A Secret of the Lebombo

“Our jaunt this time will take us rather off it. I say – that time we ran the gauntlet through to Kambula, from that infernal mountain. It was something to remember, eh?”

Wyvern looked grave.

“One might run as narrow a shave as that again, but it’s a dead cert we couldn’t run a narrower one,” he said.

“Not much. I say, though. You’ve seen some rather different times since then. Let on, old chap – is that her portrait you’ve got stuck up in Number 3 Ulundi Square? Because, if so, you’re in luck’s way, by jingo you are.”

“You’re quite right, Fleetwood, as to both ventures. Only a third ingredient is unfortunately needed to render the luck complete, and that is a sufficiency of means.”

“That all? Well, then, buck up, old chap, because I’d lay a very considerable bet you’ll find that difficulty got over by the time you next set foot in hot – and particularly thirsty – Durban.”

Wyvern looked up keenly. Something in the other’s tone struck him as strange.

“What card have you got up your sleeve, Joe?” he said. “You let out something about ‘a few months’ a little while ago. Well now, I may not know much about the native trade, but I have a devilish shrewd idea that a man doesn’t scare up a fortune at it in that time.”

“You’re right there – quite right – and that’s the very thing we’ve come out to chat about – and sniff the ozone at the same time. It’ll keep till we get there. Here’s our tram.”

These two were great friends. Fleetwood, indeed, was prone to declare that he owed his life to the other’s deftness and coolness on one occasion when they had been campaigning together; a statement, however, which Wyvern unhesitatingly and consistently pooh-poohed. Anyhow, there was nothing that Fleetwood would not have done for him; and having lit upon the marvellous discovery which was behind his sanguine predictions of immediate wealth, he had written at once to Wyvern to come up and share it.

A fresh breeze stirred the blue of the waves, as the milky surf came tumbling up the pebbly beach with thunderous roar. Out in the roadstead vessels were riding to their anchors, prominent among them the blue-white hull and red funnel of the big mail steamer which had brought Wyvern round the day before. On the right, as they faced seaward, beyond the white boil of surf on the bar, rose the bush-clad Bluff, capped by its lighthouse, and behind, and stretching away on the other hand, the line of scrub-grown sandhills, beyond which rose the wooded slopes of the Berea.

“Now we’re all right,” pronounced Fleetwood, leading the way along the beach. “We’ve got the whole show to ourselves and we know it. Not a soul can get within earshot of us and we not know it, which is important if you’ve got anything important to talk about.”

“Yes,” assented Wyvern, lighting his pipe. “Now – drive ahead. Found a gold mine, eh?”

“That’s just about what it is; only it’s not a gold mine in the ordinary sense of the word. It’s buried gold.”

“The deuce it is. Where?”

“That’s what I’m coming to. Now listen. There exists a certain Zulu of my acquaintance, a head-ringed man named Hlabulana. I have known him a long while, some time before the war, in fact, and he’s a wonderfully straight and reliable man. Well, a good many years ago a strange thing came within his experience. Off the coast of Zululand, about where the Umfolosi river runs out at Saint Lucia Bay, there arrived a ship – a small ship, I gathered from his account, probably a brig or schooner. Now this in itself was an event, because there was absolutely no trade done with Zululand by sea in those days, any more than there is now. But where this craft undertook to anchor was off one of the most rotten, swampy and uninhabited parts of the whole coast. A boat put off from her and came ashore, and in it were four men. They landed, and no sooner had they done so than the vessel, which appears to have been lying a good way out, was seen suddenly to disappear. She had, in fact, gone to the bottom.”

“One minute, Fleetwood,” interrupted Wyvern. “When was this – have you any sort of idea?”

“Yes, I have as it happens. It can’t have been many months before the big fight between Cetywayo and Umbulazi for the succession. Now that came off at the end of 1856, which locates this earlier in the same year. Good while back, isn’t it? Close upon thirty years.”

“Right. Go on.”

“Well, then, they took some packages out of the boat; not very large ones, but still, it seems, about as much as they could manage. They hid the boat under bushes and started inland. All this, of course, was seen, because although that part of the country is poorly populated, still there were, and are, people there, and such an unusual occurrence was not likely to go unspotted. But the Zulus didn’t show themselves. They kept out of sight, and shadowed the four.”

“What sort of fellows were the said four?” asked Wyvern. “Nationality, for instance. English?”

