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Updated: May 5, 2025
In short, as they said, he looked twice the man he had done when lounging around the Stock Exchange or the liquor bars of Johannesburg. Through the hot hours of noontide the raiders lie at their ease. Many are asleep, others conversing in drowsy tones, smoking or chewing tobacco. The Wangoni divide their time about equally between taking snuff and jeering at and teasing the unfortunate captives.
The Wangoni, seeing their chance, have sprung forward to meet and roll back the assailants. But they themselves are beaten down by the broad shields, ripped with the terrible stabbing spears of the ferocious Ba-gcatya, now maddened to assuage their blood-thirst, and whose crushing might, now pouring over in countless numbers, this handful shall never hope to resist.
Thus they stood, the savage and the white man, looking into each other's eyes; the one in a blaze of haughty anger, the other cool, resolute, and absolutely unflinching. How it would end Heaven alone knew. But now the very thing that Laurence had been longing for happened. A hurried murmur ran through the Wangoni lines.
Those Wangoni brutes are never happy unless killing." "That is inevitable and is the law of life, which is always hard. And, as Lutali would say, who may fight against his destiny? Not that I mean to say we embarked in this business from motives of philanthropy, friend Holmes; I only cite the argument as one to quiet that singularly inconvenient conscience of yours.
They were too fine and stately of aspect with their lofty, commanding brows, and clear, full glance to belong to any of the tribes around. They were not Wangoni they wore too striking a look to come of even that fine race. Who could they be?
The insurgents, reading the expression upon the countenances of these two, broke forth into tumult once more. Groans and mutterings arose among the Arab contingent, while the Wangoni uttered wild laughing whoops of defiance. Nothing would be easier than to slay the white leaders. A single volley would lay them low. The position was critical, perilous to a degree.
But, get one or two of our Wangoni to talk, and he may, or may not, tell you something about them; for the Ba-gcatya are, like the Wangoni themselves, a Zulu offshoot, only far more conservative in the old Zulu traditions, and of purer blood. They are a much finer race, indeed I believe them to be as powerful and well disciplined as the Zulus themselves were under Cetywayo.
But the remaining Wajalu had withdrawn in terror: and well for all concerned that it was so, otherwise the Wangoni, inspired by the example of their chief, would certainly have commenced a massacre which even the prestige and authority of Hazon and Laurence combined would have been powerless to quell.
The Wangoni advanced in a compact mass, beating their shields with their spear-hafts, yelling in concert a shrill, harsh battle-song, into which they had managed to import an indescribable note of defiance, announcing their intention of returning to "eat up" those they had so weakly spared the previous day.
The Wangoni did not entirely believe the explanation; and to further their doubts there now arose from the inside of the huts the puling wail of infants which the mothers had not been entirely able to stifle. "Au, we will add those to the death number, at least," said the chief, giving the signal to his followers to advance. "Not so!" said Laurence decisively.
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