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Nada the Lily

by H. Rider Haggard · English · Gutenberg #1207 · 625,267 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Nada the Lily

Author: H. Rider Haggard


        
Release date: February 1, 1998 [eBook #1207]
                Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1207

Credits: John Bickers and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NADA THE LILY ***

Nada the Lily

by H. Rider Haggard


Contents

 DEDICATION
 PREFACE
 NADA THE LILY
 INTRODUCTION

 CHAPTER I. THE BOY CHAKA PROPHESIES
 CHAPTER II. MOPO IS IN TROUBLE
 CHAPTER III. MOPO VENTURES HOME
 CHAPTER IV. THE FLIGHT OF MOPO AND BALEKA
 CHAPTER V. MOPO BECOMES THE KING’S DOCTOR
 CHAPTER VI.  THE BIRTH OF UMSLOPOGAAS
 CHAPTER VII. UMSLOPOGAAS ANSWERS THE KING
 CHAPTER VIII. THE GREAT INGOMBOCO
 CHAPTER IX. THE LOSS OF UMSLOPOGAAS
 CHAPTER X. THE TRIAL OF MOPO
 CHAPTER XI. THE COUNSEL OF BALEKA
 CHAPTER XII. THE TALE OF GALAZI THE WOLF
 CHAPTER XIII. GALAZI BECOMES KING OF THE WOLVES
 CHAPTER XIV. THE WOLF-BRETHREN
 CHAPTER XV. THE DEATH OF THE KING’S SLAYERS
 CHAPTER XVI. UMSLOPOGAAS VENTURES OUT TO WIN THE AXE
 CHAPTER XVII. UMSLOPOGAAS BECOMES CHIEF OF THE PEOPLE OF THE AXE
 CHAPTER XVIII.  THE CURSE OF BALEKA
 CHAPTER XIX. MASILO COMES TO THE KRAAL DUGUZA
 CHAPTER XX. MOPO BARGAINS WITH THE PRINCES
 CHAPTER XXI. THE DEATH OF CHAKA
 CHAPTER XXII. MOPO GOES TO SEEK THE SLAUGHTERER
 CHAPTER XXIII. MOPO REVEALS HIMSELF TO THE SLAUGHTERER
 CHAPTER XXIV. THE SLAYING OF THE BOERS
 CHAPTER XXV. THE WAR WITH THE HALAKAZI PEOPLE
 CHAPTER XXVI. THE FINDING OF NADA
 CHAPTER XXVII. THE STAMPING OF THE FIRE
 CHAPTER XXVIII. THE LILY IS BROUGHT TO DINGAAN
 CHAPTER XXIX. MOPO TELLS HIS TALE
 CHAPTER XXX. THE COMING OF NADA
 CHAPTER XXXI. THE WAR OF THE WOMEN
 CHAPTER XXXII. ZINITA COMES TO THE KING 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. THE END OF THE PEOPLE, BLACK AND GREY
 CHAPTER XXXIV. THE LILY’S FAREWELL
 CHAPTER XXXV. THE VENGEANCE OF MOPO AND HIS FOSTERLING
 CHAPTER XXXVI. MOPO ENDS HIS TALE




DEDICATION


Sompseu:

For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been honoured
by every tribe between Zambesi and Cape Agulbas,—I greet you!

Sompseu, my father, I have written a book that tells of men and matters
of which you know the most of any who still look upon the light;
therefore, I set your name within that book and, such as it is, I offer
it to you.

If you knew not Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine, you
knew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that very
Mopo who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the Princes.
You have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the unconquerable
Zulu impis rushing to war; you have crowned their kings and shared
their counsels, and with your son’s blood you have expiated a
statesman’s error and a general’s fault.

Sompseu, a song has been sung in my ears of how first you mastered this
people of the Zulu. Is it not true, my father, that for long hours you
sat silent and alone, while three thousand warriors shouted for your
life? And when they grew weary, did you not stand and say, pointing
towards the ocean: “Kill me if you wish, men of Cetywayo, but I tell
you that for every drop of my blood a hundred avengers shall rise from
yonder sea!”

Then, so it was told me, the regiments turned staring towards the Black
Water, as though the day of Ulundi had already come and they saw the
white slayers creeping across the plains.

Thus, Sompseu, your name became great among the people of the Zulu, as
already it was great among many another tribe, and their nobles did you
homage, and they gave you the _Bayéte_, the royal salute, declaring by
the mouth of their Council that in you dwelt the spirit of Chaka.

Many years have gone by since then, and now you are old, my father. It
is many years even since I was a boy, and followed you when you went up
among the Boers and took their country for the Queen.

Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth. You
did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have stamped out
the Boers. Were not Cetywayo’s impis gathered against the land, and was
it not because it became the Queen’s land that at your word he sent
them murmuring to their kraals?[1] To save bloodshed you annexed the
country beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had been better to leave it, since
“Death chooses for himself,” and after all there was killing—of our own
people, and with the killing, shame. But in those days we did not guess
what we should live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as a little
hill!

Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter, Sompseu,
you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet what does that
avail? When you have “gone beyond” it will be forgotten, since the
sting of ingratitude passes and lies must wither like the winter veldt.
Only your name will not be forgotten; as it was heard in life so it
shall be heard in story, and I pray that, however humbly, mine may pass
down with it. Chance has taken me by another path, and I must leave the
ways of action that I love and bury myself in books, but the old days
and friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I forget them
and you.

Therefore, though it be for the last time, from far across the seas I
speak to you, and lifting my hand I give your “Sibonga”[2] and that
royal salute, to which, now that its kings are gone and the “People of
Heaven” are no more a nation, with Her Majesty you are alone entitled:—

_Bayéte!_ Baba, Nkosi ya makosi!
Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!
Wen’ o wa vela wasi pata!
Wen’ o wa hlul’ izizwe zonke za patwa nguive!
Wa geina nge la Mabun’ o wa ba hlul’ u yedwa!
Umsizi we zintandane e ziblupekayo!
Si ya kuleka Baba!
_Bayéte_, T’ Sompseu![3]

and farewell!

H. RIDER HAGGARD.

To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal.
13 _September_, 1891.

 [1] “I thank my father Sompseu for his message. I am glad that he has
 sent it, because the Dutch have tired me out, and I intended to fight
 them once and once only, and to drive them over the Vaal. Kabana, you
 see my impis are gathered. It was to fight the Dutch I called them
 together; now I send them back to their homes.” —Message from Cetywayo
 to Sir. T. Shepstone, April, 1877.

 [2] Titles of praise.

 [3] _Bayéte_, Father, Chief of Chiefs!
Lion! Elephant that is not turned!
You who nursed us from of old!
You who overshadowed all peoples and took charge of them,
And ended by mastering the Boers with your single strength!
Help of the fatherless when in trouble!
Salutation to you, Father!
_Bayéte_, O Sompseu!




PREFACE


The writer of this romance has been encouraged to his task by a purpose
somewhat beyond that of setting out a wild tale of savage life. When he
was yet a lad,—now some seventeen years ago,—fortune took him to South
Africa. There he was thrown in with men who, for thirty or forty years,
had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu people, with their
history, their heroes, and their customs. From these he heard many
tales and traditions, some of which, perhaps, are rarely told nowadays,
and in time to come may cease to be told altogether. Then the Zulus
were still a nation; now that nation has been destroyed, and the chief
aim of its white rulers is to root out the warlike spirit for which it
was remarkable, and to replace it by a spirit of peaceful progress. The
Zulu military organisation, perhaps the most wonderful that the world
has seen, is already a thing of the past; it perished at Ulundi. It was
Chaka who invented that organisation, building it up from the smallest
beginnings. When he appeared at the commencement of this century, it
was as the ruler of a single small tribe; when he fell, in the year
1828, beneath the assegais of his brothers, Umhlangana and Dingaan, and
of his servant, Mopo or Umbopo, as he is called also, all south-eastern
Africa was at his feet, and in his march to power he had slaughtered
more than a million human beings. An attempt has been made in these
pages to set out the true character of this colossal genius and most
evil man,—a Napoleon and a Tiberius in one,—and also that of his
brother and successor, Dingaan, so no more need be said of them here.
The author’s aim, moreover, has been to convey, in a narrative form,
some idea of the remarkable spirit which animated these kings and their
subjects, and to make accessible, in a popular shape, incidents of
history which are now, for the most part, only to be found in a few
scarce works of reference, rarely consulted, except by students. It
will be obvious that such a task has presented difficulties, since he
who undertakes it must for a time forget his civilisation, and think
with the mind and speak with the voice of a Zulu of the old regime. All
the horrors perpetrated by the Zulu tyrants cannot be published in this
polite age of melanite and torpedoes; their details have, therefore,
been suppressed. Still much remains, and those who think it wrong that
massacre and fighting should be written of,—except by special
correspondents,—or that the sufferings of mankind beneath one of the
world’s most cruel tyrannies should form the groundwork of romance, may
be invited to leave this book unread. Most, indeed nearly all, of the
historical incidents here recorded are substantially true. Thus, it is
said that Chaka did actually kill his mother, Unandi, for the reason
given, and destroy an entire tribe in the Tatiyana cleft, and that he
prophesied of the coming of the white man after receiving his death
wounds. Of the incident of the Missionary and the furnace of logs, it
is impossible to speak so certainly. It came to the writer from the
lips of an old traveller in “the Zulu”; but he cannot discover any
confirmation of it. Still, these kings undoubtedly put their soldiers
to many tests of equal severity. Umbopo, or Mopo, as he is named in
this tale, actually lived. After he had stabbed Chaka, he rose to great
eminence. Then he disappears from the scene, but it is not accurately
known whether he also went “the way of the assegai,” or perhaps, as is
here suggested, came to live near Stanger under the name of Zweete. The
fate of the two lovers at the mouth of the cave is a true Zulu tale,
which has been considerably varied to suit the purposes of this
romance. The late Mr. Leslie, who died in 1874, tells it in his book
“Among the Zulus and Amatongas.” “I heard a story the other day,” he
says, “which, if the power of writing fiction were possessed by me, I
might have worked up into a first-class sensational novel.” It is the
story that has been woven into the plot of this book. To him also the
writer is indebted for the artifice by which Umslopogaas obtained
admission to the Swazi stronghold; it was told to Mr. Leslie by the
Zulu who performed the feat and thereby won a wife. Also the writer’s
thanks are due to his friends, Mr. F. B. Fynney,[1] late Zulu border
agent, for much information given to him in bygone years by word of
mouth, and more recently through his pamphlet “Zululand and the Zulus,”
and to Mr. John Bird, formerly treasurer to the Government of Natal,
whose compilation, “The Annals of Natal,” is invaluable to all who
would study the early history of that colony and of Zululand.

 [1] I grieve to state that I must now say the late Mr. F. B. Fynney.

As for the wilder and more romantic incidents of this story, such as
the hunting of Umslopogaas and Galazi with the wolves, or rather with
the hyaenas,—for there are no true wolves in Zululand,—the author can
only say that they seem to him of a sort that might well have been
mythically connected with the names of those heroes. Similar beliefs
and traditions are common in the records of primitive peoples. The club
“Watcher of the Fords,” or, to give its Zulu name, U-nothlola-mazibuko,
is an historical weapon, chronicled by Bishop Callaway. It was once
owned by a certain Undhlebekazizwa. He was an arbitrary person, for “no
matter what was discussed in our village, he would bring it to a
conclusion with a stick.” But he made a good end; for when the Zulu
soldiers attacked him, he killed no less than twenty of them with the
Watcher, and the spears stuck in him “as thick as reeds in a morass.”
This man’s strength was so great that he could kill a leopard “like a
fly,” with his hands only, much as Umslopogaas slew the traitor in this
story.

Perhaps it may be allowable to add a few words about the Zulu
mysticism, magic, and superstition, to which there is some allusion in
this romance. It has been little if at all exaggerated. Thus the writer
well remembers hearing a legend how the Guardian Spirit of the Ama-Zulu
was seen riding down the storm. Here is what Mr. Fynney says of her in
the pamphlet to which reference has been made: “The natives have a
spirit which they call Nomkubulwana, or the Inkosazana-ye-Zulu (the
Princess of Heaven). She is said to be robed in white, and to take the
form of a young maiden, in fact an angel. She is said to appear to some
chosen person, to whom she imparts some revelation; but, whatever that
revelation may be, it is kept a profound secret from outsiders. I
remember that, just before the Zulu war, Nomkubulwana appeared,
revealing something or other which had a great effect throughout the
land, and I know that the Zulus were quite impressed that some calamity
was about to befall them. One of the ominous signs was that fire is
said to have descended from heaven, and ignited the grass over the
graves of the former kings of Zululand. ... On another occasion
Nomkubulwana appeared to some one in Zululand, the result of that visit
being, that the native women buried their young children up to their
heads in sand, deserting them for the time being, going away weeping,
but returning at nightfall to unearth the little ones again.”

For this divine personage there is, therefore, authority, and the same
may be said of most of the supernatural matters spoken of in these
pages. The exact spiritual position held in the Zulu mind by the
Umkulunkulu,—the Old—Old,—the Great—Great,—the Lord of Heavens,—is a
more vexed question, and for its proper consideration the reader must
be referred to Bishop Callaway’s work, the “Religious System of the
Amazulu.” Briefly, Umkulunkulu’s character seems to vary from the idea
of an ancestral spirit, or the spirit of an ancestor, to that of a god.
In the case of an able and highly intelligent person like the Mopo of
this story, the ideal would probably not be a low one; therefore he is
made to speak of Umkulunkulu as the Great Spirit, or God.

It only remains to the writer to express his regret that this story is
not more varied in its hue. It would have been desirable to introduce
some gayer and more happy incidents. But it has not been possible. It
is believed that the picture given of the times is a faithful one,
though it may be open to correction in some of its details. At the
least, the aged man who tells the tale of his wrongs and vengeance
could not be expected to treat his subject in an optimistic or even in
a cheerful vein.




NADA THE LILY




INTRODUCTION


Some years since—it was during the winter before the Zulu War—a White
Man was travelling through Natal. His name does not matter, for he
plays no part in this story. With him were two wagons laden with goods,
which he was transporting to Pretoria. The weather was cold and there
was little or no grass for the oxen, which made the journey difficult;
but he had been tempted to it by the high rates of transport that
prevailed at that season of the year, which would remunerate him for
any probable loss he might suffer in cattle. So he pushed along on his
journey, and all went well until he had passed the little town of
Stanger, once the site of Duguza, the kraal of Chaka, the first Zulu
king and the uncle of Cetywayo. The night after he left Stanger the air
turned bitterly cold, heavy grey clouds filled the sky, and hid the
light of the stars.

“Now if I were not in Natal, I should say that there was a heavy fall
of snow coming,” said the White Man to himself. “I have often seen the
sky look like that in Scotland before snow.” Then he reflected that
there had been no deep snow in Natal for years, and, having drunk a
“tot” of squareface and smoked his pipe, he went to bed beneath the
after-tent of his larger wagon.

During the night he was awakened by a sense of bitter cold and the low
moaning of the oxen that were tied to the trek-tow, every ox in its
place. He thrust his head through the curtain of the tent and looked
out. The earth was white with snow, and the air was full of it, swept
along by a cutting wind.

Now he sprang up, huddling on his clothes and as he did so calling to
the Kaffirs who slept beneath the wagons. Presently they awoke from the
stupor which already was beginning to overcome them, and crept out,
shivering with cold and wrapped from head to foot in blankets.

“Quick! you boys,” he said to them in Zulu; “quick! Would you see the
cattle die of the snow and wind? Loose the oxen from the trek-tows and
drive them in between the wagons; they will give them some shelter.”
And lighting a lantern he sprang out into the snow.

At last it was done—no easy task, for the numbed hands of the Kaffirs
could scarcely loosen the frozen reins. The wagons were outspanned side
by side with a space between them, and into this space the mob of
thirty-six oxen was driven and there secured by reims tied crosswise
from the front and hind wheels of the wagons. Then the White Man crept
back to his bed, and the shivering natives, fortified with gin, or
squareface, as it is called locally, took refuge on the second wagon,
drawing a tent-sail over them.

For awhile there was silence, save for the moaning of the huddled and
restless cattle.

“If the snow goes on I shall lose my oxen,” he said to himself; “they
can never bear this cold.”

Hardly had the words passed his lips when the wagon shook; there was a
sound of breaking reims and trampling hoofs. Once more he looked out.
The oxen had “skrecked” in a mob. There they were, running away into
the night and the snow, seeking to find shelter from the cold. In a
minute they had vanished utterly. There was nothing to be done, except
wait for the morning.

At last it came, revealing a landscape blind with snow. Such search as
could be made told them nothing. The oxen had gone, and their spoor was
obliterated by the fresh-fallen flakes. The White Man called a council
of his Kaffir servants. “What was to be done?” he asked.

One said this thing, one that, but all agreed that they must wait to
act until the snow melted.

“Or till we freeze, you whose mothers were fools!” said the White Man,
who was in the worst of tempers, for had he not lost four hundred
pounds’ worth of oxen?

Then a Zulu spoke, who hitherto had remained silent. He was the driver
of the first wagon.

“My father,” he said to the White Man, “this is my word. The oxen are
lost in the snow. No man knows whither they have gone, or whether they
live or are now but hides and bones. Yet at the kraal yonder,” and he
pointed to some huts about two miles away on the hillside, “lives a
witch doctor named Zweete. He is old—very old—but he has wisdom, and he
can tell you where the oxen are if any man may, my father.”

“Stuff!” answered the White Man. “Still, as the kraal cannot be colder
than this wagon, we will go and ask Zweete. Bring a bottle of
squareface and some snuff with you for presents.”

An hour later he stood in the hut of Zweete. Before him was a very
ancient man, a mere bag of bones, with sightless eyes, and one hand—his
left—white and shrivelled.

“What do you seek of Zweete, my white father?” asked the old man in a
thin voice. “You do not believe in me and my wisdom; why should I help
you? Yet I will do it, though it is against your law, and you do wrong
to ask me,—yes, to show you that there is truth in us Zulu doctors, I
will help you. My father, I know what you seek. You seek to know where
your oxen have run for shelter from the cold! Is it not so?”

“It is so, Doctor,” answered the White Man. “You have long ears.”

“Yes, my white father, I have long ears, though they say that I grow
deaf. I have keen eyes also, and yet I cannot see your face. Let me
hearken! Let me look!”

For awhile he was silent, rocking himself to and fro, then he spoke:
“You have a farm, White Man, down near Pine Town, is it not? Ah! I
thought so—and an hour’s ride from your farm lives a Boer with four
fingers only on his right hand. There is a kloof on the Boer’s farm
where mimosa-trees grow. There, in the kloof, you shall find your
oxen—yes, five days’ journey from here you will find them all. I say
all, my father, except three only—the big black Africander ox, the
little red Zulu ox with one horn, and the speckled ox. You shall not
find these, for they have died in the snow. Send, and you will find the
others. No, no! I ask no fee! I do not work wonders for reward. Why
should I? I am rich.”

