Maiwa\'s Revenge

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MAIWA'S REVENGE

OR THE WAR OF THE LITTLE HAND


by H. Rider Haggard




PREFACE

It may be well to state that the incident of the "Thing that bites"
recorded in this tale is not an effort of the imagination. On the
contrary, it is "plagiarized." Mandara, a well-known chief on the east
coast of Africa, has such an article, _and uses it_. In the same way the
wicked conduct attributed to Wambe is not without a precedent. T'Chaka,
the Zulu Napoleon, never allowed a child of his to live. Indeed he went
further, for on discovering that his mother, Unandi, was bringing up one
of his sons in secret, like Nero he killed her, and with his own hand.





MAIWA'S REVENGE




I--GOBO STRIKES

One day--it was about a week after Allan Quatermain told me his story
of the "Three Lions," and of the moving death of Jim-Jim--he and I were
walking home together on the termination of a day's shooting. He owned
about two thousand acres of shooting round the place he had bought in
Yorkshire, over a hundred of which were wood. It was the second year of
his occupation of the estate, and already he had reared a very fair head
of pheasants, for he was an all-round sportsman, and as fond of shooting
with a shot-gun as with an eight-bore rifle. We were three guns that
day, Sir Henry Curtis, Old Quatermain, and myself; but Sir Henry was
obliged to leave in the middle of the afternoon in order to meet
his agent, and inspect an outlying farm where a new shed was wanted.
However, he was coming back to dinner, and going to bring Captain Good
with him, for Brayley Hall was not more than two miles from the Grange.

We had met with very fair sport, considering that we were only
going through outlying cover for cocks. I think that we had killed
twenty-seven, a woodcock and a leash of partridges which we secured
out of a driven covey. On our way home there lay a long narrow spinney,
which was a very favourite "lie" for woodcocks, and generally held a
pheasant or two as well.

"Well, what do you say?" said old Quatermain, "shall we beat through
this for a finish?"

I assented, and he called to the keeper who was following with a little
knot of beaters, and told him to beat the spinney.

"Very well, sir," answered the man, "but it's getting wonderful dark,
and the wind's rising a gale. It will take you all your time to hit a
woodcock if the spinney holds one."

"You show us the woodcocks, Jeffries," answered Quatermain quickly, for
he never liked being crossed in anything to do with sport, "and we will
look after shooting them."

The man turned and went rather sulkily. I heard him say to the
under-keeper, "He's pretty good, the master is, I'm not saying he isn't,
but if he kills a woodcock in this light and wind, I'm a Dutchman."

I think that Quatermain heard him too, though he said nothing. The wind
was rising every minute, and by the time the beat begun it blew big
guns. I stood at the right-hand corner of the spinney, which curved
round somewhat, and Quatermain stood at the left, about forty paces from
me. Presently an old cock pheasant came rocketing over me, looking as
though the feathers were being blown out of his tail. I missed him clean
with the first barrel, and was never more pleased with myself in my life
than when I doubled him up with the second, for the shot was not an
easy one. In the faint light I could see Quatermain nodding his head in
approval, when through the groaning of the trees I heard the shouts of
the beaters, "Cock forward, cock to the right." Then came a whole volley
of shouts, "Woodcock to the right," "Cock to the left," "Cock over."

I looked up, and presently caught sight of one of the woodcocks coming
down the wind upon me like a flash. In that dim light I could not follow
all his movements as he zigzagged through the naked tree-tops; indeed I
could see him when his wings flitted up. Now he was passing me--_bang_,
and a flick of the wing, I had missed him; _bang_ again. Surely he was
down; no, there he went to my left.

"Cock to you," I shouted, stepping forward so as to get Quatermain
between me and the faint angry light of the dying day, for I wanted to
see if he would "wipe my eye." I knew him to be a wonderful shot, but I
thought that cock would puzzle him.

I saw him raise his gun ever so little and bend forward, and at that
moment out flashed two woodcocks into the open, the one I had missed to
his right, and the other to his left.

