The Ivory Child

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"Charge!"



CHAPTER XI

ALLAN IS CAPTURED

The ride that followed was really quite exhilarating. The camels,
notwithstanding their long journey, seemed to have caught some of the
enthusiasm of the war-horse as described in the Book of Job; indeed I
had no idea that they could travel at such a rate. On we swung down the
slope, keeping excellent order, the forest of tall spears shining
and the little lancer-like pennons fluttering on the breeze in a very
gallant way. In silence we went save for the thudding of the hoofs of
the camels and an occasional squeal of anger as some rider drove his
lance handle into their ribs. Not until we actually joined battle did
a single man open his lips. Then, it is true, there went up one
simultaneous and mighty roar of:

"The Child! Death to Jana! The Child! The Child!"

But this happened a few minutes later.

As we drew near the enemy I saw that they had massed their footmen in
a dense body, six or eight lines thick. There they stood to receive the
impact of our charge, or rather they did not all stand, for the first
two ranks were kneeling with long spears stretched out in front of them.
I imagine that their appearance must have greatly resembled that of the
Greek phalanx, or that of the Swiss prepared to receive cavalry in the
Middle Ages. On either side of this formidable body, which by now must
have numbered four or five hundred men, and at a distance perhaps of
a quarter of a mile from them, were gathered the horsemen of the Black
Kendah, divided into two bodies of nearly equal strength, say about a
hundred horse in each body.

As we approached, our triangle curved a little, no doubt under the
direction of Harut. A minute or so later I saw the reason. It was that
we might strike the foot-soldiers not full in front but at an angle. It
was an admirable manoeuvre, for when presently we did strike, we caught
them swiftly on the flank and crumpled them up. My word! we went through
those fellows like a knife through butter; they had as much chance
against the rush of our camels as a brown-paper screen has against a
typhoon. Over they rolled in heaps while the White Kendah spitted them
with their lances.

"The Child is top dog! My money on the Child," reflected I in irreverent
ecstasy. But that exultation was premature, for those Black Kendah were
by no means all dead. Presently I saw that scores of them had appeared
among the camels, which they were engaged in stabbing, or trying
to stab, in the stomach with their spears. Also I had forgotten the
horsemen. As our charge slackened owing to the complication in front,
these arrived on our flanks like two thunderbolts. We faced about and
did our best to meet the onslaught, of which the net result was that
both our left and right lines were pierced through about fifty yards
behind the baggage camels. Luckily for us the very impetuosity of the
Black Kendah rush deprived it of most of the fruits of victory, since
the two squadrons, being unable to check their horses, ended by charging
into each other and becoming mixed in inextricable confusion. Then, I
do not know who gave the order, we wheeled our camels in and fell upon
them, a struggling, stationary mass, with the result that many of them
were speared, or overthrown and trampled.

"I have said we, but that is not quite correct, at any rate so far
as Marut, Hans, I and about fifteen camelmen were concerned. How it
happened I could not tell in that dust and confusion, but we were
cut off from the main body and presently found ourselves fighting
desperately in a group at which Black Kendah horsemen were charging
again and again. We made the best stand we could. By degrees the
bewildered camels sank under the repeated spear-thrusts of the enemy,
all except one, oddly enough that ridden by Hans, which by some strange
chance was never touched. The rest of us were thrown or tumbled off the
camels and continued the fight from behind their struggling bodies."

That is where I came in. Up to this time I had not fired a single shot,
partly because I do not like missing, which it is so easy to do from the
back of a swaying camel, and still more for the reason that I had
not the slightest desire to kill any of these savage men unless I was
obliged to do so in self-defence. Now, however, the thing was different,
as I was fighting for my life. Leaning against my camel, which was dying
and beating its head upon the ground, groaning horribly the while, I
emptied the five cartridges of the repeater into those Black Kendah,
pausing between each shot to take aim, with the result that presently
five riderless horses were galloping loose about the veld.

The effect was electrical, since our attackers had never seen anything
of the kind before. For a while they all drew off, which gave me time to
reload. Then they came on again and I repeated the process. For a second
time they retreated and after consultation which lasted for a minute or
more, made a third attack. Once more I saluted them to the best of my
ability, though on this occasion only three men and a horse fell. The
fifth shot was a clean miss because they came on in such a scattered
formation that I had to turn from side to side to fire.