Now the White Man scoffed. But in the end, so great is the power of
superstition, he sent. And here it may be stated that on the eleventh
day of his sojourn at the kraal of Zweete, those whom he sent returned
with the oxen, except the three only. After that he scoffed no more.
Those eleven days he spent in a hut of the old man’s kraal, and every
afternoon he came and talked with him, sitting far into the night.

On the third day he asked Zweete how it was that his left hand was
white and shrivelled, and who were Umslopogaas and Nada, of whom he had
let fall some words. Then the old man told him the tale that is set out
here. Day by day he told some of it till it was finished. It is not all
written in these pages, for portions may have been forgotten, or put
aside as irrelevant. Neither has it been possible for the writer of it
to render the full force of the Zulu idiom nor to convey a picture of
the teller. For, in truth, he acted rather than told his story. Was the
death of a warrior in question, he stabbed with his stick, showing how
the blow fell and where; did the story grow sorrowful, he groaned, or
even wept. Moreover, he had many voices, one for each of the actors in
his tale. This man, ancient and withered, seemed to live again in the
far past. It was the past that spoke to his listener, telling of deeds
long forgotten, of deeds that are no more known.

Yet as he best may, the White Man has set down the substance of the
story of Zweete in the spirit in which Zweete told it. And because the
history of Nada the Lily and of those with whom her life was
intertwined moved him strangely, and in many ways, he has done more, he
has printed it that others may judge of it.

And now his part is played. Let him who was named Zweete, but who had
another name, take up the story.




CHAPTER I.
THE BOY CHAKA PROPHESIES


You ask me, my father, to tell you the tale of the youth of
Umslopogaas, holder of the iron Chieftainess, the axe Groan-maker, who
was named Bulalio the Slaughterer, and of his love for Nada, the most
beautiful of Zulu women. It is long; but you are here for many nights,
and, if I live to tell it, it shall be told. Strengthen your heart, my
father, for I have much to say that is sorrowful, and even now, when I
think of Nada the tears creep through the horn that shuts out my old
eyes from light.

Do you know who I am, my father? You do not know. You think that I am
an old, old witch-doctor named Zweete. So men have thought for many
years, but that is not my name. Few have known it, for I have kept it
locked in my breast, lest, though I live now under the law of the White
Man, and the Great Queen is my chieftainess, an assegai still might
find this heart did any know my name.

Look at this hand, my father—no, not that which is withered with fire;
look on this right hand of mine. You see it, though I who am blind
cannot. But still, within me, I see it as it was once. Ay! I see it red
and strong—red with the blood of two kings. Listen, my father; bend
your ear to me and listen. I am Mopo—ah! I felt you start; you start as
the regiment of the Bees started when Mopo walked before their ranks,
and from the assegai in his hand the blood of Chaka[1] dropped slowly
to the earth. I am Mopo who slew Chaka the king. I killed him with
Dingaan and Umhlangana the princes; but the wound was mine that his
life crept out of, and but for me he would never have been slain. I
killed him with the princes, but Dingaan, I and one other slew alone.

 [1] The Zulu Napoleon, one of the greatest geniuses and most wicked
 men who ever lived. He was killed in the year 1828, having slaughtered
 more than a million human beings.—ED.

What do you say? “Dingaan died by the Tongola.”

Yes, yes, he died, but not there; he died on the Ghost Mountain; he
lies in the breast of the old Stone Witch who sits aloft forever
waiting for the world to perish. But I also was on the Ghost Mountain.
In those days my feet still could travel fast, and vengeance would not
let me sleep. I travelled by day, and by night I found him. I and
another, we killed him—ah! ah!

Why do I tell you this? What has it to do with the loves of Umslopogaas
and Nada the Lily? I will tell you. I stabbed Chaka for the sake of my
sister, Baleka, the mother of Umslopogaas, and because he had murdered
my wives and children. I and Umslopogaas slew Dingaan for the sake of
Nada, who was my daughter.

There are great names in the story, my father. Yes, many have heard the
names: when the Impis roared them out as they charged in battle, I have
felt the mountains shake and seen the waters quiver in their sound. But
where are they now? Silence has them, and the white men write them down
in books. I opened the gates of distance for the holders of the names.
They passed through and they are gone beyond. I cut the strings that
tied them to the world. They fell off. Ha! ha! They fell off! Perhaps
they are falling still, perhaps they creep about their desolate kraals
in the skins of snakes. I wish I knew the snakes that I might crush
them with my heel. Yonder, beneath us, at the burying-place of kings,
there is a hole. In that hole lie the bones of Chaka, the king who died
for Baleka. Far away in Zululand there is a cleft upon the Ghost
Mountain. At the foot of that cleft lie the bones of Dingaan, the king
who died for Nada. It was far to fall and he was heavy; those bones of
his are broken into little pieces. I went to see them when the vultures
and the jackals had done their work. And then I laughed three times and
came here to die.

All that is long ago, and I have not died; though I wish to die and
follow the road that Nada trod. Perhaps I have lived to tell you this
tale, my father, that you may repeat it to the white men if you will.
How old am I? Nay, I do not know. Very, very old. Had Chaka lived he
would have been as old as I.[2] None are living whom I knew when I was
a boy. I am so old that I must hasten. The grass withers, and the
winter comes. Yes, while I speak the winter nips my heart. Well, I am
ready to sleep in the cold, and perhaps I shall awake again in the
spring.

 [2] This would have made him nearly a hundred years old, an age rarely
 attained by a native. The writer remembers talking to an aged Zulu
 woman, however, who told him that she was married when Chaka was
 king.—ED.

Before the Zulus were a people—for I will begin at the beginning—I was
born of the Langeni tribe. We were not a large tribe; afterwards, all
our able-bodied men numbered one full regiment in Chaka’s army, perhaps
there were between two and three thousand of them, but they were brave.
Now they are all dead, and their women and children with them,—that
people is no more. It is gone like last month’s moon; how it went I
will tell you by-and-bye.

Our tribe lived in a beautiful open country; the Boers, whom we call
the Amaboona, are there now, they tell me. My father, Makedama, was
chief of the tribe, and his kraal was built on the crest of a hill, but
I was not the son of his head wife. One evening, when I was still
little, standing as high as a man’s elbow only, I went out with my
mother below the cattle kraal to see the cows driven in. My mother was
very fond of these cows, and there was one with a white face that would
follow her about. She carried my little sister Baleka riding on her
hip; Baleka was a baby then. We walked till we met the lads driving in
the cows. My mother called the white-faced cow and gave it mealie
leaves which she had brought with her. Then the boys went on with the
cattle, but the white-faced cow stopped by my mother. She said that she
would bring it to the kraal when she came home. My mother sat down on
the grass and nursed her baby, while I played round her, and the cow
grazed. Presently we saw a woman walking towards us across the plain.
She walked like one who is tired. On her back was a bundle of mats, and
she led by the hand a boy of about my own age, but bigger and stronger
than I was. We waited a long while, till at last the woman came up to
us and sank down on the veldt, for she was very weary. We saw by the
way her hair was dressed that she was not of our tribe.

“Greeting to you!” said the woman.

“Good-morrow!” answered my mother. “What do you seek?”

“Food, and a hut to sleep in,” said the woman. “I have travelled far.”

“How are you named?—and what is your people?” asked my mother.

“My name is Unandi: I am the wife of Senzangacona, of the Zulu tribe,”
said the stranger.

Now there had been war between our people and the Zulu people, and
Senzangacona had killed some of our warriors and taken many of our
cattle. So, when my mother heard the speech of Unandi she sprang up in
anger.

“You dare to come here and ask me for food and shelter, wife of a dog
of a Zulu!” she cried; “begone, or I will call the girls to whip you
out of our country.”

The woman, who was very handsome, waited till my mother had finished
her angry words; then she looked up and spoke slowly, “There is a cow
by you with milk dropping from its udder; will you not even give me and
my boy a gourd of milk?” And she took a gourd from her bundle and held
it towards us.

“I will not,” said my mother.

“We are thirsty with long travel; will you not, then, give us a cup of
water? We have found none for many hours.”

“I will not, wife of a dog; go and seek water for yourself.”

The woman’s eyes filled with tears, but the boy folded his arms on his
breast and scowled. He was a very handsome boy, with bright black eyes,
but when he scowled his eyes were like the sky before a thunderstorm.

“Mother,” he said, “we are not wanted here any more than we were wanted
yonder,” and he nodded towards the country where the Zulu people lived.
“Let us be going to Dingiswayo; the Umtetwa people will protect us.”

“Yes, let us be going, my son,” answered Unandi; “but the path is long,
we are weary and shall fall by the way.”

I heard, and something pulled at my heart; I was sorry for the woman
and her boy, they looked so tired. Then, without saying anything to my
mother, I snatched the gourd and ran with it to a little donga that was
hard by, for I knew that there was a spring. Presently I came back with
the gourd full of water. My mother wanted to catch me, for she was very
angry, but I ran past her and gave the gourd to the boy. Then my mother
ceased trying to interfere, only she beat the woman with her tongue all
the while, saying that evil had come to our kraals from her husband,
and she felt in her heart that more evil would come upon us from her
son. Her _Ehlosé_[3] told her so. Ah! my father, her _Ehlosé_ told her
true. If the woman Unandi and her child had died that day on the veldt,
the gardens of my people would not now be a wilderness, and their bones
would not lie in the great gulley that is near U’Cetywayo’s kraal.

 [3] Guardian spirit.—ED.

While my mother talked I and the cow with the white face stood still
and watched, and the baby Baleka cried aloud. The boy, Unandi’s son,
having taken the gourd, did not offer the water to his mother. He drank
two-thirds of it himself; I think that he would have drunk it all had
not his thirst been slaked; but when he had done he gave what was left
to his mother, and she finished it. Then he took the gourd again, and
came forward, holding it in one hand; in the other he carried a short
stick.

“What is your name, boy?” he said to me as a big rich man speaks to one
who is little and poor.

“Mopo is my name,” I answered.

“And what is the name of your people?”

I told him the name of my tribe, the Langeni tribe.

“Very well, Mopo; now I will tell you my name. My name is Chaka, son of
Senzangacona, and my people are called the Amazulu. And I will tell you
something more. I am little to-day, and my people are a small people.
But I shall grow big, so big that my head will be lost in the clouds;
you will look up and you shall not see it. My face will blind you; it
will be bright like the sun; and my people will grow great with me;
they shall eat up the whole world. And when I am big and my people are
big, and we have stamped the earth flat as far as men can travel, then
I will remember your tribe—the tribe of the Langeni, who would not give
me and my mother a cup of milk when we were weary. You see this gourd;
for every drop it can hold the blood of a man shall flow—the blood of
one of your men. But because you gave me the water I will spare you,
Mopo, and you only, and make you great under me. You shall grow fat in
my shadow. You alone I will never harm, however you sin against me;
this I swear. But for that woman,” and he pointed to my mother, “let
her make haste and die, so that I do not need to teach her what a long
time death can take to come. I have spoken.” And he ground his teeth
and shook his stick towards us.

My mother stood silent awhile. Then she gasped out: “The little liar!
He speaks like a man, does he? The calf lows like a bull. I will teach
him another note—the brat of an evil prophet!” And putting down Baleka,
she ran at the boy.

Chaka stood quite still till she was near; then suddenly he lifted the
stick in his hand, and hit her so hard on the head that she fell down.
After that he laughed, turned, and went away with his mother Unandi.

These, my father, were the first words I heard Chaka speak, and they
were words of prophecy, and they came true. The last words I heard him
speak were words of prophecy also, and I think that they will come
true. Even now they are coming true. In the one he told how the Zulu
people should rise. And say, have they not risen? In the other he told
how they should fall; and they did fall. Do not the white men gather
themselves together even now against U’Cetywayo, as vultures gather
round a dying ox? The Zulus are not what they were to stand against
them. Yes, yes, they will come true, and mine is the song of a people
that is doomed.

But of these other words I will speak in their place.

I went to my mother. Presently she raised herself from the ground and
sat up with her hands over her face. The blood from the wound the stick
had made ran down her face on to her breast, and I wiped it away with
grass. She sat for a long while thus, while the child cried, the cow
lowed to be milked, and I wiped up the blood with the grass. At last
she took her hands away and spoke to me.

“Mopo, my son,” she said, “I have dreamed a dream. I dreamed that I saw
the boy Chaka who struck me: he was grown like a giant. He stalked
across the mountains and the veldt, his eyes blazed like the lightning,
and in his hand he shook a little assegai that was red with blood. He
caught up people after people in his hands and tore them, he stamped
their kraals flat with his feet. Before him was the green of summer,
behind him the land was black as when the fires have eaten the grass. I
saw our people, Mopo; they were many and fat, their hearts laughed, the
men were brave, the girls were fair; I counted their children by the
hundreds. I saw them again, Mopo. They were bones, white bones,
thousands of bones tumbled together in a rocky place, and he, Chaka,
stood over the bones and laughed till the earth shook. Then, Mopo, in
my dream, I saw you grown a man. You alone were left of our people. You
crept up behind the giant Chaka, and with you came others, great men of
a royal look. You stabbed him with a little spear, and he fell down and
grew small again; he fell down and cursed you. But you cried in his ear
a name—the name of Baleka, your sister—and he died. Let us go home,
Mopo, let us go home; the darkness falls.”

So we rose and went home. But I held my peace, for I was afraid, very
much afraid.




CHAPTER II.
MOPO IS IN TROUBLE


Now, I must tell how my mother did what the boy Chaka had told her, and
died quickly. For where his stick had struck her on the forehead there
came a sore that would not be healed, and in the sore grew an abscess,
and the abscess ate inwards till it came to the brain. Then my mother
fell down and died, and I cried very much, for I loved her, and it was
dreadful to see her cold and stiff, with not a word to say however
loudly I called to her. Well, they buried my mother, and she was soon
forgotten. I only remembered her, nobody else did—not even Baleka, for
she was too little—and as for my father he took another young wife and
was content. After that I was unhappy, for my brothers did not love me,
because I was much cleverer than they, and had greater skill with the
assegai, and was swifter in running; so they poisoned the mind of my
father against me and he treated me badly. But Baleka and I loved each
other, for we were both lonely, and she clung to me like a creeper to
the only tree in a plain, and though I was young, I learned this: that
to be wise is to be strong, for though he who holds the assegai kills,
yet he whose mind directs the battle is greater than he who kills. Now
I saw that the witch-finders and the medicine-men were feared in the
land, and that everybody looked up to them, so that, even when they had
only a stick in their hands, ten men armed with spears would fly before
them. Therefore I determined that I should be a witch-doctor, for they
alone can kill those whom they hate with a word. So I learned the arts
of the medicine-men. I made sacrifices, I fasted in the veldt alone, I
did all those things of which you have heard, and I learned much; for
there is wisdom in our magic as well as lies—and you know it, my
father, else you had not come here to ask me about your lost oxen.

So things went on till I was twenty years of age—a man full grown. By
now I had mastered all I could learn by myself, so I joined myself on
to the chief medicine-man of our tribe, who was named Noma. He was old,
had one eye only, and was very clever. Of him I learned some tricks and
more wisdom, but at last he grew jealous of me and set a trap to catch
me. As it chanced, a rich man of a neighbouring tribe had lost some
cattle, and came with gifts to Noma praying him to smell them out. Noma
tried and could not find them; his vision failed him. Then the headman
grew angry and demanded back his gifts; but Noma would not give up that
which he once had held, and hot words passed. The headman said that he
would kill Noma; Noma said that he would bewitch the headman.

“Peace,” I said, for I feared that blood would be shed. “Peace, and let
me see if my snake will tell me where the cattle are.”

“You are nothing but a boy,” answered the headman. “Can a boy have
wisdom?”

“That shall soon be known,” I said, taking the bones in my hand.[1]

 [1] The Kafir witch-doctors use the knuckle-bones of animals in their
 magic rites, throwing them something as we throw dice.—ED.

“Leave the bones alone!” screamed Noma. “We will ask nothing more of
our snakes for the good of this son of a dog.”

“He shall throw the bones,” answered the headman. “If you try to stop
him, I will let sunshine through you with my assegai.” And he lifted
his spear.

Then I made haste to begin; I threw the bones. The headman sat on the
ground before me and answered my questions. You know of these matters,
my father—how sometimes the witch-doctor has knowledge of where the
lost things are, for our ears are long, and sometimes his _Ehlosé_
tells him, as but the other day it told me of your oxen. Well, in this
case, my snake stood up. I knew nothing of the man’s cattle, but my
Spirit was with me and soon I saw them all, and told them to him one by
one, their colour, their age—everything. I told him, too, where they
were, and how one of them had fallen into a stream and lay there on its
back drowned, with its forefoot caught in a forked root. As my _Ehlosé_
told me so I told the headman.

Now, the man was pleased, and said that if my sight was good, and he
found the cattle, the gifts should be taken from Noma and given to me;
and he asked the people who were sitting round, and there were many, if
this was not just. “Yes, yes,” they said, it was just, and they would
see that it was done. But Noma sat still and looked at me evilly. He
knew that I had made a true divination, and he was very angry. It was a
big matter: the herd of cattle were many, and, if they were found where
I had said, then all men would think me the greater wizard. Now it was
late, and the moon had not yet risen, therefore the headman said that
he would sleep that night in our kraal, and at the first light would go
with me to the spot where I said the cattle were. After that he went
away.

I too went into my hut and lay down to sleep. Suddenly I awoke, feeling
a weight upon my breast. I tried to start up, but something cold
pricked my throat. I fell back again and looked. The door of the hut
was open, the moon lay low on the sky like a ball of fire far away. I
could see it through the door, and its light crept into the hut. It
fell upon the face of Noma the witch-doctor. He was seated across me,
glaring at me with his one eye, and in his hand was a knife. It was
that which I had felt prick my throat.

“You whelp whom I have bred up to tear me!” he hissed into my ear, “you
dared to divine where I failed, did you? Very well, now I will show you
how I serve such puppies. First, I will pierce through the root of your
tongue, so that you cannot squeal, then I will cut you to pieces
slowly, bit by bit, and in the morning I will tell the people that the
spirits did it because you lied. Next, I will take off your arms and
legs. Yes, yes, I will make you like a stick! Then I will”—and he began
driving in the knife under my chin.

“Mercy, my uncle,” I said, for I was frightened and the knife hurt.
“Have mercy, and I will do whatever you wish!”

“Will you do this?” he asked, still pricking me with the knife. “Will
you get up, go to find the dog’s cattle and drive them to a certain
place, and hide them there?” And he named a secret valley that was
known to very few. “If you do that, I will spare you and give you three
of the cows. If you refuse or play me false, then, by my father’s
spirit, I will find a way to kill you!”

“Certainly I will do it, my uncle,” I answered. “Why did you not trust
me before? Had I known that you wanted to keep the cattle, I would
never have smelt them out. I only did so fearing lest you should lose
the presents.”

“You are not so wicked as I thought,” he growled. “Get up, then, and do
my bidding. You can be back here two hours after dawn.”

