Chapter Twelve.

Chapter Twelve.Fighting the Flames.For fully three days did our friends occupy themselves in the very necessary work of perfecting the defences of their stronghold on the mountain, and in teaching a picked dozen of the Atagbondo the use of the rifle, with which weapon they soon became fair marksmen, in the native acceptance of the term.On the fourth day, however, a discovery, trifling in itself, convinced the party that, so far from having been forgotten by Zero, they were at present occupying the whole of his earnest attention.The incident in question was the accidental notice taken by Kenyon of a small bird wheeling round and round their position; closer and closer it came, until all could see perfectly well that it was a white carrier pigeon, bearing a message. Finding, however, that the party did not whistle it in, the bird grew shy, and quickly took to flight Leigh raised his rifle with the intention of bringing it down, but Kenyon stopped him just in time.“Don’t shoot, old fellow,” he said; “I’ve a fancy to let that bird severely alone. I want to know just where it’s bound for at the present moment.”Watching very carefully, the pigeon was at last seen to enter a clump of bush about half a mile up the mountain side, and scarcely ten minutes later, either it, or a similar bird, left the same cover, and winged its rapid way due north.The inference was plain, and our friends looked blankly at one another; but, ere they could speak, the Zulu chief had summoned Umbulanzi and directed him to take two men, thoroughly search the suspected spot, and put to the assegai anyone they might find lurking there.Grenville and Kenyon would have much preferred taking the spy—if spy there was—alive, but the fear that his presence would cause the injured People of the Stick to overstep all restraint and become guilty of some fearful act of barbaric cruelty, decided them to let the man fight it out to the bitter end for his own life, rather than to permit him to fall into the hands of a raging mob of naked savages, whose tenderest mercies, maddened as they were by their frightful wrongs, would be cruel indeed.Anxiously our friends watched the progress of the three Zulus up the mountain, and all at once Leigh took a fancy to follow them, and was soon swinging up the slant with rapid steps, accompanied by Amaxosa and Kenyon.The Zulus reached the spot and plunged into the cover, from which there instantly arose a tremendous hubbub, and a moment later all three reappeared, fairly driven out by half a score of white men, and fighting furiously with their spears against several of the slavers, who were armed with axes, whilst the remainder stood by eagerly seeking an opportunity to use their guns.Promptly Leigh and Kenyon pitched forward their rifles, and two of the slavers instantly rolled head over heels down the mountain side, whilst at the same moment, uttering a wild shout of encouragement, Amaxosa dashed forward like an arrow from the bow, and in another second was side by side with his warriors, their nervous arms dealing out death and disaster with every sweeping blow. When Leigh and Kenyon reached the platform upon which this tragedy had been enacted, there was but one of the enemy left alive, and he was engaged in a terrific hand-to-hand combat with Amaxosa. All at once the Zulu’s axe broke off short in the haft, and the ruffian slaver rushed at him with a victorious shout. Springing lightly to one side, however, the active chief easily avoided the deadly stroke aimed at him by his opponent, whom he seized the next instant from behind, with his powerful hands pinning the man’s arms to his side, and before anyone could interfere, or even speak, with one mighty effort the fierce Zulu fairly swung his hapless foe from the ground, and then dashed him down full upon the rock, on his bare skull, which was crushed in like an egg-shell, the awful blow, of course, killing him on the spot, and an instant later the mountain side echoed to the triumphant notes of the famous Undi war-chant.“Oh, my father,” said the great Zulu, contemplating his handiwork with satisfaction, and speaking to Leigh, “it was a great fight; few could have slain the man with empty hands. Sleep softly, ye evildoers; the Lion of the Undi bids you sleep!”Carefully examining the cover from which the discomfited foe had sprung, our friends found that it consisted of a shallow cave in the face of the rock, the entrance being masked by low bushes, and a thick undergrowth of wild vines. In this hiding-place Kenyon discovered a basket containing three white and two black pigeons, whilst a note, evidently the one just received, lay upon the rocky floor. Eagerly pouncing upon this, the detective quickly mastered its contents, which were simply as follows:—“The second detachment will arrive at midnight to-night.—“Zero.”Clearly it was not, therefore, a mere question of spying upon their position; but the evident intention of the cunning slaver was to send in small drafts of men to conceal themselves upon the mountain; and these, when his own army moved up to the attack, would, at a given signal, doubtless fall upon our friends in the rear, and thus effect a very serious diversion in favour of Zero, at a most critical moment.The scheme was well thought-out, but the watchfulness of Kenyon had completely ruined it; and if the further suggestions which he now made should prove workable, the little band might be relied upon to read Master Zero another very severe and humiliating lesson, when he made his intended final onset.Briefly, Kenyon’s idea consisted of an attempt to lure the second detachment of slavers on to their utter destruction, but in view of their prematurely taking the alarm in consequence of our friends possibly failing to understand and correctly to answer their secret signals, a large party was to be slipped into the long grass of the veldt to intercept the slavers in the event of their making a push to escape, and an endeavour was to be made to capture some of the men alive, and force them to give up the secrets of their curious system of aerial correspondence.Finally it was decided that Amaxosa should set out with ten of his own men and fifty of the warriors of the Atagbondo at moonrise, and lie in ambush about three miles to the north of the mountain, but this party was on no account to make any movement, except in the event of a rocket being fired from the camp, giving them the direction of the escaping slavers. The Zulu was especially cautioned against making fire signals of any kind, as it was calculated that the enemy would, themselves, probably employ these.Little, however, did our friends know, as yet, of the devilish ingenuity of Master Zero, who had but to suspect the very remotest possibility of the existence of a trap to guard against it in most effectual fashion, and that night our friends received a peculiarly unpleasant proof of his dangerous capabilities in this direction.The matter fell out thus:—As Kenyon, Leigh, and a party of fifty picked men were lying noiselessly in wait in the cover from which they had that morning driven the enemy, they were suddenly and viciously attacked, without a moment’s warning, by Zero’s forerunner, in the shape of an enormous jaguar, which severely mauled a number of the men ere he was settled by Kenyon, who drove a Zulu assegai through the beast’s spine, whereupon his roarings woke every living echo in the country side, and a moment later a moving mass of dark forms could be seen gliding out from the friendly shadows cast by the mountain, and stringing themselves across the veldt in a vain effort to escape from their active foes.Quickly Grenville sent up his rocket, and as the glittering thread of fire traced its way across the heavens, Leigh and his eager party dashed down the mountain, and followed the flying foe at speed across the veldt, fearing from their apparent strength that the slavers might prove too heavy for Amaxosa and his little band.A mile from the rocks, finding their retreat cut off, the slavers formed in square and stood at bay between two fires. Leigh called to them to surrender, and lay down their arms, but the answer was hurled back in the shape of a contemptuous curse and a rattling volley, which stretched several of the Atagbondo upon the ground.Not one moment after this could Leigh or Amaxosa restrain their men, who simply flung themselves upon the very muzzles of the slavers. Nothing short of a triple line of bayonets could have withstood such a magnificently audacious charge, and in less time than it takes to tell, the “People of the Stick” had literally wiped their hated foes off the face of the earth.Five minutes covered the whole ghastly affair from beginning to end, and in that short space of time, Zero, in addition to the loss of his pet tiger, had suffered to the extent of fifty-three men, whilst our friends had on their side eleven killed outright and seventeen wounded, two of these last, dying the next day.“Haow Inkoos,” said the Zulu chief approvingly; “it is indeed a brave people, and fights well, almost as well as the Amazulu, but I would they used the assegai or the axe and made cleaner work of it. Well, what is done is done, my father, and these evil witch-finders will never trouble us again,” and the great Zulu philosophically took a mighty pinch of snuff and offered one to Leigh in token of his entire satisfaction with the result of the night’s work.As soon as the arms had been collected, and the wounded men properly attended to, a council of war was held by the entire party, and under the circumstances it was considered useless to try and impose deceptive messages upon Zero, the more so as Kenyon himself was strongly of opinion, that not the pigeons, but the jaguar, had in the present instance been intended to carry back to Equatoria, news of the safe arrival of the band. The great cat would, of course, have been started off in the dark, without loss of time, or risk of suspicion even in the event of its being observed, and would certainly have travelled very swiftly to its distant home.On the following morning the Atagbondo buried their dead, and then threw the deceased slavers into the river to carry a message of woe and weeping to their friends a hundred miles below.Noticing his cousin looking anxiously at the summit of the mountain several times that day with Kenyon’s field-glass, “What’s the matter with the peak, old chap?” said Leigh.“I wish I knew, Alf,” was the reply; “I haven’t seen it since the night we got here: ever since then it has been completely hidden by yonder white cloud, which rests upon it, and unless I am mistaken, the heat emanating from that vapour is so intense, that the everlasting snows are being absolutely melted away from the summit of the cone.”Just then a very wonderful and awful thing happened, for even as Grenville was speaking, the heat-clouds suddenly rolled away like a scroll and curled up out of sight, revealing the glittering peak for one brief instant in all the radiant majesty of its unveiled glory, and then the very next second there shot far, far up into the azure vault, a giant jet of angry, inky-looking smoke, which floated lightly and lazily through the absolutely pulseless air towards the north, and was quickly succeeded by another great puff, and another, until the whole of the northern heavens were densely clouded, and the mountain itself bore the appearance of a gigantic monster mechanically expelling vast volumes of dead black smoke at every labouring respiration of its mighty rock-girt lungs, and shrouding the whole country in a sombre death-like pall of weird and awful shade.“A volcano, by Jove!” ejaculated Leigh.“Yes,” replied his cousin, “and an active one, too. I fear that Umbulanzi’s explosion, the first night we came, has awakened the slumbering internal fires, or else the water is somehow penetrating into the crater and interfering with the gases imprisoned in its abysmal depths. We shall be in a nice pickle if the volcano takes a fancy to indulge in an eruption just at present; however, we must hope for the best, old man, and put our trust in Providence.”That very night, sad to say, our friends were awakened by the objectionable throes of a mighty earthquake; the rocks quaked and groaned, and the very bowels of the mountain were rent and torn by ear-splitting explosions, and in less than ten minutes the whole party was in full flight across the northern veldt, positively chased from the stronghold upon which they had bestowed so much labour by great streams of burning lava which, like vast rivers, flowed unimpeded down the mountain side, and, instantly setting the long grass on fire, caused our friends a most anxious time until they had safely crossed the river and got well away from the spot—their movements being rendered relatively slow by the necessity of carefully transporting the wounded men in hammocks.After a short consultation it was decided to steer for the Hermit’s Cave again, and to try and discover a place capable of defence somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Equatoria; for, with the exception of the mountain from which they had just been so rudely expelled, our friends were assured by the natives that no natural fastness of any kind existed within a hundred miles to the south of their present location, and southwards all, both black and white, absolutely declined to move until Zero was stamped out, or until they themselves were effectually disposed of in attempting to settle with him.A very sharp look-out would have to be kept in order to avoid falling into the hands of the slavers, who were sure to notice the eruption of the volcano, and, knowing that the little band would have in consequence to relinquish the shelter afforded by the mountain, would doubtless be outlying with a view to falling upon them unawares; but by confining the travels of the party strictly to the night-time, and lying carefully hid by day, Grenville and Amaxosa hoped to bring all safely into the desired haven.At all events, our friends were no worse off, in consequence of their journey to the peak, having, on the contrary, inflicted two crushing blows upon the enemy, and exchanged the bare handful of men with which they left Equatoria for a small army thoroughly equipped for war, already well-tried, and thirsting for occupation in the fighting line.

For fully three days did our friends occupy themselves in the very necessary work of perfecting the defences of their stronghold on the mountain, and in teaching a picked dozen of the Atagbondo the use of the rifle, with which weapon they soon became fair marksmen, in the native acceptance of the term.

On the fourth day, however, a discovery, trifling in itself, convinced the party that, so far from having been forgotten by Zero, they were at present occupying the whole of his earnest attention.

The incident in question was the accidental notice taken by Kenyon of a small bird wheeling round and round their position; closer and closer it came, until all could see perfectly well that it was a white carrier pigeon, bearing a message. Finding, however, that the party did not whistle it in, the bird grew shy, and quickly took to flight Leigh raised his rifle with the intention of bringing it down, but Kenyon stopped him just in time.

“Don’t shoot, old fellow,” he said; “I’ve a fancy to let that bird severely alone. I want to know just where it’s bound for at the present moment.”

