The Angels Weep - Smith Wilbur (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные версии txt) 📗
"The Matabele are outV he screamed. "They are burning the farms-" and he slid out of the saddle in a dead faint.
By first light there were fifty wagons formed into a laager in the market square, without oxen to draw them, they had been manhandled into position. All the town's women and children had been brought into the laager and put to work making bandages, reloading ammunition, and baking hard bread against a siege. The few able-bodied men that Doctor Jameson had not taken with him into captivity in the Transvaal were swiftly formed into troops, and horses and rifles were found for those who lacked them.
In the midst of the bustle and confusion, Mungo St. John had commandeered a fast open coach with a coloured driver, picked out the most likely and best mounted troop of horsemen, and using his authority as acting Administrator given them the order.
"Follow me! Now he reined in on the crest of the hills above Khami Mission, at the point where the track was narrowest and the tall yellow grass and the forest hemmed it in like a wall on each side, and he shaded his single eye.
"Thank GodP he whispered. The thatched roofs of the Mission that he expected to see billowing with smoke and flame stood serenely in the quiet green valley beyond.
The horses were sweating and blowing from the pull up the hills, and the coach had lagged two hundred paces behind Mungo. As soon as it came up, without giving a moment's rest to the mules, Mungo shouted, "Troop, forwardV and spurred away down the track, with his troopers clattering behind him.
Robyn St. John came out of the thatched rondavel that was her laboratory, and as soon as she recognized the man that led the column, she placed her hands upon her boyish hips and lifted her chin angrily.
"What is the meaning of this intrusion, sir?" she demanded.
"Madam, the Matabele tribe is in full rebellion. They are murdering women and children, burning the homesteads." Robyn took a step backwards protectively, for Robert had come pale-faced from the clinic to hang onto her skirts.
"I have come to take you and your children to safety." "The Matabele are my friends," said Robyn. "I have nothing to fear from them. This is my home. I do not intend leaving it." "I do not have time to indulge your predilection for obstructive disputation, madam," he said grimly, and stood in the stirrups.
"Elizabeth!" he bellowed, and she came onto the veranda of the homestead. "The Matabele are in revolt. We are all in mortal danger.
You have two minutes to gather what personal items your family may need-" "Take no heed Of him, Elizabeth," Robyn shouted angrily. "We are staying here." Before she realized his intention, Mungo had pricked his horse with a spur, backing it up towards the laboratory doorway, then he stooped from the saddle and caught Robyn about the waist. He swung her up over the pommel of the saddle, with her backside in the air and her skirts around her hips. She kicked and yelled with outrage, but he walked his horse alongside the open coach and with a heave of his shoulder dumped her in another flurry of petticoats onto the back seat.
"If you do not stay there, madam, I will not hesitate to have you bound. It will be most undignified." "I will never forgive you for this!" she panted through white lips, but she could see he meant the threat seriously. "Robert," Mungo St. John -ordered his son, "go to your mother. Immediately!" The child scampered to the coach and climbed into it. "Elizabeth!" Mungo St. John bellowed again. "Hurry, girl. All our lives depend on haste now." Elizabeth ran out onto the veranda with a bundle over her shoulder.
"Good girl!" Mungo St. John smiled at her. So pretty and brave and level-headed, she had always been one of his favourites. He jumped down to boost her into the coach, and then vaulted back into the saddle.
"Troop, Walk. March! Trod" he ordered, and they wheeled out of the yard.
The coach was in the rear of the column. The ten troopers in double ranks ahead of it, and five lengths out in front of them again rode Mungo St. John. Despite herself, Elizabeth was thrilled and deliciously fearful. It was all so different from the quiet monotonous round of life at Khami Mission, the armed men, the urgency and tension in each of them, the dark threat of the unknown surrounding them, the romance of the faithful husband riding through the valley of the shadow of death to save his beloved woman. How noble and dashing he looked at the head of the column, how easily he sat his horse, and when he turned to look back at the coach, how reckless was his smile there was only one other man in all the world to match him. If only it had been Ralph Ballantyne come to save her alone! The thought was sinful, and she put it away quickly, and to distract herself looked back down the hill.
"Oh, Mama!" she cried, jumping up in the swaying coach, pointing wildly. "Look!" The Mission was burning. The thatch of the church stood in a tall beacon of leaping flame. Smoke was curling out of the homestead, and as they stared in horror, they saw tiny dark human figures running down the pathway under the spathodea trees, carrying torches of dry, grass. One of them stopped to hurl his torch onto the roof of the clinic.
"My books," whispered Robyn. "All my papers. My life's work."
"Don't look, Mama." Elizabeth sank down beside her on the seat, and they clung to each other like lost children.
The little column reached the crest of the pass, without a pause the weary horses plunged down the far side and the Matabele came simultaneously from both sides of the track. They rose out of the grass in two black waves, and the humming roar of their war chant swelled like the sound of an avalanche gathering momentum down a steep mountainside.
The troopers had been riding with their carbines cocked, the butts resting on their right thighs, but so swift was the rush of Matabele that only a single volley rippled down the column. It made no impression upon the black wave of humanity, and then as the horses reared and whinnied with terror, the troopers were dragged from their saddles, and stabbed through and through, ten and twenty times. The warriors were mad with blood lust. They swarmed over the bodies, snarling and howling, like the hounds tearing the carcass of the fox.