So I got up, thinking all the while whether I should try to spring on
him. But I was without arms, and he had the knife; also if, by chance,
I prevailed and killed him, it would have been thought that I had
murdered him, and I should have tasted the assegai. So I made another
plan. I would go and find the cattle in the valley where I had smelt
them out, but I would not bring them to the secret hiding-place. No; I
would drive them straight to the kraal, and denounce Noma before the
chief, my father, and all the people. But I was young in those days,
and did not know the heart of Noma. He had not been a witch-doctor till
he grew old for nothing. Oh! he was evil!—he was cunning as a jackal,
and fierce like a lion. He had planted me by him like a tree, but he
meant to keep me clipped like a bush. Now I had grown tall and
overshadowed him; therefore he would root me up.

I went to the corner of my hut, Noma watching me all the while, and
took a kerrie and my small shield. Then I started through the
moonlight. Till I was past the kraal I glided along quietly as a
shadow. After that, I began to run, singing to myself as I went, to
frighten away the ghosts, my father.

For an hour I travelled swiftly over the plain, till I came to the
hillside where the bush began. Here it was very dark under the shade of
the trees, and I sang louder than ever. At last I found the little
buffalo path I sought, and turned along it. Presently I came to an open
place, where the moonlight crept in between the trees. I knelt down and
looked. Yes! my snake had not lied to me; there was the spoor of the
cattle. Then I went on gladly till I reached a dell through which the
water ran softly, sometimes whispering and sometimes talking out loud.
Here the trail of the cattle was broad: they had broken down the ferns
with their feet and trampled the grass. Presently I came to a pool. I
knew it—it was the pool my snake had shown me. And there at the edge of
the pool floated the drowned ox, its foot caught in a forked root. All
was just as I had seen it in my heart.

I stepped forward and looked round. My eye caught something; it was the
faint grey light of the dawn glinted on the cattle’s horns. As I
looked, one of them snorted, rose and shook the dew from his hide. He
seemed big as an elephant in the mist and twilight.

Then I collected them all—there were seventeen—and drove them before me
down the narrow path back towards the kraal. Now the daylight came
quickly, and the sun had been up an hour when I reached the spot where
I must turn if I wished to hide the cattle in the secret place, as Noma
had bid me. But I would not do this. No, I would go on to the kraal
with them, and tell all men that Noma was a thief. Still, I sat down
and rested awhile, for I was tired. As I sat, I heard a noise, and
looked up. There, over the slope of the rise, came a crowd of men, and
leading them was Noma, and by his side the headman who owned the
cattle. I rose and stood still, wondering; but as I stood, they ran
towards me shouting and waving sticks and spears.

“There he is!” screamed Noma. “There he is!—the clever boy whom I have
brought up to bring shame on me. What did I tell you? Did I not tell
you that he was a thief? Yes—yes! I know your tricks, Mopo, my child!
See! he is stealing the cattle! He knew where they were all the time,
and now he is taking them away to hide them. They would be useful to
buy a wife with, would they not, my clever boy?” And he made a rush at
me, with his stick lifted, and after him came the headman, grunting
with rage.

I understood now, my father. My heart went mad in me, everything began
to swim round, a red cloth seemed to lift itself up and down before my
eyes. I have always seen it thus when I was forced to fight. I screamed
out one word only, “Liar!” and ran to meet him. On came Noma. He struck
at me with his stick, but I caught the blow upon my little shield, and
hit back. Wow! I did hit! The skull of Noma met my kerrie, and down he
fell dead at my feet. I yelled again, and rushed on at the headman. He
threw an assegai, but it missed me, and next second I hit him too. He
got up his shield, but I knocked it down upon his head, and over he
rolled senseless. Whether he lived or died I do not know, my father;
but his head being of the thickest, I think it likely that he lived.
Then, while the people stood astonished, I turned and fled like the
wind. They turned too, and ran after me, throwing spears at me and
trying to cut me off. But none of them could catch me—no, not one. I
went like the wind; I went like a buck when the dogs wake it from
sleep; and presently the sound of their chase grew fainter and fainter,
till at last I was out of sight and alone.




CHAPTER III.
MOPO VENTURES HOME


I threw myself down on the grass and panted till my breath came back;
then I went and hid in a patch of reeds down by a swamp. All day long I
lay there thinking. What was I to do? Now I was a jackal without a
hole. If I went back to my people, certainly they would kill me, whom
they thought a thief. My blood would be given for Noma’s, and that I
did not wish, though my heart was sad. Then there came into my mind the
thought of Chaka, the boy to whom I had given the cup of water long
ago. I had heard of him: his name was known in the land; already the
air was big with it; the very trees and grass spoke it. The words he
had said and the vision that my mother had seen were beginning to come
true. By the help of the Umtetwas he had taken the place of his father
Senzangacona; he had driven out the tribe of the Amaquabe; now he made
war on Zweete, chief of the Endwande, and he had sworn that he would
stamp the Endwande flat, so that nobody could find them any more. Now I
remembered how this Chaka promised that he would make me great, and
that I should grow fat in his shadow; and I thought to myself that I
would arise and go to him. Perhaps he would kill me; well, what did it
matter? Certainly I should be killed if I stayed here. Yes, I would go.
But now my heart pulled another way. There was but one whom I loved in
the world—it was my sister Baleka. My father had betrothed her to the
chief of a neighbouring tribe, but I knew that this marriage was
against her wish. Perhaps my sister would run away with me if I could
get near her to tell her that I was going. I would try—yes, I would
try.

I waited till the darkness came down, then I rose from my bed of weeds
and crept like a jackal towards the kraal. In the mealie gardens I
stopped awhile, for I was very hungry, and filled myself with the
half-ripe mealies. Then I went on till I came to the kraal. Some of my
people were seated outside of a hut, talking together over a fire. I
crept near, silently as a snake, and hid behind a little bush. I knew
that they could not see me outside the ring of the firelight, and I
wanted to hear what they said. As I guessed, they were talking of me
and called me many names. They said that I should bring ill-luck on the
tribe by having killed so great a witch-doctor as Noma; also that the
people of the headman would demand payment for the assault on him. I
learned, moreover, that my father had ordered out all the men of the
tribe to hunt for me on the morrow and to kill me wherever they found
me. “Ah!” I thought, “you may hunt, but you will bring nothing home to
the pot.” Just then a dog that was lying by the fire got up and began
to sniff the air. I could not see what dog it was—indeed, I had
forgotten all about the dogs when I drew near the kraal; that is what
comes of want of experience, my father. The dog sniffed and sniffed,
then he began to growl, looking always my way, and I grew afraid.

“What is the dog growling at?” said one man to another. “Go and see.”
But the other man was taking snuff and did not like to move. “Let the
dog go and see for himself,” he answered, sneezing, “what is the good
of keeping a dog if you have to catch the thief?”

“Go on, then,” said the first man to the dog. And he ran forward,
barking. Then I saw him: it was my own dog, Koos, a very good dog.
Presently, as I lay not knowing what to do, he smelt my smell, stopped
barking, and running round the bush he found me and began to lick my
face. “Be quiet, Koos!” I whispered to him. And he lay down by my side.

“Where has that dog gone now?” said the first man. “Is he bewitched,
that he stops barking suddenly and does not come back?”

“We will see,” said the other, rising, a spear in his hand.

Now once more I was terribly afraid, for I thought that they would
catch me, or I must run for my life again. But as I sprang up to run, a
big black snake glided between the men and went off towards the huts.
They jumped aside in a great fright, then all of them turned to follow
the snake, saying that this was what the dog was barking at. That was
my good _Ehlosé_, my father, which without any doubt took the shape of
a snake to save my life.

When they had gone I crept off the other way, and Koos followed me. At
first I thought that I would kill him, lest he should betray me; but
when I called to him to knock him on the head with my kerrie, he sat
down upon the ground wagging his tail, and seemed to smile in my face,
and I could not do it. So I thought that I would take my chance, and we
went on together. This was my purpose: first to creep into my own hut
and get my assegais and a skin blanket, then to gain speech with
Baleka. My hut, I thought, would be empty, for nobody sleeps there
except myself, and the huts of Noma were some paces away to the right.
I came to the reed fence that surrounded the huts. Nobody was to be
seen at the gate, which was not shut with thorns as usual. It was my
duty to close it, and I had not been there to do so. Then, bidding the
dog lie down outside, I stepped through boldly, reached the door of my
hut, and listened. It was empty; there was not even a breath to be
heard. So I crept in and began to search for my assegais, my
water-gourd, and my wood pillow, which was so nicely carved that I did
not like to leave it. Soon I found them. Then I felt about for my skin
rug, and as I did so my hand touched something cold. I started, and
felt again. It was a man’s face—the face of a dead man, of Noma, whom I
had killed and who had been laid in my hut to await burial. Oh! then I
was frightened, for Noma dead and in the dark was worse than Noma
alive. I made ready to fly, when suddenly I heard the voices of women
talking outside the door of the hut. I knew the voices; they were those
of Noma’s two wives, and one of them said she was coming in to watch by
her husband’s body. Now I was in a trap indeed, for before I could do
anything I saw the light go out of a hole in the hut, and knew by the
sound of a fat woman puffing as she bent herself up that Noma’s first
wife was coming through it. Presently she was in, and, squatting by the
side of the corpse in such a fashion that I could not get to the door,
she began to make lamentations and to call down curses on me. Ah! she
did not know that I was listening. I too squatted by Noma’s head, and
grew quick-witted in my fear. Now that the woman was there I was not so
much afraid of the dead man, and I remembered, too, that he had been a
great cheat; so I thought I would make him cheat for the last time. I
placed my hands beneath his shoulders and pushed him up so that he sat
upon the ground. The woman heard the noise and made a sound in her
throat.

“Will you not be quiet, you old hag?” I said in Noma’s voice. “Can you
not let me be at peace, even now when I am dead?”

She heard, and, falling backwards in fear, drew in her breath to shriek
aloud.

“What! will you also dare to shriek?” I said again in Noma’s voice;
“then I must teach you silence.” And I tumbled him over on to the top
of her.

Then her senses left her, and whether she ever found them again I do
not know. At least she grew quiet for that time. For me, I snatched up
the rug—afterwards I found it was Noma’s best kaross, made by Basutos
of chosen cat-skins, and worth three oxen—and I fled, followed by Koos.

Now the kraal of the chief, my father, Makedama, was two hundred paces
away, and I must go thither, for there Baleka slept. Also I dared not
enter by the gate, because a man was always on guard there. So I cut my
way through the reed fence with my assegai and crept to the hut where
Baleka was with some of her half-sisters. I knew on which side of the
hut it was her custom to lie, and where her head would be. So I lay
down on my side and gently, very gently, began to bore a hole in the
grass covering of the hut. It took a long while, for the thatch was
thick, but at last I was nearly through it. Then I stopped, for it came
into my mind that Baleka might have changed her place, and that I might
wake the wrong girl. I almost gave it over, thinking that I would fly
alone, when suddenly I heard a girl wake and begin to cry on the other
side of the thatch. “Ah,” I thought, “that is Baleka, who weeps for her
brother!” So I put my lips where the thatch was thinnest and
whispered:—

“Baleka, my sister! Baleka, do not weep! I, Mopo, am here. Say not a
word, but rise. Come out of the hut, bringing your skin blanket.”

Now Baleka was very clever: she did not shriek, as most girls would
have done. No; she understood, and, after waiting awhile, she rose and
crept from the hut, her blanket in her hand.

“Why are you here, Mopo?” she whispered, as we met. “Surely you will be
killed!”

“Hush!” I said. And then I told her of the plan which I had made. “Will
you come with me?” I said, when I had done, “or will you creep back
into the hut and bid me farewell?”

She thought awhile, then she said, “No, my brother, I will come, for I
love you alone among our people, though I believe that this will be the
end of it—that you will lead me to my death.”

I did not think much of her words at the time, but afterwards they came
back to me. So we slipped away together, followed by the dog Koos, and
soon we were running over the veldt with our faces set towards the
country of the Zulu tribe.




CHAPTER IV.
THE FLIGHT OF MOPO AND BALEKA


All the rest of that night we journeyed, till even the dog was tired.
Then we hid in a mealie field for the day, as we were afraid of being
seen. Towards the afternoon we heard voices, and, looking through the
stems of the mealies, we saw a party of my father’s men pass searching
for us. They went on to a neighbouring kraal to ask if we had been
seen, and after that we saw them no more for awhile. At night we
travelled again; but, as fate would have it, we were met by an old
woman, who looked oddly at us but said nothing. After that we pushed on
day and night, for we knew that the old woman would tell the pursuers
if she met them; and so indeed it came about. On the third evening we
reached some mealie gardens, and saw that they had been trampled down.
Among the broken mealies we found the body of a very old man, as full
of assegai wounds as a porcupine with quills. We wondered at this, and
went on a little way. Then we saw that the kraal to which the gardens
belonged was burnt down. We crept up to it, and—ah! it was a sad sight
for us to see! Afterwards we became used to such sights. All about us
lay the bodies of dead people, scores of them—old men, young men,
women, children, little babies at the breast—there they lay among the
burnt huts, pierced with assegai wounds. Red was the earth with their
blood, and red they looked in the red light of the setting sun. It was
as though all the land had been smeared with the bloody hand of the
Great Spirit, of the Umkulunkulu. Baleka saw it and began to cry; she
was weary, poor girl, and we had found little to eat, only grass and
green corn.

“An enemy has been here,” I said, and as I spoke I thought that I heard
a groan from the other side of a broken reed hedge. I went and looked.
There lay a young woman: she was badly wounded, but still alive, my
father. A little way from her lay a man dead, and before him several
other men of another tribe: he had died fighting. In front of the woman
were the bodies of three children; another, a little one, lay on her
body. I looked at the woman, and, as I looked, she groaned again,
opened her eyes and saw me, and that I had a spear in my hand.

“Kill me quickly!” she said. “Have you not tortured me enough?”

I said that I was a stranger and did not want to kill her.

“Then bring me water,” she said; “there is a spring there behind the
kraal.”

I called to Baleka to come to the woman, and went with my gourd to the
spring. There were bodies in it, but I dragged them out, and when the
water had cleared a little I filled the gourd and brought it back to
the woman. She drank deep, and her strength came back a little—the
water gave her life.

“How did you come to this?” I asked.

“It was an impi of Chaka, Chief of the Zulus, that ate us up,” she
answered. “They burst upon as at dawn this morning while we were asleep
in our huts. Yes, I woke up to hear the sound of killing. I was
sleeping by my husband, with him who lies there, and the children. We
all ran out. My husband had a spear and shield. He was a brave man.
See! he died bravely: he killed three of the Zulu devils before he
himself was dead. Then they caught me, and killed my children, and
stabbed me till they thought that I was dead. Afterwards, they went
away. I don’t know why they came, but I think it was because our chief
would not send men to help Chaka against Zweete.”

She stopped, gave a great cry, and died.

My sister wept at the sight, and I too was stirred by it. “Ah!” I
thought to myself, “the Great Spirit must be evil. If he is not evil
such things would not happen.” That is how I thought then, my father;
now I think differently. I know that we had not found out the path of
the Great Spirit, that is all. I was a chicken in those days, my
father; afterwards I got used to such sights. They did not stir me any
more, not one whit. But then in the days of Chaka the rivers ran
blood—yes, we had to look at the water to see if it was clean before we
drank. People learned how to die then and not make a noise about it.
What does it matter? They would have been dead now anyway. It does not
matter; nothing matters, except being born. That is a mistake, my
father.

We stopped at the kraal that night, but we could not sleep, for we
heard the _Itongo_, the ghosts of the dead people, moving about and
calling to each other. It was natural that they should do so; men were
looking for their wives, and mothers for their children. But we were
afraid that they might be angry with us for being there, so we clung
together and trembled in each other’s arms. Koos also trembled, and
from time to time he howled loudly. But they did not seem to see us,
and towards morning their cries grew fainter.

When the first light came we rose and picked our way through the dead
down to the plain. Now we had an easy road to follow to Chaka’s kraal,
for there was the spoor of the impi and of the cattle which they had
stolen, and sometimes we came to the body of a warrior who had been
killed because his wounds prevented him from marching farther. But now
I was doubtful whether it was wise for us to go to Chaka, for after
what we had seen I grew afraid lest he should kill us. Still, we had
nowhere to turn, so I said that we would walk along till something
happened. Now we grew faint with hunger and weariness, and Baleka said
that we had better sit down and die, for then there would be no more
trouble. So we sat down by a spring. But I did not wish to die yet,
though Baleka was right, and it would have been well to do so. As we
sat, the dog Koos went to a bush that was near, and presently I heard
him spring at something and the sound of struggling. I ran to the
bush—he had caught hold of a duiker buck, as big as himself, that was
asleep in it. Then I drove my spear into the buck and shouted for joy,
for here was food. When the buck was dead I skinned him, and we took
bits of the flesh, washed them in the water, and ate them, for we had
no fire to cook them with. It is not nice to eat uncooked flesh, but we
were so hungry that we did not mind, and the food refreshed us. When we
had eaten what we could, we rose and washed ourselves at the spring;
but, as we washed, Baleka looked up and gave a cry of fear. For there,
on the crest of the hill, about ten spear-throws away, was a party of
six armed men, people of my own tribe—children of my father
Makedama—who still pursued us to take us or kill us. They saw us—they
raised a shout, and began to run. We too sprang up and ran—ran like
bucks, for fear had touched our feet.

Now the land lay thus. Before us the ground was open and sloped down to
the banks of the White Umfolozi, which twisted through the plain like a
great and shining snake. On the other side the ground rose again, and
we did not know what was beyond, but we thought that in this direction
lay the kraal of Chaka. We ran for the river—where else were we to run?
And after us came the warriors. They gained on us; they were strong,
and they were angry because they had come so far. Run as we would,
still they gained. Now we neared the banks of the river; it was full
and wide. Above us the waters ran angrily, breaking into swirls of
white where they passed over sunken rocks; below was a rapid, in which
none might live; between the two a deep pool, where the water was quiet
but the stream strong.

“Ah! my brother, what shall we do?” gasped Baleka.

“There is this to choose,” I answered; “perish on the spears of our
people or try the river.”

“Easier to die by water than on iron,” she answered.

“Good!” I said. “Now may our snakes look towards us and the spirits of
our fathers be with us! At the least we can swim.” And I led her to the
head of the pool. We threw away our blankets—everything except an
assegai, which I held in my teeth—and we plunged in, wading as far as
we could. Now we were up to our breasts; now we had lost the earth and
were swimming towards the middle of the river, the dog Koos leading the
way.

Then it was that the soldiers appeared upon the bank. “Ah! little
people,” one cried, “you swim, do you? Well, you will drown; and if you
do not drown we know a ford, and we will catch you and kill you—yes! if
we must run over the edge of the world after you we will catch you.”
And he hurled an assegai after us, which fell between us like a flash
of light.

