Maiwa's Revenge

CHAPTER VI. THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGtT. l "JTotwithstanding all that wo had gone ' through, perhaps, indeed, on account of it- for I was thoroughly worn out- I slept that I night as üoundly as poor Gobo, round whose I crushed body the hyenas would now I be prowling. Rising refreshed at dawn I we went on our way toward Nala's I kraal, which ws reached at nightfaU. I It Í3 built on open ground, after the Zulu fashion, in a ring fence and with beehive huts. The cattlo kraal is behind and a little to the left. Indeed, both om their habits and their talk, it was easy -ee that these Butiana belong to that secI -on of the Bantu people which since I T Chaka's time has been known as the Zulu ■ race. We did uot see the chief Nala that mght. His daughter Maiwa went on to Lis ■ private huts as soon as we arrived, and very ■ shortly afterward one of Iris headmen carne ■ to us, bringing a sheep and some mealies ■ and milk with him. 'The chief sent us greet■ mg,' he said, and would see us on the mor■ row. lleauwhile he was ordered to bring us ■ to a place of resting, where we and our goods ■ should be safe and undisturbed. AccordI ingly he led the way to 6ome very good huts ■ 3ust outside Nala's private iuclosure, and ■ nere we slept eomfortabLy. "On the morrow about 8 o'clock the headI man came again, and said that NaJa reI quested that I would visit him. Accordingly I I followed him into the private enclosnrw. nnri I was introduced to the chief- a fino looking Lman of about 50, with very delicately shaped hands and feet, and a rather nervous mouth. I The chief was seated on a tanned os hide outI de his hut. By his side was his daughter ■ Mama, and round him, squatted on their I naunehes, weresome twenty headnien or InI dunas, whose number was continually added I to by fresh arrivals. These men saluted me I as I entered, and the chief rose and took my I üand, ordering a stool to be brought me I to sit on. When this was done, he with mueh ■ eloquence and native courtesy thanked me I for protectiiig his daughter in the painful I and dangerous circumstances ia which Bhe I lound herself placed, and also complimented I me very highly upon what he was pleas,-d to l cali the bravery with which I had defended i toe pass in the rocks. I answered ín . propriate terms, saying that it was to ífaiwa fwself that thanks were due, for had it not F been for her warning and knowledge of tho ■ country we should not have been here today, ■ while as to the defense of the pass, I was Inghting íor my life, aud that put heart ■ inpo me. "These courtesies being concluded, Nala ■ called upou bis daughter Maiwa to teil her ■ tale to the headmen, and this she did most ■ omply andeffectively. She reminded them ■ that she had gone as an unwilling bride to ■ r06 ! thLt no cattle had been paid f or her, ■ Kecause Wambe had threatened war iL she ■ '"as not sent as a free gift. Since she had ■ enteredthü kraal of Wambe her days had ■ beau days of heaviness, and hernights nights ■ She had been beaten, she had ■ oeenneglected, and made todo the work of syow bom wife- she, a chiefs daughter labo had borne a ehild, and this was the story ■ M the child. Then, amidst a dead silenoe, toe told them the awf ui tale which she had faü-eady narrated to me. When she had finf!f, ' her "sarers gave a loud ejaculation. ■ Nali' they said"'ou' Maiwa, daughter of E ■ , '"Ay.'sbe went on, with flashing eyes- I aT it is true. My mouth is as full of truth ■ as a Bower of honey, and for tears my eyes a wue; I saw the child dia Here is tho Pf of it, couneilors;' and she drew f orth Mie little dead hand, and held it before them. Ou!' they said again- 'ou! it is the dead hand.' " 'Yes,' 6he contiaued, 'it is the dead hand ol my dead chüd, and I bear it with me that 1 may uerar f orget, never f or one short hour taat I may see Wambe die and be arenged. J'0" beur vrith it, my fathei-, that your daughter aud your daughter's child should be so treated by a MatukuJ Will ye bear it jien of niy own people!' "'No,1 said an old Iniuna, rising; "it is ■ not to be borne. Enough hare we suffered at the hands of these Matuku dogs and their loud tongued chief. Let us put il to the issue. ' " 'It ia not to be borne indeed,' said Nala; 'but how can we make head against so great a peoplef' " 'Ask of him- ask of Maeumazahn the wise white man,' said Maiwa, pointing to me. " 'How can we overeóme Wambe, Macu mazahn the hunterP " 'How does the jackal overreach the lion Nala? " 'By cleverness, Maeumazahn.' " 'Soshall you overeóme Wambe, Nala.' "At this momont an interruptiou occurred. A man entered, and said that messeugers had arrived from Wambe. " 'What is their message?' asked Nala. " They come to ask that thy daughter Maiwa bo sent back, and with her the white hunter.' " 'How shall I make answer to this, Maeumazahn i' said Nala, when the man had withdrawn. " 'Thus shalt thou answer,' I said, after reflection. 