THE MADNESS OF GINGER M'KAY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2682, 11 December 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE MADNESS OF GINGER M'KAY.

. (By Stanley Portal Hyatt.) The messenger deposited his assegais and blanket at the foot of the big wild fig-tree; then squatted down a couple of yards from the council-place, where the elders of the squalid little Masliona village were warming their hands over some smouldering logs. N’Jova, the head man, glanced' at the newcomer out of the corners of his

eyes,! and mumfiled the words; of’greeting :.“I seerthee,'O M’Bulerwa.” “I see thee, 0 my fathers,” answered the youngster, as he came forward and took a vacant-place in the circle. “There is news,” he added lyN’Jova emptied somo powdered tobacco into a grimy palm and sniffed ut it carefully; then, “What is the news?” he. demanded. “Wo are to slay all the white men at the full moon!” The messenger swelled with importance, and looked -round to note the effects of his words. Old Chivamba, N’Jova’s uncle, shook his head mournfully. “You have come on a fool’s errand. The white men have too many guns,” he quavered. The headman, who was fumbling nervously with his snuff-box, turned to t' e youngster. “What do those who sent you want'with me?” “They want your young men to assemble with their guns at Voudsa’s kraal the night before the moon is full.” N’Jova thrust out his hands helplessly. “I have no young men here—at , least, very few. Some are at the mines, some are dead of smallpox, and we need the rest to help the women thresh our harvest,, which was'very late this year. As for guns—” The messenger leaned forward and whispered a name. “They are his orders. He says it-must be done. Moreover, he knows you have ten muskets, as well as the rifle belonging to M’Jimba, the white man who lives here.” “If he says it—well, it must be so,” N’Jova sighed heavily, whilst the other old man nodded an unwilling acquiescence, the only open dissentient being Chivamba, who growled: “Ho ! He is not a witch-doctor. All the groat witch-doctors are dead. Leave it alone, my brothers. The white men have too many guns; and as for our white man here, why should we take his gun ? Has he not brought luck to the village ?” Ginger M’Kay, the white Kaffir of N’Jova’s kraal, was dozing in the doorway of his hut, passing the afternoon as he passed practically every afternoon since he had crawled into the village deadly sack with fever, two years previously. “He is mad,” the old men had decided. No sane whit© man would tramp the ,veldt bootless and in rags, with a Martini rifle as his only possession, aud the opinion was confirmed when, having been nursed back to a sort of health by the women, the stranger showed no inclination to leave. “He is mad, but lie may bring the village luck,” so they built him a hut and gave him a young widow for a wife; and in return he shot them more waterbuck and sable antelope in each month than they had had in a full* year before. True, the' cartridges he had brought with him were soon finished, but it was not a very difficult matter to get a new supply from the coolie traders, or from the Portuguese territory; moreover, M’Jimba, “the mighty hunter,” as they named him, seldom wasted a shot. “We want your rifle, M’Jimba. The young men are going to fight the white men, the other kind, of white men, up on the high veldt, and our great chief lias called for all the guns.” spoke almost apologetically. He had no wish to offend the stranger whose presence liad secured two record harvests for the village. Ginger M’Kay was fully awake in an instant. A nigger, a confounded old savage with a dirty goatskin round his loins, was asking him, a white man, for a gun with which to shoot other white men. >■ “Do you want the cartridges too? There are only three left,” he asked very quietly. - N’Jova nodded. “Yes, but there will be many more when they have killed the police at M’Bouka’s”—the white man was mad; it did not matter telling him. Ginger M’Kay went into the hut, and came out a minute later with two cartridges in the pocket of his tattered shirt, and with the rifle in his hand, loaded. His face was a little white under the grime and tan. It was the young men who were going to do the killing, so he merely caught M’Jova a smashing blow on the jaw, and shot the foremest of the group between the eyes. The others dashed for cover as he jerked out the empty case; but still he just had time to put the second bullet through the heart of M’Jova’s eldest son. “Two,” he shouted gleefully, as he reloaded, with his last cartridge; but there was- no one in sight, except N’Jova;* so he walked into-,th,e main circle of huts, where the big rock was, and waited. Suddenly, the muzzle of a Tower musket was thrust between the poles of one of the huts, and a hammered iron slug grazed his legs; a moment later, an assegai from the cattle kraal whizzed past lji s head. He swore a little. “I can’t make dead sure of another, but I mustn’t risk waiting,” then lie blazed his last shot* into the hut whence the slug had come, and after that gripped his rifle by the barrel, and, with one terrific blow bn the reduced it to a twisted piece of scrap-iron. As he straightened himself up, a bullet from a different hut caught him where the spine and neck join.

*“H«i was mall,” N’Jova mumbled as he looked down at the body. “Who but a madman would have done that when he knew we should not touch him? Now he is dead, and three more, for his last bullet slew M’Bulerwa, the messenger.” But old Chivamba shook his head. “Once ho was mad indeed, but not at the last.. He was a mighty warrior, so are all the white men.' They will eat us up if we fight them.” • ‘ •' :