Isazi did not go to the kraal the following dawn. He was afraid of what he would find. Bazo went in his place.
They were all dead. Every single bullock. They were already stiff and cold as statues, locked in that dreadful final convulsion.
Bazo shivered, and pulled his monkeys king cloak more closely around his shoulders. It was not the dawn chill, but the icy finger of superstitious awe that had touched him.
"When the cattle lie with their heads twisted to touch their flank, and cannot rise-" he repeated aloud the exact, words of the Umlimo, and his dread was carried away by the jubilant rush of his warlike spirits. "It is happening, just as it was prophesied." Never before had the Chosen One's words been so unequivocal. He should have seen it immediately, but the whirlwind of events had confused him so that it was only now that the true significance of this fatal plague had come upon him. Now he wanted to leave the laager, and run southwards, day and night, without stopping, until he reached that secret cavern in the sacred hills.
He wanted to stand "before the assembled indunas and tell them.
"You who doubted, believe now the words of the Umlimo. You with milk and beer in your bellies, put a stone in their place." He wanted to go from mine to farm to the new villages the white men were building where his comrades now laboured with pick and shovel instead of the silver blade, wearing the ragged cast-offs of their masters rather than the plumes and kilts of the regiment.
He wanted to ask them, "Do you remember the war song of the 1zimvukuzane Ezembintaba, the Moles-that-burrow under-a-mountain? Come, you diggers of the other men's dirt, come rehearse the war song of the Moles with me." But it was not yet full term, there was the third and final act of the Umlimo's prophecy to unfold, and until then Bazo, like his old comrades, must play the white man's servant. With an effort, he masked his savage joy, withdrawing behind the inscrutable face of Africa. Bazo left the kraal of dead bullocks and went to the remaining wagon. The white women and the child were asleep within the body of the vehicle, and Harry Mellow was lying wrapped in his blanket under the chassis where the dew could not wet him.
Henshaw had deserted them late the previous afternoon, before they had even reached the bank of the Lupani river. He had -chosen four horses, the swiftest and strongest. He had charged Bazo most strictly with the task of leading the little party back to Bulawayo on foot, then he had kissed his wife and son, shaken hands briefly with Harry Mellow, and galloped away southwards towards the drift on the Lupani, leading the three spare horses on a long rein and riding like a man chased by wild dogs.
Now Bazo stooped beside the wagon and spoke slowly and clearly to the blanket-wrapped figure beneath it. Though Harry Mellow's grasp of Sindebele improved each day, it was still equivalent to that of a five-year-old. and Bazo had to be sure he understood.
"The last of the oxen is dead. One horse was killed by the buffalo, and Henshaw has taken four." Harry Mellow sat up quickly and made the decision. "That leaves one mount each for the women, and Jon-Jon can ride up behind one of them. The rest of us will walk. How long back to Bulawayo, Bazo?" Bazo shrugged eloquently. "If we were an impi, fast and fit, five days. But at the pace of a white man in boots.--" They looked like refugees, each servant carrying bundles of only the most essential stores upon his head, and strung out in a long straggling line behind the two horses. The women were hampered by their long skirts whenever they walked to rest the horses, and Bazo could not contain himself to this pace. He ranged far ahead of the others and once he was out of sight and well beyond earshot, he pranced and stamped, stabbing with an imaginary assegai at a non-existent adversary, and accompanying the giya, the challenge dance, with the fighting chant of his old impi.
"Like a mole in the earth's gut Bazo found the secret way-" The first verse of the song commemorated the impi's assault on the mountain stronghold of Pemba, the wizard, when so long ago Bazo, had climbed the subterranean passage to the top of the cliff. It was as a reward for this feat that Lobengula had promoted Bazo to and una had given him the head ring and allowed him to "go in to the women and choose Tanase as his wife.
Dancing alone in the forest, Bazo sang the other verses. Each of them had been composed after a famous victory, all except the last.
That verse was the only one that had never been sung by the full regiment in battle array. It was the verse for the last charge of the Moles, when with Bazo at their head, they had run onto the laager on the banks of the Shangani river. Bazo had composed it himself, as he lay in the cave of the Matopos, near unto death with the mortification of the bullet wounds in his body.
"Why do you weep, widows of Shangani, When the three-legged guns laugh so loudly?
Why do you weep, little sons of the Moles, When your fathers did the king's bidding?" Now suddenly there was another verse. It came into Bazo's head complete and perfect, as though it had been sung ten thousand times before.
"The Moles are beneath the earth, "Are they dead?" asked the daughters of Mashobane. Listen, pretty maids, do you not hear Something stirring, in the darkness?" And Bazo, the Axe, shouted it to the ms asa trees in their soft mantles of red leaves, and the trees bowed slightly to the east wind, as though they, too, were listening.
Ralph Ballantyne stopped at King's Lynn. He threw the reins to Jan Cheroot, the old Hottentot hunter.
R'Water them, old man, and fill the grain bags for me. I will be away again in an hour." Then he ran up onto the veranda of the sprawling thatched homestead, and his stepmother came out to meet him, her consternation turning to delight, when she recognized him.
"Oh Ralph, you startled me "Where is my father?" Ralph demanded, as he kissed her cheek, and Louise's expression changed to match the gravity of his.
"In the north section, they are branding the calves but what is it, Ralph? I haven't seen you like this." He ignored the question.
"The north section, that's six hours" ride. I cannot spare the time to go to him." "It's serious," she decided. "Don't torture me, Ralph."
"I'm sorry." He laid his hand on her arm. "There is some dreadful murrain sweeping down out of the north. It hit my cattle on the Gwaai river, and we lost them all, over one hundred head in twelve hours."
Louise stared at him. "Perhaps-" she whispered, but he cut across her brusquely.
"It's killing everything, giraffe and buffalo and oxen, only the horses have not been touched yet. But, by God, Louise, I saw buffalo lying dead and stinking on each side of the track as I rode southwards yesterday. Animals that had been strong and healthy the day before."
"What must we do, Ralph?" "Sell," he answered. "Sell all the cattle at any price, before it reaches us." He turned and shouted to Jan Cheroot.
"Bring the notebook from my saddlebag." While he scribbled a note for his father, Louise asked, "When did you last eat?" "I cannot remember."
He ate the slabs of cold venison and raw onion and strong cheese on slices of stone-ground bread, and washed it down with a jug of beer, while he gave Jan Cheroot his instructions. "Speak to nobody else but my father. Tell nobody else of this thing. Go swiftly, Jan Cheroot."