The place was bushy, but not very thickly so. Spreading out they entered the scrub by the only side on which he could have disappeared.
"There he is!" cried Hoste suddenly, when they had gone about fifty yards.
Slinking along in a crouching att.i.tude, slipping from bush to bush, they spied the poor fellow. That was all right. There would be no difficulty now.
No difficulty? Was there not? As soon as he saw that he was discovered he began to run--to run like a buck. And then, to their consternation, they perceived that his legs were free. By some means or other he had contrived, with a lunatic"s stealthy cunning, to cut the _reim_ which had secured them. They could see the severed ends flapping as he ran.
"Well, we"ve got to catch him, poor chap, so here goes," said Hoste, starting with all his might in pursuit.
But the maniac wormed in and out of the bushes with marvellous rapidity.
Shelton had tripped and come a headlong cropper, and Hoste was becoming blown, but they seemed to get no nearer. Suddenly the bush came to an end. Beyond lay a gradual acclivity, open and gra.s.sy, ending abruptly in air.
"Heavens!" cried Eustace in a tone of horror. "The _krantz_!"
His tones found an echo in those of his companions. The precipice in front was a continuation of the lofty perpendicular cliff which fell away from the front of their halting place. Any one who should go over that giddy brink would leave no sort of shadow of uncertainty as to his fate. They stopped in their pursuit.
"Tom!" cried Eustace persuasively, "Come back, old chap. It"s going to rain like fits in a minute. You"ll be much snugger at the camp."
The lunatic, now half-way across the open, stopped at the voice and stood listening. Then he ran forward again, but at a decreased pace.
Heavens! He was only twenty yards from the brink. His pursuers were more than twice that distance behind. Any move forward would inevitably have the effect of driving him over.
"What _are_ we to do?" gasped Hoste, exhausted by the mingled exertion and excitement.
"We had better leave him alone, and watch him from where he can"t see us," was Eustace"s reply.
The poor fellow had now gained the very brink. Then he turned, but his pursuers had deftly concealed themselves behind a small bush which opportunely grew in the midst of the open. His hands were still tied fast, and the gag was in his mouth. If only they could have reached him.
He stood for a moment, balanced on the edge of the abyss, looking _into it_. Then he turned again. There was a horrible leer of triumphant insanity upon the distorted face as his gaze failed to discover the presence of anybody likely to prove hostile.
The thunder rolled out heavily from overhead, and the figure of the maniac stood in bold relief against the leaden sky, photographed in black relief against the red flashes of lightning which played with well-nigh unintermittent incandescence athwart the storm cloud beyond.
There he stood, his features working horribly, the tangled ma.s.ses of his beard and hair floating in the fitful gusts which came whistling up from the dizzy height. Never, to their dying day, would the spectators forget the sight. Yet they could do nothing.
With a choking cackle, like an attempt at a laugh, the maniac turned again to the awful height. The spectators held their breaths and their blood ran cold. Then they saw him gather his legs beneath him and spring far out into s.p.a.ce.
Petrified with horror, they rushed to the brink and peered over. The smooth rock face fell without a break down to the tree-tops at a dizzy depth beneath. These were still quivering faintly as though recently disturbed. But at that moment heaven"s artillery roared in one vast deafening, crackling roll. The air was ablaze with vivid blue flame, and driven before the tornado blast, sheet upon sheet of deluging rain crashed down upon them, beating them to the earth by the very weight and fury of its volume.
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT.
ENVOI.
Ring we the curtain down--for our tale is ended and we have no desire to point a moral thereto. Years have gone by, and new homesteads have risen upon the ashes of the old ones; and flocks and herds are once more grazing in security upon those gra.s.sy plains, those pleasant plains, so sunny, so peaceful, so smiling.
And how the broken and decimated tribes were settled on new locations, and how the ringleaders and prominent fighting men of those who owned British allegiance were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, and how the Gaika location was parcelled out into farms, and as such leased by the Department of Crown Lands to white settlers; and how in consideration of certain acts of forbearance and humanity exercised during the period of hostilities and resulting in the saving of several European lives, the sentences of imprisonment pa.s.sed upon Nteya and Ncanduku were remitted--mainly through the exertions of Eustace Milne-- and the two sub-chiefs were allowed to rejoin the banished remnant of their tribe in its new location beyond the Kei--are not all these things matters of history?
And how the sad relics of poor Tom Carhayes, his fate now under no sort of doubt, were gathered together beneath the great _krantz_ in the Bashi valley on the morning after his insane and fatal leap, and conveyed to the settlement for burial, and how Eustace Milne, punctilious to a hair in his dealings with his barbarous neighbours, had paid over the stipulated ransom, even to the very last hoof, to the relatives of Hlangani, even though the contingency of that warrior"s demise was in no wise provided for in the original agreement--these things, too, are they not graven in the memories of all concerned?
But if, to some, the war has brought ruin and death and bereavement, it has entailed vastly different results upon two other persons at any rate; and those, needless to say, the two with whom our story has been mainly concerned. For their good fortune has been great--greater, we fear, than they had any right to expect. They are flourishing exceedingly, and now, after years of union, it still seems to them that they have only just begun to enter upon that glowing vista of lifelong happiness, down which they had gazed so wistfully in the old, troubled, and well-nigh hopeless time. But after sorrow and heaviness cometh joy--sometimes. And it has come to these two, by a weird irony of Fate, has come through the agency of a wild and sanguinary drama--through the consistent ferocity of a vindictive barbarian and the logical outcome thereof--even Hlangani"s Revenge.