Bertram Mitford - The White Hand and the Black - A Story of the Natal Rising

A weight had fallen from him – the weight of a lifetime; the galling, hopeless, demoralising weight which had paralysed his energies, sterilised his brain, and, in the case of a subject less clear-sighted, would have brought him down to drink or suicide, possibly both. And now it had fallen from him.

The man on the mountain top looked around, and as he did so, something of buoyancy that he had not known for years, came over his mind. He was free – free. His life was now his own. He could have sung aloud in the stillness of the night. And yet the said night was not one calculated to effect excessive exaltation in any mind. It was oppressive and boding; and even its usual voices, of bird and beast and insect life, seemed hushed as in awe of something impending. The broad moon glared drearily down, ghastly athwart a filmy haze; and ever and anon a heavy boom seemed to shake the earth, while huge, plume-like masses of cloud rising higher and higher above the cliffs and ridges, gleamed beautiful in golden depths with every intermittent flash. When the storm broke it would be an appalling one, but to the man on the mountain top this brought no misgiving whatever, yet he knew that it would overtake him long before he had time to reach home.

He knew something else, knew that it was vital to him to choose his steps carefully. For the summit was flat and to all appearance smooth and unbroken, yet it was seamed with crevices; crevices partly or entirely hidden by the coarse, sour herbage; crevices of no great width but some of them awful rifts, into which should a man fall, he would he entombed by that lonely mountain height until the crack of doom. But this man had no intention of undergoing any such fate. He knew his ground well, and, knowing it well, moved with especial care.

All of a sudden he was conscious of a quick tingling of the blood, but he had sufficient control neither to stop nor look round. He only listened ; listened with an acute, almost painful intensity. He had seen nobody, had heard nothing, yet that strange sixth sense of realisation had told him that he was no longer alone on the mountain top.

For a moment a quiver or qualm of superstition shook even his mind. What consideration on earth could have brought any being other than himself – any human being – up here to-night? Yet even the misgiving of superstition was a relief. The thing to be feared was the presence of such human being.

He whirled round quickly and suddenly. Just as he had thought. In the flash, lighting up the whole plateau, something dropped; disappeared behind a flat boulder not fifty yards away, and in that flash the man on the mountain top realised that he had to do with a human being. In which case every instinct of self-preservation cried out loudly that the other must not leave the mountain top alive.

There was something cat-like in his movement as with incredible speed and agility he made straight for the spot. Something sang past his head. It was not the breeze – now sweeping the tableland in fitful puffs. It was something which he heard strike the stones behind him with a steely ring. Then he had grappled with the figure behind the rock.

It rose, to fully his own height. Something else that was steely gleamed in his eyes – a broad, formidable blade. But the wrist of its wielder was grasped with a grip as of iron.

The huge white mountainous cloud, lit up by un-intermittent lightning flashes, now illuminated this life and death struggle with weird, lamp-like effect. For it was a life and death struggle. The white man could not, by every known law of self-preservation, let any witness get away from this place a living witness. The dark man, by the same intuition realised that fact, and such being the case realised also that he was in the position of a “cornered” animal. He must fight – hard and desperately – for his life. And he came of a race of hard and desperate fighters.

Neither spoke. Both were equally matched, the white man, tough, powerful, and in the pink of training; the dark man lithe, cat-like, but accustomed to depend more on quick sinuosity of movement than on sheer muscular power. Moreover he was armed, and his opponent was not.

Armed. One quick deft stroke of that broad-headed short-handled stabbing spear, and where was the other? Yet he could not deliver it. His adversary had bent back his arm. In his iron strength he had forced it out to its full length behind, well nigh dislocating it at the shoulder. The dark man could not even change the weapon into his left hand. And, so sudden had been the onslaught, that his great knobbed stick lay on the ground, yards away.

Wait. The white man could have made an end of the struggle at any moment. He was armed – though to all intents and purposes not – and this is how such a paradox unravels. He had a fully loaded five chambered revolver upon him, but it was a matter of vital importance to refrain from firing a shot on this silent, lonely mountain top at such a moment. So for all practical purposes he was an unarmed man.

Yet his plan of campaign was clear – clear, fell, and remorseless. He had seen what his opponent had not; and now by every effort of his straining, powerful muscles he was forcing that opponent steadily backward. For in the weird light of Heaven’s fires above and around he had detected a certain line in the waving grass bents, which labelled its own character. His adversary should perform his own funeral.

His said adversary was giving way. In fact he was gathering himself for a final spring. Still no word between the two men. Only the deep heave of laboured, but carefully husbanded breathing. Now and then something like a cracking sound, as joints and muscles tightened. Then the dark man suddenly and with a mighty effort, wrenched himself free, and – disappeared.

Disappeared. For a fraction of a second the great white fiery cloud shed its gleam upon an appalled face and rolling eyeballs, and a convulsive clutching of two sinewy hands at the grass tufts; and then upon the white man standing once more on the mountain top – alone.

He stood for a few moments panting after the struggle. Then, having recovered breath, he took a couple of steps forward and peered down into the narrow black rift. No sound came up. He found a stone, and dropped it in. A rattle or two against the rocky sides, and then silence. Only the thunder boom, now growing fainter, relieved it from time to time: but still the immensity of the white fiery cloud shed its lamp-like light, upon him and the scene of this silent tragedy. Then he made a careful search around. The weapon that had been flung at him he picked up, also the great knobstick, and dropped them over into the rift; and as he smoothed back the trampled grass into position as best he could, for the first time he spoke.

“ Hlala gahle ! A fighter’s weapons should be buried with him, and this is a right fitting tomb for such.”

Again he glanced around. The flat, table-like mountain top was silent once more. It was time to descend, and having thus decided, a new and louder thunder roll from a dark curtain swiftly moving up from another direction caused him no anxiety but rather the reverse. The witness of one tragedy had furnished material for another, and the storm now coming up would thoroughly and effectually eliminate any possible remaining trace of either.

The girl was drawing.

From where she sat a great mountain head, turreted with bronze-faced krantzes, rose up against the unclouded blue, set off by a V-shaped foreground of tossing, tumbling foliage – in a word, virgin forest. The grass was long in the little open space, and in and among the trailers hanging like network from the trees, birds were making the warm air merry with many a varied call and pipe. Now and then a grey monkey, reassured by the repose of the human occupant of the spot, would climb partly down, almost above her head, and hang, perking his black face in a knowing attitude, as though quite competent to criticise the water-colour sketch now rapidly taking shape: to skip aloft, chattering, as some sudden movement on the part of the artist appealed strongly to his instinct of self preservation. And then the dark shadowy depths of the surrounding trees would be alive with responsive mutterings and cackles, where the less venturesome of the troop lurked, awaiting further developments.