The covenant - James A. Michener [359]
the North as far as the Land may be Useful and in my possession for their Everlasting property.
De merk + + van de Koning Dingane
Tjaart and Paulus, riding quietly along the banks of the Tugela River, could not know that their fellow Voortrekkers were being massacred, but the boy suffered powerful premonitions and said, 'Father, I do think the king is going to kill all our men. Should we turn back to warn them?'
'No one would dare do a thing like that.'
'But William knows the king. Twice he heard him say that we were wizards.'
'He meant wise men. Because we defeated Mzilikazi.' 'But William has seen wizards put to death. Men hammer stakes into them.'
The boy was so insistent that Tjaart had to pay attention; he became more alert, and it was fortunate that he did, because toward noon he detected to the rear a rise of dust along the trail they had just traveled, and from a hiding place, saw with horror the better part of two regiments, assegais glistening, flash past, headed in the general direction of the Blaauwkrantz River.
Instantly Tjaart realized that they must somehow move ahead of the running column to alert the encampments and the hundreds of Voortrekkers who would not be in laager, but no matter how cleverly they tried to speed along unused trails, invariably they were forestalled by detachments of Zulu who were fanning out across the countryside, murdering any Boers they found.
At four different isolated camps, Tjaart and Paulus found only smoldering ruins and gutted Boers. In an agony of fear, they fought to circumvent the Zulu lines and sound an alarm, but always they failed; once when it seemed that they could slip down a canyon, they watched in dismay as a third regiment of Dingane's men crept in, attacking a lonely wagon and killing everyone.
Belatedly, Tjaart had to acknowledge aloud that Retief and all his men were probably dead. He looked blankly at Paulus, and the boy nodded. He had known all along how great would be the disaster, for William Wood had told him, and now, distraught, he said, 'And before we left, William told me that every Boer in Zululand would be killed. We must hurry to the river.'
'I've been trying!' Tjaart cried, and once again he sought to outflank the Zulu lines, and failed.
At sunset on Friday, 16 February 1838, they were still far short of the Blaauwkrantz, their warning signal undelivered. That night, along an unprotected stretch eleven miles in length, the scattered wagons of the Voortrekkers stood in formless array, and near them the women and children of the men already slaughtered went carelessly to sleep. Additional families, only recently arrived from Thaba Nchu, were spending their first nights in their promised land and staring at the stars which had brought them safely home. It was a quiet night, with only a few dogs barking sporadically.
At one o'clock in the morning three full regiments of Zulu warriors stormed forth in a surprise attack and reached the sleeping wagons and tents before anyone could sound an alarm. In the first wave they slaughtered everyone at the eastern end of the line, except two members of the Bezuidenhout family. The younger Bezuidenhout, barely able to grasp the fact that all but one of his kin were slain, enabled others farther westward to survive the assault by heroically riding through the night, breaking miraculously through one concentration of Zulu warriors after another.
Among the groups he wakened was the Van Doorn encampment: Jakoba, Minna and Theunis, their three-year-old daughter Sybilla and their five servants. These nine had just enough time to take frenzied precautions before the screaming Zulu fell upon them, and in these moments of terror Theunis Nel did a remarkable thing: he took Sybilla and hid her behind a tree, well away from the wagons, and as he left her, trembling with a fear he could not control, he whispered, 'Sybilla, remember when we played the game? You must not make a sound.'
Running back to the wagons,