"Not since the son of Tondusa a.s.sumed the head-ring," answered the other.
"And now a greater is about to a.s.sume the head-ring," went on the first speaker, "even Ncute, the son of Nondwana."
"The brother of the Great Great One?"
"The same," a.s.serted the first speaker, in that sing-song hum in which natives, when among themselves, will carry on a conversation for hours.
Now the listener was interested indeed. On the mysterious subject of "The Spider" the Ba-gcatya had been close as death. No hint or indication tending to throw light upon it would they let fall in reply to any question, direct or indirect. Now he was going to hear something.
These men, unaware of his presence, and talking freely among themselves, would certainly afford more than a clew to it. Nondwana, the king"s brother, he suspected of being not over favourably disposed towards himself, possibly through jealousy.
"That will be when the second moon is at full?" continued one of the talkers.
"It will. Ha! The Spider will receive a brave offering. Yet how shall it devour one who bears its Sign?"
"It may not," rejoined the other. "_Hau!_ that will in truth be a test--if the sign is real."
_One who bears its Sign!_ The listener felt every drop of blood within him turn cold, freeze from head to foot. What sort of devil-G.o.d could it be from which this nation derived its name, and which these were talking about as one that devoured men?
_He that bears its Sign!_ The words could apply to none other than himself. He had deduced that, although the Ba-gcatya held cannibalism in abhorrence, yet from time to time human sacrifices of very awesome and mysterious nature took place, and that on certain momentous occasions--the accession or death of a king, of an heir to any branch of the royal house, or such a one as this now under discussion--the admission to full privileges of manhood of a scion of the same. And the sacrifice on this occasion was to consist of himself? To this end he had been spared--even honoured.
"It will in truth be a test, for some doubt that the Sign as worn by this stranger hath any magic at all," continued one of the talkers. "If he comes out unharmed--_hau_! that will be a marvel, indeed--a marvel, indeed."
"_E-he!_" they a.s.sented. Then they fell to talking of other things, and soon the concealed listener heard them rise up and depart.
Laurence decided to wait no more for his companions. He wanted to be alone and think this matter out. So when the voices of the talkers had fairly faded beyond earshot he left the cl.u.s.ter of trees on the farther side and took his way down the mountain slope.
A ghastly fear was upon him. The horror and mystery of the thing got upon even his iron nerves--the suddenness of it too, just when he had lulled himself into a complete sense of security. Had he learned in like fashion that he was to be slain in an ordinary way at a given time it would not have shaken him beyond the ordinary. But this thing--there was something so devilish about it. What did it mean? Was it some grotesque idol worked by mechanism, even as in the old pagan temples--to which human sacrifices were offered? Or--for he could not candidly discredit all the weird and marvellous tales and traditions of some of these up-country tribes, degraded and man-eating as they were--was it some unknown and terrifying monster inhabiting the dens and caves of the earth? Whatever it was, he knew too well, of course, that the coincidence which had so miraculously resulted in the sparing of his life at the hands of the victorious Ba-gcatya, reeking with slaughter, would stand him in nowhere here. He remembered the mystery hanging over the fate of Lutali, and those horrible beings who had hauled the Arab to his doom, whatever it was, who indeed might well const.i.tute the priesthood of the unknown devil-G.o.d.
Surely never indeed had earth presented a fairer scene than this upon which the adventurer"s eyes rested, as he made his way down the mountain-side. The calm, peaceful beauty of the day, the golden sunlight flooding the plain beneath, the great circle of Imvungayo, and the--by contrast--tiny circles of lesser kraals scattered about the valley or crowning some mountain spur, and, mellow upon the stillness, the distant low of cattle--the singing of women at work mingling with the soft voices of a mult.i.tude of doves in cornlands and the surrounding forest-trees. Yet now in the white peaks towering to the cloudless heavens, in the black and craggy rifts, in the wide, rolling, partially-wooded plains--the hunter"s paradise--this man saw only a gloomy wizard circle, inclosing some horrible inferno, the throne of the frightful demon-G.o.d of this extraordinary race.
