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Page 23
"Ah, well," he said presently, "he is dead, but he died like a man!"
CHAPTER V
OUR MARCH INTO THE DESERT
We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the
tusks, and having brought them into camp, to bury them carefully in
the sand under a large tree, which made a conspicuous mark for miles
round. It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better,
averaging as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk. The tusks
of the great bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and
seventy pounds the pair, so nearly as we could judge.
As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear
hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey
to a better world. On the third day we marched again, hoping that we
might live to return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course,
after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not
space to detail, we reached Sitanda's Kraal, near the Lukanga River,
the real starting-point of our expedition. Very well do I recollect
our arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native
settlement with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands
down by the water, where these savages grew their scanty supply of
grain, and beyond it stretched great tracts of waving "veld" covered
with tall grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering.
To the left lay the vast desert. This spot appears to be the outpost
of the fertile country, and it would be difficult to say to what
natural causes such an abrupt change in the character of the soil is
due. But so it is.
Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side
of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I
had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach
Solomon's Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert,
covered with a species of karoo shrub.
It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great ball of the sun
was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many-coloured
light flying all over its vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend
the arrangement of our little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and
walking to the top of the slope opposite, we gazed across the desert.
The air was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the
faint blue outlines, here and there capped with white, of the Suliman
Berg.
"There," I said, "there is the wall round Solomon's Mines, but God
knows if we shall ever climb it."
"My brother should be there, and if he is, I shall reach him somehow,"
said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man.
"I hope so," I answered, and turned to go back to the camp, when I saw
that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly towards the
far-off mountains, stood the great Kafir Umbopa.
The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, addressing Sir
Henry, to whom he had attached himself.
"Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?" (a native word
meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by
the Kafirs), he said, pointing towards the mountain with his broad
assegai.
I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that
familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among
themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by
their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet
little laugh which angered me.
"How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi whom I
serve?" he said. "He is of a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in
his size and by his mien; so, mayhap, am I. At least, I am as great a
man. Be my mouth, O Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu,
my master, for I would speak to him and to thee."
I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in
that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was
curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my
opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his
swagger was outrageous.
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