While he spoke we swam hard, and now we were in the current. It swept
us downwards, but still we made way, for we could swim well. It was
just this: if we could reach the bank before we were swept into the
rapids we were safe; if not, then—good-night! Now we were near the
other side, but, alas! we were also near the lip of the foaming water.
We strained, we struggled. Baleka was a brave girl, and she swam
bravely; but the water pushed her down below me, and I could do nothing
to help her. I got my foot upon the rock and looked round. There she
was, and eight paces from her the broken water boiled. I could not go
back. I was too weak, and it seemed that she must perish. But the dog
Koos saw. He swam towards her, barking, then turned round, heading for
the shore. She grasped him by the tail with her right hand. Then he put
out his strength—he was very strong. She too struck out with her feet
and left hand, and slowly—very slowly—drew near. Then I stretched out
the handle of my assegai towards her. She caught it with her left hand.
Already her feet were over the brink of the rapids, but I pulled and
Koos pulled, and we brought her safe into the shallows, and from the
shallows to the bank, and there she fell gasping.

Now when the soldiers on the other bank saw that we had crossed, they
shouted threats at us, then ran away down the bank.

“Arise, Baleka!” I said: “they have gone to see a ford.”

“Ah, let me die!” she answered.

But I forced her to rise, and after awhile she got her breath again,
and we walked on as fast as we could up the long rise. For two hours we
walked, or more, till at last we came to the crest of the rise, and
there, far away, we saw a large kraal.

“Keep heart,” I said. “See, there is the kraal of Chaka.”

“Yes, brother,” she answered, “but what waits us there? Death is behind
us and before us—we are in the middle of death.”

Presently we came to a path that ran to the kraal from the ford of the
Umfolozi. It was by it that the Impi had travelled. We followed the
path till at last we were but half an hour’s journey from the kraal.
Then we looked back, and lo! there behind us were the pursuers—five of
them—one had drowned in crossing the river.

Again we ran, but now we were weak, and they gained upon us. Then once
more I thought of the dog. He was fierce and would tear any one on whom
I set him. I called him and told him what to do, though I knew that it
would be his death. He understood, and flew towards the soldiers
growling, his hair standing up on his spine. They tried to kill him
with spears and kerries, but he jumped round them, biting at them, and
kept them back. At last a man hit him, and he sprang up and seized the
man by the throat. There he clung, man and dog rolling over and over
together, till the end of it was that they both died. Ah! he was a dog!
We do not see such dogs nowadays. His father was a Boer hound, the
first that came into the country. That dog once killed a leopard all by
himself. Well, this was the end of Koos!

Meanwhile, we had been running. Now we were but three hundred paces
from the gate of the kraal, and there was something going on inside it;
that we could see from the noise and the dust. The four soldiers,
leaving the dead dog and the dying man, came after us swiftly. I saw
that they must catch us before we reached the gate, for now Baleka
could go but slowly. Then a thought came into my head. I had brought
her here, I would save her life if I could. Should she reach the kraal
without me, Chaka would not kill a girl who was so young and fair.

“Run on, Baleka! run on!” I said, dropping behind. Now she was almost
blind with weariness and terror, and, not seeing my purpose, staggered
towards the gate of the kraal. But I sat down on the veldt to get my
breath again, for I was about to fight four men till I was killed. My
heart beat and the blood drummed in my ears, but when they drew near
and I rose—the assegai in my hand—once more the red cloth seemed to go
up and down before my eyes, and all fear left me.

The men were running, two and two, with the length of a spear throw
between them. But of the first pair one was five or six paces in front
of the other. This man shouted out loud and charged me, shield and
spear up. Now I had no shield—nothing but the assegai; but I was crafty
and he was overbold. On he came. I stood waiting for him till he drew
back the spear to stab me. Then suddenly I dropped to my knees and
thrust upward with all my strength, beneath the rim of his shield, and
he also thrust, but over me, his spear only cutting the flesh of my
shoulder—see! here is its scar; yes, to this day. And my assegai? Ah!
it went home; it ran through and through his middle. He rolled over and
over on the plain. The dust hid him; only I was now weaponless, for the
haft of my spear—it was but a light throwing assegai—broke in two,
leaving nothing but a little bit of stick in my hand. And the other one
was upon me. Then in the darkness I saw a light. I fell on to my hands
and knees and flung myself over sideways. My body struck the legs of
the man who was about to stab me, lifting his feet from beneath him.
Down he came heavily. Before he had touched the ground I was off it.
His spear had fallen from his hand. I stooped, seized it, and as he
rose I stabbed him through the back. It was all done in the shake of a
leaf, my father; in the shake of a leaf he also was dead. Then I ran,
for I had no stomach for the other two; my valour was gone.

About a hundred paces from me Baleka was staggering along with her arms
out like one who has drunk too much beer. By the time I caught her she
was some forty paces from the gate of the kraal. But then her strength
left her altogether. Yes! there she fell senseless, and I stood by her.
And there, too, I should have been killed, had not this chanced, since
the other two men, having stayed one instant by their dead fellows,
came on against me mad with rage. For at that moment the gate of the
kraal opened, and through it ran a party of soldiers dragging a
prisoner by the arms. After them walked a great man, who wore a leopard
skin on his shoulders, and was laughing, and with him were five or six
ringed councillors, and after them again came a company of warriors.

The soldiers saw that killing was going on, and ran up just as the
slayers reached us.

“Who are you?” they cried, “who dare to kill at the gate of the
Elephant’s kraal? Here the Elephant kills alone.”

“We are of the children of Makedama,” they answered, “and we follow
these evildoers who have done wickedness and murder in our kraal. See!
but now two of us are dead at their hands, and others lie dead along
the road. Suffer that we slay them.”

“Ask that of the Elephant,” said the soldiers; “ask too that he suffer
you should not be slain.”

Just then the tall chief saw blood and heard words. He stalked up; and
he was a great man to look at, though still quite young in years. For
he was taller by a head than any round him, and his chest was big as
the chests of two; his face was fierce and beautiful, and when he grew
angry his eye flashed like a smitten brand.

“Who are these that dare to stir up dust at the gates of my kraal?” he
asked, frowning.

“O Chaka, O Elephant!” answered the captain of the soldiers, bending
himself double before him, “the men say that these are evildoers and
that they pursue them to kill them.”

“Good!” he answered. “Let them slay the evildoers.”

“O great chief! thanks be to thee, great chief!” said those men of my
people who sought to kill us.

“I hear you,” he answered, then spoke once more to the captain. “And
when they have slain the evildoers, let themselves be blinded and
turned loose to seek their way home, because they have dared to lift a
spear within the Zulu gates. Now praise on, my children!” And he
laughed, while the soldiers murmured, “_Ou!_ he is wise, he is great,
his justice is bright and terrible like the sun!”

But the two men of my people cried out in fear, for they did not seek
such justice as this.

“Cut out their tongues also,” said Chaka. “What? shall the land of the
Zulus suffer such a noise? Never! lest the cattle miscarry. To it, ye
black ones! There lies the girl. She is asleep and helpless. Kill her!
What? you hesitate? Nay, then, if you will have time for thought, I
give it. Take these men, smear them with honey, and pin them over
ant-heaps; by to-morrow’s sun they will know their own minds. But first
kill these two hunted jackals,” and he pointed to Baleka and myself.
“They seem tired and doubtless they long for sleep.”

Then for the first time I spoke, for the soldiers drew near to slay us.

“O Chaka,” I cried, “I am Mopo, and this is my sister Baleka.”

I stopped, and a great shout of laughter went up from all who stood
round.

“Very well, Mopo and thy sister Baleka,” said Chaka, grimly.
“Good-morning to you, Mopo and Baleka—also, good-night!”

“O Chaka,” I broke in, “I am Mopo, son of Makedama of the Langeni
tribe. It was I who gave thee a gourd of water many years ago, when we
were both little. Then thou badest me come to thee when thou hadst
grown great, vowing that thou wouldst protect me and never do me harm.
So I have come, bringing my sister with me; and now, I pray thee, do
not eat up the words of long ago.”

As I spoke, Chaka’s face changed, and he listened earnestly, as a man
who holds his hand behind his ear. “Those are no liars,” he said.
“Welcome, Mopo! Thou shalt be a dog in my hut, and feed from my hand.
But of thy sister I said nothing. Why, then, should she not be slain
when I swore vengeance against all thy tribe, save thee alone?”

“Because she is too fair to slay, O Chief!” I answered, boldly; “also
because I love her, and ask her life as a boon!”

“Turn the girl over,” said Chaka. And they did so, showing her face.

“Again thou speakest no lie, son of Makedama,” said the chief. “I grant
thee the boon. She also shall lie in my hut, and be of the number of my
‘sisters.’ Now tell me thy tale, speaking only the truth.”

So I sat down and told him all. Nor did he grow weary of listening.
But, when I had done, he said but one thing—that he would that the dog
Koos had not been killed; since, if he had still been alive, he would
have set him on the hut of my father Makedama, and made him chief over
the Langeni.

Then he spoke to the captain of the soldiers. “I take back my words,”
he said. “Let not these men of the Langeni be mutilated. One shall die
and the other shall go free. Here,” and he pointed to the man whom we
had seen led out of the kraal-gate, “here, Mopo, we have a man who has
proved himself a coward. Yesterday a kraal of wizards yonder was eaten
up by my order—perhaps you two saw it as you travelled. This man and
three others attacked a soldier of that kraal who defended his wife and
children. The man fought well—he slew three of my people. Then this dog
was afraid to meet him face to face. He killed him with a throwing
assegai, and afterwards he stabbed the woman. That is nothing; but he
should have fought the husband hand to hand. Now I will do him honour.
He shall fight to the death with one of these pigs from thy sty,” and
he pointed with his spear to the men of my father’s kraal, “and the one
who survives shall be run down as they tried to run you down. I will
send back the other pig to the sty with a message. Choose, children of
Makedama, which of you will live.”

Now the two men of my tribe were brothers, and loved one another, and
each of them was willing to die that the other might go free.
Therefore, both of them stepped forward, saying that they would fight
the Zulu.

“What, is there honour among pigs?” said Chaka. “Then I will settle it.
See this assegai? I throw it into the air; if the blade falls uppermost
the tall man shall go free; if the shaft falls uppermost, then life is
to the short one, so!” And he sent the little spear whirling round and
round in the air. Every eye watched it as it wheeled and fell. The haft
struck the ground first.

“Come hither, thou,” said Chaka to the tall brother. “Hasten back to
the kraal of Makedama, and say to him, Thus says Chaka, the Lion of the
Zulu-ka-Malandela, ‘Years ago thy tribe refused me milk. To-day the dog
of thy son Mopo howls upon the roof of thy hut.’ Begone!”[1]

 [1] Among the Zulus it is a very bad omen for a dog to climb the roof
 of a hut. The saying conveyed a threat to be appreciated by every
 Zulu.—ED.

The man turned, shook his brother by the hand, and went, bearing the
words of evil omen.

Then Chaka called to the Zulu and the last of those who had followed us
to kill us, bidding them fight. So, when they had praised the prince
they fought fiercely, and the end of it was that the man of my people
conquered the Zulu. But as soon as he had found his breath again he was
set to run for his life, and after him ran five chosen men.

Still, it came about that he outran them, doubling like a hare, and got
away safely. Nor was Chaka angry at this; for I think that he bade the
men who hunted him to make speed slowly. There was only one good thing
in the cruel heart of Chaka, that he would always save the life of a
brave man if he could do so without making his word nothing. And for my
part, I was glad to think that the man of my people had conquered him
who murdered the children of the dying woman that we found at the kraal
beyond the river.




CHAPTER V.
MOPO BECOMES THE KING’S DOCTOR


These, then, my father, were the events that ended in the coming of me,
Mopo, and of my sister Baleka to the kraal of Chaka, the Lion of the
Zulu. Now you may ask why have I kept you so long with this tale, which
is as are other tales of our people. But that shall be seen, for from
these matters, as a tree from a seed, grew the birth of Umslopogaas
Bulalio, Umslopogaas the Slaughterer, and Nada the Beautiful, of whose
love my story has to tell. For Nada was my daughter, and Umslopogaas,
though few knew it, was none other than the son of Chaka, born of my
sister Baleka.

Now when Baleka recovered from the weariness of our flight, and had her
beauty again, Chaka took her to wife, numbering her among his women,
whom he named his “sisters.” And me Chaka took to be one of his
doctors, of his _izinyanga_ of medicine, and he was so well pleased
with my medicine that in the end I became his head doctor. Now this was
a great post, in which, during the course of years, I grew fat in
cattle and in wives; but also it was one of much danger. For when I
rose strong and well in the morning, I could never know but that at
night I should sleep stiff and red. Many were the doctors whom Chaka
slew; doctored they never so well, they were killed at last. For a day
would surely come when the king felt ill in his body or heavy in his
mind, and then to the assegai or the torment with the wizard who had
doctored him! Yet I escaped, because of the power of my medicine, and
also because of that oath which Chaka had sworn to me as a child. So it
came about that where the king went there I went with him. I slept near
his hut, I sat behind him at council, in the battle I was ever at his
side.

Ah! the battle! the battle! In those days we knew how to fight, my
father! In those days the vultures would follow our impis by thousands,
the hyenas would steal along our path in packs, and none went empty
away. Never may I forget the first fight I stood in at the side of
Chaka. It was just after the king had built his great kraal on the
south bank of the Umhlatuze. Then it was that the chief Zwide attacked
his rival Chaka for the third time and Chaka moved out to meet him with
ten full regiments,[1] now for the first time armed with the short
stabbing-spear.

 [1] About 30,000 men.—ED.

The ground lay thus: On a long, low hill in front of our impi were
massed the regiments of Zwide; there were seventeen of them; the earth
was black with their number; their plumes filled the air like snow. We,
too, were on a hill, and between us lay a valley down which there ran a
little stream. All night our fires shone out across the valley; all
night the songs of soldiers echoed down the hills. Then the grey
dawning came, the oxen lowed to the light, the regiments arose from
their bed of spears; they sprang up and shook the dew from hair and
shield—yes! they arose! the glad to die! The impi assumed its array
regiment by regiment. There was the breast of spears, there were the
horns of spears, they were numberless as the stars, and like the stars
they shone. The morning breeze came up and fanned them, their plumes
bent in the breeze; like a plain of seeding grass they bent, the plumes
of the soldiers ripe for the assegai. Up over the shoulder of the hill
came the sun of Slaughter; it glowed red upon the red shields, red grew
the place of killing; the white plumes of the chiefs were dipped in the
blood of heaven. They knew it; they saw the omen of death, and, ah!
they laughed in the joy of the waking of battle. What was death? Was it
not well to die on the spear? What was death? Was it not well to die
for the king? Death was the arms of Victory. Victory would be their
bride that night, and oh! her breast is fair.

Hark! the war-song, the Ingomo, the music of which has the power to
drive men mad, rose far away to the left, and was thrown along from
regiment to regiment—a rolling ball of sound—

We are the king’s kine, bred to be butchered,
    You, too, are one of us!
We are the Zulu, children of the Lion,
    What! did you tremble?

Suddenly Chaka was seen stalking through the ranks, followed by his
captains, his indunas, and by me. He walked along like a great buck;
death was in his eyes, and like a buck he sniffed the air, scenting the
air of slaughter. He lifted his assegai, and a silence fell; only the
sound of chanting still rolled along the hills.

“Where are the children of Zwide?” he shouted, and his voice was like
the voice of a bull.

“Yonder, father,” answered the regiments. And every spear pointed
across the valley.

“They do not come,” he shouted again. “Shall we then sit here till we
grow old?”

“No, father,” they answered. “Begin! begin!”

“Let the Umkandhlu regiment come forward!” he shouted a third time, and
as he spoke the black shields of the Umkandhlu leaped from the ranks of
the impi.

“Go, my children!” cried Chaka. “There is the foe. Go and return no
more!”

“We hear you, father!” they answered with one voice, and moved down the
slope like a countless herd of game with horns of steel.

Now they crossed the stream, and now Zwide awoke. A murmur went through
his companies; lines of light played above his spears.

_Ou!_ they are coming! _Ou!_ they have met! Hearken to the thunder of
the shields! Hearken to the song of battle!

To and fro they swing. The Umkandhlu gives way—it flies! They pour back
across the stream—half of them; the rest are dead. A howl of rage goes
up from the host, only Chaka smiles.

“Open up! open up!” he cries. “Make room for the Umkandhlu _girls!_”
And with hanging heads they pass us.

Now he whispers a word to the indunas. The indunas run; they whisper to
Menziwa the general and to the captains; then two regiments rush down
the hill, two more run to the right, and yet another two to the left.
But Chaka stays on the hill with the three that are left. Again comes
the roar of the meeting shields. Ah! these are men: they fight, they do
not run. Regiment after regiment pours upon them, but still they stand.
They fall by hundreds and by thousands, but no man shows his back, and
on each man there lie two dead. _Wow!_ my father, of those two
regiments not one escaped. They were but boys, but they were the
children of Chaka. Menziwa was buried beneath the heaps of his
warriors. Now there are no such men.

They are all dead and quiet. Chaka still holds his hand! He looks to
the north and to the south. See! spears are shining among the trees.
Now the horns of our host close upon the flanks of the foe. They slay
and are slain, but the men of Zwide are many and brave, and the battle
turns against us.

Then again Chaka speaks a word. The captains hear, the soldiers stretch
out their necks to listen.

It has come at last. “_Charge! Children of the Zulu!_”

There is a roar, a thunder of feet, a flashing of spears, a bending of
plumes, and, like a river that has burst its banks, like storm-clouds
before the gale, we sweep down upon friend and foe. They form up to
meet us; the stream is passed; our wounded rise upon their haunches and
wave us on. We trample them down. What matter? They can fight no more.
Then we meet Zwide rushing to greet us, as bull meets bull. _Ou!_ my
father, I know no more. Everything grows red. That fight! that fight!
We swept them away. When it was done there was nothing to be seen, but
the hillside was black and red. Few fled; few were left to fly. We
passed over them like fire; we ate them up. Presently we paused,
looking for the foe. All were dead. The host of Zwide was no more. Then
we mustered. Ten regiments had looked upon the morning sun; three
regiments saw the sun sink; the rest had gone where no suns shine.

Such were our battles in the days of Chaka!

You ask of the Umkandhlu regiment which fled. I will tell you. When we
reached our kraal once more, Chaka summoned that regiment and mustered
it. He spoke to them gently, gently. He thanked them for their service.
He said it was natural that “_girls_” should faint at the sight of
blood and turn to seek their kraals. Yet he had bid them come back no
more and they had come back! What then was there now left for him to
do? And he covered his face with his blanket. Then the soldiers killed
them all, nearly two thousand of them—killed them with taunts and
jeers.

That is how we dealt with cowards in those days, my father. After that,
one Zulu was a match for five of any other tribe. If ten came against
him, still he did not turn his back. “Fight and fall, but fly not,”
that was our watchword. Never again while Chaka lived did a conquered
force pass the gates of the king’s kraal.