“I don’t think so. From the account they were dark-skinned, black-bearded chaps, and wore large rings in their ears. I should say – though I’ve no personal experience of either – Italians or Spaniards – or, maybe, Portuguese.”

“Ah! very likely. The latter most probably.”

“Well, they held along, inland, keeping the course of the Umfolosi river not far on their left – that is, travelling north-west. They seemed to have their own stores, for they avoided the kraals, and now and then shot game; for they were well armed. When they came to where the Black Umfolosi forks more northward they didn’t hesitate but struck up it, which showed that at least one among them had some previous knowledge of the country, and this, in fact, was the case.”

“How is it they weren’t all captured and marched off to the king?”

“Yes. That’s one of the very first questions that occurred to me. Wyvern, and I put it at once. Mpande was king then. The answer was that the country was in such a disturbed state just then, and the people so unsettled, that the few living in those parts were extremely unwilling to go to Nodwengu, for fear they should be obliged to take sides in the row brewing between Cetywayo and his brother. You see, the coast-dwelling Zulus are by no meant the flower of the nation, and these didn’t want to be drawn into any fighting at all. They preferred to sit tight at home. They knew, too, that there was little chance of them being hauled over the coals for it, because things were so excessively sultry at and around the seat of government of the Zulu nation, that the high authorities had no time to bother their heads about anything further afield.

“Well, things went on so for a time, and their march progressed. The people inhabiting the coast country took for granted these chaps had been shipwrecked, and were making their way to the nearest settlements of other whites, and it was not till they got in among the passes of the Lebombo range that they were in any way interfered with, and then not until they had reached the western side.

“This is where Hlabulana comes into the story. He was a young ’un then – an umfane. Two of them surprised him while stealthily watching the other two, and he says he has been no nearer death, even in the thickest part of the late war, than he was on that occasion. One of them could talk some Zulu, and they only spared him on condition he should go with them and help carry the loads; and this he agreed to do, partly out of scare and partly out of curiosity. Then the time came when they quarrelled among themselves, the upshot of which was that two of them knifed the other two in their sleep.

“Now came a deadlock. The two who were left were unable to carry all the plunder, besides they were a good deal weakened and exhausted by their long tramp. They had to hide most of their stuff, presumably intending to return for it at some future time. They buried it accordingly in a cave on the western side of the Lebombo, but Hlabulana wasn’t allowed to see the exact spot.”

“Then how does he know that they buried it?” asked Wyvern. “They may have just shoved it into some cleft.”

“There was earth on their knives, moist earth such as you’d get in a damp cool place where the sun never struck. But he can take us to the spot; there are several holes and caves around, but I don’t think we’ll find much difficulty in hitting off the right one.”

“And then? What makes you think there’ll be anything worth finding if we do, for I suppose the two jokers never came back to dig it up again?”

“They didn’t, because to cut a long yarn short, the Zulu-speaking chap knifed his mate directly after – and he himself was killed by a sort of outlaw tribe that hung out on the Swazi border. So there the stuff is, waiting for us to dig out, and it’ll mean a tidy fortune apiece.”

“Yes, but what of the stuff being worth finding?” urged Wyvern, again. He was beginning to feel less sanguine than at first.

“It is – for these reasons. First of all, the comparatively small compass of the loads, points to proportionate value. Then that ruffian murdered his remaining pal so as to get the benefit of the whole lot – but, more important still, Hlabulana more than once caught sight of shining stones, some white, some red and green, in fact, he thinks there were other colours. He remembers it perfectly because once he saw them sorting these into different bags I believe, too, one of the boxes contained bar gold, for he says it was as heavy as a stone of the same size. After the third chap had been knifed Hlabulana thought it about time to make himself scarce and he accordingly did.”

“You believe his yarn then, absolutely?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, but – ” went on Wyvern, “why didn’t he prospect for the stuff himself, and get all the benefit of it?”

“The untrousered savage is a queer devil, Wyvern; at least as he is represented in this country. The fact is Hlabulana is afraid to meddle with this himself – Zulus are a superstitious crowd you know. As he puts it – white people can do anything, no matter how ‘tagati.’ Wherefore we are to unearth the stuff and give him a share of the plunder according to its value.”

“Confiding of him, very. Do you find them often that way?”

“Oftener than you’d think. When a Zulu has made up his mind you’re to be trusted, he’ll trust you almost to an unlimited extent.”