At the same time a fresh shout arose of, "Woodcock over," and looking
down the spinney I saw a third bird high up in the air, being blown
along like a brown and whirling leaf straight over Quatermain's head.
And then followed the prettiest little bit of shooting that I ever saw.
The bird to the right was flying low, not ten yards from the line of
a hedgerow, and Quatermain took him first because he would become
invisible the soonest of any. Indeed, nobody who had not his hawk's eyes
could have seen to shoot at all. But he saw the bird well enough to kill
it dead as a stone. Then turning sharply, he pulled on the second bird
at about forty-five yards, and over he went. By this time the third
woodcock was nearly over him, and flying very high, straight down the
wind, a hundred feet up or more, I should say. I saw him glance at it as
he opened his gun, threw out the right cartridge and slipped in another,
turning round as he did so. By this time the cock was nearly fifty yards
away from him, and travelling like a flash. Lifting his gun he fired
after it, and, wonderful as the shot was, killed it dead. A tearing gust
of wind caught the dead bird, and blew it away like a leaf torn from an
oak, so that it fell a hundred and thirty yards off or more.

"I say, Quatermain," I said to him when the beaters were up, "do you
often do this sort of thing?"

"Well," he answered, with a dry smile, "the last time I had to load
three shots as quickly as that was at rather larger game. It was at
elephants. I killed them all three as dead as I killed those woodcocks;
but it very nearly went the other way, I can tell you; I mean that they
very nearly killed me."

Just at that moment the keeper came up, "Did you happen to get one of
them there cocks, sir?" he said, with the air of a man who did not in
the least expect an answer in the affirmative.

"Well, yes, Jeffries," answered Quatermain; "you will find one of them
by the hedge, and another about fifty yards out by the plough there to
the left----"

The keeper had turned to go, looking a little astonished, when
Quatermain called him back.

"Stop a bit, Jeffries," he said. "You see that pollard about one hundred
and forty yards off? Well, there should be another woodcock down in a
line with it, about sixty paces out in the field."

"Well, if that bean't the very smartest bit of shooting," murmured
Jeffries, and departed.

After that we went home, and in due course Sir Henry Curtis and Captain
Good arrived for dinner, the latter arrayed in the tightest and most
ornamental dress-suit I ever saw. I remember that the waistcoat was
adorned with five pink coral buttons.

It was a very pleasant dinner. Old Quatermain was in an excellent
humour; induced, I think, by the recollection of his triumph over the
doubting Jeffries. Good, too, was full of anecdotes. He told us a most
miraculous story of how he once went shooting ibex in Kashmir. These
ibex, according to Good, he stalked early and late for four entire days.
At last on the morning of the fifth day he succeeded in getting within
range of the flock, which consisted of a magnificent old ram with horns
so long that I am afraid to mention their measure, and five or six
females. Good crawled upon his stomach, painfully taking shelter behind
rocks, till he was within two hundred yards; then he drew a fine bead
upon the old ram. At this moment, however, a diversion occurred. Some
wandering native of the hills appeared upon a distant mountain top. The
females turned, and rushing over a rock vanished from Good's ken. But
the old ram took a bolder course. In front of him stretched a mighty
crevasse at least thirty feet in width. He went at it with a bound.
Whilst he was in mid-air Good fired, and killed him dead. The ram turned
a complete somersault in space, and fell in such fashion that his horns
hooked themselves upon a big projection of the opposite cliffs. There he
hung, till Good, after a long and painful detour, gracefully dropped a
lasso over him and fished him up.

This moving tale of wild adventure was received with undeserved
incredulity.

"Well," said Good, "if you fellows won't believe my story when I tell
it--a perfectly true story mind--perhaps one of you will give us a
better; I'm not particular if it is true or not." And he lapsed into a
dignified silence.

"Now, Quatermain," I said, "don't let Good beat you, let us hear how you
killed those elephants you were talking about this evening just after
you shot the woodcocks."

"Well," said Quatermain, dryly, and with something like a twinkle in
his brown eyes, "it is very hard fortune for a man to have to follow on
Good's 'spoor.' Indeed if it were not for that running giraffe which, as
you will remember, Curtis, we saw Good bowl over with a Martini rifle
at three hundred yards, I should almost have said that this was an
impossible tale."

Here Good looked up with an air of indignant innocence.

"However," he went on, rising and lighting his pipe, "if you fellows
like, I will spin you a yarn. I was telling one of you the other night
about those three lions and how the lioness finished my unfortunate
'voorlooper,' Jim-Jim, the boy whom we buried in the bread-bag.

"Well, after this little experience I thought that I would settle down a
bit, so I entered upon a venture with a man who, being of a speculative
mind, had conceived the idea of running a store at Pretoria upon
strictly cash principles. The arrangement was that I should find
the capital and he the experience. Our partnership was not of a long
duration. The Boers refused to pay cash, and at the end of four months
my partner had the capital and I had the experience. After this I came
to the conclusion that store-keeping was not in my line, and having
four hundred pounds left, I sent my boy Harry to a school in Natal, and
buying an outfit with what remained of the money, started upon a big
trip.

