We looked at one another.
‘Thou seest,’ I said, ‘they have taken away the door. Is there aught with which we may fill the place? Speak quickly for they will be on us ere the daylight.’ I thus, because I knew that we must hold this place or none, as there were no inner doors in the palace, the rooms being separated one from another by curtains. I also knew that if we could by any means defend this the murderers could get in nowhere else; for the palace is absolutely impregnable, that is, since the secret door by which Sorais had entered on that night of attempted murder had, by Nyleptha’s order, been closed up with .
‘I have it,’ said Nyleptha, who, as usual with her, rose to the emergency in a wonderful way. ‘On the farther side of the courtyard are blocks of cut marble—the workmen brought them there for the bed of the new statue of Incubu, my lord; let us block the door with them.’
I jumped at the idea; and having despatched one of the remaining down the great stair to see if she could obtain assistance from the docks below, where her father, who was a great merchant employing many men, had his dwelling-place, and set another to watch through the doorway, we made our way back across the courtyard to where the hewn marble lay; and here we met Kara returning from despatching the first two messengers. There were the marble blocks, sure enough, broad, massive lumps, some six inches thick, and weighing about eighty pounds each, and there, too, were a couple of like small stretchers, that the workmen used to carry them on. Without delay we got some of the blocks on to the stretchers, and four of the girls carried them to the doorway.
‘Listen, Macumazahn,’ said Umslopogaas, ‘if those low fellows come, it is I who will hold the stair against them till the door is built up. , nay, it will be a man’s death: me not, old friend. It has been a good day, let it now be good night. See, I throw myself down to rest on the marble there; when their footsteps are nigh, wake thou me, not before, for I need my strength,’ and without a word he went outside and flung himself down on the marble, and was instantly asleep.
At this time, I too was overcome, and was forced to sit down by the doorway, and content myself with directing operations. The girls brought the block, while Kara and Nyleptha built them up across the six-foot-wide doorway, a triple row of them, for less would be useless. But the marble had to be brought forty yards and then there were forty yards to run back, and though the girls laboured gloriously, even staggering along alone, each with a block in her arms, it was slow work, dreadfully slow.
The light was growing now, and presently, in the silence, we heard a at the far-bottom of the stair, and the faint clinking of armed men. As yet the wall was only two feet high, and we had been eight minutes at the building of it. So they had come. Alphonse had heard aright.
The clanking sound came nearer, and in the ghostly grey of the dawning we could make out long files of men, some fifty or so in all, slowly creeping up the stair. They were now at the half-way place that rested on the great flying arch; and here, perceiving that something was going on above, they, to our great gain, halted for three or four minutes and consulted, then slowly and cautiously advanced again.
We had been nearly a quarter of an hour at the work now, and it was almost three feet high.
Then I woke Umslopogaas. The great man rose, stretched himself, and swung Inkosi-kaas round his head.
‘It is well,’ he said. ‘I feel as a young man once more. My strength has come back to me, ay, even as a lamp up before it dies. Fear not, I shall fight a good fight; the wine and the sleep have put a new heart into me.
‘Macumazahn, I have dreamed a dream. I dreamed that thou and I stood together on a star, and looked down on the world, and thou wast as a spirit, Macumazahn, for light flamed through thy flesh, but I could not see what was the fashion of mine own face. The hour has come for us, old hunter. So be it: we have had our time, but I would that in it I had seen some more such fights as yesterday’s.
‘Let them bury me after the fashion of my people, Macumazahn, and set my eyes towards Zululand;’ and he took my hand and shook it, and then turned to face the advancing .
Just then, to my , the Zu-Vendi officer Kara clambered over our wall in his quiet, sort of way, and took his stand by the Zulu, unsheathing his sword as he did so.
‘What, comest thou too?’ laughed out the old . ‘Welcome—a welcome to thee, brave heart! Ow! for the man who can die like a man; ow! for the death grip and the ringing of steel. Ow! we are ready. We wet our like eagles, our spears flash in the sun; we shake our assegais, and are hungry to fight. Who comes to give greeting to the Chieftainess [Inkosi-kaas]? Who would taste her kiss, whereof the fruit is death? I, the Woodpecker, I, the , I the Swiftfooted! I, Umslopogaas, of the tribe of the Maquilisini, of the people of Amazulu, a captain of the of the Nkomabakosi: I, Umslopogaas, the son of Indabazimbi, the son of Arpi the son of Mosilikaatze, I of the royal blood of T’Chaka, I of the King’s House, I the Ringed Man, I the Induna, I call to them as a calls, I challenge them, I await them. Ow! it is thou, it is thou!’
As he spake, or rather chanted, his wild war-song, the armed men, among whom in the growing light I recognized both Nasta and Agon, came streaming up the stair with a rush, and one big fellow, armed with a heavy spear, dashed up the ten semicircular steps ahead of his comrades and struck at the great Zulu with the spear. Umslopogaas moved his body but not his legs, so that the blow missed him, and next instant Inkosi-kaas crashed through headpiece, hair and , and the man’s was down the steps. As he dropped, his round hippopotamus-hide shield fell from his hand on to the marble, and the Zulu stooped down and seized it, still chanting as he did so.
In another second the sturdy Kara had also a man, and then began a scene the like of which has not been known to me.