Now at last the game was up, for the simple reason that I had no more
cartridges save two in my double-barrelled pistol. It may be asked why.
The answer is, want of foresight. Too many cartridges in one's pocket
are apt to chafe on camel-back and so is a belt full of them. In those
days also the engagements were few in which a man fired over fifteen.
I had forty or fifty more in a bag, which bag Savage with his usual
politeness had taken and hung upon his saddle without saying a word to
me. At the beginning of the action I found this out, but could not then
get them from him as he was separated from me. Hans, always careless in
small matters, was really to blame as he ought to have seen that I had
the cartridges, or at any rate to have carried them himself. In short,
it was one of those accidents that will happen. There is nothing more to
be said.

After a still longer consultation our enemies advanced on us for the
fourth time, but very slowly. Meanwhile I had been taking stock of the
position. The camel corps, or what was left of it, oblivious of our
plight which the dust of conflict had hidden from them, was travelling
on to the north, more or less victorious. That is to say, it had cut its
way through the Black Kendah and was escaping unpursued, huddled up in
a mob with the baggage animals safe in its centre. The Black Kendah
themselves were engaged in killing our wounded and succouring their
own; also in collecting the bodies of the dead. In short, quite
unintentionally, we were deserted. Probably, if anybody thought about us
at all in the turmoil of desperate battle, they concluded that we were
among the slain.

Marut came up to me, unhurt, still smiling and waving a bloody spear.

"Lord Macumazana," he said, "the end is at hand. The Child has saved the
others, or most of them, but us it has abandoned. Now what will you do?
Kill yourself, or if that does not please you, suffer me to kill you? Or
shoot on until you must surrender?"

"I have nothing to shoot with any more," I answered. "But if we
surrender, what will happen to us?"

"We shall be taken to Simba's town and there sacrificed to the devil
Jana--I have not time to tell you how. Therefore I propose to kill
myself."

"Then I think you are foolish, Marut, since once we are dead, we are
dead; but while we are alive it is always possible that we may escape
from Jana. If the worst comes to the worst I have a pistol with two
bullets in it, one for you and one for me."

"The wisdom of the Child is in you," he replied. "I shall surrender with
you, Macumazana, and take my chance."

Then he turned and explained things to his followers, who spoke together
for a moment. In the end these took a strange and, to my mind, a very
heroic decision. Waiting till the attacking Kendah were quite close
to us, with the exception of three men, who either because they lacked
courage or for some other reason, stayed with us, they advanced humbly
as though to make submission. A number of the Black Kendah dismounted
and ran up, I suppose to take them prisoners. The men waited till
these were all round them. Then with a yell of "The Child!" they sprang
forward, taking the enemy unawares and fighting like demons, inflicted
great loss upon them before they fell themselves covered with wounds.

"Brave men indeed!" said Marut approvingly. "Well, now they are all at
peace with the Child, where doubtless we shall find them ere long."

I nodded but answered nothing. To tell the truth, I was too much engaged
in nursing the remains of my own courage to enter into conversation
about that of other people.

This fierce and cunning stratagem of desperate men which had cost their
enemies so dear, seemed to infuriate the Black Kendah.

At us came the whole mob of them--we were but six now--roaring "Jana!
Jana!" and led by a grey-beard who, to judge from the number of silver
chains upon his breast and his other trappings, seemed to be a great man
among them. When they were about fifty yards away and I was preparing
for the worst, a shot rang out from above and behind me. At the same
instant Greybeard threw his arms wide and letting fall the spear he
held, pitched from his horse, evidently stone dead. I glanced back and
saw Hans, the corn-cob pipe still in his mouth and the little rifle,
"Intombi," still at his shoulder. He had fired from the back of the
camel, I think for the first time that day, and whether by chance or
through good marksmanship, I do not know, had killed this man.

His sudden and unexpected end seemed to fill the Black Kendah with grief
and dismay. Halting in their charge they gathered round him, while a
fierce-looking middle-aged man, also adorned with much barbaric finery,
dismounted to examine him.

