 22 A great peril and a great salvation. I must now take up some of the ragged ends which I have left behind me. It is not my task, as I have said, to write the history of the great rising. That has been done by Abler men who were at the center of the business, and had some knowledge of strategy and tactics, whereas I was only a raw lad who was privileged by fate to see the start. If I could, I would feign make an epic of it, and show how the planes found at all points the plateau guarded, how wits overcame numbers, and at every pass which the natives tried the great guns spoke and the tide rolled back. Yet I fear it would be an epic without a hero. There was no leader left when Laputa had gone. There were months of guerrilla fighting and then months of reprisals, when chief after chief was hunted down and brought to trial. Then the amnesty came and a clean sheet, and white Africa drew breath again with certain grave reflections left in her head. On the whole I am not sorry that the history is no business of mine. Romance died with the Arab John, and the crusade became a sorry mutiny. I can fancy how differently Laputa would have managed it all had he lived, how swift and sudden his plans would have been, how under him the fighting would not have been in the mountain glands, but far in the high belt among the dorks and townships. With the Inculu alive we warred against odds. With the Inculu dead the balance sank heavily in our favour. I leave to others the marches and strategy of the thing, and hasten to clear up the obscure parts in my own fortunes. Arco received my message from Umphalos by Colin, or rather Wardlaw received it, and sent it on to the post on the Berg where the leader had gone. Close on its heels came the message from Enriquech by Achan gone in his pay. It must have been sent off before the Portuguese got to the Rurirand, from which it would appear that he had his own men in the bush near the store, and that I was lucky to get off as I did. Arco might have disregarded Enriquech's news as a trap if it had come alone, but my corroboration impressed and perplexed him. He began to credit the Portuguese with treachery, but he had no inclination to act on his message since it conflicted with his plans. He knew that Laputa must come into the Berg sooner or later, and he had resolved that his strategy must be to await him there. But there was the question of my life. He had every reason to believe that I was in the greatest danger, and he felt a certain responsibility for my fate. With a few men at his disposal he could not hope to hold up the great Caffer army. But there was a chance that he might by a bold stand effect my rescue. Enriquech had told him of the vow and had told him that Laputa would ride in the center of the force. A body of men well posted at Depri's Drift might split the army at the crossing, and under cover of the fire I might swim the river and join my friends. Still relying on the vow it might be possible for well-mounted men to evade capture. Accordingly he called for volunteers and sent off one of his Caffers to warn me of his design. He led his men in person, and of his doings the reader already knows the tale. But though the crossing was swung into confusion and the rear of the army was compelled to follow the northerly bank of the Lataba, there was no sign of me anywhere. Arkol searched the river-banks and crossed the drift to where the old keeper was lying dead. He then concluded that I had been murdered early in the march and his Caffer who might have given him news of me, was carried up the stream in the tide of the disorderly army. Therefore he and his men rode back with all haste to the berg by way of main drift, and reached Bruterstrom before Laputa had crossed the highway. My information about Inanda's Crawl decided Arkol's next move. Like me he remembered Baer's performance and resolved to repeat it. He had no hope of catching Laputa, but he thought he might hold up the bulk of his force if he got guns on the ridge above the Crawl. A message had already been sent for guns and the first to arrive got to Bruterstrom about the hour when I was being taken by Makuti's men in the Clouffe. The ceremony of the purification prevented Laputa from keeping a good look out, and the result was that a way was made for the guns on the northwestern corner of the rampart of Rock. It was the way which Baer's had taken, and indeed the enterprise was directed by one of Baer's old commandants. All that day the work continued while Laputa and I were traveling to Makuti's. Then came the evening when I staggered into camp and told my news. Arkol, who alone knew how vital Laputa was to the success of the insurrection, immediately decided to suspend all other operations and devote himself to shepherding the leader away from his army. How the scheme succeeded and what befell of Laputa a reader has already been told. Aitken and Wardlaw, when I descended from the cliffs, took me straight to Blauwealerbeest, Fontaine. I was like a man who was recovering from bad fever, cured but weakened foolish, and it was a slow journey which I made to Umphilos riding on Aitken's pony. At Umphilos we found a picket who had captured the shimmel by the roadside. That wise beast, when I turned him loose at the entrance to the cave, had trotted quietly back the way he had come. At Umphilos Aitken