Then it occurred to Laurence that he had better not let this thing get too much upon his nerves. It was the result of inaction, he told himself. Several months of rest and tranquillity had begun to turn him soft. That would not do. He had got to look matters in the face fairly and squarely. The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost certainly be a fearful fate was set for the fall of the second moon, the talkers had said--but of this he had been already aware, for the chief Nondwana and his son were both well known to him. That would give him a little over six weeks. Escape? Nothing short of a miracle could effect that, he told himself, remembering the immense tract of desolate country surrounding the fastnesses of the Ba-gcatya, and the ferocious cannibal hordes which lay beyond these, and who indeed would wreak a vengeance of the most barbarous kind upon their old enemy and scourge, the slaver-chief, did they find him alone, and to that extent no longer formidable, in their midst.
The friendship of the king? No. That was based on superst.i.tion, even as the friendship of the entire nation. Even it was a.s.sumed for an end.
Again, should he boldly challenge the pretensions of the demon-G.o.d, whatever it might be, and a.s.serting himself to be the real one, offer to slay the horror in open conflict? Not a moment"s reflection was needed, however, to convince him of the utter impracticability of this scheme.
The cherished superst.i.tion of a great nation was not to be uprooted in any such rough-and-ready fashion. The only way of escape left open to him was that of death--death swift and sudden--the death of the suicide--to escape the greater horror. But from this he shrank. The grim hardness of his recent training had nerved him rather to face peril than to avoid it. He did not care to contemplate such a way out of the dilemma. He was cornered. There was no way of escape.
And then, as he walked thus, thinking, and thinking hard, in the fierce, desperate, clearheadedness of a strong, cool-nerved man face to face with despair, a voice--a female voice, lifted in song--sounded across his path, nearer and nearer. And now a wave of hope, of relief, surged through Laurence Stanninghame"s heart, for there flooded in upon him, as with an inspiration, a way out of the situation. For he knew both the voice and the singer, and at that moment a turn in the bushes brought the latter and himself face to face.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] A term of deference frequently used in addressing one of the royal family.
CHAPTER XXIII.
LINDELA.
A woman, young, tall, perfectly proportioned, light of colour, and with the bright and pleasing expression common among the well-born of the Ba-gcatya maidens, enhanced by large l.u.s.trous eyes, lips parted in a smile half-startled, half-coquettish, revealing a row of teeth of dazzling whiteness of unrivalled evenness. She wore a _mutya_ or skirt of beautiful bead-work, and a soft robe of dressed fawn-skin but half concealed the splendid outlines of her frame. Withal there was an aspect of dignity in her erect carriage, and the pose of her head, which the Grecian effect of the _impiti_, or cone into which her hair was gathered above the scalp, went far to enhance. She was not alone--two other young women, also attractive of aspect, being in attendance upon her, though these held somewhat in the background.
"Greeting, Nyonyoba," she began, in a sweet and musical voice. "I was startled for a moment--here where I expected to find none."
"To thee, greeting, daughter of the great," returned Laurence, for this girl was a princess of the highest rank in the nation, being, in fact, a daughter of Nondwana the king"s brother--that same chief whose son"s accession to manhood was to be the occasion of his own departure to another sphere. Nor was it, indeed, the first time these two had talked together.
"And why are you sad and heavy of countenance, Nyonyoba? Was the hunt bad--the game scarce?" she went on, with a quick searching glance into his eyes.
"Not so," he answered. "Those who are with me bring on much ivory for the king"s treasury. For yourself, Lindela, I found a bright-plumaged and rare bird, which I will stuff and set up for you."
The girl uttered a cry of delight, and her face brightened. It so happened that Laurence was something of a taxidermist, and had already stuffed a few birds and small animals for the chief"s daughter, who was as delighted with her increasing "museum" as any child could have been.
