CHAPTER VIII.
BY THE BUFFALO RIVER.
The morning of a new day was well in when Florian, lying among the tall, wavy reeds and feathery grass by the river-bank, awoke from a sleep that had been deep and heavy, induced by long exhaustion, toil, and over-tension of the nerves. Ere he started up, and as he was drifting back to consciousness, his thoughts had been, not of the awful slaughter from which he had escaped, but, strange to say, of Dulcie Carlyon, the object of his constant and most painful solicitude.
His returning thoughts had been of the past and her. In fancy he saw her again, with her laughing dark blue eyes and her winning smile; he felt the pressure of her little hand, and heard the tones of her voice, so soft and winning, and saw her, not as he saw her last, in deep mourning, but in her favourite blue serge trimmed with white, and a smart sailor's hat girt with a blue yachting ribbon above her ruddy golden hair; then there came an ominous flapping of heavy wings, and he started up to find two enormous Kaffir vultures wheeling overhead in circles round him!
On every side reigned profound silence, broken only by the lap-lapping of the Buffalo as it washed against rocks and boulders on its downward passage to the Indian Ocean. A few miles distant rose the rocky crest of fatal Isandhlwana, reddened to the colour of blood by the rising sun, and standing up clearly defined in outline against a sky of the deepest blue; and a shudder came over him as he looked at it, and thought of all that had happened, and of those who were lying unburied there.
His sodden uniform was almost dried now by the heat of the sun, but he felt stiff and sore in every joint, and on rising from the earth he knew not which way to turn. He knew that two companies of the first battalion of his regiment were at Helpmakaar, with the regimental colour, and that one of the second battalion was posted at Rorke's Drift, under Lieutenant Bromhead, but of where these places lay he had not the least idea. He was defenceless too, for though he had his sword-bayonet he had lost his rifle when his horse was shot in the stream.
He passed a hand across his brow as if to clear away his painful and anxious thoughts, and was making up his mind to follow the course of the river upward as being the most likely mode of reaching Rorke's Drift when a yell pierced his ears, and he found himself surrounded by some twenty black-skinned Zulus, with gleaming eyes and glistening teeth, all adorned with cow-tails, feathers, and armlets, and armed in their usual fashion—Zulus who had been resting close by him among the long reeds, weary, as it proved; after their night's conflict at Rorke's Drift and their repulse at that place.
Florian's blood ran cold!
Already he seemed to feel their keen assegais piercing his body and quivering in his flesh. However, to his astonishment, these savages, acting under the orders of their leader, did nothing worse then than strip him of his belts and tunic, and, strange enough, examined him to see if he was wounded anywhere.
He then understood their leader to say—for he had picked up a few words of their not unmusical language—that they would give him as a present to Cetewayo.
Their leader proved to be one of the sons of Sirayo—one of the original causes of the war, and has been described as a model Zulu warrior, lithe, muscular, and without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his handsome limbs; one who could launch an assegai with unerring aim, and spring like a tiger to close quarters with knife or knobkerie—the same warrior who lay long a prisoner in the gaol of Pietermaritzburg after the war was over.
They dragged Florian across the river at a kind of ford, and partly took him back the way he had come from Isandhlwana, and awful were the sights he saw upon it—the dead bodies of comrades, all frightfully gashed and mutilated, with here and there a wounded horse, which, after partially recovering from its first agony, was cropping, or had cropped, the grass around in a limited circle, which showed the weakness caused by loss of blood; and Florian, with a prayerful heart, marvelled that his savage captors spared him, as they assegaied these helpless animals in pure wantonness and lust of cruelty.
All day they travelled Florian knew not in what direction, and when they found him sinking with exertion they gave him a kind of cake made of mealies to eat, and a draught of utywala from a gourd. This is Kaffir beer, or some beverage which is like thin gruel, but on which the army of Cetewayo contrived to get intoxicated on the night before the battle of Ulundi.
Early next day he was taken to a military kraal, situated in a solitary and pastoral plain, surrounded by grassy hills, where he was given to understand he would be brought before the king.
Like all other military kraals, it consisted of some hundred beehive-shaped huts, surrounded by a strong wooden palisade, nine feet high and two feet thick. He was thrust into a hut, and for a time left to his own reflections.
The edifice was of wicker-work made of wattles, light and straight, bent over at regular distances till they met at the apex, on the principle of a Gothic groined arch. The walls were plastered, the roof neatly thatched; the floor was hard and smooth. Across it ran a ledge, which served as a cupboard, where all the clay utensils were placed, and among these were squat-shaped jars capable of holding twenty gallons of Kaffir beer.
Ox-hide shields and bundles of assegais were hung on the walls, which were thin enough to suggest the idea of breaking through them to escape; but that idea no sooner occurred to the unfortunate prisoner than he abandoned it. He remembered the massive palisade, and knew that within and without were the Zulu warriors in thousands, for the kraal was the quarters of an Impi or entire column.
After a time he was brought before Cetewayo, who was seated in a kind of chair at the door of a larger hut than the rest, with a number of indunas (or colonels) about him, all naked save at the loins, wearing fillets or circlets on their shaven heads, and armed with rifles; and now, sooth to say, as he eyed this savage potentate wistfully and with dread anxiety, Florian Melfort thought not unnaturally that he was face to face with a death that might be sudden or one of acute and protracted torture.
There is no need for describing the appearance of the sable monarch, with whose face and burly figure the London photographers have made all so familiar; but on this occasion though he was nude, all save a royal mantle over his shoulders—a mantle said to have borne 'a suspicious resemblance to an old tablecloth with fringed edges'—he wore his other 'royal' ensignia, which these artists perhaps never saw—a kind of conical helmet or head-dress, with a sort of floating puggaree behind, and garnished by three feathers, not like the modern badge of the Prince of Wales—but like three old regimental hackles, one on the top and one on each side.
