CHAPTER XXVII

THE RAVING OF THE WITCH-DOCTOR

ON Piet Van der Wyck, the Colonel's guest, descended the mantle of responsibility. With the exception of the dour Scot, McFrazer, he was the only active white man on the estate, and in spite of his years he rose nobly to the occasion.

The first step was to have the injured man carried to his bed. Here the Afrikander, skilled in veldt surgery and medicine, deftly removed Colonel Narfield's boots and leggings. Already the sprained ankle had swollen badly, and once the compression of the foot gear was removed, the foot enlarged to greatly abnormal dimensions.

With the aid of embrocation and hot water Van der Wyck dressed the injury and then proceeded to restore the patient to consciousness.

Colonel Narfield's first act upon opening his eyes was to attempt to get out of bed, protesting that happen what may he was not going to lie there while his two young charges were still missing.

The old farmer firmly exercised his authority.

"You'll have to stay there for a few days," he declared. "By getting up you will not only injure yourself, but no doubt hamper the work of the searchers. I am sending McFrazer as you ordered, and until the native trackers arrive I will patrol the road with the Haussas."

The injured man saw the force of Van der Wyck's contentions. He simply had to give up, although the state of his active mind can well be imagined.

McFrazer, booted and spurred, was ready for his long ride when the Afrikander left the patient's room.

"Would you be thinking it was an aeroplane?" he asked, for he had already heard from the Haussas how far the spoor of the missing youths had been tracked.

Van der Wyck shook his head.

"Impossible," he replied. "There were trees meeting overhead."

McFrazer accepted the denial with characteristic brevity.

"Oh, ay," he replied. "Then I'm just awa'," as if a 150-mile ride were an everyday occurrence.

As a matter of fact the journey to Nyaruma took him exactly fifteen hours, for at twelve miles from Kilembonga the rough track joined a well-constructed post-road from Tabora to Ujiji, where there were relay-horses at convenient distances.

Meanwhile Van der Wyck rode over to Sibenga's Kraal and saw Logula again. Most of the natives had recovered from their feast, and several of them, with a view to a reward, offered to search for the missing white men. Selecting two trackers, Van der Wyck set them on the spoor, which to a European would be by this time utterly lost.

The natives did almost exactly what their fellow tribesmen had done the previous day, coming to a halt in precisely the same spot and declaring that the lost men had "gone up."

Van der Wyck, who spoke most of the Kaffir dialects fluently, had little difficulty in making himself understood in the tongue of Sibenga's people; but he found it impossible to get the natives to climb the trees and make further investigations. They professed ignorance of the command, shaking their heads and uttering the word "Maquishi" (finished).

So the Afrikander had to leave it at that as far as these fellows were concerned, but he determined to carry out further investigations in that direction, although he himself was too old and too inexperienced in woodcraft to be able to climb trees.

At four o'clock on the day next following two motor-cars dashed up to the gate of Kilembonga.

In the first was Wynyard, the District Commissioner, his secretary, and McFrazer. The second contained a native sergeant, two police, and two black trackers from Lilwana's country, men known for miles as the craftiest and most highly-skilled human sleuthhounds in East Africa.

Wynyard meant to do his task thoroughly. Apart from the fact that two Englishmen had disappeared, Colin and Desmond were, like himself, Stockmere Old Boys.

He had accomplished the journey in the record time of seven hours, the cars attaining a speed of nearly fifty miles an hour over the post-road, and rarely falling below twenty over the rest of the way.

McFrazer had already related all he knew of the case. During a hasty meal Wynyard elicited further information from Van der Wyck, and also had a brief but business-like interview with the invalid, Colonel Narfield.

"Right-o!" he declared, cheerfully. "We'll find them. S'pose they're not playing a practical joke, by any chance?"

"Not with serious work on hand," replied Colonel Narfield. "They were keeping an eye on the niggers carrying the ivory, and they knew the importance of that. Yet, curiously enough, the blacks didn't notice the lads' disappearance, otherwise some, if not all, of the ivory would have been missing. It wasn't."

Within forty minutes of his arrival Wynyard was on the road again. With him went Van der Wyck, none too readily, for he mistrusted mechanical cars. He would have preferred his trusty horse, but that animal had been worked hard of late, and, as time was a great consideration, the Afrikander took courage and rather nervously sat beside Wynyard in the car.

In the rear were crowded Tenpenny Nail, Blue Fly, and the native sergeant, while the second car was packed with native trackers, police, and a huge dog, partly bloodhound and partly wolfhound.

"We are nearing the place where the Sibenga Kraal trackers lost the spoor," cautioned Van der Wyck, as the leading car jolted and bumped through the dense avenue.

"Oh," ejaculated Wynyard, "is that so? But I think I'll start at the beginning. There's nothing like independent clues."

The cars pulled up outside the hut of Logula, Sibenga's successor came out to do "Konza," accompanied by almost every man, woman and child in the village.

There was a sneer on the Chief's face as he watched the preparations. He rather resented the employment of trackers from another tribe, but he said nothing and thought the more.

