By Veldt and Kopje - W. C. Scully

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us with this sickness which has filled our bones with water for marrow, and caused our quick flesh to rot slowly, like dead wood. We acknowledge that it is only right we should be separated from other men, so that we may not give the disease to those who are clean, but we cannot dwell apart from our kindred, our cattle and the fields wherein our fathers saw the corn growing when they were little children—therefore we wish to die now, this day. Then will the sickness die with us, and our Father, the Government, will not be put to any further trouble on our account.

      “What we ask of the White Chief, our Magistrate, is this: that he now, before the sun has begun to fall, send hither his policemen with rifles, and bid them shoot us skilfully so that we may suffer little pain.

      Then turning to his companions, who had heard him in silence, he added—

      “My brothers and sisters—children of my Father—tell our Chief if I have spoken the right word.”

      An eager murmur of assent followed.

      “Yes, our Chief, he has spoken the one word which is in all our hearts: kill us here, but send us not to dwell apart from our homes and our kindred.”

      It was some little time before the Magistrate was able to command his feelings sufficiently to admit of his speaking. When they saw that he was about to reply, his miserable hearers leant forward with every appearance of the keenest interest. In his heart he knew that what the poor creatures asked for was for them the best. His compassion was so deep that he could have slain them with his own hand.

      “The word you have spoken,” he said, “has gone through my heart like the bullet you have asked for. What can I say for your comfort? Go, my poor brothers and sisters whom God has afflicted so sorely. In the place to which your Father, the Government, is sending you, neither hunger nor cold will afflict you; you will have many friends and your days will be passed in peace. The thing you ask for I may not give, for the Law allows it not. My heart will be with you in your exile.”

      Then a wail of anguished protest went up from the miserable crowd—

      “Law—what have we to do with the Law—we who are dead already? We cannot dwell in a strange place. Kill us and put us under the ground on which we have lived our lives. Send the policemen with the rifles to us here at this spot—we will not shrink.”

      After the Magistrate had withdrawn, the poor creatures continued their lamentations for some time. Then they seemed to fall into a condition of apathy. Mangèlè sat silently apart, with the corner of his blanket drawn over his head. This, of late, had become his habitual attitude. Eventually he arose and called for attention—

      “Listen, O brothers and sisters of the sickness; the thing which the Magistrate may not do on account of the Law we may yet do for ourselves … To-morrow night at sundown let us meet at the Wizard’s Rock. There we may die as painlessly as by a rifle. To-day and to-morrow let us look our last upon our kindred, our cattle, and the land our fathers dwelt in. To-morrow night we will go down with the sun.”

      Three

      The Wizard’s Rock derives its name from the circumstance that in the old days—before the advent of civilised government—it was the place of execution of those hapless creatures who were condemned for the supposed practice of witchcraft.

      Before the rule of the European in South Africa there was, among the natives, a strong recrudescence from time to time of the lamentable belief that the land was full of malevolent wizards and witches, who spent most of their time in weaving deadly spells against man and beast. The consequences were terrible; men and women were put to death upon the flimsiest suspicion; torture of the most horrible kind was freely resorted to, and the wildest confession wrung from the agonised lips of some was taken as absolute confirmation of the most preposterous apprehensions.

      Not more than thirty years ago many a dolorous procession wended its way up to this jutting peak, from the base of which, hundreds of feet below, a slope, covered with noble forest, fell away to a deep and rapid river. The doomed wretch would be blindfolded and placed, standing, at the edge of the precipice. Then the executioner would deal him a smashing blow on the side of the head with a heavily knobbed stick, and thus hurl him into the abyss.

      Among the broken rocks below, the curious may, even at this late day, find fragments of human bones. The place has an evil reputation; no native boy cares to go near it; no bribe would induce one to visit it alone. Now and then a few of the bolder spirits, finding themselves in the forest, make an excursion to the foot of the great rock, but they steal along breathlessly from tree to tree and from stone to stone, taking cover at each and listening fearfully lest the restless “imishologu”—the spirits of the wicked ones who have died violently—should be unseasonably awake. Then the fall of a dead bough, the rush of a troop of monkeys through the branches, the slightest unfamiliar echo from the beetling crag, will send them flying toward the open in speechless terror, with ashen-grey faces and staring eyes. Afterward they will boast loudly to their friends of the bravery evinced in the visit, omitting, of course, all reference to the invariable panic.

      The day following the assembling of the lepers at the Magistracy died splendidly. To seaward the milk-white thunderclouds which marked the track of the monsoon towered into the deep azure, and when the sun began to sink behind the great mountain range to westward, every stately vapour-turret took on a changing glory, while in the inky vaults between incessant lightnings played.

      Since early in the afternoon the poor lepers had been laboriously ascending the mountain by the different footpaths. Many were hardly able to hobble, but these were assisted by others whose legs were not so badly affected. Mangèlè bore upon his broad back an old man whose feet had completely crumbled away. Leaving this poor creature at the summit, he returned and helped the weaker among the others to ascend. The sun was still some little distance above the horizon when the last of the self-doomed band sank panting at the edge of the cliff. Of the four-and-twenty who had come to the Residency to interview the Magistrate, twenty had assembled at the Rock. The others, three women and a man, had felt their courage fail them, so had decided to accept their less violent, though dreaded, fate and go to Emjanyana.

      ’Mpofu, the oldest of the men, dragged his shapeless frame to a stone, against which he leant, supporting himself by his stick at the same time. He trembled violently and made several attempts before he succeeded in speaking. Then his voice came in a husky quaver. The others turned toward him with an air of expectancy.

      “It is,” he said, “a long time since I last stood on this spot. I was then hardly a man; Hintza was Chief. We came here to look upon the killing of Gungubèlè, who was ‘smelt out’ for having bewitched his elder brother. I leant my head over the edge of the rock and listened for the thud of his body as it struck the stones, far down. I thought the wind had borne it away, but at length it struck me like a club. Many seasons have since passed, but that sound has ever since been in my ears. And now—when my body falls—”

      A shudder passed through the crouching creatures; one or two of the women began to whimper and a few near the verge drew back with looks of terror. Mangèlè sprang to his feet.

      “What is this?” he cried in an angry voice; “has ‘the sickness’ filled your heart as well as your bones with water, O ’Mpofu, my father? Is yours the voice that calls dogs thirsty for death back from the fountain? Was it not your word that made me the leader of this army of dead men who are yet alive—and will you now turn them back on the day of battle? Shame on you. Listen to me, oh, my brothers, and not to this old man whose heart shrinks because of a sound he heard on a day before we were born. I am young, and death is more bitter to the young than to the old. My kraal is full of cattle; the dowry has been paid for my bride, yet I stand here to-day and am not afraid to die. Listen now to a new word in a strange tongue, but a word which you nevertheless may understand if you will:

      “For a long time I have known that my sickness was like your own—the sickness that no doctor can cure. Through the long nights, when others slept, I have sat alone under the stars, and the voices of the darkness have taught me many things. Now, the greatest and strangest of these things was this: that I

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