King Solomon's Mines
may meet in the fight; fly not to the Stars, but wait for me, I pray,
white men.” With this shaft of sarcasm he retired, and almost
immediately the sun sank.
That night was a busy one, for weary as we were, so far as was possible
by the moonlight all preparations for the morrow’s fight were
continued, and messengers were constantly coming and going from the
place where we sat in council. At last, about an hour after midnight,
everything that could be done was done, and the camp, save for the
occasional challenge of a sentry, sank into silence. Sir Henry and I,
accompanied by Ignosi and one of the chiefs, descended the hill and
made a round of the pickets. As we went, suddenly, from all sorts of
unexpected places, spears gleamed out in the moonlight, only to vanish
again when we uttered the password. It was clear to us that none were
sleeping at their posts. Then we returned, picking our way warily
through thousands of sleeping warriors, many of whom were taking their
last earthly rest.
The moonlight flickering along their spears played upon their features
and made them ghastly; the chilly night wind tossed their tall and
hearse-like plumes. There they lay in wild confusion, with arms
outstretched and twisted limbs; their stern, stalwart forms looking
weird and unhuman in the moonlight.
“How many of these do you suppose will be alive at this time
to-morrow?” asked Sir Henry.
I shook my head and looked again at the sleeping men, and to my tired
and yet excited imagination it seemed as though Death had already
touched them. My mind’s eye singled out those who were sealed to
slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the
mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and
sadness. To-night these thousands slept their healthy sleep, to-morrow
they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be
stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children
fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever. Only the old
moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses,
and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did æons before we
were, and will do æons after we have been forgotten.
Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument,
remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still
stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke
yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we
have inherited to-day; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and
sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends—the end from which he
fled aghast will surely overtake us also!
Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres,
but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once
been, can never _die_, though they blend and change, and change again
for ever.
All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind—for as I
grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to
be getting a hold of me—while I stood and stared at those grim yet
fantastic lines of warriors, sleeping, as their saying goes, “upon
their spears.”
“Curtis,” I said, “I am in a condition of pitiable fear.”
Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard and laughed, as he answered—
“I have heard you make that sort of remark before, Quatermain.”
“Well, I mean it now. Do you know, I very much doubt if one of us will
be alive to-morrow night. We shall be attacked in overwhelming force,
and it is quite a chance if we can hold this place.”
“We’ll give a good account of some of them, at any rate. Look here,
Quatermain, this business is nasty, and one with which, properly
speaking, we ought not to be mixed up, but we are in for it, so we must
make the best of our job. Speaking personally, I had rather be killed
fighting than any other way, and now that there seems little chance of
our finding my poor brother, it makes the idea easier to me. But
fortune favours the brave, and we may succeed. Anyway, the battle will
be awful, and having a reputation to keep up, we shall need to be in
the thick of the thing.”
He made this last remark in a mournful voice, but there was a gleam in
his eye which belied its melancholy. I have an idea Sir Henry Curtis
actually likes fighting.
After this we went to sleep for a couple of hours or so.
Just about dawn we were awakened by Infadoos, who came to say that
great activity was to be observed in Loo, and that parties of the
king’s skirmishers were driving in our outposts.
We rose and dressed ourselves for the fray, each putting on his chain
armour shirt, for which garments at the present juncture we felt
exceedingly thankful. Sir Henry went the whole length about the matter,
and dressed himself like a native warrior. “When you are in
Kukuanaland, do as the Kukuanas do,” he remarked, as he drew the
shining steel over his broad breast, which it fitted like a glove. Nor
did he stop there. At his request Infadoos had provided him with a
complete set of native war uniform. Round his throat he fastened the
leopard-skin cloak of a commanding officer, on his brows he bound the
plume of black ostrich feathers worn only by generals of high rank, and
about his middle a magnificent moocha of white ox-tails. A pair of
sandals, a leglet of goat’s hair, a heavy battle-axe with a
rhinoceros-horn handle, a round iron shield covered with white ox-hide,
and the regulation number of _tollas_, or throwing-knives, made up his
equipment, to which, however, he added his revolver. The dress was, no
doubt, a savage one, but I am bound to say that I seldom saw a finer
sight than Sir Henry Curtis presented in this guise. It showed off his
magnificent physique to the greatest advantage, and when Ignosi arrived
presently, arrayed in a similar costume, I thought to myself that I had
never before seen two such splendid men.