left me and next day, with Wardlaw as companion, I rode up the Glen of the Klein Lobongo and came in the afternoon to my old home. The store was empty, for Jap some days before had gone off post-haste to Peter's Dorp. But there was Zeta cleaning up the place as if war had never been heard of. I slept the night there, and in the morning found myself so much recovered that I was eager to get away. I wanted to see Arkol about many things, but mainly about the treasure in the cave. It was an easy journey to Bruterstrom through the meadows of the Plateau. The farmer's commandos had been recalled, but the ashes of their campfires were still gray among the town. I fell in with a police patrol and was taken by them to a spot on the upper Lataba, some miles west of the camp, where we found Arkol at late breakfast. I had resolved to take him into my confidence, so I told him the full tale of my night's adventure. He was very severe with me, I remember, for my daft-like ride, but his severity relaxed before I had done with my story. The telling brought back the scene to me, and I shivered at the picture of the cave with the morning breaking through the veil of water and Laputa in his death-rose. Arkol did not speak for some time, so he is dead, he said at last, half whispering to himself. Well, he was a king, and died like a king. Our job now is simple, for there is none of his breed left in Africa. Then I told him of the treasure. It belongs to you, Davy, he said. And we must see that you get it. This is going to be a long war, but if we survive to the end, you will be a rich man. But in the meantime, I asked, supposing other caffers hear of it and come back and make a bridge over the gorge. They may be doing it now. I'll put a guard on it, he said, jumping up briskly. It's maybe not a soldier's job. But you've saved this country, Davy. And I'm going to make sure that you have your reward. After that I went with Arkol to Ananda's Crawl. I'm not going to tell the story of that performance, for it occupies no less than two chapters in Mr. Upton's book. He makes one or two blunders, for he spells my name with an O. And he says we walked out of the camp on our perilous mission, with faces white and set as crusaders. That is certainly not true. For in the first place nobody saw us go, who could judge how we looked. And in the second place we were both smoking and feeling quite cheerful. At home they made a great fuss about it and started a newspaper cry about Victoria Cross. But the danger was not so terrible after all. And in any case it was nothing to what I had been through in the past week. I take credit to myself for suggesting the idea. By this time we had the army in the Crawl at our mercy. Laputa not having returned, they had no plans. It had been the original intention to start for the Oliphants on the following day. So there was a scanty supply of food. Besides there were the makings of a pretty quarrel between Ambuni and some of the North Country chiefs. And I barely believe that if we had held them tight there for a week they would have destroyed each other in faction fights. In any case, in a little they would have grown desperate and tried to rush the approaches on the North and South. Then we must either have used the guns on them, which would have meant a great slaughter, or let them go to do mischief elsewhere. Marco was a merciful man who had no love for butchery. Besides he was a statesman with an eye to the future of the country after the war. But it was his duty to isolate Laputa's army. And at all costs it must be prevented from joining any of the concentrations in the South. Then I proposed to him to do as Rhodes did in the Matapos and go and talk to them. By this time I argued the influence of Laputa must have sunk and the fervor of the purification be half forgotten. The army had little food and no leader. The rank and file had never been fanatical. And the chiefs and Idunas must now be inclined to sober reflections. But once blood was shed the lust of blood would possess them. Our only chance was to strike when their minds were perplexed and undecided. Arkel did all the arranging. He had a message sent to the chiefs inviting them to an endaba. And presently word was brought back that an endaba was called for the next day at noon. That same night we heard that Ambuni and about twenty of his men had managed to evade our ring of scouts and got clear away to the South. This was all to our advantage as it removed from the coming endaba, the most irreconcilable of the chiefs. That endaba was a queer business. Arkel and I left our escort at the foot of a ravine and entered the crawl by the same road as I had left it. It was a very bright hot winter's day. And try as I might I could not bring myself to think of any danger. I believe that in this way most Temerarius deeds are done. The doer has become insensible to danger and his imagination is clouded with some engrossing purpose. The first centuries received us gloomily enough and closed behind us as they had done when Makuti's men hailed me wither. Then the job became eerie, for we had to walk across a green flat with thousands of eyes watching us. By and by we came to the Marula tree opposite the Kias. And there we found a ring of chiefs sitting with cocked rifles on their knees. We were armed with pistols and the first thing