Watching very carefully, the pigeon was at last seen to enter a clump of bush about half a mile up the mountain side, and scarcely ten minutes later, either it, or a similar bird, left the same cover, and winged its rapid way due north.

The inference was plain, and our friends looked blankly at one another; but, ere they could speak, the Zulu chief had summoned Umbulanzi and directed him to take two men, thoroughly search the suspected spot, and put to the assegai anyone they might find lurking there.

Grenville and Kenyon would have much preferred taking the spy—if spy there was—alive, but the fear that his presence would cause the injured People of the Stick to overstep all restraint and become guilty of some fearful act of barbaric cruelty, decided them to let the man fight it out to the bitter end for his own life, rather than to permit him to fall into the hands of a raging mob of naked savages, whose tenderest mercies, maddened as they were by their frightful wrongs, would be cruel indeed.

Anxiously our friends watched the progress of the three Zulus up the mountain, and all at once Leigh took a fancy to follow them, and was soon swinging up the slant with rapid steps, accompanied by Amaxosa and Kenyon.

The Zulus reached the spot and plunged into the cover, from which there instantly arose a tremendous hubbub, and a moment later all three reappeared, fairly driven out by half a score of white men, and fighting furiously with their spears against several of the slavers, who were armed with axes, whilst the remainder stood by eagerly seeking an opportunity to use their guns.

Promptly Leigh and Kenyon pitched forward their rifles, and two of the slavers instantly rolled head over heels down the mountain side, whilst at the same moment, uttering a wild shout of encouragement, Amaxosa dashed forward like an arrow from the bow, and in another second was side by side with his warriors, their nervous arms dealing out death and disaster with every sweeping blow. When Leigh and Kenyon reached the platform upon which this tragedy had been enacted, there was but one of the enemy left alive, and he was engaged in a terrific hand-to-hand combat with Amaxosa. All at once the Zulu’s axe broke off short in the haft, and the ruffian slaver rushed at him with a victorious shout. Springing lightly to one side, however, the active chief easily avoided the deadly stroke aimed at him by his opponent, whom he seized the next instant from behind, with his powerful hands pinning the man’s arms to his side, and before anyone could interfere, or even speak, with one mighty effort the fierce Zulu fairly swung his hapless foe from the ground, and then dashed him down full upon the rock, on his bare skull, which was crushed in like an egg-shell, the awful blow, of course, killing him on the spot, and an instant later the mountain side echoed to the triumphant notes of the famous Undi war-chant.

“Oh, my father,” said the great Zulu, contemplating his handiwork with satisfaction, and speaking to Leigh, “it was a great fight; few could have slain the man with empty hands. Sleep softly, ye evildoers; the Lion of the Undi bids you sleep!”

Carefully examining the cover from which the discomfited foe had sprung, our friends found that it consisted of a shallow cave in the face of the rock, the entrance being masked by low bushes, and a thick undergrowth of wild vines. In this hiding-place Kenyon discovered a basket containing three white and two black pigeons, whilst a note, evidently the one just received, lay upon the rocky floor. Eagerly pouncing upon this, the detective quickly mastered its contents, which were simply as follows:—

“The second detachment will arrive at midnight to-night.—

“Zero.”

Clearly it was not, therefore, a mere question of spying upon their position; but the evident intention of the cunning slaver was to send in small drafts of men to conceal themselves upon the mountain; and these, when his own army moved up to the attack, would, at a given signal, doubtless fall upon our friends in the rear, and thus effect a very serious diversion in favour of Zero, at a most critical moment.

The scheme was well thought-out, but the watchfulness of Kenyon had completely ruined it; and if the further suggestions which he now made should prove workable, the little band might be relied upon to read Master Zero another very severe and humiliating lesson, when he made his intended final onset.

Briefly, Kenyon’s idea consisted of an attempt to lure the second detachment of slavers on to their utter destruction, but in view of their prematurely taking the alarm in consequence of our friends possibly failing to understand and correctly to answer their secret signals, a large party was to be slipped into the long grass of the veldt to intercept the slavers in the event of their making a push to escape, and an endeavour was to be made to capture some of the men alive, and force them to give up the secrets of their curious system of aerial correspondence.

Finally it was decided that Amaxosa should set out with ten of his own men and fifty of the warriors of the Atagbondo at moonrise, and lie in ambush about three miles to the north of the mountain, but this party was on no account to make any movement, except in the event of a rocket being fired from the camp, giving them the direction of the escaping slavers. The Zulu was especially cautioned against making fire signals of any kind, as it was calculated that the enemy would, themselves, probably employ these.

Little, however, did our friends know, as yet, of the devilish ingenuity of Master Zero, who had but to suspect the very remotest possibility of the existence of a trap to guard against it in most effectual fashion, and that night our friends received a peculiarly unpleasant proof of his dangerous capabilities in this direction.

The matter fell out thus:—As Kenyon, Leigh, and a party of fifty picked men were lying noiselessly in wait in the cover from which they had that morning driven the enemy, they were suddenly and viciously attacked, without a moment’s warning, by Zero’s forerunner, in the shape of an enormous jaguar, which severely mauled a number of the men ere he was settled by Kenyon, who drove a Zulu assegai through the beast’s spine, whereupon his roarings woke every living echo in the country side, and a moment later a moving mass of dark forms could be seen gliding out from the friendly shadows cast by the mountain, and stringing themselves across the veldt in a vain effort to escape from their active foes.

Quickly Grenville sent up his rocket, and as the glittering thread of fire traced its way across the heavens, Leigh and his eager party dashed down the mountain, and followed the flying foe at speed across the veldt, fearing from their apparent strength that the slavers might prove too heavy for Amaxosa and his little band.

A mile from the rocks, finding their retreat cut off, the slavers formed in square and stood at bay between two fires. Leigh called to them to surrender, and lay down their arms, but the answer was hurled back in the shape of a contemptuous curse and a rattling volley, which stretched several of the Atagbondo upon the ground.

Not one moment after this could Leigh or Amaxosa restrain their men, who simply flung themselves upon the very muzzles of the slavers. Nothing short of a triple line of bayonets could have withstood such a magnificently audacious charge, and in less time than it takes to tell, the “People of the Stick” had literally wiped their hated foes off the face of the earth.

Five minutes covered the whole ghastly affair from beginning to end, and in that short space of time, Zero, in addition to the loss of his pet tiger, had suffered to the extent of fifty-three men, whilst our friends had on their side eleven killed outright and seventeen wounded, two of these last, dying the next day.

“Haow Inkoos,” said the Zulu chief approvingly; “it is indeed a brave people, and fights well, almost as well as the Amazulu, but I would they used the assegai or the axe and made cleaner work of it. Well, what is done is done, my father, and these evil witch-finders will never trouble us again,” and the great Zulu philosophically took a mighty pinch of snuff and offered one to Leigh in token of his entire satisfaction with the result of the night’s work.

As soon as the arms had been collected, and the wounded men properly attended to, a council of war was held by the entire party, and under the circumstances it was considered useless to try and impose deceptive messages upon Zero, the more so as Kenyon himself was strongly of opinion, that not the pigeons, but the jaguar, had in the present instance been intended to carry back to Equatoria, news of the safe arrival of the band. The great cat would, of course, have been started off in the dark, without loss of time, or risk of suspicion even in the event of its being observed, and would certainly have travelled very swiftly to its distant home.

On the following morning the Atagbondo buried their dead, and then threw the deceased slavers into the river to carry a message of woe and weeping to their friends a hundred miles below.

Noticing his cousin looking anxiously at the summit of the mountain several times that day with Kenyon’s field-glass, “What’s the matter with the peak, old chap?” said Leigh.

“I wish I knew, Alf,” was the reply; “I haven’t seen it since the night we got here: ever since then it has been completely hidden by yonder white cloud, which rests upon it, and unless I am mistaken, the heat emanating from that vapour is so intense, that the everlasting snows are being absolutely melted away from the summit of the cone.”

Just then a very wonderful and awful thing happened, for even as Grenville was speaking, the heat-clouds suddenly rolled away like a scroll and curled up out of sight, revealing the glittering peak for one brief instant in all the radiant majesty of its unveiled glory, and then the very next second there shot far, far up into the azure vault, a giant jet of angry, inky-looking smoke, which floated lightly and lazily through the absolutely pulseless air towards the north, and was quickly succeeded by another great puff, and another, until the whole of the northern heavens were densely clouded, and the mountain itself bore the appearance of a gigantic monster mechanically expelling vast volumes of dead black smoke at every labouring respiration of its mighty rock-girt lungs, and shrouding the whole country in a sombre death-like pall of weird and awful shade.

“A volcano, by Jove!” ejaculated Leigh.

“Yes,” replied his cousin, “and an active one, too. I fear that Umbulanzi’s explosion, the first night we came, has awakened the slumbering internal fires, or else the water is somehow penetrating into the crater and interfering with the gases imprisoned in its abysmal depths. We shall be in a nice pickle if the volcano takes a fancy to indulge in an eruption just at present; however, we must hope for the best, old man, and put our trust in Providence.”

That very night, sad to say, our friends were awakened by the objectionable throes of a mighty earthquake; the rocks quaked and groaned, and the very bowels of the mountain were rent and torn by ear-splitting explosions, and in less than ten minutes the whole party was in full flight across the northern veldt, positively chased from the stronghold upon which they had bestowed so much labour by great streams of burning lava which, like vast rivers, flowed unimpeded down the mountain side, and, instantly setting the long grass on fire, caused our friends a most anxious time until they had safely crossed the river and got well away from the spot—their movements being rendered relatively slow by the necessity of carefully transporting the wounded men in hammocks.

After a short consultation it was decided to steer for the Hermit’s Cave again, and to try and discover a place capable of defence somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Equatoria; for, with the exception of the mountain from which they had just been so rudely expelled, our friends were assured by the natives that no natural fastness of any kind existed within a hundred miles to the south of their present location, and southwards all, both black and white, absolutely declined to move until Zero was stamped out, or until they themselves were effectually disposed of in attempting to settle with him.

A very sharp look-out would have to be kept in order to avoid falling into the hands of the slavers, who were sure to notice the eruption of the volcano, and, knowing that the little band would have in consequence to relinquish the shelter afforded by the mountain, would doubtless be outlying with a view to falling upon them unawares; but by confining the travels of the party strictly to the night-time, and lying carefully hid by day, Grenville and Amaxosa hoped to bring all safely into the desired haven.

At all events, our friends were no worse off, in consequence of their journey to the peak, having, on the contrary, inflicted two crushing blows upon the enemy, and exchanged the bare handful of men with which they left Equatoria for a small army thoroughly equipped for war, already well-tried, and thirsting for occupation in the fighting line.

