King Solomon's Mines
“They rose up and tossed their spears: the soldiers called to the
captains, ‘Come, lead us’—and the captains cried to the king, ‘Direct
thou the battle.’
“They laughed in their pride, twenty thousand men, and yet a twenty
thousand.
“Their plumes covered the valleys as the plumes of a bird cover her
nest; they shook their shields and shouted, yea, they shook their
shields in the sunlight; they lusted for battle and were glad.
“They came up against me; their strong ones ran swiftly to slay me;
they cried, ‘Ha! ha! he is as one already dead.’
“Then breathed I on them, and my breath was as the breath of a wind,
and lo! they were not.
“My lightnings pierced them; I licked up their strength with the
lightning of my spears; I shook them to the ground with the thunder of
my shoutings.
“They broke—they scattered—they were gone as the mists of the morning.
“They are food for the kites and the foxes, and the place of battle is
fat with their blood.
“Where are the mighty ones who rose up in the morning?
“Where are the proud ones who tossed their spears and cried, ‘He is as
a man already dead’?
“They bow their heads, but not in sleep; they are stretched out, but
not in sleep.
“They are forgotten; they have gone into the blackness; they dwell in
the dead moons; yea, others shall lead away their wives, and their
children shall remember them no more.
“And I—! the king—like an eagle I have found my eyrie.
“Behold! far have I flown in the night season, yet have I returned to
my young at the daybreak.
“Shelter ye under the shadow of my wings, O people, and I will comfort
you, and ye shall not be dismayed.
“Now is the good time, the time of spoil.
“Mine are the cattle on the mountains, mine are the virgins in the
kraals.
“The winter is overpast with storms, the summer is come with flowers.
“Now Evil shall cover up her face, now Mercy and Gladness shall dwell
in the land.
“Rejoice, rejoice, my people!
“Let all the stars rejoice in that this tyranny is trodden down, in
that I am the king.”
Ignosi ceased his song, and out of the gathering gloom came back the
deep reply—
“_Thou art the king!_”
Thus was my prophecy to the herald fulfilled, and within the
forty-eight hours Twala’s headless corpse was stiffening at Twala’s
gate.
CHAPTER XV.
GOOD FALLS SICK
After the fight was ended, Sir Henry and Good were carried into Twala’s
hut, where I joined them. They were both utterly exhausted by exertion
and loss of blood, and, indeed, my own condition was little better. I
am very wiry, and can stand more fatigue than most men, probably on
account of my light weight and long training; but that night I was
quite done up, and, as is always the case with me when exhausted, that
old wound which the lion gave me began to pain. Also my head was aching
violently from the blow I had received in the morning, when I was
knocked senseless. Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that
evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort
lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to
feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so
many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and
strong in the morning.
Somehow, with the assistance of the beautiful Foulata, who, since we
had been the means of saving her life, had constituted herself our
handmaiden, and especially Good’s, we managed to get off the chain
shirts, which had certainly saved the lives of two of us that day. As I
expected, we found that the flesh underneath was terribly contused, for
though the steel links had kept the weapons from entering, they had not
prevented them from bruising. Both Sir Henry and Good were a mass of
contusions, and I was by no means free. As a remedy Foulata brought us
some pounded green leaves, with an aromatic odour, which, when applied
as a plaster, gave us considerable relief.
But though the bruises were painful, they did not give us such anxiety
as Sir Henry’s and Good’s wounds. Good had a hole right through the
fleshy part of his “beautiful white leg,” from which he had lost a
great deal of blood; and Sir Henry, with other hurts, had a deep cut
over the jaw, inflicted by Twala’s battle-axe. Luckily Good is a very
decent surgeon, and so soon as his small box of medicines was
forthcoming, having thoroughly cleansed the wounds, he managed to
stitch up first Sir Henry’s and then his own pretty satisfactorily,
considering the imperfect light given by the primitive Kukuana lamp in
the hut. Afterwards he plentifully smeared the injured places with some
antiseptic ointment, of which there was a pot in the little box, and we
covered them with the remains of a pocket-handkerchief which we
possessed.
Meanwhile Foulata had prepared us some strong broth, for we were too
weary to eat. This we swallowed, and then threw ourselves down on the
piles of magnificent karrosses, or fur rugs, which were scattered about
the dead king’s great hut. By a very strange instance of the irony of
fate, it was on Twala’s own couch, and wrapped in Twala’s own
particular karross, that Sir Henry, the man who had slain him, slept
that night.
I say slept; but after that day’s work, sleep was indeed difficult. To
begin with, in very truth the air was full
“Of farewells to the dying
And mournings for the dead.”
From every direction came the sound of the wailing of women whose
husbands, sons, and brothers had perished in the battle. No wonder that
they wailed, for over twelve thousand men, or nearly a fifth of the
Kukuana army, had been destroyed in that awful struggle. It was
heart-rending to lie and listen to their cries for those who never
would return; and it made me understand the full horror of the work
done that day to further man’s ambition. Towards midnight, however, the
ceaseless crying of the women grew less frequent, till at length the
silence was only broken at intervals of a few minutes by a long
piercing howl that came from a hut in our immediate rear, which, as I
afterwards discovered, proceeded from Gagool “keening” over the dead
king Twala.
