so we must do our best."

  The men kept watch by turns until dawn, and then both slept whilst Dorakept guard for a couple of hours; and after all had breakfasted, theMormons were seen approaching in a compact mass, which, as Grenvilleestimated, must contain the whole nation; and at this he, to hiscousin's surprise, expressed his satisfaction.

  Our friend now descended to artifice, blackening his face and hands withburnt wood, in order to pass at a distance for one of the Zulus, as hehad no wish at present to reveal his own dreaded identity to the enemy.

  As soon as the masses got within a thousand yards, the repeaters openedfire, killing the Mormons at a longer range than they had ever beforebeen treated to; still, however, the advance was steadily persevered in,and Grenville soon saw at least five hundred Mormons established withinthree hundred yards of his position, and almost entirely protected fromhis fire by immense rubber half-houses on wheels, which gradually,though continually, approached nearer and nearer to the rock. Watchingthese carefully, it soon appeared that the game was to get the shelterclose up to the plateau and then charge up the path in an irresistiblestream. The plan was well devised, but the thorn-bushes of Amaxosaruined it, and the twenty picked Mormons who tried the first rushperished miserably to a man.

  The shooting of the besieged was beautifully accurate, for, in no fearof their fire being returned, they were able to expose their persons atwill, and aim with murderous precision.

  Now, however, two houses were planted at one time, and as two men, evenwith Winchesters and posted behind a zareba, are rather short odds tocope with forty, Grenville washed his face, got ready a shell, and, asthe Mormons charged, coolly stepped up to the very verge of the rock,and threw the lighted bomb amongst them. None who heard the awful yellof terror which went up from these miserable and superstitious men couldever forget it, and the whole Mormon army echoed the name of Grenvillein a shout which almost drowned the thundering and deadly explosion ofthe first shell. For such decidedly amateur handiwork, the missileacted very well indeed and between its results and the Winchesters,which Dora and Leigh plied unceasingly, not half a dozen men survivedthe second charge.

  A lull followed, but at three o'clock in the afternoon the foe againmoved up, and fought with increased vigour and renewed cunning. Adashing charge carried three men out of ten up to the first line ofthorn-bushes, into which they each slipped a lighted torch; and thoughall were instantly picked off by the rifles, their work was done, for inless than ten minutes the bushes were destroyed by fire, and an attemptto destroy the second line in the same way followed, but failedignominiously, owing to the magnificent shooting of the beleagueredparty.

  Cunning, nevertheless, matched science, and by putting on rushes ofthirty, forty, and even fifty men, the three lines of bushes weredestroyed, the last charge alone costing the foe forty men, of whom morethan a half were destroyed by one of Grenville's bombs. Now, however,there was but the last line of bush which fringed the plateau, and witha terrific shout a full hundred Mormons rushed up the path and made forthis, whilst the defenders rained shot and shell upon them. Still, whatcould two men and one woman do? Nearly forty men fell, but the bushesblazed; and now the whole Mormon army drew together at the foot of theslope, prepared to charge the moment the fire died out.

  The cousins shook hands, and Grenville once again casting a longingglance down the valley, and at the now sinking sun, set his teeth, andprepared to die hard.

  See, they come! Now to it, good rifles. Handsomely done, Leigh; shellafter shell, brave Grenville. Ha! there goes Warden with a bulletthrough his brain. Well aimed, Dora Winfield! That shot has settledmany an old score of thy dear father's.

  Alas! alas! all is lost. They are up--they touch the very plateau,
whenGrenville again drives them back with a terrific charge, cryingout--"Hurrah, old man; bear up another moment--look yonder." Leighlooks, and so do the Mormons, and with one accord they turn and fly downthe rock--and why? Out yonder, under the setting sun, what do theysee?--what do they hear?

  Woe! woe! woe! to the Mormon host, for up the valley, at a long slingingtrot, comes the crack regiment of the famous warriors of the Undi, ledon to the charge by Amaxosa, the chief of their ancient house. TheSaints form up in square against the rocks, heedless of their white foesabove, as they try to meet the resistless charge of the Zulu impi, andstem the awful torrent which rolls up in a dark compact tide and flingsitself upon them, even as the surf dashes itself against, against, up,up--ay, and right over the rocky shore. Then the awful battle-shout ofthe Undi is raised, and before the sun sets red in the western sky theentire Mormon army has been annihilated, and the victorious Zulu chiefis grasping the hand of his "great white father," whom he introduces tohis brother-officers as the man who originated this mighty scheme ofstern retribution and wholesale slaughter.