"This time I determined to go further afield than I had ever been
before; so I took a passage for a few pounds in a trading brig that
ran between Durban and Delagoa Bay. From Delagoa Bay I marched inland
accompanied by twenty porters, with the idea of striking up north,
towards the Limpopo, and keeping parallel to the coast, but at a
distance of about one hundred and fifty miles from it. For the first
twenty days of our journey we suffered a good deal from fever, that is,
my men did, for I think that I am fever proof. Also I was hard put to
it to keep the camp in meat, for although the country proved to be very
sparsely populated, there was but little game about. Indeed, during all
that time I hardly killed anything larger than a waterbuck, and, as you
know, waterbuck's flesh is not very appetising food. On the twentieth
day, however, we came to the banks of a largish river, the Gonooroo it
was called. This I crossed, and then struck inland towards a great range
of mountains, the blue crests of which we could see lying on the distant
heavens like a shadow, a continuation, as I believe, of the Drakensberg
range that skirts the coast of Natal. From this main range a great spur
shoots out some fifty miles or so towards the coast, ending abruptly in
one tremendous peak. This spur I discovered separated the territories of
two chiefs named Nala and Wambe, Wambe's territory being to the north,
and Nala's to the south. Nala ruled a tribe of bastard Zulus called
the Butiana, and Wambe a much larger tribe, called the Matuku, which
presents marked Bantu characteristics. For instance, they have doors and
verandahs to their huts, work skins perfectly, and wear a waistcloth and
not a moocha. At this time the Butiana were more or less subject to
the Matuku, having been surprised by them some twenty years before
and mercilessly slaughtered down. The tribe was now recovering itself,
however, and as you may imagine, it did not love the Matuku.

"Well, I heard as I went along that elephants were very plentiful in the
dense forests which lie upon the slopes and at the foot of the mountains
that border Wambe's territory. Also I heard a very ill report of that
worthy himself, who lived in a kraal upon the side of the mountain,
which was so strongly fortified as to be practically impregnable. It was
said that he was the most cruel chief in this part of Africa, and that
he had murdered in cold blood an entire party of English gentlemen, who,
some seven years before, had gone into his country to hunt elephants.
They took an old friend of mine with them as guide, John Every by name,
and often had I mourned over his untimely death. All the same, Wambe
or no Wambe, I determined to hunt elephants in his country. I never was
afraid of natives, and I was not going to show the white feather now. I
am a bit of a fatalist, as you fellows know, so I came to the conclusion
that if it was fated that Wambe should send me to join my old friend
John Every, I should have to go, and there was an end of it. Meanwhile,
I meant to hunt elephants with a peaceful heart.

"On the third day from the date of our sighting the great peak, we found
ourselves beneath its shadow. Still following the course of the river
which wound through the forests at the base of the peak, we entered the
territory of the redoubtable Wambe. This, however, was not accomplished
without a certain difference of opinion between my bearers and myself,
for when we reached the spot where Wambe's boundary was supposed to run,
the bearers sat down and emphatically refused to go a step further. I
sat down too, and argued with them, putting my fatalistic views before
them as well as I was able. But I could not persuade them to look at
the matter in the same light. 'At present,' they said, 'their skins were
whole; if they went into Wambe's country without his leave they would
soon be like a water-eaten leaf. It was very well for me to say that
this would be Fate. Fate no doubt might be walking about in Wambe's
country, but while they stopped outside they would not meet him.'

"'Well,' I said to Gobo, my head man, 'and what do you mean to do?'

"'We mean to go back to the coast, Macumazahn,' he answered insolently.

"'Do you?' I replied, for my bile was stirred. 'At any rate, Mr. Gobo,
you and one or two others will never get there; see here, my friend,'
and I took a repeating rifle and sat myself comfortably down, resting my
back against a tree--'I have just breakfasted, and I had as soon spend
the day here as anywhere else. Now if you or any of those men walk one
step back from here, and towards the coast, I shall fire at you; and you
know that I don't miss.'

"The man fingered the spear he was carrying--luckily all my guns were
stacked against the tree--and then turned as though to walk away, the
others keeping their eyes fixed upon him all the while. I rose and
covered him with the rifle, and though he kept up a brave appearance of
unconcern, I saw that he was glancing nervously at me all the time. When
he had gone about twenty yards I spoke very quietly--

"'Now, Gobo,' I said, 'come back, or I shall fire.'