Near him Florian saw a white man, clad like a Boer, whom he supposed to be another unfortunate prisoner like himself, but who proved to be that strange character known as 'Cetewayo's Dutchman,' who was there to act as interpreter.
This personage, whose name was Cornelius Viljoen, had been a Natal trader, and acted as a kind of secretary to the Zulu King throughout the war; but latterly he was treated with suspicion, and remained as a prisoner in his hands, and now he was ordered to ask Florian a series of questions.
'Can you unspike the two pieces of cannon captured by the warriors of Dabulamanza at Isandhlwana?'
These were seven-pounder Royal Artillery guns.
'I cannot,' replied Florian.
'Why?'
'Because I am not a gunner—neither am I a mechanic,' he replied, unwilling to perform this task for the service of the enemy.
'The king desires me to tell you that if you can do this, and teach his young men the way to handle these guns, he will give you a hundred head of oxen, a kraal by the Pongola River, where your people will never find you, and you will ever after be a great man among the Zulus.'
Again Florian protested his inability, assuring them that he knew nothing of artillery.
When questioned as to the strength of the three columns that entered Zululand, the king and all his indunas seemed incredulous as to their extreme weakness when compared to the vast forces they were to encounter, and when told that there were hundreds of thousands of red soldiers who could come from beyond the sea, they laughed aloud with unbelief, and Cetewayo said the more that came the more there would be to kill, and that when he had driven the last of the British and the last of the Boers into the salt sea together, he would divide all their lands among his warriors.
Cetewayo waved his hand, as much as to say the interview was over, and said something in a menacing tone to Cornelius Viljoen.
'You had better consider the king's wish,' said the latter to Florian; 'he tells me that if you do not obey him in the matter of the guns, you will be cut in small pieces with an assegai, joint by joint, beginning with the toes and finger-tips, so that you may be long, long of dying, and pray for death.'
For three successive days he was visited by the Dutchman, who repeated the king's request and threat, and, in pity perhaps for his youth, the speaker besought him to comply; but Florian was resolute.
Each day at noon the latter was escorted by two tall and powerful Zulus, one armed with a musket loaded, and the other with a double-barbed assegai, into the adjacent mealie fields, where, to sustain life, he was permitted with his hands unbound to make a plentiful repast on this hermit-like diet; and it was while thus engaged he began to see and consider that this was his only chance of escape, if he could do so, by preventing the explosion of the musket borne by one of his guards from rousing all the warriors in and about the kraal.
Florian was quite aware now of the reason why Methlagazulu (for so the son of Sirayo was named) had so singularly spared his life, when captured beside the Buffalo River, and he knew now that if he failed to obey the request of Cetewayo in the matter of unspiking the two seven-pounders, or wore out the patience of that sable potentate, he would be put to a cruel death; and he shrewdly suspected, from all he knew of the Zulu character, that even were he weak enough, or traitor enough, to do what he was requested, he would be put to death no doubt all the same, despite the promised kraal and herd of cattle beyond the Pongola River.
He had seen too much of ruthless slaughter of late not to be able to nerve himself—to screw his courage up to the performance of a desperate deed to secure his own deliverance and safety.
His two escorts were quite off their guard, while he affected to be feeding himself with the green mealies, and no more dreamt that he would attack them empty-handed or unarmed than take a flight into the air.
Suddenly snatching the assegai from the Zulu, who, unsuspecting him, held it loosely, he plunged it with all his strength—a strength that was doubled by the desperation of the moment—into the heart of the other, who was armed with the rifle—a Martini-Henry taken at Isandhlwana—and leaving it quivering in his broad, brawny, and naked breast, he seized the firearm as the dying man fell, and wrenched away his cartridge-belt.
The whole thing was done quick as thought, and the other Zulu, finding himself disarmed, fled yelling towards the kraal, about a mile distant, while Florian, his heart beating wildly, his head in a whirl, rushed with all his speed towards a wood—his first impulse—for shelter and concealment.
In the lives of most people there are some episodes they care not to recall or to remember, but this, though a desperate one, was not one of these to Florian.
He had the start of a mile in case of pursuit, which was certain; but he knew that a mile was but little advantage when his pursuers were fleet and hard-footed Zulus.
Whatever the reason, the pursuit of him was not so immediate as he anticipated; but he had barely gained the shelter of the thicket, which, with a great undergrowth or jungle, was chiefly composed of yellow wood and assegai trees, when, on giving a backward glance, he saw the black-skinned Zulus issuing in hundreds from the gates in the palisading, and spreading all over the intervening veldt.
Would he, or could he, escape so many?
A few shots that were fired at him by some of the leading pursuers showed that he was not unseen; but, as the Zulus knew not how to sight their rifles or judge of distance, their bullets either flew high in the air or entered the ground some sixty yards or so from their feet; and Florian, knowing that they would be sure to enter the wood at the point where he disappeared in it, turned off at an angle, and creeping for some distance among the underwood to conceal, if possible, his trail, which they would be sure to follow, he reached a tree, the foliage of which was dense. He slung his rifle over his back, and climbed up for concealment, and then for the first time he became aware that his hands, limbs, and even his face, were lacerated, torn, and bleeding from the leaves and thorns of the sharp, spiky plants among which he had been creeping.[*]
[*] The escape of Florian from the kraal is an incident similar, in some instances, to that of Private Grandier, of Weatherly's Horse, after the affair at Inhlobane.
He had scarcely attained a perch where he hoped to remain unseen till nightfall, or the Zulus withdrew, and where he sat, scarcely daring to breathe, when the wood resounded with their yells.