Chapter Thirteen.In Freedom’s Cause.Owing to the difficulty of transporting so many wounded men, it took our friends quite four days to accomplish the distance which they had covered on a former occasion in less than one-half that time; but by the fourth night all had safely reached the mountains of the north, and after Amaxosa had carefully reconnoitred the vicinity of the hermit’s cave, the party took undisputed possession thereof, and made arrangements to defend the place in the event of an attack, by throwing up a great earthwork round the outlet of the cavern.This important matter attended to, Grenville and Kenyon next proceeded to explore, by torchlight, the labyrinth of caves with which the heart of the mountain proved to be honeycombed, and in the furthest of those natural vaulted chambers they finally discovered Muzi Zimba the Ancient. The old man was in a state of very great prostration, and was obviously dying from sheer decay of all his faculties. Kenyon at once administered to him a spoonful of brandy, and afterwards prevailed upon him to swallow some beef-tea. This grateful nourishment soon appeared to revive his sinking form, and, recognising Grenville, he accorded him a hearty welcome, and congratulated him kindly upon his marvellous escape from death, and then, speaking very lucidly, his mental faculties seeming to grow clearer as his bodily vigour gradually died out, he dilated at some length to the attentive pair, upon their present dangerous position, and regarding the cause and the remedy for the horrors of the slave-trade.It must not, however, be supposed that the conversation given here, is written down precisely as it was spoken; for at times our friends had much ado to keep the poor old man alive, and it was only by continually giving him weak stimulants, that body and soul were kept together until his work was done. Often, too, his halting tongue refused to frame the meanings he desired to convey, and Grenville had thus frequently to come to his assistance, and express his thoughts for him in clear, every-day English.“My sons,” said the aged man, “I came hither many, many years ago—how many, I know not, for my mind has for a long and weary time been under a very darksome cloud, but it is clearer now, and in the light which streams through heaven’s wide-open gates. I once more see, with the eye of faith, and know that all will yet again be well. Hearken, my sons, for I can tell ye much that may avail ye to escape from the hands of the demon who dwells in yonder city of evil.“Ye are brave men, and I have heard how that ye have already rescued many precious lives from this fiend in human form, and have thrice brought defeat and disaster upon his hateful arms. Nevertheless, be ye ware, my sons, for he has, indeed, a very great army of bloody-minded and wicked men, and he has, moreover, sworn to entirely eat you up. Know, therefore, that in the third cave from here is a spot where, by moving a great black stone, a narrow passage can be found, but wide enough for two men to walk abreast, and this leads gently downwards, step by step, right through the bowels of the mountain, and so into the town of the evil ones, where there are many white and black slaves, both of men and women. Mark this passage well, my children, for if once yon monster wins the secret of the way, ye, too, will exist only as I do—even midway between the bitter memories of the unforgotten past and the golden shores of the great hereafter.“And now, my sons, bear with me yet, regarding this shameful trade in human flesh and blood. Long years ere Zero came hither, like a curse, this country was peaceful and all happy, and much did I teach the simple people that tended to the welfare of both soul and body; but since the coming of this man of sin, all has been turned again to evil, and the land everywhere weeps tears of sorrow and of blood.“What can we do more, my sons, we who, simply placing our lives in the hands of the good God who gave them, penetrate unarmed, and with naught of defence but the Gospel of Peace, to the furthest confines of this dark land? What, I say, can we do, when the misguided rulers of Christian countries at home daily permit—nay, encourage—the unrestricted sale to the wretched natives, of millions of gallons of a very evil drink, which goes by the name of ‘square face,’ but which the traders declare to be but harmless gin. Gin! my sons,the first coat of which is under one shilling a gallon, and which is poured into the land, after it has paid the British governors upon the western sea-girt border of this mighty continenta duty of half-a-crown a gallon, or equal to two-and-a-half times its cost. Look what follows. The already debased African is at once reduced below the level of the very beasts that perish. He must have this fiery spirit, the first fatal draught of which has inflamed his soul, and brought into active being every vicious slumbering detail of his fallen human nature, and in order to obtain the wherewithal to purchase the beloved ‘Square Face,’ he falls unawares upon his next-door neighbour, so to speak—perhaps upon his own familiar friend, who trusts him—and carrying him off by night, secretly sells him to the highest bidder, white or black, that he can find within easy distance of his home.“The trade in gin and rum is at the bottom of one-half of this evil slave-dealing, and so long as this crying sin is not only permitted, but encouraged, amongst a simple people, who have no more judgment to exercise, than have a third of the weak-minded ones sheltered from the cruel world in many a private mad-house, so long will Central Africa remain a country where cruelty and misery, and the shedding of blood, prevail, where men bow down to stocks and stones, where Satan’s kingdom is, and where the missionary, my sons, is little more than a useless martyr, his precious life expended in the lively faith that the mighty power of his God will cause the barren soil he waters with his blood to prove a fruitful field before the great day of reckoning comes for missionary, for slaver, and for the miserable aboriginal African, whose body and soul these opposing forces contend for mightily both night and day.“Hear me further, my sons, for much good may yet be done, in spite of Zero and of the Arabs, who accomplish a world of evil, if someone of the great white nations of the world will but come forward and use its God-given strength for the purpose of putting down the slave-trade, suppressing entirely the sale of gin and rum in Africa, and supporting the missionaries. Africa! The whole country is being depopulated, and every acre of it watered with the tears of a people torn from their happy homes and sold into slavery in distant lands, or sent across the seas, and soon this vast and fertile region, as yet almost unknown to the white races, will become in all directions an impenetrable and useless jungle, through which even the mammoth elephant must fail to force his way—a dark continent in very deed and truth, an eyesore to both God and man.“In the earlier days of my sojourn in this place, my sons, I looked to free and happy England to do all that this rich and fruitful land required to make it perfect; and I taught the natives, under God, to reverence and to pray for the Great White Queen, their mother, in whose all-powerful name I came to them in Freedom’s cause. Alas! my sons, the first slaver who entered here and broke up their quiet homes was this shameless scoundrel Zero; and, speaking with the same tongue as my own, naught of difference could this people see between his land and mine; and then worse, far worse, when the horrible slave traffic attracted hither the native dealers from the farther west, these brought with them word that slaves could be freely sold under French and German, and—oh! the shame of it—under British rule, ay, under Freedom’s own flag on the utmost coast of Western Equatorial Africa.“My sons, I credited it not, and I sent my trusted runner a journey of many, many weary moons, and he brought me back a faithful word—alas! that it should have been a true one.“‘The thing is even so, my father,’ he said. ‘Almost within the very cities of the Great White Queen, where the moving water beats, ever murmuring, upon the yellow sands, and within hearing of the guns of British forts, I saw very many slaves; and these were sold from house to house, or from land to land, as their owners in the towns desired. Also, day by day I watched great caravans of slaves from the peoples of many, many powerful kingdoms, bringing in native produce and dust of gold, and carrying out very many cases of square face and of rum.’“‘It is a false report that ye bring,’ I said; ‘how know ye that the men were slaves? the Great White Queen frees all who come beneath the shadow of her glorious flag.’“‘That may be,’ he said, ‘as I saw not the Great White Queen herself, but the slaves were there, all marked with a brand on the cheek, my father. Also, I had speech of some of these, and they said that they were slaves. More, my father, there are also in the cities many native guards, and most of these men are also slaves, who serve under the Queen’s ruler for money, which they give to the owners of their bodies whenever the Queen pays them; and so, my father, I would even live here under your shadow, where I and my people are free by the strength of our own right hands, than be a pining slave under the flag of the Great White Queen, my mother, who is too far away to help her suffering children when they cry out of wrong and find none to hear them.’“Then it was, my sons,” said the aged man, “that I lost my reason; I could not eat my food, and my sleep at nights went from me; I could only kneel and humbly pray, both night and day, to the good God on high that lie would wake the ear of our gracious Queen to hear the pitiful cry of these poor defenceless creatures, over whom he has given her an empire, and power, and glory, and who, though they are so far from her, are yet her loyal subjects, and very near to the great God Himself, in whose hand her breath is, and whose are all her ways.“And now, my sons, my eyes are closing fast, and I leave ye to follow me along the weary road which leads to the great hereafter. Take, then, the last blessing of a very aged and a defenceless man, to whom ye were both kind and good. Fear God, and follow that which is good, so shall we meet again in the land where sorrows are forgotten, and where peace and rest await both you and me. Greeting, then, my sons, to you and yours—greeting and farewell!”And so he died, this one staunch witness for freedom and his God, in a land where all else was foul and evil. Very peacefully his life slipped from him with the dawn of day, and his loyal spirit soared to the very presence of Him who gave it life.“God rest him,” said Grenville gently; “God rest His faithful servant. May I too die the death of a brave man, and may my last end be even as the end of Muzi Zimba the Ancient.”That same day the little band buried the hermit’s body, the natives following him to the grave with many marks of respect and reverence, and the white men firing a farewell salute over the last resting-place of this gallant soldier, who had given up his life for the truth, and died in freedom’s cause, in this far-distant land.

Owing to the difficulty of transporting so many wounded men, it took our friends quite four days to accomplish the distance which they had covered on a former occasion in less than one-half that time; but by the fourth night all had safely reached the mountains of the north, and after Amaxosa had carefully reconnoitred the vicinity of the hermit’s cave, the party took undisputed possession thereof, and made arrangements to defend the place in the event of an attack, by throwing up a great earthwork round the outlet of the cavern.

This important matter attended to, Grenville and Kenyon next proceeded to explore, by torchlight, the labyrinth of caves with which the heart of the mountain proved to be honeycombed, and in the furthest of those natural vaulted chambers they finally discovered Muzi Zimba the Ancient. The old man was in a state of very great prostration, and was obviously dying from sheer decay of all his faculties. Kenyon at once administered to him a spoonful of brandy, and afterwards prevailed upon him to swallow some beef-tea. This grateful nourishment soon appeared to revive his sinking form, and, recognising Grenville, he accorded him a hearty welcome, and congratulated him kindly upon his marvellous escape from death, and then, speaking very lucidly, his mental faculties seeming to grow clearer as his bodily vigour gradually died out, he dilated at some length to the attentive pair, upon their present dangerous position, and regarding the cause and the remedy for the horrors of the slave-trade.

It must not, however, be supposed that the conversation given here, is written down precisely as it was spoken; for at times our friends had much ado to keep the poor old man alive, and it was only by continually giving him weak stimulants, that body and soul were kept together until his work was done. Often, too, his halting tongue refused to frame the meanings he desired to convey, and Grenville had thus frequently to come to his assistance, and express his thoughts for him in clear, every-day English.

“My sons,” said the aged man, “I came hither many, many years ago—how many, I know not, for my mind has for a long and weary time been under a very darksome cloud, but it is clearer now, and in the light which streams through heaven’s wide-open gates. I once more see, with the eye of faith, and know that all will yet again be well. Hearken, my sons, for I can tell ye much that may avail ye to escape from the hands of the demon who dwells in yonder city of evil.

“Ye are brave men, and I have heard how that ye have already rescued many precious lives from this fiend in human form, and have thrice brought defeat and disaster upon his hateful arms. Nevertheless, be ye ware, my sons, for he has, indeed, a very great army of bloody-minded and wicked men, and he has, moreover, sworn to entirely eat you up. Know, therefore, that in the third cave from here is a spot where, by moving a great black stone, a narrow passage can be found, but wide enough for two men to walk abreast, and this leads gently downwards, step by step, right through the bowels of the mountain, and so into the town of the evil ones, where there are many white and black slaves, both of men and women. Mark this passage well, my children, for if once yon monster wins the secret of the way, ye, too, will exist only as I do—even midway between the bitter memories of the unforgotten past and the golden shores of the great hereafter.

“And now, my sons, bear with me yet, regarding this shameful trade in human flesh and blood. Long years ere Zero came hither, like a curse, this country was peaceful and all happy, and much did I teach the simple people that tended to the welfare of both soul and body; but since the coming of this man of sin, all has been turned again to evil, and the land everywhere weeps tears of sorrow and of blood.

“What can we do more, my sons, we who, simply placing our lives in the hands of the good God who gave them, penetrate unarmed, and with naught of defence but the Gospel of Peace, to the furthest confines of this dark land? What, I say, can we do, when the misguided rulers of Christian countries at home daily permit—nay, encourage—the unrestricted sale to the wretched natives, of millions of gallons of a very evil drink, which goes by the name of ‘square face,’ but which the traders declare to be but harmless gin. Gin! my sons,the first coat of which is under one shilling a gallon, and which is poured into the land, after it has paid the British governors upon the western sea-girt border of this mighty continenta duty of half-a-crown a gallon, or equal to two-and-a-half times its cost. Look what follows. The already debased African is at once reduced below the level of the very beasts that perish. He must have this fiery spirit, the first fatal draught of which has inflamed his soul, and brought into active being every vicious slumbering detail of his fallen human nature, and in order to obtain the wherewithal to purchase the beloved ‘Square Face,’ he falls unawares upon his next-door neighbour, so to speak—perhaps upon his own familiar friend, who trusts him—and carrying him off by night, secretly sells him to the highest bidder, white or black, that he can find within easy distance of his home.

“The trade in gin and rum is at the bottom of one-half of this evil slave-dealing, and so long as this crying sin is not only permitted, but encouraged, amongst a simple people, who have no more judgment to exercise, than have a third of the weak-minded ones sheltered from the cruel world in many a private mad-house, so long will Central Africa remain a country where cruelty and misery, and the shedding of blood, prevail, where men bow down to stocks and stones, where Satan’s kingdom is, and where the missionary, my sons, is little more than a useless martyr, his precious life expended in the lively faith that the mighty power of his God will cause the barren soil he waters with his blood to prove a fruitful field before the great day of reckoning comes for missionary, for slaver, and for the miserable aboriginal African, whose body and soul these opposing forces contend for mightily both night and day.

“Hear me further, my sons, for much good may yet be done, in spite of Zero and of the Arabs, who accomplish a world of evil, if someone of the great white nations of the world will but come forward and use its God-given strength for the purpose of putting down the slave-trade, suppressing entirely the sale of gin and rum in Africa, and supporting the missionaries. Africa! The whole country is being depopulated, and every acre of it watered with the tears of a people torn from their happy homes and sold into slavery in distant lands, or sent across the seas, and soon this vast and fertile region, as yet almost unknown to the white races, will become in all directions an impenetrable and useless jungle, through which even the mammoth elephant must fail to force his way—a dark continent in very deed and truth, an eyesore to both God and man.

