'Ou!'
ejaculated Umslopogaas, contemplating the
corpse of his foe;
'I have kept my word. It was a good stroke.'
CHAPTER VIII
ALPHONSE EXPLAINS
And so the fight was ended. On returning from the
shocking scene
it sudden struck me that I had seen nothing of Alphonse since
the moment, some twenty minutes before -- for though this fight
has taken a long while to describe, it did not take long in reality
-- when I had been forced to hit him in the wind with the result
of nearly getting myself shot. Fearing that the poor little
man had perished in the battle, I began to hunt among the dead
for his body, but, not being able either to see or hear anything
of it, I concluded that he must have survived, and walked down
the side of the kraal where we had first taken our stand, calling
him by name. Now some fifteen paces back from the kraal wall
stood a very ancient tree of the banyan
species. So ancient
was it that all the inside had in the course of ages decayed
away, leaving nothing but a shell of bark.
'Alphonse,' I called, as I walked down the wall. 'Alphonse!'
'Oui,
monsieur,' answered a voice. 'Here am I.'
I looked round but could see nobody. 'Where?' I cried.
'Here am I,
monsieur, in the tree.'
I looked, and there, peering out of a hole in the trunk of the
banyan about five feet from the ground, I saw a pale face and
a pair of large mustachios, one clipped short and the other as
lamentably out of curl as the tail of a newly whipped pug. Then,
for the first time, I realized what I had suspected before --
namely, that Alphonse was an
arrantcoward. I walked up to him.
'Come out of that hole,' I said.
'Is it finished,
monsieur?' he asked
anxiously; 'quite finished?
Ah, the horrors I have
undergone, and the prayers I have uttered!'
'Come out, you little wretch,' I said, for I did not feel amiable;
'it is all over.'
'So,
monsieur, then my prayers have prevailed? I emerge,'
and he did.
As we were walking down together to join the others, who were
gathered in a group by the wide entrance to the kraal, which
now resembled a
veritable charnel-house, a Masai, who had escaped
so far and been hiding under a bush, suddenly
sprang up and charged
furiously at us. Off went Alphonse with a howl of
terror, and
after him flew the Masai, bent upon doing some
execution before
he died. He soon
overtook the poor little Frenchman, and would
have finished him then and there had I not, just as Alphonse
made a last agonized double in the vain hope of avoiding the
yard of steel that was flashing in his immediate rear, managed
to plant a
bullet between the Elmoran's broad shoulders, which
brought matters to a
satisfactoryconclusion so far as the Frenchman
was
concerned. But just then he tripped and fell flat, and the
body of the Masai fell right on the top of him, moving convulsively
in the death struggle. Thereupon there arose such a
series of
piercing howls that I concluded that before he died the
savagemust have managed to stab poor Alphonse. I ran up in a hurry
and pulled the Masai off, and there beneath him lay Alphonse
covered with blood and jerking himself about like a galvanized
frog. Poor fellow! thought I, he is done for, and kneeling down
by him I began to search for his wound as well as his struggles
would allow.
'Oh, the hole in my back!' he yelled. 'I am murdered. I am
dead. Oh, Annette!'
I searched again, but could see no wound. Then the truth dawned
on me -- the man was frightened, not hurt.
'Get up!' I shouted, 'Get up. Aren't you
ashamed of yourself?
You are not touched.'
Thereupon he rose, not a penny the worse. 'But,
monsieur, I
thought I was,' he said apologetically; 'I did not know that
I had conquered.' Then, giving the body of the Masai a kick,
he ejaculated
triumphantly, 'Ah, dog of a black
savage, thou
art dead; what
victory!'
Thoroughly disgusted, I left Alphonse to look after himself,
which he did by following me like a shadow, and proceeded to
join the others by the large entrance. The first thing that
I saw was Mackenzie, seated on a stone with a
handkerchief twisted
round his thigh, from which he was bleeding
freely, having, indeed,
received a spear-thrust that passed right through it, and still
holding in his hand his favourite
carving knife now bent nearly
double, from which I gathered that he had been successful in
his rough and tumble with the Elmoran.
'Ah, Quatermain!' he sang out in a trembling, excited voice,
'so we have conquered; but it is a sorry sight, a sorry sight;'
and then breaking into broad Scotch and glancing at the bent
knife in his hand, 'It fashes me sair to have bent my best carver
on the breastbone of a
savage,' and he laughed hysterically.
Poor fellow, what between his wound and the killing excitement
he had
undergone his nerves were much
shaken, and no wonder!
It is hard upon a man of peace and kindly heart to be called
upon to join in such a gruesome business. But there, fate puts
us sometimes into very
comical positions!
At the kraal entrance the scene was a strange one. The slaughter
was over by now, and the wounded men had been put out of their
pain, for no quarter had been given. The bush-closed entrance
was trampled flat, and in place of bushes it was filled with
the bodies of dead men. Dead men, everywhere dead men -- they
lay about in knots, they were flung by ones and twos in every
position upon the open spaces, for all the world like the people
on the grass in one of the London parks on a particularly hot
Sunday in August. In front of this entrance, on a space which
had been cleared of dead and of the shields and spears which
were scattered in all directions as they had fallen or been thrown
from the hands of their owners, stood and lay the survivors of
the awful struggle, and at their feet were four wounded men.