Arkel did was to hand them to one of the chiefs. We come in peace, he said. We give you our lives. Then the endaba began, Arkel leading off. It was a fine speech he made, one of the finest I have ever listened to. He asked them what their grievances were. He told them how mighty was the power of the white man. He promised that what was unjust should be remedies, if only they would speak honestly and peacefully. He harped on their old legends and songs, claiming for the King of England the right of their old monarchs. It was a fine speech and yet I saw that it did not convince them. They listened moodily, if attentively, and at the end there was a blank silence. Arkel turned to me. For God's sake, Davy, he said, talk to them about Laputa. It's our only chance. I had never tried speaking before, and though I talked their tongue I had not Arkel's gift of it. But I felt that a great cause was at stake, and I spoke up as best I could. I began by saying that Inkulu had been my friend, and that at Umvilos, before the rising, he had tried to save my life. At the mention of the name I saw eyes brighten. At last the audience was hanging on my words. I told them of Enrikesh and his treachery. I told them frankly and fairly of the doings at Dupri's Drift. I made no secret of the part I played. I was fighting for my life, I said. Any man of you who is a man would have done the like. Then I told them of my last ride in the sight I saw at the foot of the Rurand. I drew a picture of Enrikesh lying dead with a broken neck, and the Inkulu wounded to death, creeping into the cave. In moments of extremity I suppose every man becomes an orator. In that hour in place I discovered gifts I had never dreamed of. Arkol told me afterwards that I had spoken like a man inspired, and by a fortunate chance had hit upon the only way to move my hearers. I told of that last scene in the cave when Laputa had broken down the bridge and has spoken his dying words, that he was the last king in Africa, and that without him the rising was at an end. Then I told of his leap into the river, and a great sigh went up from the ranks about me. You see me here, I said, by the grace of God. I found a way up the fall in the cliffs which no man has ever traveled before or will travel again. Your king is dead. He was a great king. As I who stand here bear witness, and you will never more see his like. His last words were that the rising was over. Respect that word, my brothers. We come to you not in war but in peace, to offer you a free pardon and the redress of your wrongs. If you fight, you fight with the certainty of failure and against the wish of the heir of John. I have come here at the risk of my life to tell you his commands. His spirit approves my mission. Think well before you defy the mandate of the snake and risk the vengeance of the terrible ones. After that I knew that we had won. The chiefs talked among themselves in low whispers. Casting strange looks at me. Then the greatest of them advanced and laid his rifle at my feet. We believe the word of a brave man, he said. We accept the mandate of the snake. The general now took command. He arranged for the disarmament bit by bit. Companies of men being marched off from Ananda's crawl to stations on the plateau where their arms were collected by our troops and food provided for them. For the full history I refer the reader to Mr. Upton's work. It took many days and taxed all our resources. But by the end of the week we had the whole of Laputa's army in separate stations, under guard, disarmed, and awaiting repatriation. Then Arkol went south to the war which was to rage around the Swaziland and Zululand borders for many months. While to Aitkenin myself was entrusted the work of settlement. We had inadequate troops at our command. And but for our prestige and the weight of Laputa's dead hand there might any moment have been a tragedy. The task took months. For many of the levies came from the far north, and the job of feeding troops on a long journey was difficult enough in the winter season when the energies of the country were occupied with the fighting in the south. Yet it was an experience for which I shall ever be grateful. For it turned me from a rash boy into a serious man. I knew then the meaning of the white man's duty. He has to take all risks, wrecking nothing of his life or his fortunes, and well content to find his reward in the fulfilment of his task. That is the difference between white and black. The gift of responsibility. The power of being in a little way a king. And so long as we know this and practice it. We will rule, not in Africa alone, but wherever there are dark men who live only for the day and their own bellies. Moreover the work made me pitiful and kindly. I learned much of the untold grievances of the natives and saw something of their strange twisted reasoning. Before we had got Laputa's army back to their crawls. With food enough to tide them over the spring sowing, Etkin and I had got sounder policy in our heads than you will find in the towns, where men sit in offices and see the world through a mist of papers. By this time peace was at hand, and I went back to Ananda's crawl to look for Colin's grave. It was not a difficult quest, for on the sword in front of the Marula tree they had buried him. I found a mason in the Iron Crantz village, and from