“In the earlier days of my sojourn in this place, my sons, I looked to free and happy England to do all that this rich and fruitful land required to make it perfect; and I taught the natives, under God, to reverence and to pray for the Great White Queen, their mother, in whose all-powerful name I came to them in Freedom’s cause. Alas! my sons, the first slaver who entered here and broke up their quiet homes was this shameless scoundrel Zero; and, speaking with the same tongue as my own, naught of difference could this people see between his land and mine; and then worse, far worse, when the horrible slave traffic attracted hither the native dealers from the farther west, these brought with them word that slaves could be freely sold under French and German, and—oh! the shame of it—under British rule, ay, under Freedom’s own flag on the utmost coast of Western Equatorial Africa.

“My sons, I credited it not, and I sent my trusted runner a journey of many, many weary moons, and he brought me back a faithful word—alas! that it should have been a true one.

“‘The thing is even so, my father,’ he said. ‘Almost within the very cities of the Great White Queen, where the moving water beats, ever murmuring, upon the yellow sands, and within hearing of the guns of British forts, I saw very many slaves; and these were sold from house to house, or from land to land, as their owners in the towns desired. Also, day by day I watched great caravans of slaves from the peoples of many, many powerful kingdoms, bringing in native produce and dust of gold, and carrying out very many cases of square face and of rum.’

“‘It is a false report that ye bring,’ I said; ‘how know ye that the men were slaves? the Great White Queen frees all who come beneath the shadow of her glorious flag.’

“‘That may be,’ he said, ‘as I saw not the Great White Queen herself, but the slaves were there, all marked with a brand on the cheek, my father. Also, I had speech of some of these, and they said that they were slaves. More, my father, there are also in the cities many native guards, and most of these men are also slaves, who serve under the Queen’s ruler for money, which they give to the owners of their bodies whenever the Queen pays them; and so, my father, I would even live here under your shadow, where I and my people are free by the strength of our own right hands, than be a pining slave under the flag of the Great White Queen, my mother, who is too far away to help her suffering children when they cry out of wrong and find none to hear them.’

“Then it was, my sons,” said the aged man, “that I lost my reason; I could not eat my food, and my sleep at nights went from me; I could only kneel and humbly pray, both night and day, to the good God on high that lie would wake the ear of our gracious Queen to hear the pitiful cry of these poor defenceless creatures, over whom he has given her an empire, and power, and glory, and who, though they are so far from her, are yet her loyal subjects, and very near to the great God Himself, in whose hand her breath is, and whose are all her ways.

“And now, my sons, my eyes are closing fast, and I leave ye to follow me along the weary road which leads to the great hereafter. Take, then, the last blessing of a very aged and a defenceless man, to whom ye were both kind and good. Fear God, and follow that which is good, so shall we meet again in the land where sorrows are forgotten, and where peace and rest await both you and me. Greeting, then, my sons, to you and yours—greeting and farewell!”

And so he died, this one staunch witness for freedom and his God, in a land where all else was foul and evil. Very peacefully his life slipped from him with the dawn of day, and his loyal spirit soared to the very presence of Him who gave it life.

“God rest him,” said Grenville gently; “God rest His faithful servant. May I too die the death of a brave man, and may my last end be even as the end of Muzi Zimba the Ancient.”

That same day the little band buried the hermit’s body, the natives following him to the grave with many marks of respect and reverence, and the white men firing a farewell salute over the last resting-place of this gallant soldier, who had given up his life for the truth, and died in freedom’s cause, in this far-distant land.

Chapter Fourteen.Equatoria.As soon as our friends had paid the final honours to the mortal remains of Muzi Zimba, they carefully warned the “People of the Stick” against spreading the news of his decease in any shape or form, fearing that the ignorant natives in the surrounding country might foolishly impute his somewhat sudden and unexpected end, to the unauthorised presence of the little hand in his cavernous dwelling.Hardly were the funeral obsequies over than Kenyon drew Grenville aside, and after a few moments of earnest conversation, the pair announced their intention of investigating the secret stair through the mountain, of which the old hermit had spoken to them.Taking Amaxosa along, and supplying themselves from Muzi Zimba’s ample stores with torches made of fibre, the trio entered the indicated cave, shifted the black, basaltic-looking rock, and duly found themselves in the entrance of the tunnel. The tortuous way was rough and very narrow, but it was, as the old man had said, fairly easy to traverse, and in twenty minutes’ time our friends emerged into semi-daylight in the narrow shaft of a dry and disused well, from whence—by means of a stout but roughly-constructed ladder of rope, which hung from its upper orifice—the old man had evidently obtained access at will into the slavers’ town.Withdrawing cautiously into the mountain again, in fear lest the smoke of their torches should be seen above the mouth of the well, our friends entered into a somewhat heated argument.Grenville was for entirely closing the narrow passage by blocking it once for all with mighty rocks, which would effectually prevent Zero from discovering the secret of the way, and perhaps destroying themselves and their cavern by an explosion of gunpowder; but Kenyon declared that, sooner than permit such a capital means of access to Equatoria to be destroyed, he would himself sit and watch it night and day. His specious arguments and professional instinct, at length prevailed over Grenville’s caution, and the trio then resolved that two reliable men should be kept constantly on the watch beneath the well, provided with a cord, the other end of which they would attach to the trigger of a small pistol fixed in the cavern above, and should anyone attempt to descend the well, the sentinels were to jerk the cord, fire the pistol as an anxious call for help, and forthwith retreat noiselessly into the mountain burrow, where they would be met at the narrowest part of the tortuous path by armed support.During the whole of that day the party on the rock could descry in the far distance large bands of the slaver fraternity patrolling the southern veldt, and carefully searching the borders of the eastern forest, being evidently altogether at a loss to know what had become of the dangerous and hated foe, and yearning, no doubt, for the resuscitation of their slaughtered bloodhounds; whilst when night fell, the furthest limit of vision revealed, a hundred miles away, the fire-girt summit of the fierce volcano, its blazing peak hanging upon the distant line of smoke-beclouded sky like a glittering star of the first magnitude.The night was very dark and moonless when Kenyon and Amaxosa left the outer cave to relieve Leigh and Grenville, who were keeping watch below the well; but, pausing before he entered the narrow passage, the American sent the Zulu forward, simply saying he would join him by-and-by, as he had yet some work to do, and so it came to pass that the two cousins returned to the cavern without having seen him, and that Amaxosa, keeping his lonely vigil by torchlight, passed through the most fearsome trial his courageous but untutored heart had ever known; for whilst he watched and waited, patient as a statue carved in stone, the great Zulu heard a light footfall behind him, and, turning quickly, beheld, to his utter horror, the well-known figure of the ancient Muzi Zimba approaching through the gloom. The warrior’s heart stood still with fear and his very blood froze in his veins—Muzi Zimba, whose dead body he had that very day helped to consign to its grave, and upon whose breast he had placed giant rocks to scare the beasts of prey; yet here he stood, and there before him in the flesh stood Muzi Zimba. Nay, it could not be flesh and blood, but a spook (spirit) of the mountain, and not even a child of the Undi could fight with spooks. Coming swiftly to him, the vision spoke quietly to him in broken Zulu. “Greeting,” it said, “greeting, Lion of the Undi, what dost thou here by night in Muzi Zimba’s secret way.”“Greeting, great Father of the Spooks,” boldly answered the Zulu. “I do this here, I watch thy dark and narrow stair, oh, Ancient One, by order of the Great White Chief, my father, and if any enter to disturb thy restful peace, he dies a swift and easy death on this my ready spear.”“Well done, Amaxosa,” was the cool reply which the astonished chief received from his ancient friend, the “Father of the Spooks,” as the dread thing deftly removed its flowing wealth of beard and whiskers, and revealed the clean-shaved countenance of Stanforth Kenyon, the American detective.“Wow, Inkoos!” said the astonished Zulu. “Wow! the thing was indeed well done; and I, even I, the son of the witch-doctor, Isanusi, would have let thee pass and leave me for a spook. Yet, did it seem strange to me, my father, thou shouldst speak to thy son with the tongue of his own people, for ever I heard that the Ancient One who has gone from us, knew not to speak as speak the children of the Zulu.”Briefly explaining his intentions to the chief, Kenyon carefully readjusted his disguise, and, nimbly mounting the ladder of rope, scrambled out of the mouth of the well, and at once found himself in a clump of bushes, and close to the outskirts of the slavers’ town, towards which he fearlessly directed his now seemingly feeble steps.Well was it for Stanforth Kenyon that years of rigid training in his own peculiar walk of life enabled him to support to perfection the somewhat difficult, because exquisitely simple, character, which his supreme audacity had undertaken. The extreme darkness of the night was, however, favourable to his enterprise, as there were but few people about, and the detective found himself in the very centre of Equatoria without being accosted by anyone. The town, to his surprise, proved to be very compactly built, and consisted of perhaps five hundred houses, mostly composed of wood and roofed with iron, the only exceptions to this rule being what were evidently the public offices of the place, which were built of a mixture of sand and gravel, a composition going amongst the natives by the name of “swish,” and which presented, so far as he could see by the light of the oil-lamps hung round the buildings, an extremely handsome appearance.Just as Kenyon was about to move forward after carefully taking stock of the place, a young girl started out from a side street, and laid a gently detaining hand upon his arm.“Father,” she said, “I have looked and longed for thee every night, and feared that thou wert ill. Come and see my boy, I beseech thee, good father, for he dies—he dies before my face, and here is none to help but thee.”With a sign of brief assent, the detective turned and halted slowly along, despite the manifest impatience of the young and anxious mother.Turning into a small house some little way along the street, she led him through a comfortably but roughly furnished parlour, into a bed-room at the rear, where lay a baby boy not more than eighteen months old, and whom his medical experience soon assured him was suffering from a slight attack of that most malignant disease, diphtheria.Knowing, through Grenville, that the old hermit had acted in the capacity of physician and surgeon to both slavers and natives, Kenyon, before he left the cavern, had provided himself with several articles, including a small case of phials, likely to be of use in supporting his assumption of the character of a medical practitioner; and, briefly directing the young mother to keep the child quiet and supply him with cooling drinks, he carefully painted the tonsils with perchloride of iron, and left her instructions to continue this treatment.As Kenyon, however, was moving away, the grateful mother again stopped him. “Father,” she said, “I call thee such by permission; canst thou do naught for yon poor woman whom these cruel, heartless Mormons have condemned to death by fire, because she will not change her faith and ‘marry’ one of their own creatures. Thou knowest my history, my father; how I was stolen away when but a girl, and wedded to a man I used to hate, and that my happiest hour was when he died in battle. Yet do I love my little son, and could I but give freedom to this woman I would fly the country with her, and take refuge with the brave men of my own race who have escaped hence, and who now hold Zero at defiance.”“Where lies this woman, my daughter?” said the false hermit, after making a show of thinking carefully for some little time.“Still in the same strong place, my father—the great hall of the common prison-house; and at noon, next day but one, she suffers at the stake. Save her, if thou canst, my father; and if it be indeed beyond thy power, then give her, in mercy, a draught of swift and deadly poison, if thou hast such, and earn a double blessing from her ere she dies.”With a promise that he would endeavour on the following night to see the condemned one referred to, our adventurer at length got away from the importunate woman, and effected, undiscovered, his retreat to the well, and thence into the depths of the mountain, where he, of course, found the Zulu on guard, the pair being soon after this relieved by Umbulanzi and the young Scotsman, Ewan, of whom all had formed a high opinion, both as to shrewdness and bravery.Arrived in the cave above, Kenyon communicated to his astonished and admiring friends his experiment and the result of it, and all then fell to eagerly discussing ways and means for the rescue of the poor condemned woman from her villainous judges and would-be executioners; and, ere the party lay down to sleep, it was decided that Kenyon should make an attempt to see her the following night in his character of a priest, and learn what suggestions the captive could herself make, with regard to a plan to save her life and give her back her liberty.

As soon as our friends had paid the final honours to the mortal remains of Muzi Zimba, they carefully warned the “People of the Stick” against spreading the news of his decease in any shape or form, fearing that the ignorant natives in the surrounding country might foolishly impute his somewhat sudden and unexpected end, to the unauthorised presence of the little hand in his cavernous dwelling.