Now, in her unfeigned glee over the prospect of a new specimen, Lindela looked extremely attractive; and noting it, an unconscious softness had crept into the man"s tone. Even the girls behind noticed it, and whispered to each other, sn.i.g.g.e.ring:
"_Hau! Isityeli!_ Quite a wooer! Nyonyoba is hoeing up new land."
"Withdraw a little from these, Lindela," he said in a lowered tone; "I would talk."
The chief"s daughter made a barely perceptible sign, but her attendants understood it, and remained where they stood.
"The success or failure of a hunt is a small thing. Such does not render a man heavy of countenance," he went on, when they were beyond earshot.
"What does, then?" said the girl, raising her large eyes swiftly to his.
"Sorrow--parting. Such are the things which make life dark. I have dwelt long among your people, and at the prospect of leaving them my heart is sore."
As the last words left his lips, Laurence learned in just one brief flash of a second exactly what he wanted to know. But the look of startled pain in Lindela"s face gave way to one of surprise.
"Of leaving them?" she echoed. "Has the Great Great One, then, ordered you to begone, Nyonyoba?"
"Not yet. But it will be so. Listen! At the full of the second moon."
A cry escaped her. She understood. For a moment the self-control of her savage ancestors entirely forsook her. She became the child of nature--all human.
"It shall not be! It shall not be!"
The pa.s.sion, the abandonment in the soft, liquid Zulu tone--in the large eyes, transforming the whole attractive face--touched even him--penetrated even the scaly armour which encased his hardened heart.
Considerations of expediency no longer reigned there alone as he stood face to face with the chief"s daughter. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood, he decided, gazing with unfeigned admiration upon her splendid frame, upon the unconscious grace of her every movement.
"If I go, I return not ever," he went on, resolved to strike while the iron was hot--to strike as hard as he knew how. "Yet how to remain--for the brother of the king is so great a chief that he who would approach him with _lobola_[3] would need to own half the wealth of the Ba-gcatya people. Now I, who owned much wealth, am yet poor to-day, for the Ba-gcatya have killed all my slaves, and the king has taken my ivory and goods."
The girl"s eyes sparkled. Perhaps she too had learned something she wanted to know; indeed, it must have been so, for her whole face was lit up with a gladsome light, a wonderfully attractive light.
"Perchance the king will return some of it," she said. "Yet you are a white man, and strong, Nyonyoba--are all white men like you, I wonder?--and can overcome all difficulties. Listen! You shall not leave us at the full of the second moon. Now, farewell--and--forget not my name."[4]
There was a grandeur of resolution in her tone, in her glance, as she uttered these last words, her l.u.s.trous eyes, wide and clear, meeting his full. Laurence, standing there gazing after the tall, retreating form of the chief"s daughter, felt something like a sense of exultation stealing over him. His scheme seemed already to glow with success. He had suspected for some time that Lindela regarded him with more than favour; and indeed, while weighing the prospect of casting in his lot with the Ba-gcatya, he had already in his own mind marked her out to share it.
Now, however, the thing had become imperative. In order to save not merely his life, but to escape a fate which brooded over him with a peculiarly haunting horror, he had got to do this thing, to take to wife, according to the customs of the Ba-gcatya, the daughter of Nondwana, the niece of the king. Then not a man in the nation dare raise a hand against him; and the dour priesthood of the Spider might look further for their victim--and might find in their selection one much more remote from the throne.
And now that he was face to face with the prospect, it struck him as anything but an unpleasing one. Such an alliance would place him among the most powerful chiefs in the land. All the ambition in the adventurer"s soul warmed to the prospect. To be high in authority among this fine race, part-ruler over this splendid country, sport in abundance, and that of the most enthralling kind--war occasionally; to dwell, too, in the strong revivifying air of these grand uplands! Why, a man might live forever under such conditions.