'Say that the woman shall be sent and I with her, and then bid the messengers Degone. Stay ; Jl will hide myself here in the hut that the men niay not see me.' And I did. "Shortly afterward, through a crack in the hut, I saw the messengers arrive, and great truculent looking fellows they were. There were f our of theni, and they had evidently traveled hard. They entered with a swagger and squatted down before Nala. " 'Your business?' said Nala, frowning. " 'We comr from Wambe, bearing the orders of Wambe to Nala his servant,' anBwered the spokesman of the party. " 'Speak,' said Nala, with a curious twitch of bis nervous looking mouth. " 'These are the words of Wambe, "Send back the woman, my wife, who has run away froin my kraal, and send with her the white man who has dared to hunt in my country without my leare and to slay my soldiers." These are the words of Wambe.' " 'And it I say I will not send them?' asked Nala. " 'Then, on behalf of Wainbe, we declare war upon you. Wambe will eat you up. He will wipe you out Your kraals shall be stamped flat- so;' and with an expressive gesture, he drew his hand across his mouth to show complete would be th" annihilatiou of the chief who dared to defy Wambe. " 'These are heavy words,' said Nala. 'Let me think before I give an answer,' "ïhen followed a little piece of ncting that was really very ereditable to the untutored savage mind. The heralds withdrew, but not out of sight, and Nala went through the show of earnestly consultmg his Indunas. The girl, Maiwa, too, flung herself at his feet, and appeared to weep and implore his protection, while he wrung his hands as though in doubt and tribulation of mind. At length ho summoned the messengers to draw near and addresed them, while Maiwa sobbed very realistically at his side. " 'Wambe is a great chief,' said Nala, 'and this woman is uis wife, whom he has a right to claim. She must return to him, but her feet are sore with walking. She canuot come now. In eight days from this day she shall be delivered at the kraal of Wambe. I will send her with a party of my men. As for the white hunter and his men, I have naught to do with them, and cannot answer for their misdeeds. They have wandered hither asfced by me, and I will deliver them back whence they came, that Wambe may judge them aecording to his law. They shall ba sent with the girl. For you, go your ways. Food shall be given you without the kraal and a present for Wambe in atonement of the ill-doing of my daughter. I have spoken.' "At first the heralds seemed inclined to insist upon Maiwa's accompanying them then, and there, but ultimately, on being shown the swollen condition of her feet, they gave up the point and departed. "Whou they were well out of the way I emerged from the hut, and we went on to discuss the situation and make our plans. First of all, as X was careful to explain to Nala, I was not going to give him my experience and services for nothing. I heard that Wambo had a stockade round his kraal made of elephant tusks. These tusks, in the event of our succeeding in our enterprise, I should claim as my perquisite, with the proviso that Nala should f urnish me with men to carry them down to the coast. "To this modest request he and the headmen gave an unqualified and hearty assent, the more hearty, perhaps, because they never expected to finger them. "The next thing that I stipulated was that Jt we conquered, the white man, John Every, should be hamled over to me, together with' any goods that he might claim. Ilis crue] captivity was, I need hardly say, the only reason that induced me to join in so hare brained an expedition; but I was careiul, f rom motives of policy, to keep this factia the background. Nala accepted this condition. My third stipulation was that no women or children should be killed. This being also agreed to, we went on to consider ways and means. Wambe was, it appeared, a very powerful petty chief ; that is, he could put at least ü,000 flghting men into the field, and al ways had trom 3,000 to 4,000 collected about his kraai, which was supposed to be impregnablo. Nala, on the contrary, could not, at such short notice, collect more than from 1,000 to 1,200 men, though, being of