Hardly were the funeral obsequies over than Kenyon drew Grenville aside, and after a few moments of earnest conversation, the pair announced their intention of investigating the secret stair through the mountain, of which the old hermit had spoken to them.

Taking Amaxosa along, and supplying themselves from Muzi Zimba’s ample stores with torches made of fibre, the trio entered the indicated cave, shifted the black, basaltic-looking rock, and duly found themselves in the entrance of the tunnel. The tortuous way was rough and very narrow, but it was, as the old man had said, fairly easy to traverse, and in twenty minutes’ time our friends emerged into semi-daylight in the narrow shaft of a dry and disused well, from whence—by means of a stout but roughly-constructed ladder of rope, which hung from its upper orifice—the old man had evidently obtained access at will into the slavers’ town.

Withdrawing cautiously into the mountain again, in fear lest the smoke of their torches should be seen above the mouth of the well, our friends entered into a somewhat heated argument.

Grenville was for entirely closing the narrow passage by blocking it once for all with mighty rocks, which would effectually prevent Zero from discovering the secret of the way, and perhaps destroying themselves and their cavern by an explosion of gunpowder; but Kenyon declared that, sooner than permit such a capital means of access to Equatoria to be destroyed, he would himself sit and watch it night and day. His specious arguments and professional instinct, at length prevailed over Grenville’s caution, and the trio then resolved that two reliable men should be kept constantly on the watch beneath the well, provided with a cord, the other end of which they would attach to the trigger of a small pistol fixed in the cavern above, and should anyone attempt to descend the well, the sentinels were to jerk the cord, fire the pistol as an anxious call for help, and forthwith retreat noiselessly into the mountain burrow, where they would be met at the narrowest part of the tortuous path by armed support.

During the whole of that day the party on the rock could descry in the far distance large bands of the slaver fraternity patrolling the southern veldt, and carefully searching the borders of the eastern forest, being evidently altogether at a loss to know what had become of the dangerous and hated foe, and yearning, no doubt, for the resuscitation of their slaughtered bloodhounds; whilst when night fell, the furthest limit of vision revealed, a hundred miles away, the fire-girt summit of the fierce volcano, its blazing peak hanging upon the distant line of smoke-beclouded sky like a glittering star of the first magnitude.

The night was very dark and moonless when Kenyon and Amaxosa left the outer cave to relieve Leigh and Grenville, who were keeping watch below the well; but, pausing before he entered the narrow passage, the American sent the Zulu forward, simply saying he would join him by-and-by, as he had yet some work to do, and so it came to pass that the two cousins returned to the cavern without having seen him, and that Amaxosa, keeping his lonely vigil by torchlight, passed through the most fearsome trial his courageous but untutored heart had ever known; for whilst he watched and waited, patient as a statue carved in stone, the great Zulu heard a light footfall behind him, and, turning quickly, beheld, to his utter horror, the well-known figure of the ancient Muzi Zimba approaching through the gloom. The warrior’s heart stood still with fear and his very blood froze in his veins—Muzi Zimba, whose dead body he had that very day helped to consign to its grave, and upon whose breast he had placed giant rocks to scare the beasts of prey; yet here he stood, and there before him in the flesh stood Muzi Zimba. Nay, it could not be flesh and blood, but a spook (spirit) of the mountain, and not even a child of the Undi could fight with spooks. Coming swiftly to him, the vision spoke quietly to him in broken Zulu. “Greeting,” it said, “greeting, Lion of the Undi, what dost thou here by night in Muzi Zimba’s secret way.”

“Greeting, great Father of the Spooks,” boldly answered the Zulu. “I do this here, I watch thy dark and narrow stair, oh, Ancient One, by order of the Great White Chief, my father, and if any enter to disturb thy restful peace, he dies a swift and easy death on this my ready spear.”

“Well done, Amaxosa,” was the cool reply which the astonished chief received from his ancient friend, the “Father of the Spooks,” as the dread thing deftly removed its flowing wealth of beard and whiskers, and revealed the clean-shaved countenance of Stanforth Kenyon, the American detective.

“Wow, Inkoos!” said the astonished Zulu. “Wow! the thing was indeed well done; and I, even I, the son of the witch-doctor, Isanusi, would have let thee pass and leave me for a spook. Yet, did it seem strange to me, my father, thou shouldst speak to thy son with the tongue of his own people, for ever I heard that the Ancient One who has gone from us, knew not to speak as speak the children of the Zulu.”

Briefly explaining his intentions to the chief, Kenyon carefully readjusted his disguise, and, nimbly mounting the ladder of rope, scrambled out of the mouth of the well, and at once found himself in a clump of bushes, and close to the outskirts of the slavers’ town, towards which he fearlessly directed his now seemingly feeble steps.

Well was it for Stanforth Kenyon that years of rigid training in his own peculiar walk of life enabled him to support to perfection the somewhat difficult, because exquisitely simple, character, which his supreme audacity had undertaken. The extreme darkness of the night was, however, favourable to his enterprise, as there were but few people about, and the detective found himself in the very centre of Equatoria without being accosted by anyone. The town, to his surprise, proved to be very compactly built, and consisted of perhaps five hundred houses, mostly composed of wood and roofed with iron, the only exceptions to this rule being what were evidently the public offices of the place, which were built of a mixture of sand and gravel, a composition going amongst the natives by the name of “swish,” and which presented, so far as he could see by the light of the oil-lamps hung round the buildings, an extremely handsome appearance.

Just as Kenyon was about to move forward after carefully taking stock of the place, a young girl started out from a side street, and laid a gently detaining hand upon his arm.

“Father,” she said, “I have looked and longed for thee every night, and feared that thou wert ill. Come and see my boy, I beseech thee, good father, for he dies—he dies before my face, and here is none to help but thee.”

With a sign of brief assent, the detective turned and halted slowly along, despite the manifest impatience of the young and anxious mother.

Turning into a small house some little way along the street, she led him through a comfortably but roughly furnished parlour, into a bed-room at the rear, where lay a baby boy not more than eighteen months old, and whom his medical experience soon assured him was suffering from a slight attack of that most malignant disease, diphtheria.

Knowing, through Grenville, that the old hermit had acted in the capacity of physician and surgeon to both slavers and natives, Kenyon, before he left the cavern, had provided himself with several articles, including a small case of phials, likely to be of use in supporting his assumption of the character of a medical practitioner; and, briefly directing the young mother to keep the child quiet and supply him with cooling drinks, he carefully painted the tonsils with perchloride of iron, and left her instructions to continue this treatment.

As Kenyon, however, was moving away, the grateful mother again stopped him. “Father,” she said, “I call thee such by permission; canst thou do naught for yon poor woman whom these cruel, heartless Mormons have condemned to death by fire, because she will not change her faith and ‘marry’ one of their own creatures. Thou knowest my history, my father; how I was stolen away when but a girl, and wedded to a man I used to hate, and that my happiest hour was when he died in battle. Yet do I love my little son, and could I but give freedom to this woman I would fly the country with her, and take refuge with the brave men of my own race who have escaped hence, and who now hold Zero at defiance.”

“Where lies this woman, my daughter?” said the false hermit, after making a show of thinking carefully for some little time.

“Still in the same strong place, my father—the great hall of the common prison-house; and at noon, next day but one, she suffers at the stake. Save her, if thou canst, my father; and if it be indeed beyond thy power, then give her, in mercy, a draught of swift and deadly poison, if thou hast such, and earn a double blessing from her ere she dies.”

With a promise that he would endeavour on the following night to see the condemned one referred to, our adventurer at length got away from the importunate woman, and effected, undiscovered, his retreat to the well, and thence into the depths of the mountain, where he, of course, found the Zulu on guard, the pair being soon after this relieved by Umbulanzi and the young Scotsman, Ewan, of whom all had formed a high opinion, both as to shrewdness and bravery.

Arrived in the cave above, Kenyon communicated to his astonished and admiring friends his experiment and the result of it, and all then fell to eagerly discussing ways and means for the rescue of the poor condemned woman from her villainous judges and would-be executioners; and, ere the party lay down to sleep, it was decided that Kenyon should make an attempt to see her the following night in his character of a priest, and learn what suggestions the captive could herself make, with regard to a plan to save her life and give her back her liberty.

Chapter Fifteen.“Hope.”On the following night, therefore, as soon as darkness fell, Kenyon, disguised to represent the old hermit, again entered the slavers’ town, whilst Leigh, Grenville, Amaxosa, and a score of picked men lay in wait below the well, from which, in the event of hearing a given signal whistle, they were to sally out and assist our adventurous friend.The detective went about his accustomed work with the greatestnonchalance; and, on reaching the building which had been pointed out to him the previous night, simply and plainly told the guard that he wished to have speech of the condemned woman. Without a word of reply, one of the men on duty signed to Kenyon to follow him, and well might our adventurer, under the loose folds of his cloak, clench his fingers over the butt of a friendly revolver when he found himself ushered directly into the well-known and hated presence of Zero the Slaver. For a moment the impulse was almost unconquerable in Kenyon to slip out his six-shooter and make an end of this inhuman monster without further palaver; but, recognising how much hung upon the result of his actions that night, he wisely restrained his passions.The slaver was sitting in a handsomely got-up room carpeted with furs, and thick with weapons and with trophies of the chase, and opposite to him—fortunately, perhaps, for Kenyon—sat the native king already spoken of, and who immediately did our adventurer reverence, in his capacity of Muzi Zimba the Ancient.As the guard detailed his errand. Zero rose with a sneering laugh. “Ay! let him go to her,” he said, “and look ’ee here, old man, if this captive escapes me as did the last ones, thine own life shall pay the forfeit. Now go, nay, by all the Gods, I will go too!” and, passing on in front of the supposed hermit, he provided Kenyon with another almost overpowering temptation to use his weapons.Unbarring the door of another room, Zero let the hermit in and closed the portal behind them both, and Kenyon found himself face to face with an imperially beautiful woman, still quite young, but whose lovely face was worn with sorrow and anguish, and furrowed with her bitter tears. A tall, well-knit figure, a wealth of lustrous golden hair, and glorious deep blue eyes, formed atout ensemblewhich might have won pity from a stone, but had no effect whatever upon this scoundrel who battened on human misery.“Well, madam,” said the slaver, in cutting tones, “you have your own obstinacy to thank for your death, which takes place to-morrow. Here’s a priest for you, so be quick and say your patter, or whatever it is. You’d be surprised to see how fast your precious boy is picking up the tenets of our Holy Mormon Faith,” and the demon laughed a jeering, taunting laugh, which made Kenyon’s blood boil, and he could have kissed the feet of the defenceless woman before him for the gesture of ineffable contempt with which she turned her back on the wretched hound. “Pray, begone,” she said in a firm but musical voice; “your hated presence comes between me and my God.”“Ha! ha!” laughed the sardonic ruffian; “one for you, Sir Priest, one for you, I reckon. Well, come along with you, I’ve no time to fool away here.” But Kenyon, mindful of the part he had to play, took not the slightest notice of the slaver, but kneeled reverently down by himself for a few brief moments, then rose and left the room obedient to an impatient signal from the fierce and wicked man, whom his fingers fairly itched to throttle then and there.Had Zero looked behind him he would have been greatly astonished to see the captive woman bend simply down and gaze wildly at the floor beneath her feet; and then, in a mighty revulsion of feeling, give way to a perfect paroxysm of tears and sobs. What, you ask, gentle reader, was the cause of this sudden and subtle change from strength to weakness? What? Simply Stanforth Kenyon’s message written with the point of his finger on a dusty boarded floor, and that message was:“Hope.”Only four precious letters; yet this man had written them at the peril of his life. It must, it did, mean something, and all her woman’s wit was instantly on the alert to lay hold of the earliest clue to the whereabouts of these her secret friends.Hope! Oh pity her, gentle reader, a lovely woman in the zenith of her beauty and the pride of motherhood, condemned to die a frightful death before another day had run its course, and die merely to satisfy the insensate malice of a ruffian Mormon hound.Turning away from Zero, Kenyon would have left the building in silence; but the slaver laid upon his shoulder a firm, detaining hand. “Softly, my good old man! ‘Softly! softly! catch monkey,’ as these infernal niggers say. You live on the mountain, and I reckon you can see a long way. Now have you seen naught of this cursed Grenville and the pack of fools who follow him? Speak out, man, or I guess I’ll soon find means to open your wretched old jaws.”Like a flash of light, an inspiration came to Kenyon; and, drawing himself up proudly, he shook off the slaver’s hand. “The men ye name are even now within my cave upon the hill,” he said. “Go seek them if ye dare, monster of evil, but beware the end thereof; beware, for Muzi Zimba warns thee!”The effect was precisely what Kenyon had calculated upon. Flinging the old man from him with a fearful oath, the slaver sent his powerful voice echoing through the house and out along the streets, calling up guards and officers in every direction, whilst our adventurous friend soon after took his departure, entirely unnoticed during the tumult which followed the communication of the news which he had given, regarding the position of his friends.Hanging about for a few moments, however, Kenyon learned all he wished to know, as he heard Zero, with a volley of oaths, exclaim: “Put off her execution? No, by all the Gods—no, tie the slut to the faggots at noon to-morrow, and let her roast, and mind you have her whelp of a son to watch her die, whilst I eat up these cursed fools who think to change my vengeance and to spoil my trade.”This was all that Kenyon required to know, and an hour later he was deep in consultation with his friends in the hermit’s cave, amongst the northern hills.It was agreed on all hands that Kenyon had acted for the best, as the plan he had formed, though simple in the extreme, had every promise of a grand success.Briefly, the scheme stood thus:—Whilst Zero was moving up to the attack, as he evidently meant to do next morning, a party of their own was, by way of the secret passage and the well, to enter Equatoria, fall upon the few guards left there, carry off the captive woman, and generally do as much damage to the slavers’ town as they found it in their power to accomplish. It was calculated that the rifles of Leigh, Umbulanzi, and Ewan, supported by the Atagbondo marksmen, would be quite sufficient to check Zero in his ascent up the steep and difficult path to the cavern; and, even if he forced his way so far, he would have to reckon with about two hundred of the Atagbondo, and would find their warriors uncommonly hard nuts to crack; whilst Kenyon and Grenville, who were to assail the town, would take with them Amaxosa and his men, together with a hundred of the “People of the Stick,” quite sufficient, they thought, to do irreparable damage to the slavers’ home in the two hours which they promised themselves to spend in Equatoria.And so, after looking carefully over their arms and their defences, the little band lay down to sleep that night with perfect confidence in their leaders, and in the issues of the morrow; only Leigh sat up the whole night cleaning his weapons, with murder in his heart, and a wealth of determined resolve upon his handsome face.