  The Zulus respectfully take Grenville's hand in turn, and gatheringround our hero--whose magnificent exploits their chief has related tothem, and whom they worship in consideration of the hundreds of bodiespiled up on the slopes of the plateau--they give a tremendous shout, andannounce that he has been elected their brother and a perpetual chief ofthe Sons of the Undi, and that his name henceforth amongst them will be"T'chaka, the great white father of his faithful people."

  As the little party of friends sat over their fire at the plateau thatnight, whilst their sable allies kept watch below, Grenville told thewhole thrilling story of his plunge into the River of Death.

  Being a practised diver and swimmer, he had gone into the gulf feetforemost; but dropping from such a fearful height, and knowing that thewater was low, owing to its being the very end of the dry season, he hadexpected to be killed by being dashed against the rocks below thesurface; fortunately for him, however, that portion of the chasm whichhe had selected for his awful leap, chanced to overhang a deep stillpool, into which Grenville had dropped, and from which he had emergedalmost unharmed; but, being immediately carried away by the river, hehad, in the darkness, received several nasty knocks which almostdeprived him of his senses. When he had been in the water for upwardsof an hour, silently floating along with the stream, as he could nowherefind foothold upon the slippery sides of the cliff, our hero detectedthe current quickening; soon the stream grew faster and noisier, and allat once he noticed that he was no longer able to see the sky above, but_was drifting along underground_. In the awful horror of that momentGrenville almost went mad. He commenced a mighty and useless struggleagainst the resistless current, but found himself borne along like afeather.

  Just, however, as he was losing hope, he struck first his foot, and thenhis knee, against something hard, and dropping into an upright posturefound that he had been, all the time, attempting to swim in less thanthree feet of water, which just here ran like a mill-race.

  Groping about, our friend at last succeeded in getting on a rock halfout of the water, and hung there for hours, with his person benumbedfrom head to foot, and his senses paralysed. "He had," he said, "cometo the conclusion that nothing could be worse than his present position,and that he might as well drift wherever the stream chose to take him,"when all at once he noticed the dark, swift waters changing colour, andwith a cry of joy recognised the fact that instead of being absolutelyunderground, he was only shut in by immense cliffs, thickly wooded totheir very summits, and which all but entirely excluded the glad lightof day; and day it was, the sun was up, and soon sent his welcome shaftsof light streaming through the interlaced branches overhead, lightingthe gloomy chasm in dim and ghostly fashion.

  Pulling himself together, Grenville slipped back into the water, and,plucky fellow that he was, waded down the stream for about two hours,"having," he said, "a hazy notion that he was doing the right thing byinstinct."

  At the end of this time he entered a tunnel, and having groped his wayalong it for about a mile, had almost decided to turn back, when hesuddenly passed an angle, and again saw daylight glimmering in thedistance. All this time the water kept a uniform depth of about twelveinches only, and was thick with a curious kind of subaqueous weed, whichgave him the impression that he was walking on soft damp moss.

  Finally he reached the end of the tunnel, and was about to emergo intoopen daylight, when his hurried footsteps were arrested by the sound ofa human voice speaking in the Zulu tongue.

  Creeping cautiously nearer to the entrance, Grenville found that thesound proceeded from two men, whom he at once recognised by theirgeneral "get-up" as warriors of the Undi; and listening to theconversation which ensued, he learned that a large portion of the tribewas outlying in that district, and had decided to camp for some days intheir present position and prosecute hunting operations before the wetseason set in.

  For another hour Grenville waited, not daring to introduce himself tothe Zulus, and, as soon as the pair moved away, stole out and foundhimself in a lovely valley, which, as he had anticipated, sprang almostdirectly from the mountain-range, and along which the River of Death,now glimmering bright and lovely in the sunshine, flowed on towards thesea. He had escaped from East Utah, _and was on the outer side of themountains_.

  Picking some wild gourds, he filled his empty stomach with these, andthen quickly retraced his steps through the tunnel, feeling certain nowthat in some way he could ascend the cliffs and regain East Utah, as itwas clear the herds of game were able to do so. The event proved thathe was right, for less than a mile up the glen he discovered a steep,narrow, but well-trodden pathway to the higher inside lands, and finallyreached the plateau as we have seen, bringing with him the body of poorlittle Rose.