“Well now, Fleetwood, where is this Golconda?”

“In one of the wildest and most remote tracts of the Zulu country, the Lumisana forest. I’ve been into it once, but never explored it. There’s no trade there to speak of, or anything to take a white man into it. This find, however, is to be made in a sort of amphitheatre, or hollow, known to the Zulus as Ukohlo. Now, listen, Wyvern. We haven’t got to talk about this even between ourselves, unless we’re out like this. You never know who the deuce may be within earshot.”

“That’s so. I’m all safe. I may be a damn fool at money making, or rather, money losing, but I do know how to keep my head shut. But look here, Joe. Have you got any theory of your own with regard to this yarn; for I take it those four beauties didn’t come up out of the sea and lug a few bags of valuable stones up to a remote corner of the Zulu country and plant them there for the future emolument of you and me?”

“Rather. I have a theory. I believe the whole thing spells a big robbery in some other part of the world, what of or who from is a mystery and always will be, for you bet these jokers didn’t leave any clue with the stuff they planted. The fact that the one of them, who for convenience sake we’ll call the leading rip, could talk some Zulu points to the fact that he at any rate had been there before, that the Zululand coast was their deliberate objective, and they couldn’t well have struck a better one. Whether they stole the ship as well is another question, or whether there were more on board her, and these four managed to scuttle her so as to destroy all trace and then clear out with the only boat, is a mystery too. But obviously they reckoned on getting through into Transvaal territory and that way to Europe, thus completely hiding their trail, which was an ingenious idea.”

Wyvern puffed at his pipe for a minute or two. Then seriously:

“What about this, Joe? This stuff – if it is the proceeds of a robbery – what right have we to benefit by it?”

Fleetwood started, stared, then threw back his head and roared.

“Good Lord, Wyvern, you ought to have been a parson. I wouldn’t do a shot on anyone unfairly, as you know. Man alive, but I was only giving you one of my theories – I may have others. Here’s one. You know from time to time yarns crop up in the papers about buried treasure in the West Indies and all sorts of those old piratical romps. Well, this may be a case in point, and these oily-looking, cut-throat scoundrels may have struck upon just one of these finds. To save awkward questions, and the possibility of awkward claims as to ‘treasure trove,’ and all that, they may have hit upon the dodge of bringing it across the sea right out of the ordinary course. Well, now, that theory is just as good as the other. It may be hundreds of years since the swag had a lawful owner or owners. Eh?”

“Yes, that’s all right too.”

“Very well then. We are just as much entitled to the use of it as anyone else. We want money. I do, and judging from that portrait we were talking about just now, why, you poor old chap, you want it a darned sight more. Is that sound reasoning?”

“Perfectly.” His last sight of Lalanté came before Wyvern’s mental gaze; the bitterness and desolation of their parting. Oh, anything that should bring her to him, should secure her to him, provided it was not downright dishonest – and what would he not go through!

“Mind you,” went on Fleetwood, “we haven’t got the stuff yet, and it’ll be a job carrying plenty of risk with it before we do. The Zulu country is a simmering volcano just now over the restoration of Cetywayo. The Usútu faction – that is the King’s faction – and the other side bossed by John Dunn, Sibepu, Hamu and the rest, are glaring at each other all ready to jump at each other’s throats, and when they do it’ll be all hell let loose. Our war’ll be a fleabite to it. We’ll go in, of course, ostensibly as traders, and then be guided by events.”

Wyvern nodded. The prospect of adventure fired his blood. In it he would at any rate partially lose that sense of desolation which was upon him day and night.

“So you see, old chap,” went on Fleetwood, “I didn’t lug you up here to make your fortune out of trading beads, and butcher knives, and yards of Salampore cloth; and, I hope before this time next year to come and do best man at your wedding. Eh?”

“That you shall if it comes off – which of course will depend on our success. By the way, where is this Hlabulana now?”

“He’s at a kraal on the Umvoti, near Stanger, keeping in touch with me. Success? Of course we’ll meet success. Now we’ve had our say we’ll go back and drink to it. After all Durban’s an infernally thirsty place. Success! I should think so.”

Yet at that moment Bully Rawson, unscrupulous ruffian and general cut-throat, was repeating over and over again Warren’s emphatic, if laconic, instructions, “Take care of him. Do you hear? Take care of him,” and was promising himself that he would.