On the following night, therefore, as soon as darkness fell, Kenyon, disguised to represent the old hermit, again entered the slavers’ town, whilst Leigh, Grenville, Amaxosa, and a score of picked men lay in wait below the well, from which, in the event of hearing a given signal whistle, they were to sally out and assist our adventurous friend.

The detective went about his accustomed work with the greatestnonchalance; and, on reaching the building which had been pointed out to him the previous night, simply and plainly told the guard that he wished to have speech of the condemned woman. Without a word of reply, one of the men on duty signed to Kenyon to follow him, and well might our adventurer, under the loose folds of his cloak, clench his fingers over the butt of a friendly revolver when he found himself ushered directly into the well-known and hated presence of Zero the Slaver. For a moment the impulse was almost unconquerable in Kenyon to slip out his six-shooter and make an end of this inhuman monster without further palaver; but, recognising how much hung upon the result of his actions that night, he wisely restrained his passions.

The slaver was sitting in a handsomely got-up room carpeted with furs, and thick with weapons and with trophies of the chase, and opposite to him—fortunately, perhaps, for Kenyon—sat the native king already spoken of, and who immediately did our adventurer reverence, in his capacity of Muzi Zimba the Ancient.

As the guard detailed his errand. Zero rose with a sneering laugh. “Ay! let him go to her,” he said, “and look ’ee here, old man, if this captive escapes me as did the last ones, thine own life shall pay the forfeit. Now go, nay, by all the Gods, I will go too!” and, passing on in front of the supposed hermit, he provided Kenyon with another almost overpowering temptation to use his weapons.

Unbarring the door of another room, Zero let the hermit in and closed the portal behind them both, and Kenyon found himself face to face with an imperially beautiful woman, still quite young, but whose lovely face was worn with sorrow and anguish, and furrowed with her bitter tears. A tall, well-knit figure, a wealth of lustrous golden hair, and glorious deep blue eyes, formed atout ensemblewhich might have won pity from a stone, but had no effect whatever upon this scoundrel who battened on human misery.

“Well, madam,” said the slaver, in cutting tones, “you have your own obstinacy to thank for your death, which takes place to-morrow. Here’s a priest for you, so be quick and say your patter, or whatever it is. You’d be surprised to see how fast your precious boy is picking up the tenets of our Holy Mormon Faith,” and the demon laughed a jeering, taunting laugh, which made Kenyon’s blood boil, and he could have kissed the feet of the defenceless woman before him for the gesture of ineffable contempt with which she turned her back on the wretched hound. “Pray, begone,” she said in a firm but musical voice; “your hated presence comes between me and my God.”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the sardonic ruffian; “one for you, Sir Priest, one for you, I reckon. Well, come along with you, I’ve no time to fool away here.” But Kenyon, mindful of the part he had to play, took not the slightest notice of the slaver, but kneeled reverently down by himself for a few brief moments, then rose and left the room obedient to an impatient signal from the fierce and wicked man, whom his fingers fairly itched to throttle then and there.

Had Zero looked behind him he would have been greatly astonished to see the captive woman bend simply down and gaze wildly at the floor beneath her feet; and then, in a mighty revulsion of feeling, give way to a perfect paroxysm of tears and sobs. What, you ask, gentle reader, was the cause of this sudden and subtle change from strength to weakness? What? Simply Stanforth Kenyon’s message written with the point of his finger on a dusty boarded floor, and that message was:

“Hope.”

Only four precious letters; yet this man had written them at the peril of his life. It must, it did, mean something, and all her woman’s wit was instantly on the alert to lay hold of the earliest clue to the whereabouts of these her secret friends.

Hope! Oh pity her, gentle reader, a lovely woman in the zenith of her beauty and the pride of motherhood, condemned to die a frightful death before another day had run its course, and die merely to satisfy the insensate malice of a ruffian Mormon hound.

Turning away from Zero, Kenyon would have left the building in silence; but the slaver laid upon his shoulder a firm, detaining hand. “Softly, my good old man! ‘Softly! softly! catch monkey,’ as these infernal niggers say. You live on the mountain, and I reckon you can see a long way. Now have you seen naught of this cursed Grenville and the pack of fools who follow him? Speak out, man, or I guess I’ll soon find means to open your wretched old jaws.”

Like a flash of light, an inspiration came to Kenyon; and, drawing himself up proudly, he shook off the slaver’s hand. “The men ye name are even now within my cave upon the hill,” he said. “Go seek them if ye dare, monster of evil, but beware the end thereof; beware, for Muzi Zimba warns thee!”

The effect was precisely what Kenyon had calculated upon. Flinging the old man from him with a fearful oath, the slaver sent his powerful voice echoing through the house and out along the streets, calling up guards and officers in every direction, whilst our adventurous friend soon after took his departure, entirely unnoticed during the tumult which followed the communication of the news which he had given, regarding the position of his friends.

Hanging about for a few moments, however, Kenyon learned all he wished to know, as he heard Zero, with a volley of oaths, exclaim: “Put off her execution? No, by all the Gods—no, tie the slut to the faggots at noon to-morrow, and let her roast, and mind you have her whelp of a son to watch her die, whilst I eat up these cursed fools who think to change my vengeance and to spoil my trade.”

This was all that Kenyon required to know, and an hour later he was deep in consultation with his friends in the hermit’s cave, amongst the northern hills.

It was agreed on all hands that Kenyon had acted for the best, as the plan he had formed, though simple in the extreme, had every promise of a grand success.

Briefly, the scheme stood thus:—Whilst Zero was moving up to the attack, as he evidently meant to do next morning, a party of their own was, by way of the secret passage and the well, to enter Equatoria, fall upon the few guards left there, carry off the captive woman, and generally do as much damage to the slavers’ town as they found it in their power to accomplish. It was calculated that the rifles of Leigh, Umbulanzi, and Ewan, supported by the Atagbondo marksmen, would be quite sufficient to check Zero in his ascent up the steep and difficult path to the cavern; and, even if he forced his way so far, he would have to reckon with about two hundred of the Atagbondo, and would find their warriors uncommonly hard nuts to crack; whilst Kenyon and Grenville, who were to assail the town, would take with them Amaxosa and his men, together with a hundred of the “People of the Stick,” quite sufficient, they thought, to do irreparable damage to the slavers’ home in the two hours which they promised themselves to spend in Equatoria.

And so, after looking carefully over their arms and their defences, the little band lay down to sleep that night with perfect confidence in their leaders, and in the issues of the morrow; only Leigh sat up the whole night cleaning his weapons, with murder in his heart, and a wealth of determined resolve upon his handsome face.

