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Page 83
I remarked that Ignosi had swum to power through blood. The old chief
shrugged his shoulders. "Yes," he answered; "but the Kukuana people
can only be kept cool by letting their blood flow sometimes. Many are
killed, indeed, but the women are left, and others must soon grow up
to take the places of the fallen. After this the land would be quiet
for a while."
Afterwards, in the course of the morning, we had a short visit from
Ignosi, on whose brows the royal diadem was now bound. As I
contemplated him advancing with kingly dignity, an obsequious guard
following his steps, I could not help recalling to my mind the tall
Zulu who had presented himself to us at Durban some few months back,
asking to be taken into our service, and reflecting on the strange
revolutions of the wheel of fortune.
"Hail, O king!" I said, rising.
"Yes, Macumazahn. King at last, by the might of your three right
hands," was the ready answer.
All was, he said, going well; and he hoped to arrange a great feast in
two weeks' time in order to show himself to the people.
I asked him what he had settled to do with Gagool.
"She is the evil genius of the land," he answered, "and I shall kill
her, and all the witch doctors with her! She has lived so long that
none can remember when she was not very old, and she it is who has
always trained the witch-hunters, and made the land wicked in the
sight of the heavens above."
"Yet she knows much," I replied; "it is easier to destroy knowledge,
Ignosi, than to gather it."
"That is so," he said thoughtfully. "She, and she only, knows the
secret of the 'Three Witches,' yonder, whither the great road runs,
where the kings are buried, and the Silent Ones sit."
"Yes, and the diamonds are. Forget not thy promise, Ignosi; thou must
lead us to the mines, even if thou hast to spare Gagool alive to show
the way."
"I will not forget, Macumazahn, and I will think on what thou sayest."
After Ignosi's visit I went to see Good, and found him quite
delirious. The fever set up by his wound seemed to have taken a firm
hold of his system, and to be complicated with an internal injury. For
four or five days his condition was most critical; indeed, I believe
firmly that had it not been for Foulata's indefatigable nursing he
must have died.
Women are women, all the world over, whatever their colour. Yet
somehow it seemed curious to watch this dusky beauty bending night and
day over the fevered man's couch, and performing all the merciful
errands of a sick-room swiftly, gently, and with as fine an instinct
as that of a trained hospital nurse. For the first night or two I
tried to help her, and so did Sir Henry as soon as his stiffness
allowed him to move, but Foulata bore our interference with
impatience, and finally insisted upon our leaving him to her, saying
that our movements made him restless, which I think was true. Day and
night she watched him and tended him, giving him his only medicine, a
native cooling drink made of milk, in which was infused juice from the
bulb of a species of tulip, and keeping the flies from settling on
him. I can see the whole picture now as it appeared night after night
by the light of our primitive lamp; Good tossing to and fro, his
features emaciated, his eyes shining large and luminous, and jabbering
nonsense by the yard; and seated on the ground by his side, her back
resting against the wall of the hut, the soft-eyed, shapely Kukuana
beauty, her face, weary as it was with her long vigil, animated by a
look of infinite compassion--or was it something more than compassion?
For two days we thought that he must die, and crept about with heavy
hearts.
Only Foulata would not believe it.
"He will live," she said.
For three hundred yards or more around Twala's chief hut, where the
sufferer lay, there was silence; for by the king's order all who lived
in the habitations behind it, except Sir Henry and myself, had been
removed, lest any noise should come to the sick man's ears. One night,
it was the fifth of Good's illness, as was my habit, I went across to
see how he was doing before turning in for a few hours.
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