Meanwhile Wynyard was holding one of Colin's sun-helmets to the hound's nose. The animal, quickly picking up the scent, trotted off with his tail erect and his nose close to the ground.

Twenty yards or so behind followed the car containing the District Commissioner and Van der Wyck, with the Haussas riding on the running-board. The other car came close behind, with four of the more daring natives of Sibenga's Kraal augmenting the numbers of the already closely-packed occupants.

Van der Wyck was not in the least surprised that the hound came to a standstill at the very spot which the two pairs of trackers had already indicated as the end of the spoor. The animal, showing a decided disinclination to proceed, was led back to the second car, and the Nyaruma trackers were told to carry on the good work.

In five minutes they delivered their verdict. The missing white men had "gone up." They were positive about that, but, like the Sibenga Kraal trackers, they resolutely declined to continue their investigations in the overhanging branches of the trees.

"Dashed if I'll be done!" exclaimed Wynyard. Then turning to the native sergeant, he bade him bring a rope from the second car and make it fast to one of the branches.

Assisted by Tenpenny Nail and Blue Fly, the sergeant carried out his instructions. Thereupon Wynyard swarmed up the rope and gained the leafy branch. But there was nothing that afforded him a clue, or, if there were, he failed to detect it. The leaves and young twigs showed no sign of having been disturbed; the resinous wood bore no trace of the contact of the studded sole of a boot.

"Were they carrying rifles?" he inquired, calling down to Van der Wyck, twenty-five or thirty feet below.

"Yes," replied the old farmer. "They had when we left the kraal."

"And these haven't been found?"

"No; we found nothing."

Wynyard knotted his brow in perplexity. Presumably, Sinclair and Desmond were either carrying their rifles in their left hands or else had the weapons slung across their backs.

Assuming the native trackers' assertions to be correct, what happened to the rifles? Either they would have fallen to the ground or else they would have caught and torn away some of the foliage.

"Well, I consider this the limit--the absolute limit," declared Wynyard, as he prepared to descend.

Arriving upon _terra firma_, the District Commissioner consulted a map of the district. It was based upon a German survey, and, therefore, remarkably accurate, for the Hun, painstaking and methodical and convinced that he had come to stay, had triangulated and mapped out his largest colony with Teutonic thoroughness.

From it he discovered that the forest extended a good twenty miles in a north-easterly direction, and was about half that distance across its widest part. The furthermost limits extended to the base of a lofty ridge of mountains forming part of that mighty system that early nineteenth century cartographers vaguely indicated as the Mountains of the Moon.

Wynyard was still engaged in scanning the map when his attention was distracted by the sounds of shouting and yelling. Four hundred yards down the road came Logula and his warriors, all armed in characteristic fashion with spears, shields, and kerries, and rigged out in feathers, paint, and other native insignia.

"By Jove!" he ejaculated. "I hope those beggars aren't up to mischief," and he found himself wishing that he had a full company of armed police with him in place of the three or four men at his disposal.

But Logula's intentions were friendly, even though they appeared the opposite. By his side capered a tall fellow in the full panoply of a witch-doctor.

"Great Chief," began Logula, "you have failed, even as my snake told me you would. Therefore I bring you aid."

"We are in no need of the black man's magic, Logula," declared Wynyard sternly.

"You can but try," protested the Chief.

"And waste time," rejoined the District Commissioner. "Begone!"

Logula stuck to his guns.

"Hearken, Great One," he continued. "I have twenty good oxen. If my witch-doctor fails to give you the knowledge you seek, then they are yours."

Wynyard was on the point of contemptuously declining the offer when Van der Wyck interposed.

"Let him try, Mr. Wynyard," advised the old man. "Times before I have both heard and seen these wizards at work in the Transvaal and Zululand. I have no faith in their methods, but their results are sometimes very wonderful. Out of darkness we may find light."

"Very well," agreed Wynyard grumblingly, "Let the jolly old jamboree proceed."

The witch-doctor needed no second bidding. With many weird and unintelligible incantations he lighted a fire on the very spot that had so frequently been pointed out during the last three days. Then he began dancing and capering violently, at times literally treading in the midst of the flames with his bare feet.

After about ten minutes of this sort of thing he suddenly collapsed in a heap, his head resting on his knees, at the same time emitting mournful howls.

"O Talula!" exclaimed Logula, addressing the semi-conscious wizard. "Tell me, have you smelt out the White Man-who-wears-the-Sacred-Amulet?"

"I have, O Chief."

"What do you see--blood?"

"I see no blood."

"Hau!" exclaimed Logula. "The White Man-who-wears-the-Sacred-Amulet still lives."

The witch-doctor raised himself to a sitting position and pointed to the north-east.

"Warriors not of our nation. Spears in hundreds. A great hole in the earth .... I see two white men ... at present they are not spirits."

"Ask him," exclaimed Wynyard, addressing Logula, "ask him if he will be able to rescue them?"

"They might be restored to their own people," announced the witch-doctor, without waiting for the question to be put to him. "More, I cannot say, save that the Great One from Nyaruma will not succeed in the attempt .... I have it ...."

With a convulsive effort he sprang to his feet, clutched at the empty air, and uttered one word:

"Makoh'lenga."