John Ames, Native Commissioner: A Romance of the Matabele Rising. Mitford Bertram
grim superstition the unfortunate prisoner tugged at her bonds, uttering a shriek of terror. She recognised here not the dog she had at first expected to see, but the horrid mongrel beast held in abhorrence by the superstitious. The growlings of the brute redoubled.
“Now, tell quickly,” went on the wizard. “The news of the meeting thou didst make known to two people only. Their names? Hesitate not, or – ”
“Shall I be allowed to depart from here if I tell, child of the Umlimo?” she gasped eagerly.
“Thou shalt be taken hence. Oh yes, thou shalt be taken hence.”
“Swear it. Swear it,” she cried.
“Umzilikazi!” rejoined the wizard, thus ratifying his assertion by the sacred name of the great king, founder of the nation.
But now, seeing its master’s vigilance relaxed, the wolf sprang forward, and, with a horrid mumbling snarl, buried its fangs in the helpless prisoner’s thigh. A wild, piteous, despairing shriek rent the interior of this fiend’s den.
“Take it off! Take it off! Oh, I am devoured! Quick! I will tell!”
Seizing a pair of iron tongs, Shiminya compelled the now infuriated brute to loose its hold, and following it with a tremendous blow on the head, it retreated yelling to the further side of the hut.
“The names – quick – ere it seizes thee again,” urged the wizard.
“Pukele,” she howled, frantic with agony and terror.
“The son of thy father, who is servant to Jonemi?”
“The same. The other is Ntatu.”
The words seemed squeezed from the sufferer. Her thigh, horribly lacerated by the jaws of the savage beast, streaming with blood, was quivering in every nerve.
“Thy sister, formerly wife of Makani?”
“The same. Now, child of the Umlimo, suffer me to depart.”
“Thy thigh is not well enough, sister,” replied the wizard, in a soft purring voice, putting his head on one side, and surveying her through half closed eyes. “Tarry till evening, then shalt thou be taken hence. Au! It is not good to be seen quitting the abode of Shiminya. There is tagati in it.”
Having first kicked the wolf out of the hut, the sorcerer set to work to tend the wound of his helpless victim. She, for her part, lay and moaned feebly. She had purchased her life, but at what a cost. Still, even the magnificent physical organisation of a fine savage was not proof against all she had undergone, for this was not her first taste of the torture since being forcibly seized by the satellites of Shiminya and brought hither.
Now, moaning in her pain, Nompiza lay and reflected. She had betrayed two of her father’s children, had marked them out for the vengeance of not only the Abantwana ’Mlimo, but of the disaffected chiefs. This, however, might be remedied. Once out of this she would go straight to Jonemi – which was the name by which John Ames was known to the natives, being a corruption of his own – and claim protection for herself and them, perhaps even procure the arrest of Shiminya. This thought came as a ray of light to the savage girl as she lay there. The white men would protect and avenge her. Yet – poor simpleton!
“Of what art thou thinking, Nompiza?” said the wizard, softly, as he refrained from his seeming work of mercy. “Au! Shall I tell thee? It is that thou wilt reveal to Jonemi all thou knowest of the gathering at the Home of the Umlimo when the moon was full. So shalt thou save thyself and Pukele and Ntatu, the children of thy father.”
A cry of terror escaped the sufferer. How should she have forgotten that this dreadful sorcerer could read the thoughts of men?
“Not so, my father, not so,” she prayed. “I ask for nothing but to be allowed to go home.”
“To go home? But how would that avail one who has been bitten by Lupiswana? There is no escape from that. Lupiswana will come for thee after death. Thou wilt be hunted round for ever, with Lupiswana biting – biting – at thee even as now, and thou wilt spring wildly forward to avoid his bites, and his teeth will close in thy flesh, even as now. Thou wilt run wailing round the kraals of thy people, hunted ever by Lupiswana, but they will not admit thee. They will cover their heads in terror lest the same doom overtake them. Hau! Even this night will that doom begin.”
“This night?” echoed the victim, feeling well-nigh dead with an awful fear. “This night? Now, my father, thou hast promised – hast sworn – I shall be allowed to depart.”
“I did but mean the night of death,” replied the other, his head on one side, his eyes glittering with satanic mirth. “That may be when thou art old and tottering, Nompiza, or it may mean this night, for what is time but a flash, even as that of the summer lightning? The night of death will surely come.”
No relief came into the face of the sufferer. The awful fate predicted for her by Shiminya seemed to her just as certain as though it had already befallen her, and the recollection of the horrid animal tearing at her flesh was too recent. It was a form of superstition, too, not unknown among her people, and here everything seemed to bring it home – time, place, surroundings, and the horror of this gruesome being’s presence. But before she would utter further prayer or protest, a strange hollow, humming noise was heard, at sound of which Shiminya arose suddenly, with an eager look on his repulsive countenance, and crept out of the hut, taking care to secure the door behind him.
Chapter Four.
A Human Spider
Shiminya resumed his seat upon the ground, with the múti bowl in his hands. The wolf he had already secured in one of the huts. The grim beast was in truth his familiar spirit, and as such not to be gazed upon by profane eyes, and in broad daylight. And now footsteps were heard approaching the scherm, together with the rattle of assegai hafts. Three men entered by the narrow gateway. Shiminya looked up.
“Greeting, Izinduna,” he said.
“Greeting to thee, Umtwana ’Mlimo,” came the reply in a deep-voiced hum, as the newcomers deposited their assegais just within the gate, and advanced a few steps nearer in. With two of these we are already acquainted, they being, in fact, Madúla and his brother Samvu. The third was another influential chief by name Zazwe.
Shiminya seemed to take no further notice of their presence, continuing to sway the múti bowl from side to side, muttering the while. The faces of the three indunas wore an expression of scarcely to be concealed disgust; that of Zazwe in addition showed unutterable contempt. He was an unprepossessing looking man, lean, and of middle height, with a cold, cruel countenance. At bottom he loathed and despised the whole Umlimo hierarchy as a pack of rank impostors, but it suited him now to cultivate them, for he was an arrant schemer, and would fain see every white man in the country cut to pieces.
“There are three goats in thy kraal beyond the river, Shiminya,” he began presently, tired of the silence.
“That is good, my father,” the sorcerer condescended to reply. “They are for Umlimo?”
“Nay; for his child.”
“And – for Umlimo?”
“There is a young heifer.”
“Au! Of such there will soon be no more,” replied Shiminya.
“No more?” echoed the trio.
“No more. The whites are bewitching all the cattle in the land. Soon you will see great things. The land will stink with their rotting carcases.”
A murmur went up from the three listeners. They all bent eagerly forward. Shiminya, who knew his dupes, was in no hurry. He continued to shake his bowl of abomination and mutter; then he went on:
“The last time you heard the Great Voice, what did it say? Were not the words thereof as mine are now – I, its child? Whau! I fear there were some who heard that voice and laughed, Izinduna – who heard that voice and did not believe.”
At this juncture there came a subdued wail, inexpressibly doleful, from one