"That is Simba the King," said Marut, "and the slain one is his uncle,
Goru, the great general who brought him up from a babe."

"Then I wish I had another cartridge left for the nephew," I began and
stopped, for Hans was speaking to me.

"Good-bye, Baas," he said, "I must go, for I cannot load 'Intombi' on
the back of this beast. If you meet your reverend father the Predikant
before I do, tell him to make a nice place ready for me among the
fires."

Then before I could get out an answer, Hans dragged his camel round;
as I have said, it was quite uninjured. Urging it to a shambling gallop
with blows of the rifle stock, he departed at a great rate, not towards
the home of the Child but up the hill into a brake of giant grass
mingled with thorn trees that grew quite close at hand. Here with
startling suddenness both he and the camel vanished away.

If the Black Kendah saw him go, of which I am doubtful, for they all
seemed to be lost in consultation round their king and the dead general,
Goru, they made no attempt to follow him. Another possibility is that
they thought he was trying to lead them into some snare or ambush.

I do not know what they thought because I never heard them mention Hans
or the matter of his disappearance, if indeed they ever realized that
there was such a person. Curiously enough in the case of men who had
just shown themselves so brave, this last accident of the decease of
Goru coming on the top of all their other casualties, seemed to take the
courage out of them. It was as though they had come to the conclusion
that we with our guns were something more than mortal.

For several minutes they debated in evident hesitation. At last from out
of their array rode a single man, in whom I recognized one of the envoys
who had met us in the morning, carrying in his hand a white flag as he
had done before. Thereon I laid down my rifle in token that I would not
fire at him, which indeed I could not do having nothing to fire. Seeing
this he came to within a few yards and halting, addressed Marut.

"O second Prophet of the Child," he said, "these are the words of Simba
the King: Your god has been too strong for us to-day, though in a day
to come it may be otherwise. I thought I had you in a pit; that you were
the bucks and I the hunter. But, though with loss, you have escaped out
of the pit," and the speaker glanced towards our retreating force which
was now but a cloud of dust in the far distance, "while I the hunter
have been gored by your horns," and again he glanced at the dead that
were scattered about the plain. "The noblest of the buck, the white bull
of the herd," and he looked at me, who in any other circumstances
would have felt complimented, "and you, O Prophet Marut, and one or two
others, besides those that I have slain, are however still in the pit
and your horn is a magic horn," here he pointed to my rifle, "which
pierces from afar and kills dead all by whom it is touched."

"So I caught those gentry well in the middle," thought I to myself, "and
with soft-nosed bullets!"

"Therefore I, Simba the King, make you an offer. Yield yourselves and
I swear that no spear shall be driven through your hearts and no knife
come near your throats. You shall only be taken to my town and there
be fed on the best and kept as prisoners, till once more there is peace
between the Black Kendah and the White. If you refuse, then I will
ring you round and perhaps in the dark rush on you and kill you all. Or
perhaps I will watch you from day to day till you, who have no water,
die of thirst in the heat of the sun. These are my words to which
nothing may be added and from which nothing shall be taken away."

Having finished this speech he rode back a few yards out of earshot, and
waited.

"What will you answer, Lord Macumazana?" asked Marut.

I replied by another question. "Is there any chance of our being rescued
by your people?"

He shook his head. "None. What we have seen to-day is but a small part
of the army of the Black Kendah, one regiment of foot and one of horse,
that are always ready. By to-morrow thousands will be gathered, many
more than we can hope to deal with in the open and still less in their
strongholds, also Harut will believe that we are dead. Unless the Child
saves us we shall be left to our fate."

"Then it seems that we are indeed in a pit, as that black brute of
a king puts it, Marut, and if he does what he says and rushes us at
sundown, everyone of us will be killed. Also I am thirsty already and
there is nothing to drink. But will this king keep his word? There are
other ways of dying besides by steel."

"I think that he will keep his word, but as that messenger said, he will
not add to his word. Choose now, for see, they are beginning to hedge us
round."

"What do you say, men?" I asked of the three who had remained with us.

"We say, Lord, that we are in the hands of the Child, though we wish
now that we had died with our brothers," answered their spokesman
fatalistically.