That fight was but one war out of many. With every moon a fresh impi
started to wash its spears, and came back few and thin, but with
victory and countless cattle. Tribe after tribe went down before us.
Those of them who escaped the assegai were enrolled into fresh
regiments, and thus, though men died by thousands every month, yet the
army grew. Soon there were no other chiefs left. Umsuduka fell, and
after him Mancengeza. Umzilikazi was driven north; Matiwane was stamped
flat. Then we poured into this land of Natal. When we entered, its
people could not be numbered. When we left, here and there a man might
be found in a hole in the earth—that was all. Men, women, and children,
we wiped them out; the land was clean of them. Next came the turn of
U’Faku, chief of the Amapondos. Ah! where is U’Faku now?

And so it went on and on, till even the Zulus were weary of war and the
sharpest assegais grew blunt.




CHAPTER VI.
THE BIRTH OF UMSLOPOGAAS


This was the rule of the life of Chaka, that he would have no children,
though he had many wives. Every child born to him by his “sisters” was
put away at once.

“What, Mopo,” he said to me, “shall I rear up children to put me to the
assegai when they grow great? They call me tyrant. Say, how do those
chiefs die whom men name tyrants? They die at the hands of those whom
they have bred. Nay, Mopo, I will rule for my life, and when I join the
spirits of my fathers let the strongest take my power and my place!”

Now it chanced that shortly after Chaka had spoken thus, my sister
Baleka, the king’s wife, fell in labour; and on that same day my wife
Macropha was brought to bed of twins, and this but eight days after my
second wife, Anadi, had given birth to a son. You ask, my father, how I
came to be married, seeing that Chaka forbade marriage to all his
soldiers till they were in middle life and had put the man’s ring upon
their heads. It was a boon he granted me as _inyanga_ of medicine,
saying it was well that a doctor should know the sicknesses of women
and learn how to cure their evil tempers. As though, my father, that
were possible!

When the king heard that Baleka was sick he did not kill her outright,
because he loved her a little, but he sent for me, commanding me to
attend her, and when the child was born to cause its body to be brought
to him, according to custom, so that he might be sure that it was dead.
I bent to the earth before him, and went to do his bidding with a heavy
heart, for was not Baleka my sister? and would not her child be of my
own blood? Still, it must be so, for Chaka’s whisper was as the shout
of other kings, and, if we dared to disobey, then our lives and the
lives of all in our kraals would answer for it. Better that an infant
should die than that we should become food for jackals. Presently I
came to the _Emposeni_, the place of the king’s wives, and declared the
king’s word to the soldiers on guard. They lowered their assegais and
let me pass, and I entered the hut of Baleka. In it were others of the
king’s wives, but when they saw me they rose and went away, for it was
not lawful that they should stay where I was. Thus I was left alone
with my sister.

For awhile she lay silent, and I did not speak, though I saw by the
heaving of her breast that she was weeping.

“Hush, little one!” I said at length; “your sorrow will soon be done.”

“Nay,” she answered, lifting her head, “it will be but begun. Oh, cruel
man! I know the reason of your coming. You come to murder the babe that
shall be born of me.”

“It is the king’s word, woman.”

“It is the king’s word, and what is the king’s word? Have I, then,
naught to say in this matter?”

“It is the king’s child, woman.”

“It is the king’s child, and it is not also my child? Must my babe be
dragged from my breast and be strangled, and by you, Mopo? Have I not
loved you, Mopo? Did I not flee with you from our people and the
vengeance of our father? Do you know that not two moons gone the king
was wroth with you because he fell sick, and would have caused you to
be slain had I not pleaded for you and called his oath to mind? And
thus you pay me: you come to kill my child, my first-born child!”

“It is the king’s word, woman,” I answered sternly; but my heart was
split in two within me.

Then Baleka said no more, but, turning her face to the wall of the hut,
she wept and groaned bitterly.

Now, as she wept I heard a stir without the hut, and the light in the
doorway was darkened. A woman entered alone. I looked round to see who
it was, then fell upon the ground in salutation, for before me was
Unandi, mother of the king, who was named “Mother of the Heavens,” that
same lady to whom my mother had refused the milk.

“Hail, Mother of the Heavens!” I said.

“Greeting, Mopo,” she answered. “Say, why does Baleka weep? Is it
because the sorrow of women is upon her?”

“Ask of her, great chieftainess,” I said.

Then Baleka spoke: “I weep, mother of a king, because this man, who is
my brother, has come from him who is my lord and thy son, to murder
that which shall be born of me. O thou whose breasts have given suck,
plead for me! Thy son was not slain at birth.”

“Perhaps it were well if he had been so slain, Baleka,” said Unandi;
“then had many another man lived to look upon the sun who is now dead.”

“At the least, as an infant he was good and gentle, and thou mightest
love him, Mother of the Zulu.”

“Never, Baleka! As a babe he bit my breast and tore my hair; as the man
is so was the babe.”

“Yet may his child be otherwise, Mother of the Heavens! Think, thou
hast no grandson to comfort thee in thy age. Wilt thou, then, see all
thy stock wither? The king, our lord, lives in war. He too may die, and
what then?”

“Then the root of Senzangacona is still green. Has the king no
brothers?”

“They are not of thy flesh, mother. What? thou dost not hearken! Then
as a woman to woman I plead with thee. Save my child or slay me with my
child!”

Now the heart of Unandi grew gentle, and she was moved to tears.

“How may this be done, Mopo?” she said. “The king must see the dead
infant, and if he suspect, and even reeds have ears, you know the heart
of Chaka and where we shall lie to-morrow.”

“Are there then no other new-born babes in Zululand?” said Baleka,
sitting up and speaking in a whisper like the hiss of a snake. “Listen,
Mopo! Is not your wife also in labour? Now hear me, Mother of the
Heavens, and, my brother, hear me also. Do not think to play with me in
this matter. I will save my child or you twain will perish with it. For
I will tell the king that you came to me, the two of you, and whispered
plots into my ear—plots to save the child and kill the king. Now
choose, and swiftly!”

She sank bank, there was silence, and we looked one upon another. Then
Unandi spoke.

“Give me your hand, Mopo, and swear that you will be faithful to me in
this secret, as I swear to you. A day may come when this child who has
not seen the light rules as king in Zululand, and then in reward you
shall be the greatest of the people, the king’s voice, whisperer in the
king’s ear. But if you break your oath, then beware, for I shall not
die alone!”

“I swear, Mother of the Heavens,” I answered.

“It is well, son of Makedama.”

“It is well, my brother,” said Baleka. “Now go and do that which must
be done swiftly, for my sorrow is upon me. Go, knowing that if you fail
I will be pitiless, for I will bring you to your death, yes, even if my
own death is the price!”

So I went. “Whither do you go?” asked the guard at the gate.

“I go to bring my medicines, men of the king,” I answered.

So I said; but, oh! my heart was heavy, and this was my plan—to fly far
from Zululand. I could not, and I dared not do this thing. What? should
I kill my own child that its life might be given for the life of the
babe of Baleka? And should I lift up my will against the will of the
king, saving the child to look upon the sun which he had doomed to
darkness? Nay, I would fly, leaving all, and seek out some far tribe
where I might begin to live again. Here I could not live; here in the
shadow of Chaka was nothing but death.

I reached my own huts, there to find that my wife Macropha was
delivered of twins. I sent away all in the hut except my other wife,
Anadi, she who eight days gone had borne me a son. The second of the
twins was born; it was a boy, born dead. The first was a girl, she who
lived to be Nada the Beautiful, Nada the Lily. Then a thought came into
my heart. Here was a path to run on.

“Give me the boy,” I said to Anadi. “He is not dead. Give him to me
that I may take him outside the kraal and wake him to life by my
medicine.”

“It is of no use—the child is dead,” said Anadi.

“Give him to me, woman!” I said fiercely. And she gave me the body.

Then I took him and wrapped him up in my bundle of medicines, and
outside of all I rolled a mat of plaited grass.

“Suffer none to enter the hut till I return,” I said; “and speak no
word of the child that seems to be dead. If you allow any to enter, or
if you speak a word, then my medicine will not work and the babe will
be dead indeed.”

So I went, leaving the women wondering, for it is not our custom to
save both when twins are born; but I ran swiftly to the gates of the
_Emposeni_.

“I bring the medicines, men of the king!” I said to the guards.

“Pass in,” they answered.

I passed through the gates and into the hut of Baleka. Unandi was alone
in the hut with my sister.

“The child is born,” said the mother of the king. “Look at him, Mopo,
son of Makedama!”

I looked. He was a great child with large black eyes like the eyes of
Chaka the king; and Unandi, too, looked at me. “Where is it?” she
whispered.

I loosed the mat and drew the dead child from the medicines, glancing
round fearfully as I did so.

“Give me the living babe,” I whispered back.

They gave it to me and I took of a drug that I knew and rubbed it on
the tongue of the child. Now this drug has the power to make the tongue
it touches dumb for awhile. Then I wrapped up the child in my medicines
and again bound the mat about the bundle. But round the throat of the
still-born babe I tied a string of fibre as though I had strangled it,
and wrapped it loosely in a piece of matting.

Now for the first time I spoke to Baleka: “Woman,” I said, “and thou
also, Mother of the Heavens, I have done your wish, but know that
before all is finished this deed shall bring about the death of many.
Be secret as the grave, for the grave yawns for you both.”

I went again, bearing the mat containing the dead child in my right
hand. But the bundle of medicines that held the living one I fastened
across my shoulders. I passed out of the _Emposeni_, and, as I went, I
held up the bundle in my right hand to the guards, showing them that
which was in it, but saying nothing.

“It is good,” they said, nodding.

But now ill-fortune found me, for just outside the _Emposeni_ I met
three of the king’s messengers.

“Greeting, son of Makedama!” they said. “The king summons you to the
_Intunkulu_”—that is the royal house, my father.

“Good!” I answered. “I will come now; but first I would run to my own
place to see how it goes with Macropha, my wife. Here is that which the
king seeks,” and I showed them the dead child. “Take it to him if you
will.”

“That is not the king’s command, Mopo,” they answered. “His word is
that you should stand before him at once.”

Now my heart turned to water in my breast. Kings have many ears. Could
he have heard? And how dared I go before the Lion bearing his living
child hidden on my back? Yet to waver was to be lost, to show fear was
to be lost, to disobey was to be lost.

“Good! I come,” I answered. And we walked to the gate of the
_Intunkulu_.

It was sundown. Chaka was sitting in the little courtyard in front of
his hut. I went down on my knees before him and gave the royal salute,
_Bayéte_, and so I stayed.

“Rise, son of Makedama!” he said.

“I cannot rise, Lion of the Zulu,” I answered, “I cannot rise, having
royal blood on my hands, till the king has pardoned me.”

“Where is it?” he asked.

I pointed to the mat in my hand.

“Let me look at it.”

Then I undid the mat, and he looked on the child, and laughed aloud.

“He might have been a king,” he said, as he bade a councillor take it
away. “Mopo, thou hast slain one who might have been a king. Art thou
not afraid?”

“No, Black One,” I answered, “the child is killed by order of one who
is a king.”

“Sit down, and let us talk,” said Chaka, for his mood was idle.
“To-morrow thou shalt have five oxen for this deed; thou shalt choose
them from the royal herd.”

“The king is good; he sees that my belt is drawn tight; he satisfies my
hunger. Will the king suffer that I go? My wife is in labour and I
would visit her.”

“Nay, stay awhile; say how it is with Baleka, my sister and thine?”

“It is well.”

“Did she weep when you took the babe from her?”

“Nay, she wept not. She said, ‘My lord’s will is my will.’”

“Good! Had she wept she had been slain also. Who was with her?”

“The Mother of the Heavens.”

The brow of Chaka darkened. “Unandi, my mother, what did she there? By
myself I swear, though she is my mother—if I thought”—and he ceased.

There was a silence, then he spoke again. “Say, what is in that mat?”
and he pointed with his little assegai at the bundle on my shoulders.

“Medicine, king.”

“Thou dost carry enough to doctor an impi. Undo the mat and let me look
at it.”

“Now, my father, I tell you that the marrow melted in my bones with
terror, for if I undid the mat I feared he must see the child and
then—”

“It is _tagati_, it is bewitched, O king. It is not wise to look on
medicine.”

“Open!” he answered angrily. “What? may I not look at that which I am
forced to swallow—I, who am the first of doctors?”

“Death is the king’s medicine,” I answered, lifting the bundle, and
laying it as far from him in the shadow of the fence as I dared. Then I
bent over it, slowly undoing the rimpis with which it was tied, while
the sweat of terror ran down my face blinding me like tears. What would
I do if he saw the child? What if the child awoke and cried? I would
snatch the assegai from his hand and stab him! Yes, I would kill the
king and then kill myself! Now the mat was unrolled. Inside were the
brown leaves and roots of medicine; beneath them was the senseless babe
wrapped in dead moss.

“Ugly stuff,” said the king, taking snuff. “Now see, Mopo, what a good
aim I have! This for thy medicine!” And he lifted his assegai to throw
it through the bundle. But as he threw, my snake put it into the king’s
heart to sneeze, and thus it came to pass that the assegai only pierced
the outer leaves of the medicine, and did not touch the child.

“May the heavens bless the king!” I said, according to custom.

“Thanks to thee, Mopo, it is a good omen,” he answered. “And now,
begone! Take my advice: kill thy children, as I kill mine, lest they
live to worry thee. The whelps of lions are best drowned.”

I did up the bundle fast—fast, though my hands trembled. Oh! what if
the child should wake and cry. It was done; I rose and saluted the
king. Then I doubled myself up and passed from before him. Scarcely was
I outside the gates of the _Intunkulu_ when the infant began to squeak
in the bundle. If it had been one minute before!

“What,” said a soldier, as I passed, “have you got a puppy hidden under
your moocha,[1] Mopo?”

 [1] Girdle composed of skin and tails of oxen.-ED.

I made no answer, but hurried on till I came to my huts. I entered;
there were my two wives alone.

“I have recovered the child, women,” I said, as I undid the bundle.

Anadi took him and looked at him.

“The boy seems bigger than he was,” she said.

“The breath of life has come into him and puffed him out,” I answered.

“His eyes are not as his eyes were,” she said again. “Now they are big
and black, like the eyes of the king.”

“My spirit looked upon his eyes and made them beautiful,” I answered.

“This child has a birth-mark on his thigh,” she said a third time.
“That which I gave you had no mark.”

“I laid my medicine there,” I answered.

“It is not the same child,” she said sullenly. “It is a changeling who
will lay ill-luck at our doors.”

Then I rose up in my rage and cursed her heavily, for I saw that if she
was not stopped this woman’s tongue would bring us all to ruin.

“Peace, witch!” I cried. “How dare you to speak thus from a lying
heart? Do you wish to draw down a curse upon our roof? Would you make
us all food for the king’s spear? Say such words again, and you shall
sit within the circle—the _Ingomboco_ shall know you for a witch!”

So I stormed on, threatening to bring her to death, till at length she
grew fearful, and fell at my feet praying for mercy and forgiveness.
But I was much afraid because of this woman’s tongue, and not without
reason.




CHAPTER VII.
UMSLOPOGAAS ANSWERS THE KING


Now the years went on, and this matter slept. Nothing more was heard of
it, but still it only slept; and, my father, I feared greatly for the
hour when it should awake. For the secret was known by two
women—Unandi, Mother of the Heavens, and Baleka, my sister, wife of the
king; and by two more—Macropha and Anadi, my wives—it was guessed at.
How, then, should it remain a secret forever? Moreover, it came about
that Unandi and Baleka could not restrain their fondness for this child
who was called my son and named Umslopogaas, but who was the son of
Chaka, the king, and of Baleka, and the grandson of Unandi. So it
happened that very often one or the other of them would come into my
hut, making pretence to visit my wives, and take the boy upon her lap
and fondle it. In vain did I pray them to forbear. Love pulled at their
heart-strings more heavily than my words, and still they came. This was
the end of it—that Chaka saw the child sitting on the knee of Unandi,
his mother.

“What does my mother with that brat of thine, Mopo?” he asked of me.
“Cannot she kiss me, if she will find a child to kiss?” And he laughed
like a wolf.

I said that I did not know, and the matter passed over for awhile. But
after that Chaka caused his mother to be watched. Now the boy
Umslopogaas grew great and strong; there was no such lad of his years
for a day’s journey round. But from a babe he was somewhat surly, of
few words, and like his father, Chaka, afraid of nothing. In all the
world there were but two people whom he loved—these were I, Mopo, who
was called his father, and Nada, she who was said to be his twin
sister.

Now it must be told of Nada that as the boy Umslopogaas was the
strongest and bravest of children, so the girl Nada was the gentlest
and most fair. Of a truth, my father, I believe that her blood was not
all Zulu, though this I cannot say for certain. At the least, her eyes
were softer and larger than those of our people, her hair longer and
less tightly curled, and her skin was lighter—more of the colour of
pure copper. These things she had from her mother, Macropha; though she
was fairer than Macropha—fairer, indeed, than any woman of my people
whom I have seen. Her mother, Macropha, my wife, was of Swazi blood,
and was brought to the king’s kraal with other captives after a raid,
and given to me as a wife by the king. It was said that she was the
daughter of a Swazi headman of the tribe of the Halakazi, and that she
was born of his wife is true, but whether he was her father I do not
know; for I have heard from the lips of Macropha herself, that before
she was born there was a white man staying at her father’s kraal. He
was a Portuguese from the coast, a handsome man, and skilled in the
working of iron. This white man loved the mother of my wife, Macropha,
and some held that Macropha was his daughter, and not that of the Swazi
headman. At least I know this, that before my wife’s birth the Swazi
killed the white man. But none can tell the truth of these matters, and
I only speak of them because the beauty of Nada was rather as is the
beauty of the white people than of ours, and this might well happen if
her grandfather chanced to be a white man.

Now Umslopogaas and Nada were always together. Together they ate,
together they slept and wandered; they thought one thought and spoke
with one tongue. _Ou!_ it was pretty to see them! Twice while they were
still children did Umslopogaas save the life of Nada.

The first time it came about thus. The two children had wandered far
from the kraal, seeking certain berries that little ones love. On they
wandered and on, singing as they went, till at length they found the
berries, and ate heartily. Then it was near sundown, and when they had
eaten they fell asleep. In the night they woke to find a great wind
blowing and a cold rain falling on them, for it was the beginning of
winter, when fruits are ripe.

“Up, Nada!” said Umslopogaas, “we must seek the kraal or the cold will
kill us.”

So Nada rose, frightened, and hand in hand they stumbled through the
darkness. But in the wind and the night they lost their path, and when
at length the dawn came they were in a forest that was strange to them.
They rested awhile, and finding berries ate them, then walked again.
All that day they wandered, till at last the night came down, and they
plucked branches of trees and piled the branches over them for warmth,
and they were so weary that they fell asleep in each other’s arms. At
dawn they rose, but now they were very tired and berries were few, so
that by midday they were spent. Then they lay down on the side of a
steep hill, and Nada laid her head upon the breast of Umslopogaas.

“Here let us die, my brother,” she said.

But even then the boy had a great spirit, and he answered, “Time to
die, sister, when Death chooses us. See, now! Do you rest here, and I
will climb the hill and look across the forest.”

