Ralph popped the morsel and chewed as he talked.
'The leg is hard and bright as a knife.'
Bazo puffed out his cheeks and looked even more lugubrious, and on her perch in the shadows behind him Scipio, the falcon, shook out her feathers and 'kweeted' softly as though in sympathy with him.
Bazo's decision, although heavily influenced by Ralph's arguments and by the urgings of the other young Matabele, would be final. For it was Bazo who had made the original capture of the animal under discussion.
'Every night that she does not fight, we, your brothers, are the poorer,' Kamuza came in to support Ralph. 'Henshaw is right. She is fierce as a lioness and ready to earn us all many gold queens.'
'Already you speak and think like a white man,' Bazo replied loftily. 'The yellow coins fill your head day and night.'
'What other reason for that,' Kamuza shuddered slightly as he pointed at the basket, 'that thing. If it stings you, the spear of your manhood will shrivel like a rotten fruit until it is no bigger than the finger of a new born baby.'
'What a shrivelling that would be,' Ralph chuckled.
'Like a bull hippopotamus shrivelling into a striped field mouse.'
Bazo grinned and made the gesture of placing the tiny basket on Kamuza's lap. 'Come, let her suckle a little to give her strength for the conflict,' he suggested, and the circle exploded with a roar of delighted laughter at Kamuza's patent horror as he yelled and leapt violently away.
The noisy jeers covered their own uneasiness at the close proximity of the basket, and they were immediately silent as Bazo cautiously lifted the lid.
They craned forward with sickly fascination, and in the bottom of the basket something dark and furry and big as a rat stirred.
'Hau! Inkosikazi!' Bazo greeted it, and the creature reared up on its multiple legs, raising the front pair defensively, and the rows of eyes glittered in the softly wavering firelight. Bazo lifted his own right hand to return the salute of long hairy legs.
'I see you also, Inkosikazi.'
Bazo had named her Inkosikazi, the queen, for, as he explained to Ralph, 'She is right royal in her rage, and as thirsty for blood as a Matabele queen.'
He and Ralph had been unloading timber baulks at the eastern end of the new stagings, and as one load had swung upwards in the slings the great spider had come out from its nest between the sawn planks, and, raising its swollen velvety abdomen, had scampered over Ralph's arm and leapt ten feet to the ground.
The spider was the size of a dinner plate when its legs were extended. Its hirsute appearance and its extraordinary jumping prowess had given the species the common name of baboon spider.
'Get him, Bazo!' Ralph yelled from the top of the loaded wagon.
For now that Griqualand West and the New Rush diggings were part of Cape Colony and the British Empire there had been changes.
New Rush had been re-named Kimberley, after Lord Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary in London, and the town of Kimberley was starting to enjoy the benefits of British civilization and Victorian morality, amongst which was the total ban on cock fighting which was strictly enforced by the new administrator. The diggers, always eager for distraction, had not taken long to find an alternative sport. Spider fighting was the rage of the diggings.
'Don't let him get away!' Ralph vaulted down from the wagon, ripping off his shirt, but Bazo was quicker.
He whipped the loincloth from his waist and flared it at the spider like a matador caping the bull, bringing the huge arachnid to bay on its hind legs, threatening him with its waving arms, then, naked and triumphant, Bazo had flipped the cloth over it and swiftly bundled it into a bag.
Now he slowly but deliberately extended his own hand into the basket, and the spider raised itself higher, the wolflike mandibles chewing menacingly, and between them the single curved red fang rising from its shallow sheath, a pale droplet of venom shining upon the needlesharp tip.
There was not even the sound of breathing in the dark hut, and the soft tick and rustle of the ashes sounded deafening in the silence as they watched Bazo's open hand draw closer and closer to the creature.
Then he touched it with his fingertips and began to stroke the soft furry carapace. Slowly the spider subsided from her threatening posture, and the watchers sighed and began to breathe again.
Inkosikazi had fought five times, and five times she had killed, although in the last conflict against another huge and ferocious female she had lost one of her legs, chewed through at the elbow joint. That had been almost three months previously; but the severed limb had now regenerated itself, and the new leg was lighter coloured than the others like the fresh shoots on a rose bush.
Slowly Bazo turned his hand palm upwards and the spider scuttled up into it and crouched there, filling it completely without extending her many jointed legs.
'A queen,' he said, 'a veritable queen. 'And then, frowning, he told her, 'Henshaw would like to see you fight again.' He glanced up at Ralph, and there was a mischievous twist to his full lips.
'Go to Henshaw and tell him if you will fight or no.'
And he offered the spider to Ralph.
Ralph felt the crawling of the tiny feet of horror across his skin as he stared at the spider crouching like a hairy toad before his face.
'Come, Henshaw,'Bazo smiled. 'Talk to her.'
It was a challenge, and the watchers stirred with anticipation. If the challenge was not taken up, then their mockery would be merciless. Ralph tried to force himself to move, but his loathing was a cold nauseating lump
