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Updated: July 11, 2025
Whatever it was, he knew too well, of course, that the coincidence which had so miraculously resulted in the sparing of his life at the hands of the victorious Ba-gcatya, reeking with slaughter, would stand him in nowhere here.
It catches the back of his knees, and now, having lost all control over his balance, grasping at empty air in wild effort to recover himself, Laurence pitches heavily backward over the rocks, and lies half stunned upon the plain without. Those of the Ba-gcatya host in waiting on that side surge tumultuously forward, uttering yells of savage delight.
They keep up a steady, quick-loading fire into the charging Ba-gcatya, and, aiming low, every shot tells, committing fearful havoc among the serried, onrushing masses. Yet those terrible warriors are dauntless. Whole lines go down; still, others surge over them, and now the charge is but two hundred yards from the line of rocks.
And, was it due on his part to the frame of mind of the hardened adventurer, trained to take things as they come, the good with the ill but never, during the days and weeks that followed, did the daughter of the line of the Ba-gcatya kings feel moved to any qualm of regret over the sacrifice of name and home and country which she had made for this man's sake.
The cannibal atrocities of these human beasts, the glowering heads stuck all over the stockade, the latest addition thereto being those of the slain Ba-gcatya, the all-pervading influence of death brooding over this demoniacal haunt, even as the ever-present circlings of carrion birds high in mid-air all this weighed upon his mind until he could have blown out his own brains for sheer horror and loathing.
And then, with heads bent, shields thrust forward, broad spears in strong ready grip, the whole circle of the Ba-gcatya host came surging up the slope. Crash! crash! A long, detonating roar, then crash! again. The rock-circle is a perfect ring of flame, sheeting forth in red jets athwart the hanging sulphurous smoke. Death-yells are mingling with the fearful war-shout.
We are very near the Ba-gcatya country, and an impi of them on the raid will give us as much trouble as we can do with; and I've seen signs of late which seem to point that way." "Isn't it a crowded-on business this Ba-gcatya terror, eh?" said Laurence, lazily puffing out rings of blue smoke, which hung upon the hot, still atmosphere as though they never meant to disperse.
But the reader together with Johannesburg at large knows him under another name, and that is "Pirate" Hazon. "Is it prudent, think you, Lutali?" he is saying. "Consider. These Wajalu are a trifle too near the land of the Ba-gcatya. Indeed, we ourselves are too near it now, and a day's journey or more in the same direction is it not to run our heads into the jaws of the lion?"
Now the listener was interested indeed. On the mysterious subject of "The Spider" the Ba-gcatya had been close as death. No hint or indication tending to throw light upon it would they let fall in reply to any question, direct or indirect. Now he was going to hear something. These men, unaware of his presence, and talking freely among themselves, would certainly afford more than a clew to it.
"Yet Lindela is a sprig of a mighty tree. And I think, Nyonyoba, you yourself are sprung from such a root." "That is no lie, Ruler of the Wise. As a man's whole height is to the length of half his leg, so is the length of my house to that of the kings of the Ba-gcatya, or even to that of Senzangakona himself." "Ha! That may well be. Thou hast a look that way."
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