Men of Men - Smith Wilbur (онлайн книга без txt) 📗
"Ballantyne, your sister, the missionary woman, what's her name, Codrington, is she still at Khami? Is her family there with her?"
Zouga nodded, mystified, and Jameson snatched up a pencil and scribbled a message on his pad. Then he tore off the sheet and handed it to Mungo Sint John. Mungo read it and smiled. He looked like a bird of prey, beaknosed and fierce.
"Yes," he said. "Perfect." He passed the sheet to Zouga.
Jameson had written in block capitals.
URGENT FOR JOVE MATABELE REGIMENTS MASSED TO ATTACK STOP ENGLISH WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE POWER OF THE MATABELE TYRANT STOP IMPERATIVE WE MARCH AT ONCE TO SAVE THEM REPLY SOONEST "Even Labouchere couldn't quibble with that," Zouga emarked wryly. Labouchere was the London editor of Truth magazine, a champion of the oppressed and one of Rhodes" most eloquent and persistent adversaries. Zouga proffered the sheet, but Jameson waved it back.
"Keep it. Send it. I don't suppose you could leave this evening?" Jameson asked wistfully.
"It will be dark in an hour, and my wife is exhausted."
"Very well," Jameson agreed. "But you will return here as soon as you can with mister Rhodes" reply?"
"Of course."
"And there will be something else I want you to do on your return, a most important assignment."
"What is it?"
"General Sint John will explain." And Zouga turned suspiciously to Mungo.
Mungo's manner was suddenly placatory. "Zouga, there's not one of us who hasn't read your book Hunter's Odyssey. I would say that it's the bible of anybody wanting to know about this country and its people."
"Thank you." Zouga was unbending still.
"And one of the most interesting sections is the description of your visit to the oracle of the Umlimo in the hills south of Gubulawayo."
"The Matopos," Zouga told him.
"Yes, of course, the Matopos. Could you find your way back to the witch's cavern? After all, it has been over twenty-five years?"
"Yes, I could find it again." Zouga did not hesitate.
"Excellent," Jameson interrupted. "Come along, Sint John, do tell him why." But Mungo seemed to digress.
"You know the old Zulu who works for your son "Isazi, Ralph's head driver?" Zouga asked.
"That's the one. Well, we captured four Matabele scouts and we put Isazi in the stockade with them. He can pass for a Matabele, so the prisoners spoke freely in front of him. One of the things we learnt is that the Umlimo has called all the witch doctors of the nation to a ritual in the hills."
"Yes," Zouga agreed. "I heard of it before I left Gubulawayo. The Umlimo is preaching war, and promises a charm to the impis that will turn our bullets to water."
Ah, so it's true then." Mungo nodded, and then, thoughtfully: "Just what influence does this prophetess have?"
"The Umlimo is a hereditary figure, a sort of virgin demi-deity that has her origins long before the arrival of the Matabele in this land, perhaps a thousand years or more ago. First Mzilikazi and then Lobengula have fallen under her spell. I have even heard it whispered that Lobengula served an apprenticeship in sorcery under the Umlimo's guidance, in the Matopos."
"Then she does wield power over the Matabele?"
"Immense power. Lobengula makes no important decision without her oracle. No impi would march without her charms to protect them."
"If she were to die on the day we march into Matabeleland?"
"It would throw the king and his warriors into consternation. They would probably act recklessly. The Umlimo's charms would perish with her; her advice might turn like a serpent and strike the receiver.
They would be demoralized, and it would take at least three months to choose a prophetess to replace her. During that time the nation would be vulnerable."
"Zouga, I want you to take a party of mounted men the toughest and the best we have. I want you to ride to the witch's cave and destroy her and all her witch doctors."
Will Daniel was Zouga's sergeant. He was a Canadian who had been twenty years in Africa without losing his accent. He had fought the tribes on the Fish river and in Zululand. He boasted that he had killed three of Cetewayo's men with a single shot at Ulundi and made his tobacco pouch from the scalp of one of them. He had been in the Gazaland rebellion and fought at the Hill of the Doves against the free burghers of the Transvaal Republic. Wherever there had been trouble and shooting, Will Daniel had forged his bloody reputation. He was a big man, heavy in the gut, prematurely bald with large round ears that stood out from his polished scalp like those of a wild dog. His fists were gnarled, his legs bowed from the saddle " and he wore a perpetual wide white grin which never touched his cold little eyes.
"You don't have to like or trust him," Mungo Sint John had advised Zouga. "But he is the man for the job."
With Will Daniel went his henchman, Jim Thorn, half Will's size but every bit as vicious. A skinny little Cockney with the grey tones of the slum-dweller so deeply etched into his gaunt melancholy face that five thousand African suns had been unable to erase them. Doctor Jameson had released him from the Fort Victoria gaol, where he was waiting trial for beating a Mashona servant to death with a rhinoceros-hide siambok. His pardon depended on his conduct during the campaign. "So you can rely on him to do whatever needs doing," Mungo had pointed out to Zouga.
The other thirteen troopers were men of a similar type.
They had all volunteered under Doctor Jim's Victoria Agreement and signed the enlistment document, a document which Jameson made sure remained secret. No copy of it went to the High Commissioner in Cape Town nor to Gladstone's Government in Whitehall, for it promised the volunteers a share of Lobengula's land and cattle and treasures; the word "loot" was specifically mentioned in the text.
On the first night out Will Daniel had come silently to where Zouga slept a little apart and, as he stooped over Zouga's recumbent form, a wiry arm had whipped suddenly around his neck and the muzzle of a Webley revolver was thrust under his ribs with sufficient force to drive the air from his lungs.
"Next time you creep up on me, I'll kill you," Zouga hissed into his face; and Will's teeth flashed in the moonlight as he grinned appreciatively.
"They told me you were a sharp one."
"What do you want?"
"Me and the boys want to sell our land rights, three thousand morgen each, that's ninety thousand acres. You can have them for a hundred each."
"You haven't earned them yet."
"That's a chance you gotta take, skipper."
"I thought you were on guard duty, sergeant."
"Well, it was just for a moment, sir."
"Next time you leave your post, I'll shoot you myself, without bothering about a court martial."
Daniel stared into his face for a moment.
"Yep, I reckon you would too," Will grinned mirthlessly.
Zouga led the patrol south and westwards through the forests where once long ago he had hunted the wandering herds of elephant. Now the tuskers were all gone, and even the herds of lesser game were wild from the unrestrained hunting of the new settlers and they scattered at the first approach of the small party of horsemen.
Zouga avoided the established roads between the Matabele regimental towns, and when they had to pass close to a settlement or the cultivated lands surrounding it, they did so at night. Though he knew that the impis had all answered Loberigula's call and were already assembled at Thabas Indunas, still he felt a vast relief when the granite domes of the Matopos rose above the treetops ahead of them and in single file his horsemen followed him into one of the steep-sided valleys.
