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Updated: July 11, 2025
Up this they climbed some fifty feet without difficulty, emerging upon another terrace. Here another rope hung from the cliff above, about the same height. "Go first, Nyonyoba, while I hold the rope to steady it," said the girl. "Then, too, if your strength should give way, perhaps I may catch you and break your fall. I am as strong as any of the women of the Ba-gcatya and that is saying much."
He would be the life and soul of the Ba-gcatya hunting parties, and skill and success, together with his untiring energy and philosophical acceptance of the hardships and vicissitudes of the chase, went straight to the hearts of these fine, fearless barbarians. He became quite a favourite with the nation. The female side of the latter, too, looked upon him with kindly eyes.
I don't know that the blessings of civilization are such blessings after all, which to you is a riddle." He relapsed into silence and thought. There were times when, with the riches upon him, he was consumed with a perfectly feverish longing to return to civilization. There were other times, again, when he looked back with more than a lingering regret to the pleasant land of the Ba-gcatya.
At sight of the human limbs hung up, the filed teeth and tattooed faces of these savages tearing at their horrible repast, Lindela shuddered with repulsion and anger. "See there, Nyonyoba," she said, when they had withdrawn beyond hearing, "do not the Ba-gcatya act rightly in stamping out these foul Izíma who devour the flesh of their own kindred, like wild dogs?" "I think so.
My slaves your people have killed, and my ivory and goods the king has taken, leaving me nothing but my arms and ammunition. Tell me, then, do the Ba-gcatya give their daughters for nothing, or how shall a man who is so poor think to set up a kraal of his own?" The induna laughed dryly. "We are all poor that way, for all we own belongs to the king. Yet the Great Great One is open handed.
Nothing short of a miracle could effect that, he told himself, remembering the immense tract of desolate country surrounding the fastnesses of the Ba-gcatya, and the ferocious cannibal hordes which lay beyond these, and who indeed would wreak a vengeance of the most barbarous kind upon their old enemy and scourge, the slaver-chief, did they find him alone, and to that extent no longer formidable, in their midst.
And now, hard pressed by the yelling Ba-gcatya, those of his followers yet between him and the enemy stagger back, fighting furiously, while the life-stream wells from many a gashed and gaping wound. No longer can he see either Hazon or Holmes, for the forest of waving, reeking spear blades.
He suffered severely from the cold too, he who had breathed the moist, torrid heat of equatorial forests for so long, and his wound became congealed and stiff. Yet he bore himself heroically, even as the Ba-gcatya themselves, who, their scanty clothing notwithstanding, seemed to feel the cold not one whit, chatting and laughing and singing while they marched.
For the dreaded Ba-gcatya at home were a quiet and pastoral race owning extensive herds of cattle also goats and a strange kind of large-tailed sheep though, true to their origin, horned cattle formed the staple of their possessions, and the land around the king's great palace was dappled with grazing stock, and the air was musical with the singing of women hoeing the millet and maize gardens.
While the People of the Spider have become more formidable in war, while the ivory comes pouring into the king's treasury, faster than ever it did before, so that soon there will be enough to buy fire-weapons for the whole nation, I who brought all this to pass remain poor am the poorest in the nation and the daughters of the Ba-gcatya are fair exceeding fair."
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