Up rushed the assailants, one, two, three at a time, and as fast as they came, the crashed and the sword swung, and down they rolled again, dead or dying. And ever as the fight thickened, the old Zulu’s eye seemed to get quicker and his arm stronger. He shouted out his war-cries and the names of chiefs whom he had slain, and the blows of his awful axe rained straight and true, through everything they fell on. There was none of the scientific method he was so fond of about this last fight of his; he had no time for it, but struck with his full strength, and at every stroke a man sank in his tracks, and went rattling down the marble steps.
They and at him with swords and spears, wounding him in a dozen places till he streamed red with blood; but the shield protected his head and the chain-shirt his vitals, and for minute after minute, aided by the Zu-Vendi, he still held the stair.
At last Kara’s sword broke, and he grappled with a foe, and they rolled down together, and he was cut to pieces, dying like the brave man that he was.
Umslopogaas was alone now, but he never or turned. Shouting out some wild Zulu battle-cry, he beat down a foe, ay, and another, and another, till at last they drew back from the slippery blood-stained steps, and stared at him with , thinking that he was no mortal man.
The wall of marble block was four feet six high now, and hope rose in my teeth as I leaned there against it a helpless log, and ground my teeth, and watched that glorious struggle. I could do no more for I had lost my revolver in the battle.
And old Umslopogaas, he leaned too on his good axe, and, faint as he was with wounds, he mocked them, he called them ‘women’—the grand old warrior, standing there one against so many! And for a breathing space none would come against him, notwithstanding Nasta’s , till at last old Agon, who, to do him justice, was a brave man, mad with baffled rage, and seeing that the wall would soon be built and his plans defeated, shook the great spear he held, and rushed up the dripping steps.
‘Ah, ah!’ shouted the Zulu, as he recognized the priest’s flowing white beard, ‘it is thou, old “witch-finder”! Come on! I await thee, white “medicine man”; come on! come on! I have sworn to thee, and I ever keep my faith.’
On he came, taking him at his word, and drave the big spear with such force at Umslopogaas that it sunk right through the tough shield and pierced him in the neck. The Zulu cast down the transfixed shield, and that moment was Agon’s last, for before he could free his spear and strike again, with a shout of ‘There’s for thee, Rain-maker!’ Umslopogaas gripped Inkosi-kaas with both hands and whirled on high and drave her right on to his venerable head, so that Agon rolled down dead among the of his fellow-murderers, and there was an end to him and his plots altogether. And even as he fell, a great cry rose from the foot of the stair, and looking out through the portion of the doorway that was yet unclosed, we saw armed men rushing up to the rescue, and called an answer to their shouts. Then the would-be murderers who yet remained on the stairway, and amongst whom I saw several priests, turned to fly, but, having nowhere to go, were butchered as they fled. Only one man stayed, and he was the great lord Nasta, Nyleptha’s suitor, and the father of the plot. For a moment the black-bearded Nasta stood with bowed face leaning on his long sword as though in despair, and then, with a dreadful shout, he too rushed up at the Zulu, and, swinging the glittering sword around his head, dealt him such a blow beneath his guard, that the keen steel of the heavy blade bit right through the chain and deep into Umslopogaas’ side, for a moment paralysing him and causing him to drop his axe.
Raising the sword again, Nasta sprang forward to make an end of him, but little he knew his foe. With a shake and a yell of fury, the Zulu gathered himself together and sprang straight at Nasta’s throat, as I have sometimes seen a wounded lion spring. He struck him full as his foot was on the topmost stair, and his long arms closing round him like iron bands, down they rolled together struggling furiously. Nasta was a strong man and a desperate, but he could not match the strongest man in Zululand, sore wounded though he was, whose strength was as the strength of a bull. In a minute the end came. I saw old Umslopogaas stagger to his feet—ay, and saw him by a single gigantic effort swing up the struggling Nasta and with a shout of triumph him straight over the parapet of the bridge, to be crushed to powder on the rocks two hundred feet below.
The succour which had been summoned by the girl who had passed down the stair before the assassins passed up was at hand, and the loud shouts which reached us from the outer gates told us that the town was also aroused, and the men by the women were calling to be admitted. Some of Nyleptha’s brave ladies, who in their night-shifts and with their long hair streaming down their backs, just as they had been aroused from rest, went off to admit them at the side entrance, whilst others, assisted by the rescuing party outside, pushed and pulled down the marble blocks they had placed there with so much labour.
Soon the wall was down again, and through the doorway, followed by a crowd of rescuers, staggered old Umslopogaas, an awful and, in a way, a glorious figure. The man was a mass of wounds, and a glance at his wild eye told me that he was dying. The ‘keshla’ gum-ring upon his head was in two places by sword-cuts, one just over the curious hole in his skull, and the blood poured down his face from the . Also on the right side of his neck was a stab from a spear, by Agon; there was a deep cut on his left arm just below where the mail shirt-sleeve stopped, and on the right side of his body the armour was severed by a six inches long, where Nasta’s mighty sword had bitten through it and deep into its wearer’s vitals.
On, axe in hand, he staggered, that dreadful-looking, splendid , and the ladies forgot to turn faint at the scene of blood, and cheered him, as well they might, but he never stayed or . With outstretched arms and gait he purs............