As for Good and myself, the armour did not suit us nearly so well. To
begin with, Good insisted upon keeping on his new-found trousers, and a
stout, short gentleman with an eye-glass, and one half of his face
shaved, arrayed in a mail shirt, carefully tucked into a very seedy
pair of corduroys, looks more remarkable than imposing. In my case, the
chain shirt being too big for me, I put it on over all my clothes,
which caused it to bulge in a somewhat ungainly fashion. I discarded my
trousers, however, retaining only my veldtschoons, having determined to
go into battle with bare legs, in order to be the lighter for running,
in case it became necessary to retire quickly. The mail coat, a spear,
a shield, that I did not know how to use, a couple of _tollas_, a
revolver, and a huge plume, which I pinned into the top of my shooting
hat, in order to give a bloodthirsty finish to my appearance, completed
my modest equipment. In addition to all these articles, of course we
had our rifles, but as ammunition was scarce, and as they would be
useless in case of a charge, we arranged that they should be carried
behind us by bearers.
When at length we had equipped ourselves, we swallowed some food
hastily, and then started out to see how things were going on. At one
point in the table-land of the mountain, there was a little koppie of
brown stone, which served the double purpose of head-quarters and of a
conning tower. Here we found Infadoos surrounded by his own regiment,
the Greys, which was undoubtedly the finest in the Kukuana army, and
the same that we had first seen at the outlying kraal. This regiment,
now three thousand five hundred strong, was being held in reserve, and
the men were lying down on the grass in companies, and watching the
king’s forces creep out of Loo in long ant-like columns. There seemed
to be no end to the length of these columns—three in all, and each of
them numbering, as we judged, at least eleven or twelve thousand men.
As soon as they were clear of the town the regiments formed up. Then
one body marched off to the right, one to the left, and the third came
on slowly towards us.
“Ah,” said Infadoos, “they are going to attack us on three sides at
once.”
This seemed rather serious news, for our position on the top of the
mountain, which measured a mile and a half in circumference, being an
extended one, it was important to us to concentrate our comparatively
small defending force as much as possible. But since it was impossible
for us to dictate in what way we should be assailed, we had to make the
best of it, and accordingly sent orders to the various regiments to
prepare to receive the separate onslaughts.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ATTACK
Slowly, and without the slightest appearance of haste or excitement,
the three columns crept on. When within about five hundred yards of us,
the main or centre column halted at the root of a tongue of open plain
which ran up into the hill, to give time to the other divisions to
circumvent our position, which was shaped more or less in the form of a
horse-shoe, with its two points facing towards the town of Loo. The
object of this manoeuvre was that the threefold assault should be
delivered simultaneously.
“Oh, for a gatling!” groaned Good, as he contemplated the serried
phalanxes beneath us. “I would clear that plain in twenty minutes.”
“We have not got one, so it is no use yearning for it; but suppose you
try a shot, Quatermain,” said Sir Henry. “See how near you can go to
that tall fellow who appears to be in command. Two to one you miss him,
and an even sovereign, to be honestly paid if ever we get out of this,
that you don’t drop the bullet within five yards.”
This piqued me, so, loading the express with solid ball, I waited till
my friend walked some ten yards out from his force, in order to get a
better view of our position, accompanied only by an orderly; then,
lying down and resting the express on a rock, I covered him. The rifle,
like all expresses, was only sighted to three hundred and fifty yards,
so to allow for the drop in trajectory I took him half-way down the
neck, which ought, I calculated, to find him in the chest. He stood
quite still and gave me every opportunity, but whether it was the
excitement or the wind, or the fact of the man being a long shot, I
don’t know, but this was what happened. Getting dead on, as I thought,
a fine sight, I pressed, and when the puff of smoke had cleared away,
to my disgust, I saw my man standing there unharmed, whilst his
orderly, who was at least three paces to the left, was stretched upon
the ground apparently dead. Turning swiftly, the officer I had aimed at
began to run towards his men in evident alarm.
“Bravo, Quatermain!” sang out Good; “you’ve frightened him.”
This made me very angry, for, if possible to avoid it, I hate to miss
in public. When a man is master of only one art he likes to keep up his
reputation in that art. Moved quite out of myself at my failure, I did
a rash thing. Rapidly covering the general as he ran, I let drive with
the second barrel. Instantly the poor man threw up his arms, and fell
forward on to his face. This time I had made no mistake; and—I say it
as a proof of how little we think of others when our own safety, pride,
or reputation is in question—I was brute enough to feel delighted at
the sight.
The regiments who had seen the feat cheered wildly at this exhibition
of the white man’s magic, which they took as an omen of success, while
the force the general had belonged to—which, indeed, as we ascertained
afterwards, he had commanded—fell back in confusion. Sir Henry and Good
now took up their rifles and began to fire, the latter industriously
“browning” the dense mass before him with another Winchester repeater,
and I also had another shot or two, with the result, so far as we could