After that I got a little fitful sleep, only to wake from time to time
with a start, thinking that I was once more an actor in the terrible
events of the last twenty-four hours. Now I seemed to see that warrior
whom my hand had sent to his last account charging at me on the
mountain-top; now I was once more in that glorious ring of Greys, which
made its immortal stand against all Twala’s regiments upon the little
mound; and now again I saw Twala’s plumed and gory head roll past my
feet with gnashing teeth and glaring eye.
At last, somehow or other, the night passed away; but when dawn broke I
found that my companions had slept no better than myself. Good, indeed,
was in a high fever, and very soon afterwards began to grow
light-headed, and also, to my alarm, to spit blood, the result, no
doubt, of some internal injury, inflicted during the desperate efforts
made by the Kukuana warrior on the previous day to force his big spear
through the chain armour. Sir Henry, however, seemed pretty fresh,
notwithstanding his wound on the face, which made eating difficult and
laughter an impossibility, though he was so sore and stiff that he
could scarcely stir.
About eight o’clock we had a visit from Infadoos, who appeared but
little the worse—tough old warrior that he was—for his exertions in the
battle, although he informed us that he had been up all night. He was
delighted to see us, but much grieved at Good’s condition, and shook
our hands cordially. I noticed, however, that he addressed Sir Henry
with a kind of reverence, as though he were something more than man;
and, indeed, as we afterwards found out, the great Englishman was
looked on throughout Kukuanaland as a supernatural being. No man, the
soldiers said, could have fought as he fought or, at the end of a day
of such toil and bloodshed, could have slain Twala, who, in addition to
being the king, was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the
country, in single combat, shearing through his bull-neck at a stroke.
Indeed, that stroke became proverbial in Kukuanaland, and any
extraordinary blow or feat of strength was henceforth known as
“Incubu’s blow.”
Infadoos told us also that all Twala’s regiments had submitted to
Ignosi, and that like submissions were beginning to arrive from chiefs
in the outlying country. Twala’s death at the hands of Sir Henry had
put an end to all further chance of disturbance; for Scragga had been
his only legitimate son, so there was no rival claimant to the throne
left alive.
I remarked that Ignosi had swum to power through blood. The old chief
shrugged his shoulders. “Yes,” he answered; “but the Kukuana people can
only be kept cool by letting their blood flow sometimes. Many are
killed, indeed, but the women are left, and others must soon grow up to
take the places of the fallen. After this the land would be quiet for a
while.”
Afterwards, in the course of the morning, we had a short visit from
Ignosi, on whose brows the royal diadem was now bound. As I
contemplated him advancing with kingly dignity, an obsequious guard
following his steps, I could not help recalling to my mind the tall
Zulu who had presented himself to us at Durban some few months back,
asking to be taken into our service, and reflecting on the strange
revolutions of the wheel of fortune.
“Hail, O king!” I said, rising.
“Yes, Macumazahn. King at last, by the might of your three right
hands,” was the ready answer.
All was, he said, going well; and he hoped to arrange a great feast in
two weeks’ time in order to show himself to the people.
I asked him what he had settled to do with Gagool.
“She is the evil genius of the land,” he answered, “and I shall kill
her, and all the witch doctors with her! She has lived so long that
none can remember when she was not very old, and she it is who has
always trained the witch-hunters, and made the land wicked in the sight
of the heavens above.”
“Yet she knows much,” I replied; “it is easier to destroy knowledge,
Ignosi, than to gather it.”
“That is so,” he said thoughtfully. “She, and she only, knows the
secret of the ‘Three Witches,’ yonder, whither the great road runs,
where the kings are buried, and the Silent Ones sit.”
“Yes, and the diamonds are. Forget not thy promise, Ignosi; thou must
lead us to the mines, even if thou hast to spare Gagool alive to show
the way.”
“I will not forget, Macumazahn, and I will think on what thou sayest.”
After Ignosi’s visit I went to see Good, and found him quite delirious.
The fever set up by his wound seemed to have taken a firm hold of his
system, and to be complicated with an internal injury. For four or five
days his condition was most critical; indeed, I believe firmly that had
it not been for Foulata’s indefatigable nursing he must have died.
Women are women, all the world over, whatever their colour. Yet somehow
it seemed curious to watch this dusky beauty bending night and day over
the fevered man’s couch, and performing all the merciful errands of a
sick-room swiftly, gently, and with as fine an instinct as that of a
trained hospital nurse. For the first night or two I tried to help her,
and so did Sir Henry as soon as his stiffness allowed him to move, but
Foulata bore our interference with impatience, and finally insisted
upon our leaving him to her, saying that our movements made him
restless, which I think was true. Day and night she watched him and
tended him, giving him his only medicine, a native cooling drink made
of milk, in which was infused juice from the bulb of a species of
tulip, and keeping the flies from settling on him. I can see the whole