So he left her and climbed the hill, and on its side he found many
berries and a root that is good for food, and filled himself with them.
At length he came to the crest of the hill and looked out across the
sea of green. Lo! there, far away to the east, he saw a line of white
that lay like smoke against the black surface of a cliff, and knew it
for the waterfall beyond the royal town. Then he came down the hill,
shouting for joy and bearing roots and berries in his hand. But when he
reached the spot where Nada was, he found that her senses had left her
through hunger, cold, and weariness. She lay upon the ground like one
asleep, and over her stood a jackal that fled as he drew nigh. Now it
would seem that there were but two shoots to the stick of Umslopogaas.
One was to save himself, and the other to lie down and die by Nada. Yet
he found a third, for, undoing the strips of his moocha, he made ropes
of them, and with the ropes he bound Nada on his back and started for
the king’s kraal. He could never have reached it, for the way was long,
yet at evening some messengers running through the forest came upon a
naked lad with a girl bound to his back and a staff in his hand, who
staggered along slowly with starting eyes and foam upon his lips. He
could not speak, he was so weary, and the ropes had cut through the
skin of his shoulders; yet one of the messengers knew him for
Umslopogaas, the son of Mopo, and they bore him to the kraal. They
would have left the girl Nada, thinking her dead, but he pointed to her
breast, and, feeling it, they found that her heart still beat, so they
brought her also; and the end of it was that both recovered and loved
each other more than ever before.

Now after this, I, Mopo, bade Umslopogaas stay at home within the
kraal, and not lead his sister to the wilds. But the boy loved roaming
like a fox, and where he went there Nada followed. So it came about
that one day they slipped from the kraal when the gates were open, and
sought out a certain deep glen which had an evil name, for it was said
that spirits haunted it and put those to death who entered there.
Whether this was true I do not know, but I know that in the glen dwelt
a certain woman of the woods, who had her habitation in a cave and
lived upon what she could kill or steal or dig up with her hands. Now
this woman was mad. For it had chanced that her husband had been “smelt
out” by the witch-doctors as a worker of magic against the king, and
slain. Then Chaka, according to custom, despatched the slayers to eat
up his kraal, and they came to the kraal and killed his people. Last of
all they killed his children, three young girls, and would have
assegaied their mother, when suddenly a spirit entered into her at the
sight, and she went mad, so that they let her go, being afraid to touch
her afterwards. So she fled and took up her abode in the haunted glen;
and this was the nature of her madness, that whenever she saw children,
and more especially girl children, a longing came upon her to kill them
as her own had been killed. This, indeed, she did often, for when the
moon was full and her madness at its highest, she would travel far to
find children, snatching them away from the kraals like a hyena. Still,
none would touch her because of the spirit in her, not even those whose
children she had murdered.

So Umslopogaas and Nada came to the glen where the child-slayer lived,
and sat down by a pool of water not far from the mouth of her cave,
weaving flowers into a garland. Presently Umslopogaas left Nada, to
search for rock lilies which she loved. As he went he called back to
her, and his voice awoke the woman who was sleeping in her cave, for
she came out by night only, like a jackal. Then the woman stepped
forth, smelling blood and having a spear in her hand. Presently she saw
Nada seated upon the grass weaving flowers, and crept towards her to
kill her. Now as she came—so the child told me—suddenly a cold wind
seemed to breathe upon Nada, and fear took hold of her, though she did
not see the woman who would murder her. She let fall the flowers, and
looked before her into the pool, and there, mirrored in the pool, she
saw the greedy face of the child-slayer, who crept down upon her from
above, her hair hanging about her brow and her eyes shining like the
eyes of a lion.

Then with a cry Nada sprang up and fled along the path which
Umslopogaas had taken, and after her leapt and ran the mad woman.
Umslopogaas heard her cry. He turned and rushed back over the brow of
the hill, and, lo! there before him was the murderess. Already she had
grasped Nada by the hair, already her spear was lifted to pierce her.
Umslopogaas had no spear, he had nothing but a little stick without a
knob; yet with it he rushed at the mad woman and struck her so smartly
on the arm that she let go of the girl and turned on him with a yell.
Then, lifting her spear, she struck at him, but he leapt aside. Again
she struck; but he sprang into the air, and the spear passed beneath
him. A third time the woman struck, and, though he fell to earth to
avoid the blow, yet the assegai pierced his shoulder. But the weight of
his body as he fell twisted it from her hand, and before she could
grasp him he was up, and beyond her reach, the spear still fast in his
shoulder.

Then the woman turned, screaming with rage and madness, and ran at Nada
to kill her with her hands. But Umslopogaas set his teeth, and, drawing
the spear from his wound, charged her, shouting. She lifted a great
stone and hurled it at him—so hard that it flew into fragments against
another stone which it struck; yet he charged on, and smote at her so
truly that he drove the spear through her, and she fell down dead.
After that Nada bound up his wound, which was deep, and with much pain
he reached the king’s kraal and told me this story.

Now there were some who cried that the boy must be put to death,
because he had killed one possessed with a spirit. But I said no, he
should not be touched. He had killed the woman in defence of his own
life and the life of his sister; and every one had a right to slay in
self-defence, except as against the king or those who did the king’s
bidding. Moreover, I said, if the woman had a spirit, it was an evil
one, for no good spirit would ask the lives of children, but rather
those of cattle, for it is against our custom to sacrifice human beings
to the _Amatonga_ even in war, though the Basuta dogs do so. Still, the
tumult grew, for the witch-doctors were set upon the boy’s death,
saying that evil would come of it if he was allowed to live, having
killed one inspired, and at last the matter came to the ears of the
king. Then Chaka summoned me and the boy before him, and he also
summoned the witch-doctors.

First, the witch-doctors set out their case, demanding the death of
Umslopogaas. Chaka asked them what would happen if the boy was not
killed. They answered that the spirit of the dead woman would lead him
to bring evil on the royal house. Chaka asked if he would bring evil on
him, the king. They in turn asked the spirits, and answered no, not on
him, but on one of the royal house who should be after him. Chaka said
that he cared nothing what happened to those who came after him, or
whether good or evil befell them. Then he spoke to Umslopogaas, who
looked him boldly in the face, as an equal looks at an equal.

“Boy,” he said, “what hast thou to say as to why thou shouldst not be
killed as these men demand?”

“This, Black One,” answered Umslopogaas; “that I stabbed the woman in
defence of my own life.”

“That is nothing,” said Chaka. “If I, the king, wished to kill thee,
mightest thou therefore kill me or those whom I sent? The _Itongo_ in
the woman was a Spirit King and ordered her to kill thee; thou shouldst
then have let thyself be killed. Hast thou no other reason?”

“This, Elephant,” answered Umslopogaas; “the woman would have murdered
my sister, whom I love better than my life.”

“That is nothing,” said Chaka. “If I ordered thee to be killed for any
cause, should I not also order all within thy gates to be killed with
thee? May not, then, a Spirit King do likewise? If thou hast nothing
more to say thou must die.”

Now I grew afraid, for I feared lest Chaka should slay him who was
called my son because of the word of the doctors. But the boy
Umslopogaas looked up and answered boldly, not as one who pleads for
his life, but as one who demands a right:—

“I have this to say, Eater-up of Enemies, and if it is not enough, let
us stop talking, and let me be killed. Thou, O king, didst command that
this woman should be slain. Those whom thou didst send to destroy her
spared her, because they thought her mad. I have carried out the
commandment of the king; I have slain her, mad or sane, whom the king
commanded should be killed, and I have earned not death, but a reward.”

“Well said, Umslopogaas!” answered Chaka. “Let ten head of cattle be
given to this boy with the heart of a man; his father shall guard them
for him. Art thou satisfied now, Umslopogaas?”

“I take that which is due to me, and I thank the king because he need
not pay unless he will,” Umslopogaas answered.

Chaka stared awhile, began to grow angry, then burst out laughing.

“Why, this calf is such another one as was dropped long ago in the
kraal of Senzangacona!” he said. “As I was, so is this boy. Go on, lad,
in that path, and thou mayst find those who shall cry the royal salute
of _Bayéte_ to thee at the end of it. Only keep out of my way, for two
of a kind might not agree. Now begone!”

So we went out, but as we passed them I saw the doctors muttering
together, for they were ill-pleased and foreboded evil. Also they were
jealous of me, and wished to smite me through the heart of him who was
called my son.




CHAPTER VIII.
THE GREAT INGOMBOCO


After this there was quiet until the Feast of the First-fruits was
ended. But few people were killed at this feast, though there was a
great _Ingomboco_, or witch-hunt, and many were smelt out by the
witch-doctors as working magic against the king. Now things had come to
this pass in Zululand—that the whole people cowered before the
witch-doctors. No man might sleep safe, for none knew but that on the
morrow he would be touched by the wand of an _Isanusi_, as we name a
finder of witches, and led away to his death. For awhile Chaka said
nothing, and so long as the doctors smelt out those only whom he wished
to get rid of—and they were many—he was well pleased. But when they
began to work for their own ends, and to do those to death whom he did
not desire to kill, he grew angry. Yet the custom of the land was that
he whom the witch-doctor touched must die, he and all his house;
therefore the king was in a cleft stick, for he scarcely dared to save
even those whom he loved. One night I came to doctor him, for he was
sick in his mind. On that very day there had been an _Ingomboco_, and
five of the bravest captains of the army had been smelt out by the
_Abangoma_, the witch-finders, together with many others. All had been
destroyed, and men had been sent to kill the wives and children of the
dead. Now Chaka was very angry at this slaying, and opened his heart to
me.

“The witch-doctors rule in Zululand, and not I, Mopo, son of Makedama,”
he said to me. “Where, then, is it to end? Shall I myself be smelt out
and slain? These _Isanusis_ are too strong for me; they lie upon the
land like the shadow of night. Tell me, how may I be free of them?”

“Those who walk the Bridge of Spears, O king, fall off into Nowhere,” I
answered darkly; “even witch-doctors cannot keep a footing on that
bridge. Has not a witch-doctor a heart that can cease to beat? Has he
not blood that can be made to flow?”

Chaka looked at me strangely. “Thou art a bold man who darest to speak
thus to me, Mopo,” he said. “Dost thou not know that it is sacrilege to
touch an _Isanusi?_”

“I speak that which is in the king’s mind,” I answered. “Hearken, O
king! It is indeed sacrilege to touch a true _Isanusi_, but what if the
_Isanusi_ be a liar? What if he smell out falsely, bringing those to
death who are innocent of evil? Is it then sacrilege to bring him to
that end which he has given to many another? Say, O king!”

“Good words!” answered Chaka. “Now tell me, son of Makedama, how may
this matter be put to proof?”

Then I leaned forward, whispering into the ear of the Black One, and he
nodded heavily.

Thus I spoke then, because I, too, saw the evil of the _Isanusis_, I
who knew their secrets. Also, I feared for my own life and for the
lives of all those who were dear to me. For they hated me as one
instructed in their magic, one who had the seeing eye and the hearing
ear.

One morning thereafter a new thing came to pass in the royal kraal, for
the king himself ran out, crying aloud to all people to come and see
the evil that had been worked upon him by a wizard. They came together
and saw this. On the door-posts of the gateway of the _Intunkulu_, the
house of the king, were great smears of blood. The knees of men strong
in the battle trembled when they saw it; women wailed aloud as they
wail over the dead; they wailed because of the horror of the omen.

“Who has done this thing?” cried Chaka in a terrible voice. “Who has
dared to bewitch the king and to strike blood upon his house?”

There was no answer, and Chaka spoke again. “This is no little matter,”
he said, “to be washed away with the blood of one or two and be
forgotten. The man who wrought it shall not die alone or travel with a
few to the world of spirits. All his tribe shall go with him, down to
the baby in his hut and cattle in his kraal! Let messengers go out east
and west, and north and south, and summon the witch-doctors from every
quarter! Let them summon the captains from every regiment and the
headmen from every kraal! On the tenth day from now the circle of the
_Ingomboco_ must be set, and there shall be such a smelling out of
wizards and of witches as has not been known in Zululand!”

So the messengers went out to do the bidding of the king, taking the
names of those who should be summoned from the lips of the indunas, and
day by day people flocked up to the gates of the royal kraal, and,
creeping on their knees before the majesty of the king, praised him
aloud. But he vouchsafed an answer to none. One noble only he caused to
be killed, because he carried in his hand a stick of the royal red
wood, which Chaka himself had given him in bygone years.[1]

 [1] This beautiful wood is known in Natal as “red ivory.”—ED.

On the last night before the forming of the _Ingomboco_, the
witch-doctors, male and female, entered the kraal. There were a hundred
and a half of them, and they were made hideous and terrible with the
white bones of men, with bladders of fish and of oxen, with fat of
wizards, and with skins of snakes. They walked in silence till they
came in front of the _Intunkulu_, the royal house; then they stopped
and sang this song for the king to hear:—

We have come, O king, we have come from the caves and the rocks and the
swamps,
    To wash in the blood of the slain;
We have gathered our host from the air as vultures are gathered in war
    When they scent the blood of the slain.

We come not alone, O king: with each Wise One there passes a ghost,
    Who hisses the name of the doomed.
We come not alone, for we are the sons and Indunas of Death,
    And he guides our feet to the doomed.

Red rises the moon o’er the plain, red sinks the sun in the west,
    Look, wizards, and bid them farewell!
We count you by hundreds, you who cried for a curse on the king.
    Ha! soon shall we bid _you_ farewell!

Then they were silent, and went in silence to the place appointed for
them, there to pass the night in mutterings and magic. But those who
were gathered together shivered with fear when they heard their words,
for they knew well that many a man would be switched with the gnu’s
tail before the sun sank once more. And I, too, trembled, for my heart
was full of fear. Ah! my father, those were evil days to live in when
Chaka ruled, and death met us at every turn! Then no man might call his
life his own, or that of his wife or child, or anything. All were the
king’s, and what war spared that the witch-doctors took.

The morning dawned heavily, and before it was well light the heralds
were out summoning all to the king’s _Ingomboco_. Men came by hundreds,
carrying short sticks only—for to be seen armed was death—and seated
themselves in the great circle before the gates of the royal house. Oh!
their looks were sad, and they had little stomach for eating that
morning, they who were food for death. They seated themselves; then
round them on the outside of the circle gathered knots of warriors,
chosen men, great and fierce, armed with kerries only. These were the
slayers.

When all was ready, the king came out, followed by his indunas and by
me. As he appeared, wrapped in the kaross of tiger-skins and towering a
head higher than any man there, all the multitude—and it was many as
the game on the hills—cast themselves to earth, and from every lip
sharp and sudden went up the royal salute of _Bayéte_. But Chaka took
no note; his brow was cloudy as a mountain-top. He cast one glance at
the people and one at the slayers, and wherever his eye fell men turned
grey with fear. Then he stalked on, and sat himself upon a stool to the
north of the great ring looking toward the open space.

For awhile there was silence; then from the gates of the women’s
quarters came a band of maidens arrayed in their beaded
dancing-dresses, and carrying green branches in their hands. As they
came, they clapped their hands and sang softly:—

We are the heralds of the king’s feast. Ai! Ai!
    Vultures shall eat it. Ah! Ah!
It is good—it is good to die for the king!

They ceased, and ranged themselves in a body behind us. Then Chaka held
up his hand, and there was a patter of running feet. Presently from
behind the royal huts appeared the great company of the _Abangoma_, the
witch-doctors—men to the right and women to the left. In the left hand
of each was the tail of a vilderbeeste, in the right a bundle of
assegais and a little shield. They were awful to see, and the bones
about them rattled as they ran, the bladders and the snake-skins
floated in the air behind them, their faces shone with the fat of
anointing, their eyes started like the eyes of fishes, and their lips
twitched hungrily as they glared round the death-ring. Ha! ha! little
did those evil children guess who should be the slayers and who should
be the slain before that sun sank!

On they came, like a grey company of the dead. On they came in silence
broken only by the patter of their feet and the dry rattling of their
bony necklets, till they stood in long ranks before the Black One.
Awhile they stood thus, then suddenly every one of them thrust forward
the little shield in his hand, and with a single voice they cried,
“Hail, Father!”

“Hail, my children!” answered Chaka.

“What seekest thou, Father?” they cried again. “Blood?”

“The blood of the guilty,” he answered.

They turned and spoke each to each; the company of the men spoke to the
company of the women.

“The Lion of the Zulu seeks blood.”

“He shall be fed!” screamed the women.

“The Lion of the Zulu smells blood.”

“He shall see it!” screamed the women.

“His eyes search out the wizards.”

“He shall count their dead!” screamed the women.

“Peace!” cried Chaka. “Waste not the hours in talk, but to the work.
Hearken! Wizards have bewitched me! Wizards have dared to smite blood
upon the gateways of the king. Dig in the burrows of the earth and find
them, ye rats! Fly through the paths of the air and find them, ye
vultures! Smell at the gates of the people and name them, ye jackals!
ye hunters in the night! Drag them from the caves if they be hidden,
from the distance if they be fled, from the graves if they be dead. To
the work! to the work! Show them to me truly, and your gifts shall be
great; and for them, if they be a nation, they shall be slain. Now
begin. Begin by companies of ten, for you are many, and all must be
finished ere the sun sink.”

“It shall be finished, Father,” they answered.

Then ten of the women stood forward, and at their head was the most
famous witch-doctress of that day—an aged woman named Nobela, a woman
to whose eyes the darkness was no evil, whose scent was keen as a
dog’s, who heard the voices of the dead as they cried in the night, and
spoke truly of what she heard. All the other _Isanusis_, male and
female, sat down in a half-moon facing the king, but this woman drew
forward, and with her came nine of her sisterhood. They turned east and
west, north and south, searching the heavens; they turned east and
west, north and south, searching the earth; they turned east and west,
north and south, searching the hearts of men. Then they crept round and
round the great ring like cats; then they threw themselves upon the
earth and smelt it. And all the time there was silence, silence deep as
midnight, and in it men hearkened to the beating of their hearts; only
now and again the vultures shrieked in the trees.

At length Nobela spoke:—

“Do you smell him, sisters?”

“We smell him,” they answered.

“Does he sit in the east, sisters?”

“He sits in the east,” they answered.

“Is he the son of a stranger, sisters?”

“He is the son of a stranger.”

Then they crept nearer, crept on their hands and knees, till they were
within ten paces of where I sat among the indunas near to the king. The
indunas looked on each other and grew grey with fear; and for me, my
father, my knees were loosened and my marrow turned to water in my
bones. For I knew well who was that son of a stranger of whom they
spoke. It was I, my father, I who was about to be smelt out; and if I
was smelt out I should be killed with all my house, for the king’s oath
would scarcely avail me against the witch-doctors. I looked at the
fierce faces of the _Isanusis_ before me, as they crept, crept like
snakes. I glanced behind and saw the slayers grasping their kerries for
the deed of death, and I say I felt like one for whom the bitterness is
overpast. Then I remembered the words which the king and I had
whispered together of the cause for which this _Ingomboco_ was set, and
hope crept back to me like the first gleam of the dawn upon a stormy
night. Still I did not hope overmuch, for it well might happen that the
king had but set a trap to catch me.

Now they were quite near and halted.