Chapter Sixteen.Alive from the Dead.Soon after dawn the whole party was astir, and the defenders of the cave were quickly at their several posts, whilst Kenyon and Grenville again carefully looked over their plan of attack.Grenville was fortunately able to define the probable site of the execution, knowing from experience, that the miserable victims done to death by the infamous Mormon Inquisitors wereeither burned alive or crucifiedupon a small natural hill—a curious smooth-topped, skull-shaped mound, in fact, perhaps fifty feet in height, and which, fortunately, stood between the mouth of the old well and the slavers’ town, and was equi-distant from each, perhaps five or six yards. It was a shrewd count, therefore, that the little rescue-party would be able to get within easy rifle range before they were discovered by the enemy; and, as Zero would be certain to carry practically the whole of the fighting population with him, it was extremely probable that when our friends unmasked their party, a general stampede for safety on the part of the slavers would be the immediate result, when it was hoped that the poor captive woman would be quite forgotten, and, being left behind, would prove an easy acquisition, and when they once had her in safety, the hands of our friends would, of course, be perfectly free to act in the way that might seem best.At eleven o’clock the leaders of the storming party exchanged a warm hand-grasp with Leigh and Umbulanzi, and left the cavern by way of the tunnel, through which we will now follow their fortunes.The getting of such a relatively large number of men down through this singular mountain burrow and up beyond the mouth of the well on the other side of the range, took considerably longer than the detective had reckoned upon, and the hour was within a very few minutes of noon by the time that all were safely hidden in the straggling line of bush which masked their presence, and impinged upon the narrow stretch of veldt lying between their position and the curious knoll referred to, upon which, to their horror, our friends could now plainly see a great upright stake fixed, and around this post were placed bundles of heavy faggots, packed closely with a resinous, woody fibre, and even while they looked, the executioner appeared upon the hill, carrying in his hand a swinging brazier, filled with some burning substance.Grenville quickly pointed out that the victim was to be faced towards the town, which was another circumstance in their favour, as the crest of the knoll would effectually screen their movements from the preoccupied herd of sightseers beyond.All hearts beat fast as they saw the poor sufferer led up and bound to the martyr stake, whilst the mighty, spontaneous shout which went up to heaven, caused each man’s fingers to clinch anxiously upon his weapons, as it proved to them that the multitude beyond the knoll could be no inconsiderable one.The instant that the executioner turned his back upon the well, and busied himself with the fastening of the poor woman to the stake, Grenville gave the word, and the whole party as one man shot noiselessly out of the bush, and commenced a jog-trot across the open space which separated them from the scene of the execution. When all were within a hundred yards, the wretched fellow upon the hill turned him round and saw them; then uttering a wild shout, and hurriedly bending down, he seized a lighted brand and endeavoured, with trembling hands, to thrust it in amongst the faggots.Dropping quickly upon one knee, Grenville raised his rifle, but still somewhat weak and shaken by the sharp run, for once he missed his man. Kenyon, however, quickly following, “wiped his eye,” knocking the rascal head-over-heels off the hill.A great roar of surprise and wonder burst from the mob beyond the knoll, changed to a shriek of terror and consternation as the fierce Zulus sent their wild battle-cry echoing across the rolling veldt, and charged right up the hill, instantly surrounding the poor creature at the stoke, and killing the Mormon satellites who were clambering up to the spot.And now ensued a stubborn fight, for Zero had left behind him many more men than our friends had counted upon, and these, having mostly left their rifles behind them in the town, charged madly up the little hill, and furiously engaged the rescue-party hand-to-hand, and for quite five minutes the cause of all this tumult was utterly forgotten, whilst the fight swung fiercely to and fro, and the issue hung in doubt. Our friends certainly had the advantage of position, whilst the slavers, on the other hand, still stood in the proportion of at least two to one; but the fiery valour of the active Zulus, nobly backed by the almost insensate fury of the injured “People of the Stick,” would brook no living check, and presently, led by Amaxosa, they went right through the slaver crowd, cutting them down on every hand, and driving all that were left of the wretched men pell-mell into the town, which both bands entered simultaneously.Kenyon then bethought him of the prisoner, and, taking Grenville back, both men turned to ascend the hill, and relieve the poor girl from her painful and dangerous position. Still as a statue she stood, with her head drooping forward upon her breast, and for one moment the thought that some stray shot had struck her crossed painfully the minds of both; but when they had arrived within twenty yards of her position the girl heard them, and quickly raised her head, her beautiful face all wet with tears, and eloquent with voiceless prayers to heaven. Staggering back, as if struck by a shot, Grenville, to Kenyon’s utter astonishment, dropped his gun, and threw up his hands in a frenzy of terror.“God in heaven!” he screamed, “Dora, sister Dora! or am I mad, indeed.”Well might poor Grenville think his brain had turned. After all Zero’s wicked boasts of crime, and all his cousin’s bitter sorrow for his long-dead wife, how could he believe thatthere before him, in the flesh, beautiful as when first he saw her in East Utah, stood Dora, Lady Drelincourt, dressed in deep black, with a pure white cross upon her breast, and fastened to a martyr’s stake, in the darkest part of darkest Equatorial Africa?“Dick!” she cried, “dear Dick Grenville, tell me, does my darling husband live, or have I lost him, too. Tell me, tell me! I beseech you, for the love of God.”Pulling himself together, as the music of those well-known accents reached his ears, Grenville at once ran to the poor girl’s side, and quickly unbound the chain which fixed her to the cruel stake, speaking meanwhile soothing words of hope and joy, and peace on earth, whilst Kenyon, hearing that her boy was in the town, went off, like an arrow from the bow, to make certain of the safety of his friend and patron’s little son.In every direction, as the detective entered the town, he found blazing houses, and dead and dying men, but the Atagbondo had behaved splendidly, and set a lesson to their evil white-skinned foes, in this respect, that on woman or on child they laid no hand, but every man they found died by the spear or by “the stick.” One ghastly sight, however, did Kenyon see, for absolutely pinned to a burning house by a Zulu assegai, which had passed right through her heart, hung the dead mistress of Zero, the slaver-chief, and the beholder know that the hand that killed her was the hand of justice—justice on a woman more evil in her ways than many a wicked man who had that day fallen in fair fight.Cornered, like rats, and yet more numerous than their fierce opponents, the slavers fought with all the Courage of despair, but naught availed them, and soon the only house in Equatoria which remained intact, was the great public hall, into which the storming party had collected the entire movable wealth of the slaver fraternity, and from the roof of which the Saint George’s ensign now floated lazily upon the labouring breeze. Seeing the good old flag, Grenville at once led his rescued “sister,” as it was always his habit to call her, back to the Mormon town, and the anxious young mother forgot the awful scenes of carnage and of blood, in the joy of embracing, once more, her loving little child.Ordering the men to shoulder everything worth having, and to return to the upper cave before Zero and his band could arrive, Grenville and Kenyon prepared to leave Equatoria, accompanied by Lady Drelincourt and her son, and by the woman of whom mention has previously been made, together with her child, who was now in better health, whilst the whole of the Mormon-cum-slaver women and children had scampered away to the woods, which lay in the rear of the town.Just now, however, the victorious little band received a very severe check, for ere they reached the skull-shaped hill, the report of firearms broke upon their ears, and Grenville suddenly exclaimed, “By Jove! what can have happened? There goes Alf’s repeater. What, in the name of fortune, is he doing here?”Dashing up the hill, and leaving the women in shelter on the town side of it, they came upon a sad sight. Right below their position, Leigh and about a hundred men only, were sullenly falling back upon the knoll, fighting every inch of the ground like fiends, but being steadily driven in, by something like seven times their number of heavily-armed slavers.As the retreating party got against the hill, the slavers uttered a shout of triumph, and charging in, drove the little band in every direction; but little they reckoned upon the thunderbolt which fell upon them from above. Down from the top of the knoll like a living, irresistible whirlwind, came the lion-hearted children of the Zulu, led by their fierce and active chief, and close upon their heels, in a compact serried mass, followed the ready “People of the Stick,” behind whom Leigh and his gallant little band re-formed and charged the slavers home.By this time the rifles were almost silent, only Grenville’s piece occasionally speaking its mind, for he seemed to have eyes for every combat of a friend, and when the great Zulu had led his men clean through the heart of the slavers, and had charged madly back again along a ghastly lane of dead and dying men, the foe drew off a little, and sought to load his guns.This would never do, and with a wild earth-shaking shout, Amaxosa again charged the craven crowd; with him came the staunch war-dogs of the Zulu, who loved the slaughter as they loved their daring chief, and scarce a rod behind came Barad “the Hailstorm,” his faithful people following into the very jaws of death the gallant “Chieftain of the Stick,” and ever side by side with the mighty Zulu, there fought Alf Leigh, scarcely less fierce than his sable friend, and even more determined; and before the “giant three” the foe fell in every direction, like corn beneath the sickle.Suddenly, however, Leigh broke out of the line, and, with a wild cry of triumph, fiercely engaged Zero himself, hand to hand, and axe to axe. The slaver-chief was a powerful and an active man, but he was no match for the colossal Englishman, to whom fury, revenge, and long-nursed bitter hate, had given a tenfold strength, and in ten seconds Zero lay wounded and stunned upon the ground.Then there arose a mighty uproar, the slavers charged madly in upon the foe, and bore them back a dozen rods, fighting the while like fiends, and thus succeeded in carrying their wounded chieftain off the field, then surging in around the little band which was now fighting in square, the desperate slavers made a tremendous effort to annihilate their plucky and determined foes. Clubs are poor weapons to keep the face of a square, and the formation was quickly broken, and, fighting like lions, our friends were driven backward to the hill, every one of them fairly drenched with blood, and almost all wounded, whilst their number now totalled something under a hundred men.All about lay the slain, singly and in knots and heaps; dead men everywhere, and everywhere rivers of blood, and the horrid stench of slaughter.After a few moments’ rest, the slavers charged in with a wild shout, resolved, at all cost, to wipe out the little band of heroes who held the skull-shaped hill; and when the surging struggling mass of men had been lost in a rain of blows, for full ten minutes, all chance of escape or triumph for our friends seemed gone: but fifty men were left to fight three hundred.Grenville and Leigh, Amaxosa and Kenyon, were back to back, their blows rained straight and sure, and at every blow from each a man went down, still what could they do against such overwhelming odds as six to one.Down went the gallant Umbulanzi, with a great spear wound in his back, and down upon his breathless corpse went his recreant foe, his head split to the very chin by a vengeful blow from Grenville’s ready axe.All was in vain, yet even as our friends had given up all hope of escaping from the hideous crowd which surged in upon them like hungry wolves round a dying buffalo, a clear, cold voice rang out in stentorian tones across the startled veldt, arresting every hand and every arm.“Cease,” it said; “cease and hold your hands, ye uncircumcised ones, both white and black, unless ye wish to die.” And there upon the knoll, to the utter horror of our friends, flaunted the dreaded banner of Mormonism, and round the mingled mass of combatants, and of dead and dying men, there extended on every hand a mighty triple ring of armed and hated followers of the False Prophet.Ringed in by fully a thousand well-armed men, further resistance was worse than useless. Moreover, Grenville’s keen eye quickly noted the curious fact that, so far from displaying anything like enthusiasm over the advent of the Mormon host, the slavers seemed considerably more taken aback by the presence of the new arrivals than even his own party.The tension of feeling between the three bands was all at once unintentionally relieved by poor Leigh suddenly noticing Dora on the crest of the knoll, where the poor girl had been an agonised spectator of the awful fight, and where her cries, notifying the dreaded Mormon approach, had been no more audible than the twitterings of a sparrow. Suddenly noticing her, I say, an expression of positive terror froze poor Leigh’s face, his hair rose up upon his head, and with a fearful shriek of “Dora, Dora, my long-dead, darling wife!” he threw up his hands and fell prone upon his face, with the life-blood welling from his mouth.Kenyon threw himself upon his knees beside his friend, but in another instant Dora was holding her lover’s head upon her lap, lover and husband both in one, lost and found; and, after all these cruel years of weary waiting, must she find her darling but to lose his love for ever? No! for the good God was full of mercy to the faithful heart that had trusted Him to the very stake of martyrdom, and her husband soon came round again, but to relapse into a dangerous attack of brain fever, from which he escaped only by slow degrees, and it took many weary months and a world of anxious nursing night and day ere Alfred Leigh regained his normal strength.Speaking again, the Mormon leader, a fine-looking old man, with a snow-white beard, commanded the combatants to lay down their arms and consider themselves the prisoners of the Holy Three, and this order the slavers instantly obeyed.Stepping coolly forward, however, Grenville spoke up boldly—“Who are you, and by what right do you command here, sir? Yonder floats the flag of England, under which we serve, and we demand that you respect its world-wide rights.”“Richard Grenville, I know you,” was the cool reply, “and here I command everyone by the right of might, so lay down your arms, or my men shall sweep you off the face of the earth and save further trouble: ay, both you and yonder heap of carrion with you,” and the Mormon pointed to the slavers, who were huddled together a hundred yards distant from their late antagonists.Clearly the game was up, and there was nothing for it but to comply with the Mormon’s commands, which all did with a very ill grace, when, commencing with the slavers, they were quickly bound; but, coming swiftly to Grenville the Mormon leader spoke.“I know,” he said, “that ye are brave and upright, but bloody-minded men, yet is your word your bond, and if ye give it me now that ye will not essay escape, no cord or chain shall touch ye or this your giant friend,” and he pointed to the great Zulu, who was painted a ghastly red from head to foot.Eagerly thanking the Mormon, all gladly gave the required parole, and, under this man’s direction, they then carried Leigh into a room in the public offices and left him there with his wife and child; after which, by permission, Kenyon first attended to the wounds of his own party, and afterwards to those of the slavers, though the old Mormon cynically remarked to him that it would be much more merciful to let the scoundrels die at once.A curious meeting it was in Central Africa between the detective and his quarry, when this amateur doctor came to the point of exercising his healing art upon the fallen Zero.“Well, Monckton Bassett, we meet again,” said Kenyon, coolly; “and now let me look at this head of yours, for I should be sorry for you to go off the ropes without Uncle Sam having a hand in the affair.”For reply Zero hurled a fearful curse at the detective, and ordered him to begone, so Kenyon calmly left the scoundrel to himself.

Soon after dawn the whole party was astir, and the defenders of the cave were quickly at their several posts, whilst Kenyon and Grenville again carefully looked over their plan of attack.

Grenville was fortunately able to define the probable site of the execution, knowing from experience, that the miserable victims done to death by the infamous Mormon Inquisitors wereeither burned alive or crucifiedupon a small natural hill—a curious smooth-topped, skull-shaped mound, in fact, perhaps fifty feet in height, and which, fortunately, stood between the mouth of the old well and the slavers’ town, and was equi-distant from each, perhaps five or six yards. It was a shrewd count, therefore, that the little rescue-party would be able to get within easy rifle range before they were discovered by the enemy; and, as Zero would be certain to carry practically the whole of the fighting population with him, it was extremely probable that when our friends unmasked their party, a general stampede for safety on the part of the slavers would be the immediate result, when it was hoped that the poor captive woman would be quite forgotten, and, being left behind, would prove an easy acquisition, and when they once had her in safety, the hands of our friends would, of course, be perfectly free to act in the way that might seem best.

At eleven o’clock the leaders of the storming party exchanged a warm hand-grasp with Leigh and Umbulanzi, and left the cavern by way of the tunnel, through which we will now follow their fortunes.

The getting of such a relatively large number of men down through this singular mountain burrow and up beyond the mouth of the well on the other side of the range, took considerably longer than the detective had reckoned upon, and the hour was within a very few minutes of noon by the time that all were safely hidden in the straggling line of bush which masked their presence, and impinged upon the narrow stretch of veldt lying between their position and the curious knoll referred to, upon which, to their horror, our friends could now plainly see a great upright stake fixed, and around this post were placed bundles of heavy faggots, packed closely with a resinous, woody fibre, and even while they looked, the executioner appeared upon the hill, carrying in his hand a swinging brazier, filled with some burning substance.

Grenville quickly pointed out that the victim was to be faced towards the town, which was another circumstance in their favour, as the crest of the knoll would effectually screen their movements from the preoccupied herd of sightseers beyond.