We had gone into the fight thirty strong, and of the thirty
but fifteen remained alive, and five of them (including Mr Mackenzie)
were wounded, two mortally. Of those who held the entrance,
Curtis and the Zulu alone remained. Good had lost five men killed,
I had lost two killed, and Mackenzie no less than five out of
the six with him. As for the survivors they were, with the exception
of myself who had never come to close quarters, red from head
to foot -- Sir Henry's
armour might have been painted that colour
-- and utterly exhausted, except Umslopogaas, who, as he grimly
stood on a little mound above a heap of dead, leaning as usual
upon his axe, did not seem particularly distressed, although
the skin over the hole in his head palpitated violently.
'Ah, Macumazahn!' he said to me as I limped up, feeling very
sick, 'I told thee that it would be a good fight, and it has.
Never have I seen a better, or one more
bravely fought. As
for this iron shirt, surely it is "tagati" [bewitched]; nothing
could
pierce it. Had it not been for the
garment I should have
been there,' and he nodded towards the great pile of dead men
beneath him.
'I give it thee; thou art a brave man,' said Sir Henry, briefly.
'Koos!' answered the Zulu, deeply pleased both at the gift and
the
compliment. 'Thou, too, Incubu, didst bear thyself as a
man, but I must give thee some lessons with the axe; thou dost
waste thy strength.'
Just then Mackenzie asked about Flossie, and we were all greatly
relieved when one of the men said he had seen her flying towards
the house with the nurse. Then
bearing such of the wounded as
could be moved at the moment with us, we slowly made our way
towards the Mission-house, spent with toil and
bloodshed, but
with the
glorious sense of
victory against
overwhelming odds
glowing in our hearts. We had saved the life of the little maid,
and taught the Masai of those parts a lesson that they will not
forget for ten years -- but at what a cost!
Painfully we made our way up the hill which, just a little more
than an hour before, we had descended under such different circumstances.
At the gate of the wall stood Mrs Mackenzie
waiting for us.
When her eyes fell upon us, however, she shrieked out, and covered
her face with her hands, crying, 'Horrible, horrible!' Nor were
her fears allayed when she discovered her
worthy husband being
borne upon an improvized
stretcher; but her doubts as to the
nature of his
injury were soon set at rest. Then when in a few
brief words I had told her the upshot of the struggle (of which
Flossie, who had arrived in safety, had been able to explain
something) she came up to me and
solemnly kissed me on the forehead.
'God bless you all, Mr Quatermain; you have saved my child's
life,' she said simply.
Then we went in and got our clothes off and doctored our wounds;
I am glad to say I had none, and Sir Henry's and Good's were,
thanks to those
invaluable chain shirts, of a
comparatively harmless
nature, and to be dealt with by means of a few stitches and sticking-plaster.
Mackenzie's, however, were serious, though fortunately
the spear had not severed any large
artery. After that we had
a bath, and what a
luxury it was! And having clad ourselves
in ordinary clothes, proceeded to the dining-room, where breakfast
was set as usual. It was curious sitting down there, drinking
tea and eating toast in an ordinary nineteenth-century sort of
way just as though we had not employed the early hours in a regular
primitive hand-to-hand Middle-Ages kind of struggle. As Good
said, the whole thing seemed more as though one had had a bad
nightmare just before being called, than as a deed done. When
we were finishing our breakfast the door opened, and in came
little Flossie, very pale and tottery, but quite unhurt. She
kissed us all and thanked us. I congratulated her on the presence
of mind she had shown in shooting the Masai with her Derringer
pistol, and
thereby saving her own life.
'Oh, don't talk of it!' she said,
beginning to cry hysterically;
'I shall never forget his face as he went turning round and round,
never -- I can see it now.'
I advised her to go to bed and get some sleep, which she did,
and awoke in the evening quite recovered, so far as her strength
was
concerned. It struck me as an odd thing that a girl who
could find the nerve to shoot a huge black
ruffian rushing to
kill her with a spear should have been so
affected at the thought
of it afterwards; but it is, after all,
characteristic of the
sex. Poor Flossie! I fear that her nerves will not get over
that night in the Masai camp for many a long year. She told
me afterwards that it was the
suspense that was so awful, having
to sit there hour after hour through the livelong night utterly
ignorant as to whether or not any attempt was to be made to rescue
her. She said that on the whole she did not expect it, knowing
how few of us, and how many of the Masai -- who, by the way,
came
continually to stare at her, most of them never having seen
a white person before, and handled her arms and hair with their
filthy paws. She said also that she had made up her mind that
if she saw no signs of succour by the time the first rays of
the rising sun reached the kraal she would kill herself with
the
pistol, for the nurse had heard the Lygonani say that they
were to be tortured to death as soon as the sun was up if one
of the white men did not come in their place. It was an awful
resolution to have to take, but she meant to act on it, and I
have little doubt but what she would have done so. Although
she was at an age when in England girls are in the schoolroom
and come down to
dessert, this 'child of the wilderness' had
more courage,
discretion, and power of mind than many a woman
of
mature age nurtured in
idleness and
luxury, with minds carefully
drilled and educated out of any
originality or self-resource
that nature may have endowed them with.
When breakfast was over we all turned in and had a good sleep,
only getting up in time for dinner; after which meal we once
more adjourned, together with all the
available population --