Allan and the Holy Flower. H. Rider Haggard
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and others will be hurt.”
“Ow?” said one of them, “but which will die and which will come out safe? Does not your Snake tell you that, O Doctor?”
“Yes, of course my Snake tells me that. But my Snake tells me also to hold my tongue on the matter, lest some of us should be turned to cowards. It tells me further that the first who should ask me more, will be one of those who must die. Now do you ask? Or you? Or you? Or you? Ask if you will.”
Strange to say no one accepted the invitation. Never have I seen a body of men so indifferent to the future, at least to every appearance. One and all they seemed to come to the conclusion that so far as they were concerned it might be left to look after itself.
“My Snake told me something else,” went on Mavovo. “It is that if among this company there is any jackal of a man who, thinking that he might be one of the six to die, dreams to avoid his fate by deserting, it will be of no use. For then my Snake will point him out and show me how to deal with him.”
Now with one voice each man present there declared that desertion from the lord Macumazana was the last thing that could possibly occur to him. Indeed, I believe that those brave fellows spoke truth. No doubt they put faith in Mavovo’s magic after the fashion of their race. Still the death he promised was some way off, and each hoped he would be one of the six to escape. Moreover, the Zulu of those days was too accustomed to death to fear its terrors over much.
One of them did, however, venture to advance the argument, which Mavovo treated with proper contempt, that the shillings paid for this divination should be returned by him to the next heirs of such of them as happened to decease. Why, he asked, should these pay a shilling in order to be told that they must die? It seemed unreasonable.
Certainly the Zulu Kaffirs have a queer way of looking at things.
“Hans,” I whispered, “is your fire among those that burn yonder?”
“Not so, Baas,” he wheezed back into my ear. “Does the Baas think me a fool? If I must die, I must die; if I am to live, I shall live. Why then should I pay a shilling to learn what time will declare? Moreover, yonder Mavovo takes the shillings and frightens everybody, but tells nobody anything. I call it cheating. But, Baas, do you and the Baas Wazela have no fear. You did not pay shillings, and therefore Mavovo, though without doubt he is a great Inyanga, cannot really prophesy concerning you, since his Snake will not work without a fee.”
The argument seems remarkably absurd. Yet it must be common, for now that I come to think of it, no gipsy will tell a “true fortune” unless her hand is crossed with silver.
“I say, Quatermain,” said Stephen idly, “since our friend Mavovo seems to know so much, ask him what has become of Brother John, as Hans suggested. Tell me what he says afterwards, for I want to see something.”
So I went through the little gate in the wall in a natural kind of way, as though I had seen nothing, and appeared to be struck by the sight of the little fires.
“Well, Mavovo,” I said, “are you doing doctor’s work? I thought that it had brought you into enough trouble in Zululand.”
“That is so, Baba,” replied Mavovo, who had a habit of calling me “father,” though he was older than I. “It cost me my chieftainship and my cattle and my two wives and my son. It made of me a wanderer who is glad to accompany a certain Macumazana to strange lands where many things may befall me, yes,” he added with meaning, “even the last of all things. And yet a gift is a gift and must be used. You, Baba, have a gift of shooting and do you cease to shoot? You have a gift of wandering and can you cease to wander?”
He picked up one of the burnt feathers from the little pile by his side and looked at it attentively. “Perhaps, Baba, you have been told—my ears are very sharp, and I thought I heard some such words floating through the air just now—that we poor Kaffir Inyangas can prophesy nothing true unless we are paid, and perhaps that is a fact so far as something of the moment is concerned. And yet the Snake in the Inyanga, jumping over the little rock which hides the present from it, may see the path that winds far and far away through the valleys, across the streams, up the mountains, till it is lost in the ‘heaven above.’ Thus on this feather, burnt in my magic fire, I seem to see something of your future, O my father Macumazana. Far and far your road runs,” and he drew his finger along the feather. “Here is a journey,” and he flicked away a carbonised flake, “here is another, and another, and another,” and he flicked off flake after flake. “Here is one that is very successful, it leaves you rich; and here is yet one more, a wonderful journey this in which you see strange things and meet strange people. Then”—and he blew on the feather in such a fashion that all the charred filaments (Brother John says that laminae is the right word for them) fell away from it—“then, there is nothing left save such a pole as some of my people stick upright on a grave, the Shaft of Memory they call it. O, my father, you will die in a distant land, but you will leave a great memory behind you that will live for hundreds of years, for see how strong is this quill over which the fire has had no power. With some of these others it is quite different,” he added.
“I daresay,” I broke in, “but, Mavovo, be so good as to leave me out of your magic, for I don’t at all want to know what is going to happen to me. To-day is enough for me without studying next month and next year. There is a saying in our holy book which runs: ‘Sufficient to the day is its evil.’ ”
“Quite so, O Macumazana. Also that is a very good saying as some of those hunters of yours are thinking now. Yet an hour ago they were forcing their shillings on me that I might tell them of the future. And you, too, want to know something. You did not come through that gate to quote to me the wisdom of your holy book. What is it, Baba? Be quick, for my Snake is getting very tired. He wishes to go back to his hole in the world beneath.”
“Well, then,” I answered in rather a shamefaced fashion, for Mavovo had an uncanny way of seeing into one’s secret motives, “I should like to know, if you can tell me, which you can’t, what has become of the white man with the long beard whom you black people call Dogeetah? He should have been here to go on this journey with us; indeed, he was to be our guide and we cannot find him. Where is he and why is he not here?”
“Have you anything about you that belonged to Dogeetah, Macumazana?”
“No,” I answered; “that is, yes,” and from my pocket I produced the stump of pencil that Brother John had given me, which, being economical, I had saved up ever since. Mavovo took it, and after considering it carefully as he had done in the case of the feathers, swept up a pile of ashes with his horny hand from the edge of the largest of the little fires, that indeed which had represented myself. These ashes he patted flat. Then he drew on them with the point of the pencil, tracing what seemed to me to be the rough image of a man, such as children scratch upon whitewashed walls. When he had finished he sat up and contemplated his handiwork with all the satisfaction of an artist. A breeze had risen from the sea and was blowing in little gusts, so that the fine ashes were disturbed, some of the lines of the picture being filled in and others altered or enlarged.
For a while Mavovo sat with his eyes shut. Then he opened them, studied the ashes and what remained of the picture, and taking a blanket that lay near by, threw it over his own head and over the ashes. Withdrawing it again presently he cast it aside and pointed to the picture which was now quite changed. Indeed, in the moonlight, it looked more like a landscape than anything else.
“All is clear, my father,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice. “The white wanderer, Dogeetah, is not dead. He lives, but he is sick. Something is the matter with one of his legs so that he cannot walk. Perhaps a bone is broken or some beast has bitten him. He lies in a hut such as Kaffirs make, only this hut has a verandah round it like your stoep, and there are drawings on the wall. The hut is a long way off, I don’t know where.”
“Is that all?” I asked, for he paused.
“No, not all. Dogeetah is recovering. He will join us in that country whither we journey, at a time of