All hearts beat fast as they saw the poor sufferer led up and bound to the martyr stake, whilst the mighty, spontaneous shout which went up to heaven, caused each man’s fingers to clinch anxiously upon his weapons, as it proved to them that the multitude beyond the knoll could be no inconsiderable one.

The instant that the executioner turned his back upon the well, and busied himself with the fastening of the poor woman to the stake, Grenville gave the word, and the whole party as one man shot noiselessly out of the bush, and commenced a jog-trot across the open space which separated them from the scene of the execution. When all were within a hundred yards, the wretched fellow upon the hill turned him round and saw them; then uttering a wild shout, and hurriedly bending down, he seized a lighted brand and endeavoured, with trembling hands, to thrust it in amongst the faggots.

Dropping quickly upon one knee, Grenville raised his rifle, but still somewhat weak and shaken by the sharp run, for once he missed his man. Kenyon, however, quickly following, “wiped his eye,” knocking the rascal head-over-heels off the hill.

A great roar of surprise and wonder burst from the mob beyond the knoll, changed to a shriek of terror and consternation as the fierce Zulus sent their wild battle-cry echoing across the rolling veldt, and charged right up the hill, instantly surrounding the poor creature at the stoke, and killing the Mormon satellites who were clambering up to the spot.

And now ensued a stubborn fight, for Zero had left behind him many more men than our friends had counted upon, and these, having mostly left their rifles behind them in the town, charged madly up the little hill, and furiously engaged the rescue-party hand-to-hand, and for quite five minutes the cause of all this tumult was utterly forgotten, whilst the fight swung fiercely to and fro, and the issue hung in doubt. Our friends certainly had the advantage of position, whilst the slavers, on the other hand, still stood in the proportion of at least two to one; but the fiery valour of the active Zulus, nobly backed by the almost insensate fury of the injured “People of the Stick,” would brook no living check, and presently, led by Amaxosa, they went right through the slaver crowd, cutting them down on every hand, and driving all that were left of the wretched men pell-mell into the town, which both bands entered simultaneously.

Kenyon then bethought him of the prisoner, and, taking Grenville back, both men turned to ascend the hill, and relieve the poor girl from her painful and dangerous position. Still as a statue she stood, with her head drooping forward upon her breast, and for one moment the thought that some stray shot had struck her crossed painfully the minds of both; but when they had arrived within twenty yards of her position the girl heard them, and quickly raised her head, her beautiful face all wet with tears, and eloquent with voiceless prayers to heaven. Staggering back, as if struck by a shot, Grenville, to Kenyon’s utter astonishment, dropped his gun, and threw up his hands in a frenzy of terror.

“God in heaven!” he screamed, “Dora, sister Dora! or am I mad, indeed.”

Well might poor Grenville think his brain had turned. After all Zero’s wicked boasts of crime, and all his cousin’s bitter sorrow for his long-dead wife, how could he believe thatthere before him, in the flesh, beautiful as when first he saw her in East Utah, stood Dora, Lady Drelincourt, dressed in deep black, with a pure white cross upon her breast, and fastened to a martyr’s stake, in the darkest part of darkest Equatorial Africa?

“Dick!” she cried, “dear Dick Grenville, tell me, does my darling husband live, or have I lost him, too. Tell me, tell me! I beseech you, for the love of God.”

Pulling himself together, as the music of those well-known accents reached his ears, Grenville at once ran to the poor girl’s side, and quickly unbound the chain which fixed her to the cruel stake, speaking meanwhile soothing words of hope and joy, and peace on earth, whilst Kenyon, hearing that her boy was in the town, went off, like an arrow from the bow, to make certain of the safety of his friend and patron’s little son.

In every direction, as the detective entered the town, he found blazing houses, and dead and dying men, but the Atagbondo had behaved splendidly, and set a lesson to their evil white-skinned foes, in this respect, that on woman or on child they laid no hand, but every man they found died by the spear or by “the stick.” One ghastly sight, however, did Kenyon see, for absolutely pinned to a burning house by a Zulu assegai, which had passed right through her heart, hung the dead mistress of Zero, the slaver-chief, and the beholder know that the hand that killed her was the hand of justice—justice on a woman more evil in her ways than many a wicked man who had that day fallen in fair fight.

Cornered, like rats, and yet more numerous than their fierce opponents, the slavers fought with all the Courage of despair, but naught availed them, and soon the only house in Equatoria which remained intact, was the great public hall, into which the storming party had collected the entire movable wealth of the slaver fraternity, and from the roof of which the Saint George’s ensign now floated lazily upon the labouring breeze. Seeing the good old flag, Grenville at once led his rescued “sister,” as it was always his habit to call her, back to the Mormon town, and the anxious young mother forgot the awful scenes of carnage and of blood, in the joy of embracing, once more, her loving little child.

Ordering the men to shoulder everything worth having, and to return to the upper cave before Zero and his band could arrive, Grenville and Kenyon prepared to leave Equatoria, accompanied by Lady Drelincourt and her son, and by the woman of whom mention has previously been made, together with her child, who was now in better health, whilst the whole of the Mormon-cum-slaver women and children had scampered away to the woods, which lay in the rear of the town.

Just now, however, the victorious little band received a very severe check, for ere they reached the skull-shaped hill, the report of firearms broke upon their ears, and Grenville suddenly exclaimed, “By Jove! what can have happened? There goes Alf’s repeater. What, in the name of fortune, is he doing here?”

Dashing up the hill, and leaving the women in shelter on the town side of it, they came upon a sad sight. Right below their position, Leigh and about a hundred men only, were sullenly falling back upon the knoll, fighting every inch of the ground like fiends, but being steadily driven in, by something like seven times their number of heavily-armed slavers.

As the retreating party got against the hill, the slavers uttered a shout of triumph, and charging in, drove the little band in every direction; but little they reckoned upon the thunderbolt which fell upon them from above. Down from the top of the knoll like a living, irresistible whirlwind, came the lion-hearted children of the Zulu, led by their fierce and active chief, and close upon their heels, in a compact serried mass, followed the ready “People of the Stick,” behind whom Leigh and his gallant little band re-formed and charged the slavers home.

By this time the rifles were almost silent, only Grenville’s piece occasionally speaking its mind, for he seemed to have eyes for every combat of a friend, and when the great Zulu had led his men clean through the heart of the slavers, and had charged madly back again along a ghastly lane of dead and dying men, the foe drew off a little, and sought to load his guns.

This would never do, and with a wild earth-shaking shout, Amaxosa again charged the craven crowd; with him came the staunch war-dogs of the Zulu, who loved the slaughter as they loved their daring chief, and scarce a rod behind came Barad “the Hailstorm,” his faithful people following into the very jaws of death the gallant “Chieftain of the Stick,” and ever side by side with the mighty Zulu, there fought Alf Leigh, scarcely less fierce than his sable friend, and even more determined; and before the “giant three” the foe fell in every direction, like corn beneath the sickle.

Suddenly, however, Leigh broke out of the line, and, with a wild cry of triumph, fiercely engaged Zero himself, hand to hand, and axe to axe. The slaver-chief was a powerful and an active man, but he was no match for the colossal Englishman, to whom fury, revenge, and long-nursed bitter hate, had given a tenfold strength, and in ten seconds Zero lay wounded and stunned upon the ground.

Then there arose a mighty uproar, the slavers charged madly in upon the foe, and bore them back a dozen rods, fighting the while like fiends, and thus succeeded in carrying their wounded chieftain off the field, then surging in around the little band which was now fighting in square, the desperate slavers made a tremendous effort to annihilate their plucky and determined foes. Clubs are poor weapons to keep the face of a square, and the formation was quickly broken, and, fighting like lions, our friends were driven backward to the hill, every one of them fairly drenched with blood, and almost all wounded, whilst their number now totalled something under a hundred men.

All about lay the slain, singly and in knots and heaps; dead men everywhere, and everywhere rivers of blood, and the horrid stench of slaughter.

After a few moments’ rest, the slavers charged in with a wild shout, resolved, at all cost, to wipe out the little band of heroes who held the skull-shaped hill; and when the surging struggling mass of men had been lost in a rain of blows, for full ten minutes, all chance of escape or triumph for our friends seemed gone: but fifty men were left to fight three hundred.

Grenville and Leigh, Amaxosa and Kenyon, were back to back, their blows rained straight and sure, and at every blow from each a man went down, still what could they do against such overwhelming odds as six to one.

Down went the gallant Umbulanzi, with a great spear wound in his back, and down upon his breathless corpse went his recreant foe, his head split to the very chin by a vengeful blow from Grenville’s ready axe.

All was in vain, yet even as our friends had given up all hope of escaping from the hideous crowd which surged in upon them like hungry wolves round a dying buffalo, a clear, cold voice rang out in stentorian tones across the startled veldt, arresting every hand and every arm.

“Cease,” it said; “cease and hold your hands, ye uncircumcised ones, both white and black, unless ye wish to die.” And there upon the knoll, to the utter horror of our friends, flaunted the dreaded banner of Mormonism, and round the mingled mass of combatants, and of dead and dying men, there extended on every hand a mighty triple ring of armed and hated followers of the False Prophet.

Ringed in by fully a thousand well-armed men, further resistance was worse than useless. Moreover, Grenville’s keen eye quickly noted the curious fact that, so far from displaying anything like enthusiasm over the advent of the Mormon host, the slavers seemed considerably more taken aback by the presence of the new arrivals than even his own party.

The tension of feeling between the three bands was all at once unintentionally relieved by poor Leigh suddenly noticing Dora on the crest of the knoll, where the poor girl had been an agonised spectator of the awful fight, and where her cries, notifying the dreaded Mormon approach, had been no more audible than the twitterings of a sparrow. Suddenly noticing her, I say, an expression of positive terror froze poor Leigh’s face, his hair rose up upon his head, and with a fearful shriek of “Dora, Dora, my long-dead, darling wife!” he threw up his hands and fell prone upon his face, with the life-blood welling from his mouth.

Kenyon threw himself upon his knees beside his friend, but in another instant Dora was holding her lover’s head upon her lap, lover and husband both in one, lost and found; and, after all these cruel years of weary waiting, must she find her darling but to lose his love for ever? No! for the good God was full of mercy to the faithful heart that had trusted Him to the very stake of martyrdom, and her husband soon came round again, but to relapse into a dangerous attack of brain fever, from which he escaped only by slow degrees, and it took many weary months and a world of anxious nursing night and day ere Alfred Leigh regained his normal strength.

Speaking again, the Mormon leader, a fine-looking old man, with a snow-white beard, commanded the combatants to lay down their arms and consider themselves the prisoners of the Holy Three, and this order the slavers instantly obeyed.

Stepping coolly forward, however, Grenville spoke up boldly—

“Who are you, and by what right do you command here, sir? Yonder floats the flag of England, under which we serve, and we demand that you respect its world-wide rights.”

“Richard Grenville, I know you,” was the cool reply, “and here I command everyone by the right of might, so lay down your arms, or my men shall sweep you off the face of the earth and save further trouble: ay, both you and yonder heap of carrion with you,” and the Mormon pointed to the slavers, who were huddled together a hundred yards distant from their late antagonists.

Clearly the game was up, and there was nothing for it but to comply with the Mormon’s commands, which all did with a very ill grace, when, commencing with the slavers, they were quickly bound; but, coming swiftly to Grenville the Mormon leader spoke.

“I know,” he said, “that ye are brave and upright, but bloody-minded men, yet is your word your bond, and if ye give it me now that ye will not essay escape, no cord or chain shall touch ye or this your giant friend,” and he pointed to the great Zulu, who was painted a ghastly red from head to foot.

Eagerly thanking the Mormon, all gladly gave the required parole, and, under this man’s direction, they then carried Leigh into a room in the public offices and left him there with his wife and child; after which, by permission, Kenyon first attended to the wounds of his own party, and afterwards to those of the slavers, though the old Mormon cynically remarked to him that it would be much more merciful to let the scoundrels die at once.

A curious meeting it was in Central Africa between the detective and his quarry, when this amateur doctor came to the point of exercising his healing art upon the fallen Zero.

“Well, Monckton Bassett, we meet again,” said Kenyon, coolly; “and now let me look at this head of yours, for I should be sorry for you to go off the ropes without Uncle Sam having a hand in the affair.”

For reply Zero hurled a fearful curse at the detective, and ordered him to begone, so Kenyon calmly left the scoundrel to himself.

Back to IndexNext