"Of course this was taking a very high hand; I had no real right to kill
Gobo or anybody else because they objected to run the risk of death by
entering the territory of a hostile chief. But I felt that if I wished
to keep up any authority it was absolutely necessary that I should push
matters to the last extremity short of actually shooting him. So I sat
there, looking fierce as a lion, and keeping the sight of my rifle in
a dead line for Gobo's ribs. Then Gobo, feeling that the situation was
getting strained, gave in.

"'Don't shoot, Boss,' he shouted, throwing up his hand, 'I will come
with you.'

"'I thought you would,' I answered quietly; 'you see Fate walks about
outside Wambe's country as well as in it.'

"After that I had no more trouble, for Gobo was the ringleader, and when
he collapsed the others collapsed also. Harmony being thus restored, we
crossed the line, and on the following morning I began shooting in good
earnest."




II--A MORNING'S SPORT

"Moving some five or six miles round the base of the great peak of
which I have spoken, we came the same day to one of the fairest bits of
African country that I have seen outside of Kukuanaland. At this spot
the mountain spur that runs out at right angles to the great range,
which stretches its cloud-clad length north and south as far as the eye
can reach, sweeps inwards with a vast and splendid curve. This curve
measures some five-and-thirty miles from point to point, and across
its moon-like segment the river flashed, a silver line of light. On the
further side of the river is a measureless sea of swelling ground, a
natural park covered with great patches of bush--some of them being many
square miles in extent. These are separated one from another by glades
of grass land, broken here and there with clumps of timber trees; and in
some instances by curious isolated koppies, and even by single crags of
granite that start up into the air as though they were monuments carved
by man, and not tombstones set by nature over the grave of ages gone. On
the west this beautiful plain is bordered by the lonely mountain, from
the edge of which it rolls down toward the fever coast; but how far it
runs to the north I cannot say--eight days' journey, according to the
natives, when it is lost in an untravelled morass.

"On the hither side of the river the scenery is different. Along the
edge of its banks, where the land is flat, are green patches of swamp.
Then comes a wide belt of beautiful grass land covered thickly with
game, and sloping up very gently to the borders of the forest, which,
beginning at about a thousand feet above the level of the plain, clothes
the mountain-side almost to its crest. In this forest grow great trees,
most of them of the yellow-wood species. Some of these trees are so
lofty, that a bird in their top branches would be out of range of an
ordinary shot gun. Another peculiar thing about them is, that they are
for the most part covered with a dense growth of the Orchilla moss; and
from this moss the natives manufacture a most excellent deep purple dye,
with which they stain tanned hides and also cloth, when they happen
to get any of the latter. I do not think that I ever saw anything more
remarkable than the appearance of one of these mighty trees festooned
from top to bottom with trailing wreaths of this sad-hued moss, in which
the wind whispers gently as it stirs them. At a distance it looks like
the gray locks of a Titan crowned with bright green leaves, and here and
there starred with the rich bloom of orchids.

"The night of that day on which I had my little difference of opinion
with Gobo, we camped by the edge of this great forest, and on the
following morning at daylight I started out shooting. As we were short
of meat I determined to kill a buffalo, of which there were plenty
about, before looking for traces of elephants. Not more than half a mile
from camp we came across a trail broad as a cart-road, evidently made by
a great herd of buffaloes which had passed up at dawn from their feeding
ground in the marshes, to spend the day in the cool air of the uplands.
This trail I followed boldly; for such wind as there was blew straight
down the mountain-side, that is, from the direction in which the
buffaloes had gone, to me. About a mile further on the forest began to
be dense, and the nature of the trail showed me that I must be close to
my game. Another two hundred yards and the bush was so thick that, had
it not been for the trail, we could scarcely have passed through it.
As it was, Gobo, who carried my eight-bore rifle (for I had the
.570-express in my hand), and the other two men whom I had taken with
me, showed the very strongest dislike to going any further, pointing
out that there was 'no room to run away.' I told them that they need
not come unless they liked, but that I was certainly going on; and then,
growing ashamed, they came.

