CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
MORE DARK DAYS.
We must now return perforce to the little party at the plateau, andobserve the actions of its members which led up to the awful denouementportrayed in the preceding chapter. After the departure of the Zulus,Leigh had spent a dreadful night of it, the suspense and anxiety ofthese long silent hours almost driving him mad.
It was the last cast of the dice, and he well knew that if his belovedcousin was not rescued now, he never would be, for the failure of onesuch audacious attempt as this would put the Mormons strictly on theirguard, and any further trials would simply lead to battle and murder andsudden death for all his party.
His state, therefore, may be better imagined than described, whenAmaxosa returned alone in the grey dawn with lagging steps and dejectedmien, and without even raising his head to look Leigh in the face,quietly said, "All is lost, Inkoos." Then with an exceeding bitter cry,"Alas! my father, why did I leave thee? Alas! my brother, the people ofthe Undi has lost its leader, the oak-tree has lost its strongestbranch, and I, Amaxosa, am the last surviving chief of the ancient race.Ow, my brother, why didst thou leave me? Thou, Myzukulwa, the chief ofthe Undi, wast a man after my own heart; thou wast swifter than aneagle, and stronger than a lion. Pride of the Undi, why hast thou leftus? Thou art gone, my brother, though thy glory has been even as thesun in his noonday brightness; who that saw thee yesternight would havebelieved that thou couldst thus have died? Yet hast thou fallen like awarrior, and thrice one hundred foes of the evil men, the witch-finders,have gone before to do thee service and to clear thy path to the shades.The face of the sun is hidden by storm clouds, and the heart of Amaxosais very heavy. Pride of the Undi, how art thou fallen!"
The Zulu then sat himself down, with his face between his knees, andnever moved until the girls, who had been awakened by his arrival, putin their hurried appearance and tearfully begged him to tell them all.
Pulling himself together, the Zulu related the events of the night,adding his own account of his arrival at the glade with the quagga, onlyto find Myzukulwa lying in a great lake of gore, surrounded by theMormons he had killed.
Leaving the animal tied to a tree, he had hurried after the party, butcould not overtake it; he had, however, seen Grenville's returningfootprints on the grass, and knew he had been retaken and carried off tothe Mormon stronghold, whence it would be hopeless to again try andrescue him.
Amaxosa had then returned and buried his brother, taking good care toleave the Mormons lying where they had fallen; and having performed thelast kind offices to his dead, he had at once returned to the plateauwith the news.
"Did my cousin not foresee the possibility of his recapture?" askedLeigh.
"Ay, Inkoos, that did he, and I now see that he even feared it; he toldme to say to you that, if need be, you would do well to try and makemore lightning-boxes (bomb-shells), as he thought another attempt wouldbe made on this strong place when he was dead. Much more, therefore,will it be made now that the cunning men, the witch-finders, know of thedeath of the chief, my brother. Let the Inkoos, then, follow myfather's advice, for it is very good."
"But what of him?" asked Leigh angrily; "are we to desert him and leavehim to die like a dog?"
"Inkoos," was the ominous answer, "do thou but say the word, and Amaxosagoes willingly to die with his father; but if he leaves the rock, thenwill the Rose and the Lily fall into the hands of these evil men, andthou Inkoos wilt be but as we are, even amongst the dark and mistyshadows of the long-forgotten past."
Rose listened to all this, and more, with flashing eyes, and heard theZulu say that at sundown that night the man she loved would die, and diewithout knowing that she loved him; and she stole away to her littlecave again, and sat down to cudgel her poor little brains for a way tosave him.
That day had been indeed a day of utter prostration and misery to thoseat the plateau, but early in the afternoon Leigh had resolved at allhazards to go into ambush near the Mormon town, taking Amaxosa with him,in the hope that they might cause confusion amongst the executioners bya well-directed and unexpected attack, and thus give his cousin one morechance for life and liberty.
Of course this plan necessitated leaving the plateau to the females; butDora Winfield, armed with a Winchester repeater rifle, was considerablymore formidable than she looked, and it was the reverse of likely thatany attack would be made until Grenville had been finally disposed of.
Leigh and his faithful friend had accordingly lain in wait all evening,a quarter of a mile from the town, at the unusual quiet of which theywondered, and had of course seen nothing, and returned to the plateaubroken-hearted, late at night, only to find Miss Winfield nearlydistracted, and to receive the dreadful news that Rose was missing.
The girl had stolen quietly away, leaving behind her the package ofvaluables, on which was written in pencil, in a school-girl's hand, "Fordear Dick, with Rose's last and dearest wishes."
The poor girl's infatuation for his cousin was already known to Leigh,through the medium of his betrothed, and he now quite broke down; hissorrow, however, was nothing to the lamentations of the warlike Zulu atthis fresh and overpowering calamity. "Ow! my little sister," he cried,"why host thou left thy brother? Thou wast to me the chiefest among tenthousand friends? Alas, alas, for the lovely flower of Utah!"
Slipping down the rock, Amaxosa quickly followed the young girl'stracks, and soon ran out of sight, only to return shortly after with thenews that she had evidently taken the quagga, and ridden off at speedtowards the far west.
The perceptions of this sweet little woman had been keener than theaffectionate cousin's, keener than the crafty Zulu warrior's; all herfaculties had been sharpened by intense and self-denying love, andinstinctively guessing that the Mormon burial-ground would also form theplace of execution, thither she had driven her strange mount as fast asshe could ride him, arriving, as we have seen, just in the nick of timeto save Grenville's life for the moment, at the cost of her own.
Quite at a loss to understand what object Rose could have had in takingthe direction she had done, the party prepared to spend a wretchednight, and just before midnight Amaxosa pointed out to Grenville thatthe Mormon city, which had lain in utter darkness all evening, wasbrilliantly lighted up, and very shortly a merry peal of bells camefloating like music across the veldt, carrying woe and weeping to ourfriends, for they realised that this was a paean of triumph over theirown departed comrade, and probably also over the capture of poor littleRose.
Early in the morning--in fact, by grey dawn--the Zulu was down the rock,building an enormously thick zareba of thorn-bushes, to be fixed on topof the plateau to constitute an additional, and by no means despicable,defence.
The day passed in anxious watching, and in attempts to make shells assuggested by Grenville, and that night Amaxosa actually again enteredthe Mormon town, and, keeping practically under water all the time,learned the whole crushing story of the disaster to both the friends heloved.
There was now nothing left, he said, but to revenge them, and onregaining the plateau, he was, along with Leigh and Dora Winfield,discussing what best to do next, when suddenly casting his eyes into thedarkness by his side, the courageous Zulu, to Leigh's utter astonishmentand consternation, uttered a frightful yell and rushed away to hide inthe sleeping cave, whilst at that instant his beloved and lamentedcousin Grenville calmly strode into the firelight, with the body of Rosein his arms, and, placing his precious burden tenderly on the rock,turned and offered Leigh his hand; but the other, with a stifledexclamation of joy, threw himself on Grenville's neck, whilst MissWinfield sobbed on his shoulder, and Amaxosa, who had recovered hisequanimity, timidly grasped the outstretched hand of "his father," andfinding, as he said, that it was indeed the great white chief himself,and no spook--for he had a great objection to spooks (ghosts)--he fairlydanced a war-dance, only moderating his exuberance to utter furtherlaments over the body of poor Rose.