“Have we dreamed falsely, sisters?” asked Nobela, the aged.

“What we dreamed in the night we see in the day,” they answered.

“Shall I whisper his name in your ears, sisters?”

They lifted their heads from the ground like snakes and nodded, and as
they nodded the necklets of bones rattled on their skinny necks. Then
they drew their heads to a circle, and Nobela thrust hers into the
centre of the circle and said a word.

“Ha! ha!” they laughed, “we hear you! His is the name. Let him be named
by it in the face of Heaven, him and all his house; then let him hear
no other name forever!”

And suddenly they sprang up and rushed towards me, Nobela, the aged
_Isanusi_, at their head. They leaped at me, pointing to me with the
tails of the vilderbeestes in their hands. Then Nobela switched me in
the face with the tail of the beast, and cried aloud:—

“Greeting, Mopo, son of Makedama! Thou art the man who smotest blood on
the door-posts of the king to bewitch the king. Let thy house be
stamped flat!”

I saw her come, I felt the blow on my face as a man feels in a dream. I
heard the feet of the slayers as they bounded forward to hale me to the
dreadful death, but my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth—I could not
say a word. I glanced at the king, and, as I did so, I thought that I
heard him mutter: “Near the mark, not in it.”

Then he held up his spear, and all was silence. The slayers stopped in
their stride, the witch-doctors stood with outstretched arms, the world
of men was as though it had been frozen into sleep.

“Hold!” he said. “Stand aside, son of Makedama, who art named an
evildoer! Stand aside, thou, Nobela, and those with thee who have named
him evildoer! What? Shall I be satisfied with the life of one dog?
Smell on, ye vultures, company by company, smell on! For the day the
labour, at night the feast!”

So I rose, astonished, and stood on one side. The witch-doctresses also
stood on one side, wonderstruck, since no such smelling out as this had
been seen in the land. For till this hour, when a man was swept with
the gnu’s tail of the _Isanusi_ that was the instant of his death. Why,
then, men asked in their hearts, was the death delayed? The
witch-doctors asked it also, and looked to the king for light, as men
look to a thunder-cloud for the flash. But from the Black One there
came no word.

So we stood on one side, and a second party of the _Isanusi_ women
began their rites. As the others had done, so they did, and yet they
worked otherwise, for this is the fashion of the _Isanusis_, that no
two of them smell out in the same way. And this party swept the faces
of certain of the king’s councillors, naming them guilty of the
witch-work.

“Stand ye on one side!” said the king to those who had been smelt out;
“and ye who have hunted out their wickedness, stand ye with those who
named Mopo, son of Makedama. It well may be that all are guilty.”

So these stood on one side also, and a third party took up the tale.
And they named certain of the great generals, and were in turn bidden
to stand on one side together with those whom they had named.

So it went on through all the day. Company by company the women doomed
their victims, till there were no more left in their number, and were
commanded to stand aside together with those whom they had doomed. Then
the male _Isanusis_ began, and I could see well that by this time their
hearts were fearful, for they smelt a snare. Yet the king’s bidding
must be done, and though their magic failed them here, victims must be
found. So they smelt out this man and that man till we were a great
company of the doomed, who sat in silence on the ground looking at each
other with sad eyes and watching the sun, which we deemed our last,
climb slowly down the sky. And ever as the day waned those who were
left untried of the witch-doctors grew madder and more fierce. They
leaped into the air, they ground their teeth, and rolled upon the
ground. They drew forth snakes and devoured them alive, they shrieked
out to the spirits and called upon the names of ancient kings.

At length it drew on to evening, and the last company of the
witch-doctors did their work, smelling out some of the keepers of the
_Emposeni_, the house of the women. But there was one man of their
company, a young man and a tall, who held back and took no share in the
work, but stood by himself in the centre of the great circle, fixing
his eyes on the heavens.

And when this company had been ordered to stand aside also together
with those whom they had smelt out, the king called aloud to the last
of the witch-doctors, asking him of his name and tribe, and why he
alone did not do his office.

“My name is Indabazimbi, the son of Arpi, O king,” he answered, “and I
am of the tribe of the Maquilisini. Does the king bid me to smell out
him of whom the spirits have spoken to me as the worker of this deed?”

“I bid thee,” said the king.

Then the young man Indabazimbi stepped straight forward across the
ring, making no cries or gestures, but as one who walks from his gate
to the cattle kraal, and suddenly he struck the king in the face with
the tail in his hand, saying, “I smell out the _Heavens above me!_”[2]

 [2] A Zulu title for the king.—ED.

Now a great gasp of wonder went up from the multitude, and all looked
to see this fool killed by torture. But Chaka rose and laughed aloud.

“Thou hast said it,” he cried, “and thou alone! Listen, ye people! _I_
did the deed! _I_ smote blood upon the gateways of my kraal; with my
own hand I smote it, that I might learn who were the true doctors and
who were the false! Now it seems that in the land of the Zulu there is
one true doctor—this young man—and of the false, look at them and count
them, they are like the leaves. See! there they stand, and by them
stand those whom they have doomed—the innocent whom, with their wives
and children, they have doomed to the death of the dog. Now I ask you,
my people, what reward shall be given to them?”

Then a great roar went up from all the multitude, “Let them die, O
king!”

“Ay!” he answered. “Let them die as liars should!”

Now the _Isanusis_, men and women, screamed aloud in fear, and cried
for mercy, tearing themselves with their nails, for least of all things
did they desire to taste of their own medicine of death. But the king
only laughed the more.

“Hearken ye!” he said, pointing to the crowd of us who had been smelt
out. “Ye were doomed to death by these false prophets. Now glut
yourselves upon them. Slay them, my children! slay them all! wipe them
away! stamp them out!—all! all, save this young man!”

Then we bounded from the ground, for our hearts were fierce with hate
and with longing to avenge the terrors we had borne. The doomed slew
the doomers, while from the circle of the _Ingomboco_ a great roar of
laughter went up, for men rejoiced because the burden of the
witch-doctors had fallen from them.

At last it was done, and we drew back from the heap of the dead.
Nothing was heard there now—no more cries or prayers or curses. The
witch-finders travelled the path on which they had set the feet of
many. The king drew near to look. He came alone, and all who had done
his bidding bent their heads and crept past him, praising him as they
went. Only I stood still, covered, as I was with mire and filth, for I
did not fear to stand in the presence of the king. Chaka drew near, and
looked at the piled-up heaps of the slain and the cloud of dust that
yet hung over them.

“There they lie, Mopo,” he said. “There lie those who dared to prophesy
falsely to the king! That was a good word of thine, Mopo, which taught
me to set the snare for them; yet methought I saw thee start when
Nobela, queen of the witch-doctresses, switched death on thee. Well,
they are dead, and the land breathes more freely; and for the evil
which they have done, it is as yonder dust, that shall soon sink again
to earth and there be lost.”

Thus he spoke, then ceased—for lo! something moved beneath the cloud of
dust, something broke a way through the heap of the dead. Slowly it
forced its path, pushing the slain this way and that, till at length it
stood upon its feet and tottered towards us—a thing dreadful to look
on. The shape was the shape of an aged woman, and even through the
blood and mire I knew her. It was Nobela, she who had doomed me, she
whom but now I had smitten to earth, but who had come back from the
dead to curse me!

On she tottered, her apparel hanging round her in red rags, a hundred
wounds upon her face and form. I saw that she was dying, but life still
flickered in her, and the fire of hate burned in her snaky eyes.

“Hail, king!” she screamed.

“Peace, liar!” he answered; “thou art dead!”

“Not yet, king. I heard thy voice and the voice of yonder dog, whom I
would have given to the jackals, and I will not die till I have spoken.
I smelt him out this morning when I was alive; now that I am as one
already dead, I smell him out again. He shall bewitch thee with blood
indeed, Chaka—he and Unandi, thy mother, and Baleka, thy wife. Think of
my words when the assegai reddens before thee for the last time, king!
Farewell!” And she uttered a great cry and rolled upon the ground dead.

“The witch lies hard and dies hard,” said the king carelessly, and
turned upon his heel. But those words of dead Nobela remained fixed in
his memory, or so much of them as had been spoken of Unandi and Baleka.
There they remained like seeds in the earth, there they grew to bring
forth fruit in their season.

And thus ended the great _Ingomboco_ of Chaka, the greatest _Ingomboco_
that ever was held in Zululand.




CHAPTER IX.
THE LOSS OF UMSLOPOGAAS


Now, after the smelling out of the witch-doctors, Chaka caused a watch
to be kept upon his mother Unandi, and his wife Baleka, my sister, and
report was brought to him by those who watched, that the two women came
to my huts by stealth, and there kissed and nursed a boy—one of my
children. Then Chaka remembered the prophecy of Nobela, the dead
_Isanusi_, and his heart grew dark with doubt. But to me he said
nothing of the matter, for then, as always, his eyes looked over my
head. He did not fear me or believe that I plotted against him, I who
was his dog. Still, he did this, though whether by chance or design I
do not know: he bade me go on a journey to a distant tribe that lived
near the borders of the Amaswazi, there to take count of certain of the
king’s cattle which were in the charge of that tribe, and to bring him
account of the tale of their increase. So I bowed before the king, and
said that I would run like a dog to do his bidding, and he gave me men
to go with me.

Then I returned to my huts to bid farewell to my wives and children,
and there I found that my wife, Anadi, the mother of Moosa, my son, had
fallen sick with a wandering sickness, for strange things came into her
mind, and what came into her mind that she said, being, as I did not
doubt, bewitched by some enemy of my house.

Still, I must go upon the king’s business, and I told this to my wife
Macropha, the mother of Nada, and, as it was thought, of Umslopogaas,
the son of Chaka. But when I spoke to Macropha of the matter she burst
into tears and clung to me. I asked her why she wept thus, and she
answered that the shadow of evil lay upon her heart, for she was sure
that if I left her at the king’s kraal, when I returned again I should
find neither her nor Nada, my child, nor Umslopogaas, who was named my
son, and whom I loved as a son, still in the land of life. Then I tried
to calm her; but the more I strove the more she wept, saying that she
knew well that these things would be so.

Now I asked her what could be done, for I was stirred by her tears, and
the dread of evil crept from her to me as shadows creep from the valley
to the mountain.

She answered, “Take me with you, my husband, that I may leave this evil
land, where the very skies rain blood, and let me rest awhile in the
place of my own people till the terror of Chaka has gone by.”

“How can I do this?” I said. “None may leave the king’s kraal without
the king’s pass.”

“A man may put away his wife,” she replied. “The king does not stand
between a man and his wife. Say, my husband, that you love me no
longer, that I bear you no more children, and that therefore you send
me back whence I came. By-and-bye we will come together again if we are
left among the living.”

“So be it,” I answered. “Leave the kraal with Nada and Umslopogaas this
night, and to-morrow morning meet me at the river bank, and we shall go
on together, and for the rest may the spirits of our fathers hold us
safe.”

So we kissed each other, and Macropha went on secretly with the
children.

Now at the dawning on the morrow I summoned the men whom the king had
given me, and we started upon our journey. When the sun was well up we
came to the banks of the river, and there I found my wife Macropha, and
with her the two children. They rose as I came, but I frowned at my
wife and she gave me no greeting. Those with me looked at her askance.

“I have divorced this woman,” I said to them. “She is a withered tree,
a worn out old hag, and now I take her with me to send her to the
country of the Swazis, whence she came. Cease weeping,” I added to
Macropha, “it is my last word.”

“What says the king?” asked the men.

“I will answer to the king,” I said. And we went on.

Now I must tell how we lost Umslopogaas, the son of Chaka, who was then
a great lad drawing on to manhood, fierce in temper, well grown and
broad for his years.

We had journeyed seven days, for the way was long, and on the night of
the seventh day we came to a mountainous country in which there were
few kraals, for Chaka had eaten them all up years before. Perhaps you
know the place, my father. In it is a great and strange mountain. It is
haunted also, and named the Ghost Mountain, and on the top of it is a
grey peak rudely shaped like the head of an aged woman. Here in this
wild place we must sleep, for darkness drew on. Now we soon learned
that there were many lions in the rocks around, for we heard their
roaring and were much afraid, all except Umslopogaas, who feared
nothing. So we made a circle of thorn-bushes and sat in it, holding our
assegais ready. Presently the moon came up—it was a full-grown moon and
very bright, so bright that we could see everything for a long way
round. Now some six spear-throws from where we sat was a cliff, and at
the top of the cliff was a cave, and in this cave lived two lions and
their young. When the moon grew bright we saw the lions come out and
stand upon the edge of the cliff, and with them were two little ones
that played about like kittens, so that had we not been frightened it
would have been beautiful to see them.

“Oh! Umslopogaas,” said Nada, “I wish that I had one of the little
lions for a dog.”

The boy laughed, saying, “Then, shall I fetch you one, sister?”

“Peace, boy,” I said. “No man may take young lions from their lair and
live.”

“Such things have been done, my father,” he answered, laughing. And no
more was said of the matter.

Now when the cubs had played awhile, we saw the lioness take up the
cubs in her mouth and carry them into the cave. Then she came out
again, and went away with her mate to seek food, and soon we heard them
roaring in the distance. Now we stacked up the fire and went to sleep
in our enclosure of thorns without fear, for we knew that the lions
were far away eating game. But Umslopogaas did not sleep, for he had
determined that he would fetch the cub which Nada had desired, and,
being young and foolhardy, he did not think of the danger which he
would bring upon himself and all of us. He knew no fear, and now, as
ever, if Nada spoke a word, nay, even if she thought of a thing to
desire it, he would not rest till it was won for her. So while we slept
Umslopogaas crept like a snake from the fence of thorns, and, taking an
assegai in his hand, he slipped away to the foot of the cliff where the
lions had their den. Then he climbed the cliff, and, coming to the
cave, entered there and groped his way into it. The cubs heard him,
and, thinking that it was their mother who returned, began to whine and
purr for food. Guided by the light of their yellow eyes, he crept over
the bones, of which there were many in the cave, and came to where they
lay. Then he put out his hands and seized one of the cubs, killing the
other with his assegai, because he could not carry both of them. Now he
made haste thence before the lions returned, and came back to the thorn
fence where we lay just as dawn was breaking.

I awoke at the coming of the dawn, and, standing up, I looked out. Lo!
there, on the farther side of the thorn fence, looking large in the
grey mist, stood the lad Umslopogaas, laughing. In his teeth he held
the assegai, yet dripping with blood, and in his hands the lion cub
that, despite its whines and struggles, he grasped by the skin of the
neck and the hind legs.

“Awake, my sister!” he cried; “here is the dog you seek. Ah! he bites
now, but he will soon grow tame.”

Nada awoke, and rising, cried out with joy at the sight of the cub, but
for a moment I stood astonished.

“Fool!” I cried at last, “let the cub go before the lions come to rend
us!”

“I will not let it go, my father,” he answered sullenly. “Are there not
five of us with spears, and can we not fight two cats? I was not afraid
to go alone into their den. Are you all afraid to meet them in the
open?”

“You are mad,” I said; “let the cub go!” And I ran towards Umslopogaas
to take it from him. But he sprang aside and avoided me.

“I will never let that go of which I have got hold,” he said, “at least
not living!” And suddenly he seized the head of the cub and twisted its
neck; then threw it on to the ground, and added, “See, now I have done
your bidding, my father!”

As he spoke we heard a great sound of roaring from the cave in the
cliff. The lions had returned and found one cub dead and the other
gone.

“Into the fence!—back into the fence!” I cried, and we sprang over the
thorn-bushes where those with us were making ready their spears,
trembling as they handled them with fear and the cold of the morning.
We looked up. There, down the side of the cliff, came the lions,
bounding on the scent of him who had robbed them of their young. The
lion ran first, and as he came he roared; then followed the lioness,
but she did not roar, for in her mouth was the cub that Umslopogaas had
assegaied in the cave. Now they drew near, mad with fury, their manes
bristling, and lashing their flanks with their long tails.

“Curse you for a fool, son of Mopo,” said one of the men with me to
Umslopogaas; “presently I will beat you till the blood comes for this
trick.”

“First beat the lions, then beat me if you can,” answered the lad, “and
wait to curse till you have done both.”

Now the lions were close to us; they came to the body of the second
cub, that lay outside the fence of thorns. The lion stopped and sniffed
it. Then he roared—ah! he roared till the earth shook. As for the
lioness, she dropped the dead cub which she was carrying, and took the
other into her mouth, for she could not carry both.

“Get behind me, Nada,” cried Umslopogaas, brandishing his spear, “the
lion is about to spring.”

As the words left his mouth the great brute crouched to the ground.
Then suddenly he sprang from it like a bird, and like a bird he
travelled through the air towards us.

“Catch him on the spears!” cried Umslopogaas, and by nature, as it
were, we did the boy’s bidding; for huddling ourselves together, we
held out the assegais so that the lion fell upon them as he sprang, and
their blades sank far into him. But the weight of his charge carried us
to the ground, and he fell on to us, striking at us and at the spears,
and roaring with pain and fury as he struck. Presently he was on his
legs biting at the spears in his breast. Then Umslopogaas, who alone
did not wait his onslaught, but had stepped aside for his own ends,
uttered a loud cry and drove his assegai into the lion behind the
shoulder, so that with a groan the brute rolled over dead.

Meanwhile, the lioness stood without the fence, the second dead cub in
her mouth, for she could not bring herself to leave either of them. But
when she heard her mate’s last groan she dropped the cub and gathered
herself together to spring. Umslopogaas alone stood up to face her, for
he only had withdrawn his assegai from the carcase of the lion. She
swept on towards the lad, who stood like a stone to meet her. Now she
met his spear, it sunk in, it snapped, and down fell Umslopogaas dead
or senseless beneath the mass of the lioness. She sprang up, the broken
spear standing in her breast, sniffed at Umslopogaas, then, as though
she knew that it was he who had robbed her, she seized him by the loins
and moocha, and sprang with him over the fence.

“Oh, save him!” cried the girl Nada in bitter woe. And we rushed after
the lioness shouting.

For a moment she stood over her dead cubs, Umslopogaas hanging from her
mouth, and looked at them as though she wondered; and we hoped that she
might let him fall. Then, hearing our cries, she turned and bounded
away towards the bush, bearing Umslopogaas in her mouth. We seized our
spears and followed; but the ground grew stony, and, search as we
would, we could find no trace of Umslopogaas or of the lioness. They
had vanished like a cloud. So we came back, and, ah! my heart was sore,
for I loved the lad as though he had indeed been my son. But I knew
that he was dead, and there was an end.

“Where is my brother?” cried Nada when we came back.

“Lost,” I answered. “Lost, never to be found again.”

Then the girl gave a great and bitter cry, and fell to the earth
saying, “I would that I were dead with my brother!”

“Let us be going,” said Macropha, my wife.

“Have you no tears to weep for your son?” asked a man of our company.

“What is the use of weeping over the dead? Does it, then, bring them
back?” she answered. “Let us be going!”

The man thought these words strange, but he did not know that
Umslopogaas was not born of Macropha.

