Project Gutenberg's The Triumph of Hilary Blachland, by Bertram Mitford

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Title: The Triumph of Hilary Blachland

Author: Bertram Mitford

Release Date: May 28, 2010 [EBook #32566]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The Triumph of Hilary Blachland, by Bertram Mitford.

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THE TRIUMPH OF HILARY BLACHLAND, BY BERTRAM MITFORD.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE CAMP ON THE MATYA'MHLOPE.

"There! That is Umzilikazi's grave," said Christian Sybrandt, pointing
out a towering pile of rocks some little way off, across the valley.

"Is it? Let's go and have a look at it then," was the prompt reply.
But immediately upon having made it, the second speaker knew that he had
spoken like a fool, for the first gave a short laugh.

"Go over and have a look at it?" he echoed. "Why we'd all be cut to
bits before we got within half a mile. It's holy ground, man; guarded,
picketed by armed _majara_, rigidly watched, day and night. You
couldn't get near it, no, not at any price."

"Well, I've a great notion to try," persisted the other, to the
imaginative side of whose temperament the place of sepulture of that
remarkable savage, the remorseless, all-destroying war-leader, the
founder and consolidator of a martial nation, irresistibly appealed, no
less than the mystery and peril enshrouding the undertaking did to the
adventurous side. "No white man has ever seen it close, I think you
said, Sybrandt?"

"That's so. And you won't constitute the exception, Blachland. You'll
never get there; and, if you did, you'd never get away."

"Yet it would be interesting to constitute that exception," persisted
the other. "I like doing things that nobody else has done."

"Well, even if you escaped the five hundred to one chances against you,
you wouldn't have the satisfaction of talking about it--not as long as
you are in this country, at all events; for let even so much as a
whisper get about that yo