Part 50

“Wish yourself a good journey, white man,” was the stern reply.

“Why? Do you desire that I should accompany you to Lobengula?”

“No, you go before us to the kraal of the Black One who is even greater than the child of Moselikatse, to that king who is called Death.”

Robert crossed his arms and said: “Say on.”

“White man, I promised you life if you would show us how to pierce or climb those walls. But you have made fools of us--you have set us to cut through rock with spears and axes. Yes, to hoe at rock as though it were soil--you who with the wisdom of your people could have taught us some better way. Therefore we must go back to our king disgraced, having failed in his service, and therefore you who have mocked us shall die. Come down now, that we may kill you quietly, and learn whether or no you are a brave man.”

Then it was, while her lover’s hand was moving towards the pistol hidden beneath his coat, that Benita, with a quick movement, emerged from the waggon in which she crouched, and stood up at his side upon the driving box.

“Ow!” said the Captain. “It is the White Maiden. Now how came she here? Surely this is great magic. Can a woman fly like a bird?” and they stared at her amazed.

“What does it matter how I came, chief Maduna?” she answered in Zulu. “Yet I will tell you why I came. It was to save you from dipping your spear in the innocent blood, and bringing on your head the curse of the innocent blood. Answer me now. Who gave you and your brother yonder your lives within that wall when the Makalanga would have torn you limb from limb, as hyenas tear a buck? Was it I or another?”

“Inkosi-kaas--Chieftainess,” replied the great Captain, raising his broad spear in salute. “It was you and no other.”

“And what did you promise me then, Prince Maduna?”

“Maiden of high birth, I promised you your life and your goods, should you ever fall into my power.”

“Does a leader of the Amandabele, one of the royal blood, lie like a Mashona or a Makalanga slave? Does he do worse--tell half the truth only, like a cheat who buys and keeps back half the price?” she asked contemptuously. “Maduna, you promised me not one life, but two, two lives and the goods that belong to both. Ask of your brother there, who was witness of the words.”

“Great Heavens!” muttered Robert Seymour to himself, as he looked at Benita standing with outstretched hand and flashing eyes. “Who would have thought that a starved woman could play such a part with death on the hazard?”

“It is as this daughter of white chiefs says,” answered the man to whom she had appealed. “When she freed us from the fangs of those dogs, you promised her two lives, my brother, one for yours and one for mine.”

“Hear him,” went on Benita. “He promised me two lives, and how did this prince of the royal blood keep his promise? When I and the old man, my father, rode hence in peace, he loosed his spears upon us; he hunted us. Yet it was the hunters who fell into the trap, not the hunted.”

“Maiden,” replied Maduna, in a shamed voice, “that was your fault, not mine. If you had appealed to me I would have let you go. But you killed my sentry, and then the chase began, and ere I knew who you were my runners were out of call.”

“Little time had I to ask your mercy; but so be it,” said Benita. “I accept your word, and I forgive you that offence. Now fulfil your oath. Begone and leave us in peace.”

Still Maduna hesitated.

“I must make report to the king,” he said. “What is this white man to you that I should spare him? I give you your life and your father’s life, not that of this white man who has tricked us. If he were your father, or your brother, it would be otherwise. But he is a stranger, and belongs to me, not to you.”

“Maduna,” she asked, “do women such as I am share the waggon of a stranger? This man is more to me than father or brother. He is my husband, and I claim his life.”

“Ow!” said the spokesman of the audience, “we understand now. She is his wife, and has a right to him. If she were not his wife she would not be in his waggon. It is plain that she speaks the truth, though how she came here we do not know, unless, as we think, she is a witch,” and he smiled at his own cleverness.

“Inkosi-kaas,” said Maduna, “you have persuaded me. I give you the life of that white fox, your husband, and I hope that he will not trick you as he has tricked us, and set you to hoe rock instead of soil,” and he looked at Robert wrathfully. “I give him to you and all his belongings. Now, is there anything else that you would ask?”

“Yes,” replied Benita coolly, “you have many oxen there which you took from the other Makalanga. Mine are eaten and I need cattle to draw my waggon. I ask a present of twenty of them, and,” she added by an afterthought, “two cows with young calves, for my father is sick yonder, and must have milk.”

“Oh! give them to her. Give them to her,” said Maduna, with a tragic gesture that in any other circumstances would have made Benita laugh. “Give them to her and see that they are good ones, before she asks our shields and spears also--for after all she saved my life.”

So men departed to fetch those cows and oxen, which presently were driven in.

While this talk was in progress the great impi of the Matabele was massing for the march, on the flat ground a little to the right of them. Now they began to come past in companies, preceded by the lads who carried the mats and cooking-pots and drove the captured sheep and cattle. By this time the story of Benita, the witch-woman whom they could not kill, and who had mysteriously flown from the top of the peak into their prisoner’s waggon, had spread among them. They knew also that it was she who had saved their general from the Makalanga, and those who had heard her admired the wit and courage with which she had pleaded and won her cause. Therefore, as they marched past in their companies, singing a song of abuse and defiance of the Makalanga who peered at them from the top of the wall, they lifted their great spears in salutation to Benita standing upon the waggon-box.

Indeed, they were a wondrous and imposing spectacle, such a one as few white women have ever seen.

At length all were gone except Maduna and a body-guard of two hundred men. He walked to the front of the waggon and addressed Robert Seymour.