the Zulu stock, they were of much better stuff for fighting purposes tban Wambe's Matukus. "These odds, though large, were not, under the circumstances, overwhelming. The real obstado to our chance of success was the difficulty of doli vering a crushing assault against Wambe's strong placa This was, it appeared, fortiüed all round with schanses, or i,uuu naus, ana contained numerous cave and koppies in the hiil side and at the foot of the mountain which no forcé had ever been able to captura It was said that in the tim of the Zulu monarch, Dingaan, a great impi of that king's, having penetrated to this district, had delivered an assault upon the kraal, then owned by a f orefather of Wambe's, and been beaten back with the loss of more than a thousand men. Having thoughc the question over, I closeJy interrogated Maiwa as to the f ortifications and the topographieal peculiaiities of the spot, and not without rosults. I discovered that the kraal was indeed impregnable to a front attack, but that it was very slightly defended to the rear, which ran up theslopeof the mountain; indeed, only by two lines of stone walls. The reason of this was that the mountain is quita impassable, except by one secret path, supposed to be known only to the chief and his councilors, and this being so, it had not been considered necessary to fortify it " 'Well,' 1 said, when she had done, 'and now as to this secret path of thine, knowest thou aught of iti" " 'Ay,' sho answered; 'I am no fooi, Macumazahn. Knowledge learned is power earned. I won the secret of that path.' " 'And canst thou gide an impi thereon, so that it shall fall upon the town from behind? "'Yes; this can I do, if only "Wambe's people know not that the impi comes, f or if they know then can they block the way.' " 'So, then, here is mj plan. Listen, Nala, and say if it be good, or if you have a better show it forth. Let messengers go out and summon all thy impi, that it be gathered here on the third day from now. This being done, let the impi, led by Miwa, march on the morrow of the fourth day, and, crossing the mountains, let it travel along on the other side of the mountains tilj it come to the place on the farther side of which is the kraal of Wambe; that shall be some three days' journey in all (about 120 miles). Then, on the night of the third day's journey, let Maiwa lead the impi in silence up the secret path, so that it comes to the crest of the mountain that is above the Strong Place, and here let it hide amoiig the rocks. Meanwhile, on the sixth day from now, let one of the Indunos of Nala bring with him 200 men that have guns, and take me and my men as prisoners, and take also a girl from among the Butiana people who by form and face is like unto Mui wa, and bind her hands, and pass by the road o:i which we eame, and through the cuttiug iu the cliff, on to the kraal of Wambe. But the men shall take no shields or plumes with them, only their guus and one short spear, and when they meet the people of Wambe, they shall say that they come to give up the woman and the white man and his party to Wambe, and to niake atonement to Wambe S shall they pass in peace, and traveling thus, on the evening of the seventh day we shall come to the gates of the place of Wambe, and nigh the gates there is, so says Maiwa, a koppie very strong and f uil of rocks and caves, but having no soldiers thereon except in time of war, or at the worst, but a few such as can easily be overpowered. " 'This being done at the dawn of day, must the impi on the mountain behind the town light a fire and put wet grass thereon, so that the smoke goes up. Then at the sight of the smoke will we in the koppie begin to shoot into the town of Wambe, whereon all the soldiere will run to kill us. But we will hold our own, and while we flght the impi shall charge down the mountain side and climb the schanses and put those who defend them to the assegai, and then, falling upon the town, shall surprise it and drive the soldiers of Wambe as the wind blows the dead husks of corn. This is mv ulan. I hav spoken.' " 'Ou,' said Nala, 'it is good; t is very good. The white man is cleverer than a jackai Yes, so shal] it be, and may the Snake of the Butiana people stand up upon its tail and prosper the war, for so shall we be rid of Wambe and the tyrannies of Wambe.' "After that the girl Maiwa stood up, and, once more producing the dreadf ui little dried hand, made her father and several of his bead councilors swear by it and upon it that they wouid carry out the war of vengeance to ;he bitter end. It was a very curious