So after Marut and I had consulted together for a little as to the form
of his reply, he beckoned to the messenger and said:

"We accept the offer of Simba, although it would be easy for this lord
to kill him now where he stands, namely, to yield ourselves as prisoners
on his oath that no harm shall come to us. For know that if harm does
come, the vengeance will be terrible. Now in proof of his good faith,
let Simba draw near and drink the cup of peace with us, for we thirst."

"Not so," said the messenger, "for then that white lord might kill him
with his tube. Give me the tube and Simba shall come."

"Take it," I said magnanimously, handing him the rifle, which he
received in a very gingerly fashion. After all, I reflected, there is
nothing much more useless than a rifle without ammunition.

Off he went holding the weapon at arm's length, and presently Simba
himself, accompanied by some of his men, one of whom carried a skin of
water and another a large cup hollowed from an elephant's tusk, rode up
to us. This Simba was a fine and rather terrifying person with a large
moustache and a chin shaved except for a little tuft of hair which
he wore at its point like an Italian. His eyes were big and dark,
frank-looking, yet now and again with sinister expression in the corners
of them. He was not nearly so black as most of his followers; probably
in bygone generations his blood had been crossed with that of the White
Kendah. He wore his hair long without any head-dress, held in place by a
band of gold which I suppose represented a crown. On his forehead was
a large white scar, probably received in some battle. Such was his
appearance.

He looked at me with great curiosity, and I have often wondered since
what kind of an impression I produced upon him. My hat had fallen off,
or I had knocked it off when I fired my last cartridge into his people,
and forgotten to replace it, and my intractable hair, which was longer
than usual, had not been recently brushed. My worn Norfolk jacket was
dyed with blood from a wounded or dying man who had tumbled against me
in the scrimmage when the cavalry charged us, and my right leg and boot
were stained in a similar fashion from having rubbed against my camel
where a spear had entered it. Altogether I must have appeared a most
disreputable object.

Some indication of his opinion was given, however, in a remark, which of
course I pretended not to understand, that I overheard him make to one
of his officers:

"Truly," he said, "we must not always look to the strong for strength.
And yet this little white porcupine is strength itself, for see how much
damage he has wrought us. Also consider his eyes that appear to pierce
everything. Jana himself might fear those eyes. Well, time that grinds
the rocks will tell us all."

All of this I caught perfectly, my ears being very sharp, although he
thought that he spoke out of my hearing, for after spending a month in
their company I understood the Kendah dialect of Bantu very well.

Having delivered himself thus he rode nearer and said:

"You, Prophet Marut, my enemy, have heard the terms of me, Simba the
King, and have accepted them. Therefore discuss them no more. What I
have promised I will keep. What I have given I give, neither greater nor
less by the weight of a hair."

"So be it, O King," answered Marut with his usual smile, which nothing
ever seemed to disturb. "Only remember that if those terms are broken
either in the letter or in the spirit, especially the spirit" (that is
the best rendering I can give of his word), "the manifold curses of
the Child will fall upon you and yours. Yes, though you kill us all by
treachery, still those curses will fall."

"May Jana take the Child and all who worship it," exclaimed the king
with evident irritation.

"In the end, O King, Jana will take the Child and its followers--or
the Child will take Jana and his followers. Which of these things must
happen is known to the Child alone, and perchance to its prophets.
Meanwhile, for every one of those of the Child I think that three of the
followers of Jana, or more, lie dead upon this field. Also the caravan
is now out of your reach with two of the white lords and many of such
tubes which deal death, like that which we have surrendered to you.
Therefore because we are helpless, do not think that the Child is
helpless. Jana must have been asleep, O King, or you would have set your
trap better."

I thought that this coolly insolent speech would have produced some
outburst, but in fact it seemed to have an opposite effect. Making no
reply to it, Simba said almost humbly:

"I come to drink the cup of peace with you and the white lord, O
Prophet. Afterwards we can talk. Give me water, slave."

Then a man filled the great ivory cup with water from the skin he
carried. Simba took it and having sprinkled a little upon the ground,
I suppose as an offering, drank from the cup, doubtless to show that it
was not poisoned. Watching carefully, I made sure that he swallowed what
he drank by studying the motions of his throat. Then he handed the cup
with a bow to Marut, who with a still deeper bow passed it to me. Being
absolutely parched I absorbed about a pint of it, and feeling a new man,
passed the horn to Marut, who swallowed the rest. Then it was filled
again for our three White Kendah, the King first tasting the water as
before, after which Marut and I had a second pull.