the excellent red stone of the neighborhood was hewn a square slab with an inscription. It ran thus. Here lies buried the dog Colin, who was killed in defending D. Crawford, his master. To him it was mainly due that the caffer rising failed. I leave those who have read my tale to see the justice of the words. CHAPTER XXXII My uncle's gift is many times multiplied. We got at the treasure by blowing open the turnstile. It was easy enough to trace the spot in the rock where it stood, but the most patient's search did not reveal its secret. Accordingly we had recourse to dynamite, and soon laid bare the stone steps and descended to the gallery. The chasm was bridged with planks and arcle and I crossed alone. The cave was as I had left it. The blood stains on the floor had grown dark with time, but the ashes of the sacramental fire were still there to remind me of the drama I had borne apart in. When I looked at the way I had escaped, my brain grew dizzy at the thought of it. I do not think that all the gold on earth would have driven me a second time to that awful escalade. As for our coal he could not see its possibility at all. Only a madman could have done it. He said blinking his eyes at the green linn. Indeed, Davy, I think for about four days you were as mad as they make. It was a fortunate thing, for your madness saved the country. With some labor we got the treasure down to the path and took it under strong guard to Peter's door. The government were busy with the settling up after the war, and it took many weeks to have our business disposed of. At first things looked badly for me. The Attorney General set up a claim to the whole as spoils of war, since he argued it was the war chest of the enemy we had conquered. I do not know how the matter would have gone on legal grounds, though I was advised by my lawyers that the claim was a bad one. But the part I had played in the whole business, more especially in the visit to Ananda's Crawl, had made me a kind of popular hero, and the government thought better of their first attitude. Besides, our coal had great influence and the whole story of my doings, which was told privately by him to some of the members of the government, disposed them to be generous. Accordingly they agreed to treat the contents of the cave as ordinary treasure-trove, of which by the law one half went to the discoverer and one half to the crown. This was well enough so far as the gold was concerned, but another difficulty arose about the diamonds, for a large part of these had obviously been stolen by laborers from the mines and the mining people laid claim to them as stolen goods. I was advised not to dispute this claim and consequently we had a great sorting out of the stones in the presence of the experts of the different mines. In the end it turned out that identification was not an easy matter, for the experts quarreled furiously among themselves. A compromise was at last come to and a division made. And then the diamond companies behaved very handsomely, voting me a substantial sum in recognition of my services in recovering their property. What with this and with my half-share of the gold and my share of the unclaimed stones, I found that I had a very considerable fortune. The whole of my stones I sold to debirrs. For if I had placed them on the open market, I should have upset the delicate equipoise of diamond values. When I came finally to cast up my accounts I found that I had secured a fortune of a trifle over a quarter of a million pounds. The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me. I had no impulse to spend any part of it in a riot of folly. It had come to me like fairy-gold out of the void. It had been bought with men's blood, almost with my own. I wanted to get away to a quiet place and think. For of late my life had been too crowded with drama, and there comes a satiety of action as well as of idleness. Above all things I wanted to get home. They gave me a great send-off and sang songs, and good fellows shook my hand till it ached. The papers were full of me, and there were a banquet in speeches. But I could not relish this glory as I ought, for I was like a boy thrown violently out of his bearings. Not till I was nearing Cape Town in the train did I recover my equanimity. The burden of the past seemed to slip from me suddenly as on the morning when I had climbed the Lynn. I saw my life all lying before me, and already I had won success. I thought of my return to my own country, my first sight of the grey shores of Fife, my visit to Kirkcapel, my meeting with my mother. I was a rich man now who could choose his career, and my mother need never again want for comfort. My money seemed pleasant to me, for if other men won theirs by brains or industry I had won mine by sterner methods, for I had staked against it my life. I sat alone in the railway carriage and cried with pure thankfulness. These were comforting tears for they brought me back to my old commonplace self. My last memory of Africa is my meeting with Tam Dyke. I caught sight of him in the streets of Cape Town and running after him clapped him on the shoulder. He stared at me as if he had seen a ghost. Is it yourself, Davy? he cried. I never looked to see you again in this world. I do nothing but read about you in the papers. What for did you not send for me? Here have I been