sight to see, and the fight that ensued was, by the way, thereafter known among tha tribes of that district as the War of the lattle Hand. "The next two days were busy ones for us. Messengers were sent out and every available man of the Butiana tribe was ordered up to 'a great dance.' The country was smal], and by the evening of the second day some 1,250 men were assembled, with their assegais and shields, and a fine, hardy troop they were. "At dawn of the following day, the fourth from the departure of the heralds, the main impi started, under the command of Nala himself, who, knowing that his hfe and chieftainship hung upon the issue of the struggle, wisely determined to be present to direct it. With them went Maiwa, who was to guide thcm up the secret path. Of course he had to give them two days' start, as they had more than a hundred miles oí rough country to pass, including the erossing of the great mountain range which ran north and south, for it was necessary that the impi should make a wide detour in order to escape detection. At length, however, at dawn on the sixth day, I took the road, aecompanied by my most unwilling bearers, who did not at all like the idea of thus putting their heads into the lion's mouth. Indeed, it was only the fear of Nala's spears, together with a vague confidence in myself, that induced them to accept the adventure. With me also were about two hundred Butianas, all armed with guns of various kinds, for many of these people had guns, though they were not very proflcient in the use of them. But they carried no shield, aud wore no head dress orarmlets; indeed, every warlike appearance was carefully avoided. With our party went also a sister of Maiwa's, though by a different mother, who strongly resembled her in face and form, and whose mission it as to personate the runaway wife. "That evening we camped upon the top of the cliff up which we had so barely escaped, and next moruing at the flrst breaking of the llght we roüed away the stones with which we had blocked the passage somo days before, and descended to the hill side beneatü. Here the bodies, or rather the skeletons, of the men who had fallen before my rifle still lay about The Matuku soldiers had left their comrades to be buried by the vultures. I descended tho gully into which poor Gobo had fallen, and searched for his body, but in vain, alihough I found the spot where heand the other man had struek, together with the bones of the latter, which I recognized by the waist cloth. Either some beast of prey had barried Gobo off, or the Matuku peopla nad disposed of his remains, and also of my express rifle which he carried. At any rate, I never saw or heord any more of him. "Once in Wambe's country, we adopted a very circumspeet method of proceeding. About flfty men marched ahead, in loosa order, to guard against surprise, wkile as many more followed behind. The otter hundred were gathered in a bunch between, and in the center of these men I marched, together with the girl who was personating Maiwa and all my bearers. Wo were disarmed, and somo of my men were tied togother, to show that we were prisoners, whüe the girl had a blanket thrown over her head, and moved along with an air of great dejection. We headed straight for Wambe's place, which was at a distance of about twenty-üve miles from the mountáin pass. "When we had gone some fivo miles we met a party of about flfty of W-ambe's soldiers, who were evidently on the lookout for us. They stopped us, and their captain asked where we were going. The headman of our party answered that he Tras conveying Maiwa, Wambe's runaway wife, together with the white hunter and his men, to be given up to Wambe, in aceordance with lus eommand. The captain then wanted to know why we were so many, to which our spokesman replied that I and my men were very desperate fellows, and that it was feared that if we were sent with a smaller escort we should escape, and bring disgrace and the wrath of Wambe upon their tribe. Thereon this gentleman, the llatuku captain, began to amuse himself at my expense, and moek me, saying that Wambe would make me pay for the soldiere that I had killed. He would put me in the 'Thing that bites'- in other words, the lion trap- and leave me there to die like a jackal caught by the leg. I made no answer to this, though my wrath was great, but pretended to be frightened. Indeed, there was not much pretense about it - I was frightened. ï could not coneeal from myself that it was ours was a most hazardous enterprise, and that it was very possible that I might make