The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur - Страница 118

"We might as well make ourselves comfortable," Mr. Rhodes panted, and sank down upon it. The other members of the party sat on each side of him only Zouga remained upon his feet.

Though he kept his face impassive, his skin itched as the insects of dread crawled over it. This was the heart of the Matopos Hills, the sacred hills of the Matabele, their stronghold in which they would be at their bravest and most reckless. It was folly to come unarmed into this place, to throw themselves upon the mercy of the most savage and bloodthirsty tribe of a cruel wild continent. Zouga stood with his empty hands clasped behind his back, and turned slowly upon his heel, surveying the wall of rock that hemmed them in. He had not completed his circle before he said quietly. "Well, gentlemen. Here they are!" Without a sound, with no spoken command, the imp is rose from their concealment, and formed a living barricade along the skyline. They stood in rank upon rank and shoulder to shoulder, completely encompassing the rocky valley. It was impossible to count their multitude, impossible even to guess at their thousands, but still the silence persisted as though their eardrums were filled with wax.

Do not move, gentlemen" Zouga cautioned them, and they waited in the sunlight. They waited while the silent impassive imp is stood guard about them. Now no bird called and not the lightest breeze stirred the forest of feather headdresses and the kilts of fur.

At last the ranks opened and a group of men came through. The ranks closed behind them, and the little group came on down the path.

These were the great princes of Kumalo, the Zanzi of royal blood but how they were reduced.

They were all of them old men, with the hoar frost of the years sparkling in their woolly caps of hair and in their beards. They were starved to the thinness of pariah dogs, with their warrior's muscles stringy and wasted, and their old bones showing through. Some of them had dirty bloodsoaked bandages bound over their wounds, while the limbs and faces of others were scabbed with the sores that starvation and deprivation breed.

Gandang led them, and a pace behind him on either hand came his half-brothers Babiaan and Somabula, and behind them again the other sons of Mashobane, wearing the head rings of honour and carrying every one of them the broad silver killing blades and the tall rawhide shields that gave them their name' Matabele "the People of the Long Shields."

Ten paces in front of Zouga, Gandang stopped and grounded his shield, and the two men stared deeply into each other's eyes, and both of them were thinking of the day they had first met thirty years and more before.

"I see you, Gandang, son of Mzilikazi,"Zouga said at last. "I see you, Bakela, the one who strikes with the fist." And behind Zouga Mr. Rhodes ordered calmly, "Ask him if it is to be war or peace." Zouga did not take his eyes from those of the tall emaciated and una

"Are the eyes still red for war?" he asked.

Gandang's reply was a deep rumble, but it carried clearly to every and una who followed him, and it rose up to the the ranks of warriors upon the heights.

"Tell Lo'dzi that the eyes are white," he said, and he stooped and laid his shield and his assegai upon the ground at his feet.

Two Matabele, dressed only in loincloths, pushed the steel coco pan along the narrow-gauge railway tracks. When they reached the tip, one of them knocked out the retaining pin and the steel pan swivelled and spilled its five-ton load of sugary blue quartz in the funnel-shaped chute. The rock tumbled and rolled into the sizing box, and piled on the steel grating where another dozen Matabele fell upon it with ten-pound sledgehammers, and broke it up so that it could fall through the grating into the stamp boxes below.

The stamps were of massive cast iron, hissing steam drove them in a monotonous see-saw rhythm, pounding the ore to the consistency of talcum powder. The roar of the stamps was ear-numbing.- A continuous stream of water, piped up from the stream in the valley below, sluiced the powdered ore out of the stamp boxes and carried it down the wooden gutters to the James tables.

In the low open-sided hut, Harry Mellow stood over the No. 1 table, and watched the flow of thick mud-laden water washing across the heavy copper sheet that was the tabletop. The top was inclined to allow the worthless mud to run to waste, and eccentric cams agitated the table gently to spread the flow and ensure that every particle of ore touched the coated surface of the table. Harry closed the screw valve, and diverted the flow of mud to the No. 2 table. Then he threw the lever and the agitation of the table ceased.

Harry glanced up at Ralph Ballantyne and Vicky who were watching him avidly, and he cocked a thumb to reassure them the thunderous roar of the stamps drowned all conversation here and then Harry stooped over the table once more. The tabletop was coated with a thick layer of quicksilver, and, using a wide spatula, Harry began scraping it off the copper and squeezing it into a heavy dark ball. One of the unique properties of mercury is its ability to mop up particles of gold the way that blotting paper sucks up ink.

When Harry had finished, he had a ball of amalgamated mercury twice the size of a baseball, that weighed almost forty pounds. He needed both hands to lift it. He carried it across to the thatched rondavel that served as laboratory and refinery for the Harkness Mine, and Ralph and Vicky hurried after him, and crowded into the tiny room behind him.

The three of them watched with utter fascination as the ball of amalgam began to dissolve and bubble in the retort over the intense blue flame of the primus stove.

"We cook off the mercury," Harry explained, "and condense it again, but what we have left behind is this." The boiling silver liquid reduced in quantity, and began to change in colour. They caught the first reddish-yellow promise, the gleam that has enchanted men for more than Six thousand years.

"Just look at it!" Vicky clapped her hands with excitement, shaking out her thick coppery tresses, and her eyes shone as though with a reflection of the lustre of the precious liquid that she was watching. The last of the mercury boiled away, and left behind a deep glowing puddle of pure gold. , Gold," said Ralph Ballantyne. "The first gold of the Harkness Mine." And then he threw back his head and laughed. The sound startled them. They had not heard Ralph laugh since he had left Bulawayo, and while they stared at him, he seized both of them, Vicky in one arm and Harry in the other, and danced them out into the sunlight.