The Triumph of Hilary Blachland. Mitford Bertram
part of the present town of Bulawayo now stands, for Lo Bengula’s great place crowned the rise some two miles to the eastward. And here signs of busy life were already apparent. Files of women, bearers of wood or water, were stepping along; bunches of cattle being driven or herded; here and there, men, in groups or singly, proceeding to, or returning from the great kraal, their deep-toned voices rising upon the air in contrast to the clearer trebles of the feminine ones, though none the less rich and melodious.
And above the immense kraal, with its ring of clustering huts, a blue smoke cloud, drifting lazily to leeward, as though the place were in a state of conflagration. A peaceful, pastoral scene, but that the sun glinted on the blades of the assegais carried by the men, and on the sheen of their miniature shields.
Nor were other symptoms wanting, and those of a far more ominous character, which should bring home to our party the full fact that they were in the heart of a nation of turbulent and ruthless barbarians; for as they drew nearer to the great kraal, a mighty hubbub arose within its precincts, and there emerged from the stockade a dark surging crowd of armed warriors. These, uttering a ferocious shout, made straight for the new arrivals.
“Steady, Blachland,” enjoined Sybrandt, in a low tone. “Don’t lose your head, man; keep cool. It’s the only thing to be done.”
The warning was needed, for he to whom it was addressed had already shown signs of preparing to resist this hostile threatening demonstration. The gravity of the tone in which it was uttered, however, went far to neutralise in his mind the reassuring effect of the imperturbable aspect of his companions.
The swarm of savages came crowding round the four white men, brandishing their assegais and battle-axes, and frightening the horses not a little. But two Bechuana boys who were attendant upon their masters they managed to frighten a good deal more. These turned grey with terror, and really there was some excuse for it.
For each had been seized by a tall ruffian, who, gripping him by the throat, was making believe to rip him with a great assegai brandished in front of the miserable wretch’s face, every now and then letting him feel the point sufficiently to make him think the stroke already dealt, causing the victim to yell and whine with terror. The while his white masters could do nothing to protect him, their efforts being needed to calm and restrain their badly-frightened horses: an element of the grotesque which evoked roars of bass laughter from the boisterous and bloodthirsty crowd.
“Cease this fooling!” shouted Sybrandt, in the Sindabele tongue. “Is this how you treat the King’s guests? Make way. We are bound upon the King’s business.”
“The King’s business!” echoed the warriors. “The King’s business! Ah! ah! We too are bound upon the King’s business. Come and see, Amakiwa. Come and see how we black ones, the children of the King, the Eater-up of the Disobedient, perform his bidding.”
Then, for the first time, our party became aware that in the midst of the crowd were two men who had been dragged along by raw-hide thongs noosed round their necks; and, their horses having quieted down, they were able to observe what was to follow. That the poor wretches were about to be sacrificed in some hideous and savage fashion was only too obvious, and they themselves could not refuse to witness this horror, for the reason that to do so would be, in the present mood of these fiends, almost tantamount to throwing away their own lives.
“What is their offence, Sikala-kala?” asked Sybrandt, addressing a man he knew.
“Their offence? Au! it is great. They have gone too near the Esibayaneni, the sacred place where the King, the Great Great One, practises mutt. What offence can be greater than such?”
The victims, their countenances set and stony with fear, were now seized and held by many a pair of powerful and willing hands. Then, with the blade of a great assegai, their ears were deliberately shorn from their heads. A roar of delight went up from the barbarous spectators, who shouted lustily in praise of the King.
“So said the Great Great One: ‘They had ears, but their ears heard what it was not lawful they should hear, so they must hear no more!’ Is he not wise? Au! the wisdom of the calf of Matyobane!”
Again the executioners closed around their victims. A moment more and they parted. They were holding up to the crowd their victims’ eyes. The roars of delight rose in redoubled volume.
“So said the Black One: ‘They had eyes, but they saw what it was not lawful for them to look upon. So they must see no more!’ Au! the greatness of the Elephant whose tread shaketh the world!”
There was a tigerish note in the utterance of this horrible paean which might well have made the white spectators shudder. Whatever they felt, however, they must show nothing.
“I shall be deadly sick directly,” muttered Blachland; and all wondered what horror was yet to come.
The two blinded and mutilated wretches were writhing and moaning, and begging piteously for the boon of death to end their terrible sufferings. But their fiendish tormentors were engaged in far too congenial a task to be in any undue hurry to end it. It is only fair to record that to the victims themselves it would have been equally congenial were the positions reversed. At last, however, the executioners again stepped forward.
“So said the Ruler of Nations,” they bellowed, their short-handled heavy knob sticks held aloft: “These two had the power of thought. They used that power to pry into what it is not lawful for them even to think about. A man without brains cannot think. Let them therefore think no more.”
And with these two last words of the King’s sentence – terse, remorseless in the simplicity of its barbarous logic – the heavy knob sticks swept down with a horrid crunch as of the pulverising of bones. Another and another. The sufferings of the miserable wretches were over at last. Their death struggles had ceased, and they lay stark and motionless, their skulls literally battered to pieces.
Not the most hardened and philosophical of the white spectators could entirely conceal the expressions of loathing and repulsion which were stamped upon each countenance as they turned away from this horrid sight. On that of Blachland it was far the most plainly marked, and seemed to afford the ferocious crowd the liveliest satisfaction.
“See there, Amakiwa,” they shouted. “Look and behold. It is not well to pry into forbidden things. Behold the King’s justice.”
And again they chorused forth volleys of sibonga, i.e. the royal praises.
Was it merely a coincidence that their looks and the significance of the remark seemed to be directed peculiarly at Blachland? He himself was not the only one who thought so.
“What do you think now, Blachland?” said Young, dryly. “Better leave that little exploration scheme you were planning strictly alone, eh?”
“Well, I believe I had,” was the answer.
And now the armed warriors clustered round the white men. Some were chatting with Christian Sybrandt as they moved upward to the great kraal, for they had insisted on forming a sort of escort for their visitors; or, as these far more resembled, their prisoners. They were in better humour now, after their late diversion, but still there were plenty who shook their assegais towards the latter, growling out threats.
And as they approached the vast enclosure, the same thought was foremost in the minds of all four. Something had gone wrong. They could only hope it was not as they suspected. They were absolutely at the mercy of a suspicious barbarian despot, the objects of the fanatical hate of his people. What that “mercy” might mean they had just had a grimly convincing object lesson.
Chapter Three.
What Happened at Bulawayo
As they entered the outer enclosure, a deep humming roar vibrated upon the air. Two regiments, fully armed, were squatted in a great crescent, facing the King’s private quarters, and were beguiling the time with a very energetic war-song – while half a dozen warriors, at intervals of space apart, were indulging in the performance of gwaza, stabbing furiously in the air, right and left, bellowing forth their deeds of “dering-do” and pantomiming how they had done them – leaping high off the ground