knocking about inside a ship, and you have been getting famous. They tell me you're a millionaire, too. I had Tam to dinner at my hotel, and later sitting smoking on the terrace and watching the flying ants among the aloes. I told him the better part of the story I have here written down. Man, Davy, he said at the end, you've had a tremendous time. Here you are not eighteen months away from home and you're going back with a fortune. What will you do with it? I told him that I proposed to begin with to finish my education at Edinburgh College. At this he roared with laughter. That's a dull ending, anyway. It's me that should have the money, for I'm full of imagination. You or I a prosaic body, Davy? Maybe I am, I said, but I am very sure of one thing. If I hadn't been a prosaic body, I wouldn't be sitting here to-night. Two years later Aitken found the diamond pipe, which he had always believed lay in the mountains. Some of the stones in the cave being unlike any ordinary African diamonds. Confirmed his suspicions and set him on the track. A caffer tribe to the northeast of the Rururand had known of it, but they had never worked it, but only collected the overspill. The closing down of one of the chief existing mines had created a shortage of diamonds in the world's markets, and once again the position was the same as when Kimberley began. Accordingly he made a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken proprietary mine is one of the most famous in the country. But Aitken did more than mine diamonds, for he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned together in the work of resettlement. He laid down a big fund for the education and amelioration of the native races, and the first fruit of it was the establishment at Blau Wildebeest Fontaine itself of a great native training college. It was no factory for making missionaries and black teachers, but an institution for giving the caffers the kind of training which fits them to be good citizens of the state. There you will find every kind of technical workshop and the finest experimental farms, where the blacks are taught modern agriculture. They have proved themselves apt pupils, and today you will see in the glens of the burg and in the plains, calfertillage which is as scientific as any in Africa. They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and fruit. The cotton promises well, and there is talk of a new fiber which will do wonders. Also along the river bottoms the India rubber business is prospering. There are playing fields and baths and reading rooms and libraries just as in a school at home. In front of the great hall of the college a statue stands, the figure of a black man shading his eyes with his hands, and looking far over the plains to the Rurand. On the pedestal it is lettered Pristar John, but the face is the face of Laputa. So the last of the kings of Africa does not lack his monument. Of this institution Mr. Wardlaw is the head. He writes to me weekly, for I am one of the governors as well as an old friend. And from a recent letter I take this passage. I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I sat on the stoop of the schoolhouse and talked of the caffers and our future. I had about a dozen pupils then, and now I have nearly three thousand. And in place of a tin-roofed shanty in a yard I have a whole countryside. You laughed at me for my keenness, Davy, but I've seen it justified. I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide at home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles. But when it was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't do. I was the physician, to heal wounds. You mind how nervous I was when I heard the drums beat. I hear them every evening now, for we have made a rule that all the caffer-farms on the berg sound a kind of curfew. It reminds me of old times and tells me that, though it is peace nowadays, we mean to keep all the manhood in them that they use to exercise in war. It would do your eyes good to see the garden we have made out of the Klein-Labongo Glen. The place is one big orchard with every kind of tropical fruit in it, and the irrigation dam is as full of fish as it will hold. Out at Umbulos there is a tobacco factory, and all round cicatolas we have square miles of mealy and cotton fields. The lock of the Rurrand is stocked with lock liven trout, and we have made a bridal path up to it in a gully east of the one you climbed. You asked about makudis. The last time I was there the place was white with sheep, for we have got the edge of the plateau grazed down, and sheep can get the short bite there. We have cleaned up all the crawls, and the chiefs are members of our county council, and are as fond of hearing their own voice as an Aberdeen Bailey. It's a queer transformation we have brought, and when I sit and smoke my pipe in the evening, and look over the plains and then at the big black statue you and I can set up, I thank the Providence that has guided me so far. I hope and trust that, in the Bible words, the wilderness and the solitary place are glad for us. At any rate it will not be my fault if they don't blossom as the rose. Come out and visit us soon, man, and see the work you had a hand in starting. I am thinking seriously of taking Wardlaw's advice. End of Chapter 23. End of Prester John by John Buckin