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Updated: June 11, 2025
"None who have once felt it live." The Ba-gcatya, heavy as had been their losses, were in high good-humour over their victory. After all, it was a victory, and a hard-fought one. They only lived for such. Losses were nothing to them.
But Tyisandhlu seemed to have forgotten his existence, for he bestowed no further word upon him; however, he was taken charge of by Ngumúnye, who assigned him a large hut within the royal kraal. The next few days were spent by the Ba-gcatya in dancing and ceremonial and by Laurence Stanninghame in trying to find out all he could about the Ba-gcatya.
In outward adornment their appearance differed little from that of the bulk of the Ba-gcatya. Their shaven heads were surmounted by the isicoco, or ring, exactly after the Zulu fashion, and on either side of this, but fastened so as not to interfere with it, nodded a tuft of magnificent white ostrich plumes.
All unconsciously his frequent and rapt contemplation of this object was standing him in valuable stead. The Ba-gcatya, furtively beholding him thus engaged, for he was never beyond their watchful gaze, were strengthened in their belief that he was a magician of the Spider, and feared him the more. He was thus, unconsciously, keeping up his character as such.
They were now on the other slope of the great mountain chain which shut in the Ba-gcatya country on that side, and, judging by the landmarks, it seemed to Laurence that the surroundings wore an aspect not absolutely unfamiliar, and that they could not be far out of the way by which he had been brought in a captive.
Ruins of multitudinous villages lay in their path at every turn, but, what was worse, signs of human occupation began to show once more, and human occupation meant hostile occupation. It was fortunate that the land had been doubly raided by the slave-hunters and the Ba-gcatya because in its depopulation lay their safety.
This nation was known as the Abagcatya or Ba-gcatya, "The People of the Spider." Hazon, too, believed in its existence, and Hazon was a first-class authority on such subjects. And now the warriors who had attacked him, and upon whom the tables were so strangely turned, were Zulu in aspect, and bore Zulu shields. The thing began to look serious.
"The Ba-gcatya are in great force," went on Hazon, as calmly as though he were merely announcing the proximity of one more well-nigh defenceless and slave-supplying village. "We shall have to fight, and that hard, but not here. We must fight them in the open." A murmur of assent went up. Every head was craned forward, eager to hear more. Briefly and concisely Hazon set forth his commands.
Far away over the forest country, somewhat to the right and left of the route the party had been pursuing, several columns of smoke could be seen mounting to the heavens. There were other villages, then, besides the one spared, and now the Ba-gcatya, spreading over the land in their immense might, were firing all such and massacring the inhabitants.
Nor could she tell how the strange and gruesome cult first originated, save that it was dimly whispered that the Ba-gcatya had taken it over from the nation they had driven out, and that in accordance with an ancient prophecy uttered by a famous magician at the time of their flight from Zululand.
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