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I think we've been libelling the pirate after all, eh Rainsford?" as that worthy just joined them. "Here's Hazon's trek come back without Hazon, instead of the other way about." Laurence thought how nearly it had been a case of the other way about. Had he not offered himself instead of Holmes, it would have been, for he would have remained with the Ba-gcatya, and Hazon would have returned alone.
For the moment it seems as though the Ba-gcatya were fighting with each other, striving to hew their way through their own ranks in their endeavours to escape beyond the reach of that awful and destructive fire. "Give it to them again!" growls Hazon, a lurid gleam in his deep-set, piercing eyes. "But, aim low aim low!" Again not a shot is thrown away.
Of these not a man but knows that the day is lost, that flight is impossible; that if the other half of the Ba-gcatya host has not swarmed over to take them on the rear, it is only because it is waiting to receive on its spear points all who flee. But there is no thought of flight.
Under the slave-yoke they held their lives, at any rate, but should the enemy without win the day, why, then, they would taste the steel in common with their present oppressors. The Ba-gcatya never spared. Now the battle-rank of the latter underwent a change. From each end of the great crescent "horns" shot out, extending farther and farther.
Here again whole lines of the enemy are down. Here again those in front would draw back if they could, but the immense weight behind hurls them on. It is the work of but very few moments. And now the whole of the Ba-gcatya host is circling around the slaver's position, every now and again making a furious rush upon what seems a weak point of the defences.
"Wajalu," replied the man who had done chief spokesman, rather a good-looking native, with almost a Zulu cast of countenance. "And the head man of yonder village, who is he?" "I am he. I Mgara," was the reply, with a satisfied smile. "And those we have slain, they seemed fine fighters. Of what race were they?" "Ba-gcatya." Laurence looked grave, but said nothing.
He had deduced that, although the Ba-gcatya held cannibalism in abhorrence, yet from time to time human sacrifices of very awesome and mysterious nature took place, and that on certain momentous occasions the accession or death of a king, of an heir to any branch of the royal house, or such a one as this now under discussion the admission to full privileges of manhood of a scion of the same.
These people, monstrous, repulsive as they were in his sight, had saved his life twice indeed the first time unconsciously from the Ba-gcatya, the second time from themselves. They might have slain him barbarously at almost any moment he was but one among a number; yet they had not, but instead had treated him hospitably and well. He was resolved, at any risk, to save them.
No, the existence of the Ba-gcatya is not chronicled, simply because the explorer was fortunate enough not to fall in with them. Had he done so, he would probably never have returned to chronicle anything.
The aspect of the country, too, varied, open, wavy plains, where giraffe and buffalo were plentiful, and were hunted in great numbers for the supply of the impi then gloomy forest tracts, which seemed to depress the Ba-gcatya, who hurried through them with all possible speed.
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