acquaintaneo with that lion trap before I was many days older. However, it was quite impossible to desert poor Every in his misfortune, so I had to go on, and trust to Providence, as I have so often had to do before and si nou. "And noir a fresh difficulty arose. Wambe's soldiere insisted upon accompanying us, and, what is more, did all they could to urge us forward, as they were naturally anxious to get to the chief's place before evemug. ouc we, on tne other hand, had excellent reasons for not arriving till night was closing in, since we relied upon the gloom to cover our advance upon the koppie which commanded the town. Finally they got so importúnate that we had to flatly refuse to move faster, alleging as a reason that the girl was tired. They did not accept this excuse in good part, and at one time I thought that we should have come to blows, for there is no love lost betweon Butianas and Matukus. At last, however, either from motives of poliey or because they were so evidently outnumbered, they gave in, and suffered us to go our own pace. I earnestly wished that they would have added to the obligation by going theirs, but this they absolutely declined to do. On the conixary, they accompanied us every foot of the way,' keeping up a running flre of allusions to the 'Thing that bites' that jarred upon my nerves and disconiDOsed mv temnar "About half past 4 in the afternoon we carne to a neek or ridge of stony ground, whence we could plainly see Wambe's town, lylng some six or seveu miles away and 3,000 feet beueath us. The town is built in a valley, with the exeeption of Wambe's own kraal; that is situated at the mouth of some caves upon the slope of the opposing mountains, over which I hoped to see our impi's Bpears come flashing in the morrow's light Even from where we stood it was easy to see how strongly the place was fortified with schanses and stone walls, and how difflcult of approach. Indeed, unless taken by surprise, it seemed to me quite impregnable to a forcé operating without cannon, and even cannon would not make much impression on roeks and stony koppies fiUed with caves. "Then came the descent of the pass, and an arduous business it was, for the path- if it maybe called a path- was almost entirely composed of huge water worn bowlders, from the oneto the other of which we had to jump likeso many grasshoppers. It took us two hours to get down; and tra veling through that burning sun, when at last we did reach the bottora, I, for one, was pretty nearly played out. Shortly afterwards. iust as it was growing dark, we carne to the first line of fortiflcations, which consisted of a triple Btone wall pierced by a gateway so narrow that a man could hardly squeeze through it. We passed this without question, being accompanied by Wambe's soldiere. Then came a belt of land three hundred paces or more in width, very rocky and broken, and ha ving no huts upon it. It was in hollows in this belt that the eattle were kraaled in case of danger. On the farther sido were more fortifications, and another small gateway shaped like an inverted V, and just beyond and through it I saw the koppie we had planned to seizo looming up against the line of mountains behiud. As I went I whispered my suggestions to our captain, with the result that at the second gateway he halted the cavalcade, and, addressing the captain of Wambe's soldiere, said that we would wait till we received Wambe's word to enter tho town. "The other man said that that was well, only he must hand over the prisoners to be taken up to the chief 's kraal, for Wambe was 'hungry to begin upon thera,' and his 'heart desired to see the white man at rest before he closedhiseyesiusleepj'andas for his wife, Bui-Bjy iie wouiu welcome her. Uur leader replied thac he could not do this thing, because his orders were to deliver the prisoners to Wambe at Wambe's ovrn kraal, and they mlght not bo broken. How could he be responsible for the safety of the prisoners lf he let themoufc of his hand? No; they would wait there till Wambe's word was brought "To this, after some demur, the other man consented, and departed, remarking that ho would soon be back. As he passed me he called out, with a sneer, pointing, as he did, to the fading red in the western sky: 'Look your last upon the light, white man, for the "Thing that bites" lives in the dark.' "Next day it so happened that I shot this man, and, do you know, I thjnk that he is about the only human being who has come to harm at my hands for whom I do not feel sincere sorrow and, in a degree, remorse. [TO BE COXTIN'UED.]