"Another fifty yards, and the trail opened into a little glade. I knelt
down and peeped and peered, but no buffalo could I see. Evidently the
herd had broken up here--I knew that from the spoor--and penetrated the
opposite bush in little troops. I crossed the glade, and choosing one
line of spoor, followed it for some sixty yards, when it became clear
to me that I was surrounded by buffaloes; and yet so dense was the
cover that I could not see any. A few yards to my left I could hear one
rubbing its horns against a tree, while from my right came an occasional
low and throaty grunt which told me that I was uncomfortably near an
old bull. I crept on towards him with my heart in my mouth, as gently as
though I were walking upon eggs for a bet, lifting every little bit of
wood in my path, and placing it behind me lest it should crack and warn
the game. After me in single file came my three retainers, and I don't
know which of them looked the most frightened. Presently Gobo touched my
leg; I glanced round, and saw him pointing slantwise towards the left.
I lifted my head a little and peeped over a mass of creepers; beyond the
creepers was a dense bush of sharp-pointed aloes, of that kind of which
the leaves project laterally, and on the other side of the aloes, not
fifteen paces from us, I made out the horns, neck, and the ridge of the
back of a tremendous old bull. I took my eight-bore, and getting on
to my knee prepared to shoot him through the neck, taking my chance of
cutting his spine. I had already covered him as well as the aloe leaves
would allow, when he gave a kind of sigh and lay down.

"I looked round in dismay. What was to be done now? I could not see
to shoot him lying down, even if my bullet would have pierced the
intervening aloes--which was doubtful--and if I stood up he would either
run away or charge me. I reflected, and came to the conclusion that the
only thing to do was to lie down also; for I did not fancy wandering
after other buffaloes in that dense bush. If a buffalo lies down, it
is clear that he must get up again some time, so it was only a case of
patience--'fighting the fight of sit down,' as the Zulus say.

"Accordingly I sat down and lighted a pipe, thinking that the smell of
it might reach the buffalo and make him get up. But the wind was the
wrong way, and it did not; so when it was done I lit another. Afterwards
I had cause to regret that pipe.

"Well, we squatted like this for between half and three quarters of an
hour, till at length I began to grow heartily sick of the performance.
It was about as dull a business as the last hour of a comic opera.
I could hear buffaloes snorting and moving all round, and see the
red-beaked tic birds flying up off their backs, making a kind of hiss
as they did so, something like that of the English missel-thrush, but I
could not see a single buffalo. As for my old bull, I think he must have
slept the sleep of the just, for he never even stirred.

"Just as I was making up my mind that something must be done to save the
situation, my attention was attracted by a curious grinding noise.
At first I thought that it must be a buffalo chewing the cud, but was
obliged to abandon the idea because the noise was too loud. I shifted
myself round and stared through the cracks in the bush, in the direction
whence the sound seemed to come, and once I thought that I saw something
gray moving about fifty yards off, but could not make certain. Although
the grinding noise still continued I could see nothing more, so I gave
up thinking about it, and once again turned my attention to the buffalo.
Presently, however, something happened. Suddenly from about forty yards
away there came a tremendous snorting sound, more like that made by
an engine getting a heavy train under weigh than anything else in the
world.

"'By Jove,' I thought, turning round in the direction from which the
grinding sound had come, 'that must be a rhinoceros, and he has got our
wind.' For, as you fellows know, there is no mistaking the sound made by
a rhinoceros when he gets wind of you.

"Another second, and I heard a most tremendous crashing noise. Before I
could think what to do, before I could even get up, the bush behind me
seemed to burst asunder, and there appeared not eight yards from us,
the great horn and wicked twinkling eye of a charging rhinoceros. He
had winded us or my pipe, I do not know which, and, after the fashion
of these brutes, had charged up the scent. I could not rise, I could
not even get the gun up, I had no time. All that I was able to do was
to roll over as far out of the monster's path as the bush would allow.
Another second and he was over me, his great bulk towering above me
like a mountain, and, upon my word, I could not get his smell out of my
nostrils for a week. Circumstances impressed it on my memory, at least I
suppose so. His hot breath blew upon my face, one of his front feet just
missed my head, and his hind one actually trod upon the loose part of
my trousers and pinched a little bit of my skin. I saw him pass over me
lying as I was upon my back, and next second I saw something else. My
men were a little behind me, and therefore straight in the path of the
rhinoceros. One of them flung himself backwards into the bush, and thus
avoided him. The second with a wild yell sprung to his feet, and bounded
like an india-rubber ball right into the aloe bush, landing well among
the spikes. But the third, it was my friend Gobo, could not by any means
get away. He managed to gain his feet, and that was all. The rhinoceros
was charging with his head low; his horn passed between Gobo's legs,
and feeling something on his nose, he jerked it up. Away went Gobo, high
into the air. He turned a complete somersault at the apex of the curve,
and as he did so, I caught sight of his face. It was gray with terror,
and his mouth was wide open. Down he came, right on to the great brute's
back, and that broke his fall. Luckily for him the rhinoceros never
turned, but crashed straight through the aloe bush, only missing the man
who had jumped into it by about a yard.