When at length our thirst was satisfied, horses were brought to us,
serviceable and docile little beasts with sheepskins for saddles and
loops of hide for stirrups. On these we mounted and for the next three
hours rode across the plain, surrounded by a strong escort and with an
armed Black Kendah running on each side of our horses and holding in his
hand a thong attached to the ring of the bridle, no doubt to prevent any
attempt to escape.

Our road ran past but not through some villages whence we saw many women
and children staring at us, and through beautiful crops of mealies and
other sorts of grain that in this country were now just ripening. The
luxuriant appearance of these crops suggested that the rains must have
been plentiful and the season all that could be desired. From some of
the villages by the track arose a miserable sound of wailing. Evidently
their inhabitants had already heard that certain of their menkind had
fallen in that morning's fight.

At the end of the third hour we began to enter the great forest which
I had seen when first we looked down on Kendahland. It was filled with
splendid trees, most of them quite strange to me, but perhaps because of
the denseness of their overshadowing crowns there was comparatively
no undergrowth. The general effect of the place was very gloomy, since
little light could pass through the interlacing foliage of the tops of
those mighty trees.

Towards evening we came to a clearing in this forest, it may have been
four or five miles in diameter, but whether it was natural or artificial
I am not sure. I think, however, that it was probably the former for
two reasons: the hollow nature of the ground, which lay a good many feet
lower than the surrounding forest, and the wonderful fertility of the
soil, which suggested that it had once been deposited upon an old
lake bottom. Never did I see such crops as those that grew upon that
clearing; they were magnificent.

Wending our way along the road that ran through the tall corn, for here
every inch was cultivated, we came suddenly upon the capital of the
Black Kendah, which was known as Simba Town. It was a large place,
somewhat different from any other African settlement with which I
am acquainted, inasmuch as it was not only stockaded but completely
surrounded by a broad artificial moat filled with water from a stream
that ran through the centre of the town, over which moat there were
four timber bridges placed at the cardinal points of the compass. These
bridges were strong enough to bear horses or stock, but so made that in
the event of attack they could be destroyed in a few minutes.

Riding through the eastern gate, a stout timber structure on the farther
side of the corresponding bridge, where the king was received with
salutes by an armed guard, we entered one of the main streets of the
town which ran from north to south and from east to west. It was broad
and on either side of it were the dwellings of the inhabitants set close
together because the space within the stockade was limited. These were
not huts but square buildings of mud with flat roofs of some kind of
cement. Evidently they were built upon the model of Oriental and North
African houses of which some debased tradition remained with these
people. Thus a stairway or ladder ran from the interior to the roof of
each house, whereon its inhabitants were accustomed, as I discovered
afterwards, to sleep during a good part of the year, also to eat in the
cool of the day. Many of them were gathered there now to watch us pass,
men, women, and children, all except the little ones decently clothed in
long garments of various colours, the women for the most part in white
and the men in a kind of bluish linen.

I saw at once that they had already heard of the fight and of the
considerable losses which their people had sustained, for their
reception of us prisoners was most unfriendly. Indeed the men shook
their fists at us, the women screamed out curses, while the children
stuck out their tongues in token of derision or defiance. Most of these
demonstrations, however, were directed at Marut and his followers, who
only smiled indifferently. At me they stared in wonder not unmixed with
fear.

A quarter of a mile or so from the gate we came to an inner enclosure,
that answered to the South African cattle kraal, surrounded by a dry
ditch and a timber palisade outside of which was planted a green fence
of some shrub with long white thorns. Here we passed through more
gates, to find ourselves in an oval space, perhaps five acres in extent.
Evidently this served as a market ground, but all around it were open
sheds where hundreds of horses were stabled. No cattle seemed to be kept
there, except a few that with sheep and goats were driven in every day
for slaughter purposes at a shambles at the north end, from the great
stock kraals built beyond the forest to the south, where they were safe
from possible raiding by the White Kendah.