Still, we waited in that place a day, thinking that, perhaps, the
lioness would return to her den and that, at least, we might kill her.
But she came back no more. So on the next morning we rolled up our
blankets and started forward on our journey, sad at heart. In truth,
Nada was so weak from grief that she could hardly travel, but I never
heard the name of Umslopogaas pass her lips again during that journey.
She buried him in her heart and said nothing. And I too said nothing,
but I wondered why it had been brought about that I should save the
life of Umslopogaas from the jaws of the Lion of Zulu, that the lioness
of the rocks might devour him.

And so the time went on till we reached the kraal where the king’s
business must be done, and where I and my wife should part.

On the morning after we came to the kraal, having kissed in secret,
though in public we looked sullenly on one another, we parted as those
part who meet no more, for it was in our thoughts, that we should never
see each other’s face again, nor, indeed, did we do so. And I drew Nada
aside and spoke to her thus: “We part, my daughter; nor do I know when
we shall meet again, for the times are troubled and it is for your
safety and that of your mother that I rob my eyes of the sight of you.
Nada, you will soon be a woman, and you will be fairer than any woman
among our people, and it may come about that many great men will seek
you in marriage, and, perhaps, that I, your father, shall not be there
to choose for you whom you shall wed, according to the custom of our
land. But I charge you, as far as may be possible for you to do so,
take only a man whom you can love, and be faithful to him alone, for
thus shall a woman find happiness.”

Here I stopped, for the girl took hold of my hand and looked into my
face. “Peace, my father,” she said, “do not speak to me of marriage,
for I will wed no man, now that Umslopogaas is dead because of my
foolishness. I will live and die alone, and, oh! may I die quickly,
that I may go to seek him whom I love only!”

“Nay, Nada,” I said, “Umslopogaas was your brother, and it is not
fitting that you should speak of him thus, even though he is dead.”

“I know nothing of such matters, my father,” she said. “I speak what my
heart tells me, and it tells me that I loved Umslopogaas living, and,
though he is dead, I shall love him alone to the end. Ah! you think me
but a child, yet my heart is large, and it does not lie to me.”

Now I upbraided the girl no more, because I knew that Umslopogaas was
not her brother, but one whom she might have married. Only I marvelled
that the voice of nature should speak so truly in her, telling her that
which was lawful, even when it seemed to be most unlawful.

“Speak no more of Umslopogaas,” I said, “for surely he is dead, and
though you cannot forget him, yet speak of him no more, and I pray of
you, my daughter, that if we do not meet again, yet you should keep me
in your memory, and the love I bear you, and the words which from time
to time I have said to you. The world is a thorny wilderness, my
daughter, and its thorns are watered with a rain of blood, and we
wander in our wretchedness like lost travellers in a mist; nor do I
know why our feet are set on this wandering. But at last there comes an
end, and we die and go hence, none know where, but perhaps where we go
the evil may change to the good, and those who were dear to each other
on the earth may become yet dearer in the heavens; for I believe that
man is not born to perish altogether, but is rather gathered again to
the Umkulunkulu who sent him on his journeyings. Therefore keep hope,
my daughter, for if these things are not so, at least sleep remains,
and sleep is soft, and so farewell.”

Then we kissed and parted, and I watched Macropha, my wife, and Nada,
my daughter, till they melted into the sky, as they walked upon their
journey to Swaziland, and was very sad, because, having lost
Umslopogaas, he who in after days was named the Slaughterer and the
Woodpecker, I must lose them also.




CHAPTER X.
THE TRIAL OF MOPO


Now I sat four days in the huts of the tribe whither I had been sent,
and did the king’s business. And on the fifth morning I rose up,
together with those with me, and we turned our faces towards the king’s
kraal. But when we had journeyed a little way we met a party of
soldiers, who commanded us to stand.

“What is it, king’s men?” I asked boldly.

“This, son of Makedama,” answered their spokesman: “give over to us
your wife Macropha and your children Umslopogaas and Nada, that we may
do with them as the king commands.”

“Umslopogaas,” I answered, “has gone where the king’s arm cannot
stretch, for he is dead; and for my wife Macropha and my daughter Nada,
they are by now in the caves of the Swazis, and the king must seek them
there with an army if he will find them. To Macropha he is welcome, for
I hate her, and have divorced her; and as for the girl, well, there are
many girls, and it is no great matter if she lives or dies, yet I pray
him to spare her.”

Thus I spoke carelessly, for I knew well that my wife and child were
beyond the reach of Chaka.

“You do well to ask the girl’s life,” said the soldier, laughing, “for
all those born to you are dead, by order of the king.”

“Is it indeed so?” I answered calmly, though my knees shook and my
tongue clove to my lips. “The will of the king be done. A cut stick
puts out new leaves; I can have more children.”

“Ay, Mopo; but first you must get new wives, for yours are dead also,
all five of them.”

“Is it indeed so?” I answered. “The king’s will be done. I wearied of
those brawling women.”

“So, Mopo,” said the soldier; “but to get other wives and have more
children born to you, you must live yourself, for no children are born
to the dead, and I think that Chaka has an assegai which you shall
kiss.”

“Is it so?” I answered. “The king’s will be done. The sun is hot, and I
tire of the road. He who kisses the assegai sleeps sound.”

Thus I spoke, my father, and, indeed, in that hour I desired to die.
The world was empty for me. Macropha and Nada were gone, Umslopogaas
was dead, and my other wives and children were murdered. I had no heart
to begin to build up a new house, none were left for me to love, and it
seemed well that I should die also.

The soldiers asked those with me if that tale was true which I told of
the death of Umslopogaas and of the going of Macropha and Nada into
Swaziland. They said, Yes, it was true. Then the soldiers said that
they would lead me back to the king, and I wondered at this, for I
thought that they would kill me where I stood. So we went on, and piece
by piece I learned what had happened at the king’s kraal.

On the day after I left, it came to the ears of Chaka, by the mouth of
his spies, that my second wife—Anadi—was sick and spoke strange words
in her sickness. Then, taking three soldiers with him, he went to my
kraal at the death of the day. He left the three soldiers by the gates
of the kraal, bidding them to suffer none to come in or go out, but
Chaka himself entered the large hut where Anadi lay sick, having his
toy assegai, with the shaft of the royal red wood, in his hand. Now, as
it chanced, in the hut were Unandi, the mother of Chaka, and Baleka, my
sister, the wife of Chaka, for, not knowing that I had taken away
Umslopogaas, the son of Baleka, according to their custom, these two
foolish women had come to kiss and fondle the lad. But when they
entered the hut they found it full of my other wives and children.
These they sent away, all except Moosa, the son of Anadi—that boy who
was born eight days before Umslopogaas, the son of Chaka. But they kept
Moosa in the hut, and kissed him, giving him imphi[1] to eat, fearing
lest it should seem strange to the women, my wives, if, Umslopogaas
being gone, they refused to take notice of any other child.

 [1] A variety of sugar-cane.—ED.

Now as they sat thus, presently the doorway was darkened, and, behold!
the king himself crept through it, and saw them fondling the child
Moosa. When they knew who it was that entered, the women flung
themselves upon the ground before him and praised him. But he smiled
grimly, and bade them be seated. Then he spoke to them, saying, “You
wonder, Unandi, my mother, and Baleka, my wife, why it is that I am
come here into the hut of Mopo, son of Makedama. I will tell you: it is
because he is away upon my business, and I hear that his wife Anadi is
sick—it is she who lies there, is it not? Therefore, as the first
doctor in the land, I am come to cure her, Unandi, my mother, and
Baleka, my sister.”

Thus he spoke, eyeing them as he did so, and taking snuff from the
blade of his little assegai, and though his words were gentle they
shook with fear, for when Chaka spoke thus gently he meant death to
many. But Unandi, Mother of the Heavens, answered, saying that it was
well that the king had come, since his medicine would bring rest and
peace to her who lay sick.

“Yes,” he answered; “it is well. It is pleasant, moreover, my mother
and sister, to see you kissing yonder child. Surely, were he of your
own blood you could not love him more.”

Now they trembled again, and prayed in their hearts that Anadi, the
sick woman, who lay asleep, might not wake and utter foolish words in
her wandering. But the prayer was answered from below and not from
above, for Anadi woke, and, hearing the voice of the king, her sick
mind flew to him whom she believed to be the king’s child.

“Ah!” she said, sitting upon the ground and pointing to her own son,
Moosa, who squatted frightened against the wall of the hut. “Kiss him,
Mother of the Heavens, kiss him! Whom do they call him, the young cub
who brings ill-fortune to our doors? They call him the son of Mopo and
Macropha!” And she laughed wildly, stopped speaking, and sank back upon
the bed of skins.

“They call him the son of Mopo and Macropha,” said the king in a low
voice. “Whose son is he, then, woman?”

“Oh, ask her not, O king,” cried his mother and his wife, casting
themselves upon the ground before him, for they were mad with fear.
“Ask her not; she has strange fancies such as are not meet for your
ears to hear. She is bewitched, and has dreams and fancies.”

“Peace!” he answered. “I will listen to this woman’s wanderings.
Perhaps some star of truth shines in her darkness, and I would see
light. Who, then, is he, woman?”

“Who is he?” she answered. “Are you a fool that ask who he is? He
is—hush!—put your ear close—let me speak low lest the reeds of the hut
speak it to the king. He is—do you listen? He is—the son of Chaka and
Baleka, the sister of Mopo, the changeling whom Unandi, Mother of the
Heavens, palmed off upon this house to bring a curse on it, and whom
she would lead out before the people when the land is weary of the
wickedness of the king, her son, to take the place of the king.”

“It is false, O king!” cried the two women. “Do not listen to her; it
is false. The boy is her own son, Moosa, whom she does not know in her
sickness.”

But Chaka stood up in the hut and laughed terribly. “Truly, Nobela
prophesied well,” he cried, “and I did ill to slay her. So this is the
trick thou hast played upon me, my mother. Thou wouldst give a son to
me who will have no son: thou wouldst give me a son to kill me. Good!
Mother of the Heavens, take thou the doom of the Heavens! Thou wouldst
give me a son to slay me and rule in my place; now, in turn, I, thy
son, will rob me of a mother. Die, Unandi!—die at the hand thou didst
bring forth!” And he lifted the little assegai and smote it through
her.

For a moment Unandi, Mother of the Heavens, wife of Senzangacona, stood
uttering no cry. Then she put up her hand, and drew the assegai from
her side.

“So shalt thou die also, Chaka the Evil!” she cried, and fell down dead
there in the hut.

Thus, then, did Chaka murder his mother Unandi.

Now when Baleka saw what had been done, she turned and fled from the
hut into the _Emposeni_, and so swiftly that the guards at the gates
could not stop her. But when she reached her own hut Baleka’s strength
failed her, and she fell senseless on the ground. But the boy Moosa, my
son, being overcome with terror, stayed where he was, and Chaka,
believing him to be his son, murdered him also, and with his own hand.

Then he stalked out of the hut, and leaving the three guards at the
gate, commanded a company of soldiers to surround the kraal and fire
it. This they did, and as the people rushed out they killed them, and
those who did not run out were burned in the fire. Thus, then, perished
all my wives, my children, my servants, and those who were within the
gates in their company. The tree was burned, and the bees in it, and I
alone was left living—I and Macropha and Nada, who were far away.

Nor was Chaka yet satisfied with blood, for, as has been told, he sent
messengers bidding them kill Macropha, my wife, and Nada, my daughter,
and him who was named my son. But he commanded the messengers that they
should not slay me, but bring me living before him.

Now when the soldiers did not kill me I took counsel with myself, for
it was my belief that I was saved alive only that I might die later,
and in a more cruel fashion. Therefore for awhile I thought that it
would be well if I did that for myself which another purposed to do for
me. Why should I, who was already doomed, wait to meet my doom? What
had I left to keep me in the place of life, seeing that all whom I
loved were dead or gone? To die would be easy, for I knew the ways of
death. In my girdle I carried a secret medicine; he who eats of it, my
father, will see the sun’s shadow move no more, and will never look
upon the stars again. But I was minded to know the assegai or the
kerrie; nor would I perish more slowly beneath the knives of the
tormentors, nor be parched by the pangs of thirst, or wander eyeless to
my end. Therefore it was that, since I had sat in the doom ring looking
hour after hour into the face of death, I had borne this medicine with
me by night and by day. Surely now was the time to use it.

So I thought as I sat through the watches of the night, ay! and drew
out the bitter drug and laid it on my tongue. But as I did so I
remembered my daughter Nada, who was left to me, though she sojourned
in a far country, and my wife Macropha and my sister Baleka, who still
lived, so said the soldiers, though how it came about that the king had
not killed her I did not know then. Also another thought was born in my
heart. While life remained to me, I might be revenged upon him who had
wrought me this woe; but can the dead strike? Alas! the dead are
strengthless, and if they still have hearts to suffer, they have no
hands to give back blow for blow. Nay, I would live on. Time to die
when death could no more be put away. Time to die when the voice of
Chaka spoke my doom. Death chooses for himself and answers no
questions; he is a guest to whom none need open the door of his hut,
for when he wills he can pass through the thatch like air. Not yet
would I taste of that medicine of mine.

So I lived on, my father, and the soldiers led me back to the kraal of
Chaka. Now when we came to the kraal it was night, for the sun had sunk
as we passed through the gates. Still, as he had been commanded, the
captain of those who watched me went in before the king and told him
that I lay without in bonds. And the king said, “Let him be brought
before me, who was my physician, that I may tell him how I have
doctored those of his house.”

So they took me and led me to the royal house, and pushed me through
the doorway of the great hut.

Now a fire burned in the hut, for the night was cold, and Chaka sat on
the further side of the fire, looking towards the opening of the hut,
and the smoke from the fire wreathed him round, and its light shone
upon his face and flickered in his terrible eyes.

At the door of the hut certain councillors seized me by the arms and
dragged me towards the fire. But I broke from them, and prostrating
myself, for my arms were free, I praised the king and called him by his
royal names. The councillors sprang towards me to seize me again, but
Chaka said, “Let him be; I would talk with my servant.” Then the
councillors bowed themselves on either side, and laid their hands on
their sticks, their foreheads touching the ground. But I sat down on
the floor of the hut over against the king, and we talked through the
fire.

“Tell me of the cattle that I sent thee to number, Mopo, son of
Makedama,” said Chaka. “Have my servants dealt honestly with my
cattle?”

“They have dealt honestly, O king,” I answered.

“Tell me, then, of the number of the cattle and of their markings,
Mopo, forgetting none.”

So I sat and told him, ox by ox, cow by cow, and heifer by heifer,
forgetting none; and Chaka listened silently as one who is asleep. But
I knew that he did not sleep, for all the while the firelight flickered
in his fierce eyes. Also I knew that he did but torment me, or that,
perhaps, he would learn of the cattle before he killed me. At length
all the tale was told.

“So,” said the king, “it goes well. There are yet honest men left in
the land. Knowest thou, Mopo, that sorrow has come upon thy house while
thou wast about my business.”

“I have heard it, O king!” I answered, as one who speaks of a small
matter.

“Yes, Mopo, sorrow has come upon thy house, the curse of Heaven has
fallen upon thy kraal. They tell me, Mopo, that the fire from above ran
briskly through thy huts.”

“I have heard it, O king!”

“They tell me, Mopo, that those within thy gates grew mad at the sight
of the fire, and dreaming there was no escape, that they stabbed
themselves with assegais or leaped into the flames.”

“I have heard it, O king! What of it? Any river is deep enough to drown
a fool!”

“Thou hast heard these things, Mopo, but thou hast not yet heard all.
Knowest thou, Mopo, that among those who died in thy kraal was she who
bore me, she who was named Mother of the Heavens?”

Then, my father, I, Mopo, acted wisely, because of the thought which my
good spirit gave me, for I cast myself upon the ground, and wailed
aloud as though in utter grief.

“Spare my ears, Black One!” I wailed. “Tell me not that she who bore
thee is dead, O Lion of the Zulu. For the others, what is it? It is a
breath of wind, it is a drop of water; but this trouble is as the gale
or as the sea.”

“Cease, my servant, cease!” said the mocking voice of Chaka; “but know
this, thou hast done well to grieve aloud, because the Mother of the
Heavens is no more, and ill wouldst thou have done to grieve because
the fire from above has kissed thy gates. For hadst thou done this last
thing or left the first undone, I should have known that thy heart was
wicked, and by now thou wouldst have wept indeed—tears of blood, Mopo.
It is well for thee, then, that thou hast read my riddle aright.”

Now I saw the depths of the pit that Chaka had dug for me, and blessed
my _Ehlosé_ who had put into my heart those words which I should
answer. I hoped also that Chaka would now let me go; but it was not to
be, for this was but the beginning of my trial.

“Knowest thou, Mopo,” said the king, “that as my mother died yonder in
the flames of thy kraal she cried out strange and terrible words which
came to my ears through the singing of the fire. These were her words:
that thou, Mopo, and thy sister Baleka, and thy wives, had conspired
together to give a child to me who would be childless. These were her
words, the words that came to me through the singing of the fire. Tell
me now, Mopo, where are those children that thou leddest from thy
kraal, the boy with the lion eyes who is named Umslopogaas, and the
girl who is named Nada?”

“Umslopogaas is dead by the lion’s mouth, O king!” I answered, “and
Nada sits in the Swazi caves.” And I told him of the death of
Umslopogaas and of how I had divorced Macropha, my wife.

“The boy with the lion eyes to the lion’s mouth!” said Chaka. “Enough
of him; he is gone. Nada may yet be sought for with the assegai in the
Swazi caves; enough of her. Let us speak of this song that my
mother—who, alas! is dead, Mopo—this song she sang through the singing
of the flames. Tell me, Mopo, tell me now, was it a true tale.”

“Nay, O king! surely the Mother of the Heavens was maddened by the
Heavens when she sang that song,” I answered. “I know nothing of it, O
king.”

“Thou knowest naught of it, Mopo?” said the king. And again he looked
at me terribly through the reek of the fire. “Thou knowest naught of
it, Mopo? Surely thou art a-cold; thy hands shake with cold. Nay, man,
fear not—warm them, warm them, Mopo. See, now, plunge that hand of
thine into the heart of the flame!” And he pointed with his little
assegai, the assegai handled with the royal wood, to where the fire
glowed reddest—ay, he pointed and laughed.

Then, my father, I grew cold indeed—yes, I grew cold who soon should be
hot, for I saw the purpose of Chaka. He would put me to the trial by
fire.

For a moment I sat silent, thinking. Then the king spoke again in a
great voice: “Nay, Mopo, be not so backward; shall I sit warm and see
thee suffer cold? What, my councillors, rise, take the hand of Mopo,
and hold it to the flame, that his heart may rejoice in the warmth of
the flame while we speak together of this matter of the child that was,
so my mother sang, born to Baleka, my wife, the sister of Mopo, my
servant.”

“There is little need for that, O king,” I answered, being made bold by
fear, for I saw that if I did nothing death would swiftly end my
doubts. Once, indeed, I bethought me of the poison that I bore, and was
minded to swallow it and make an end, but the desire to live is great,
and keen is the thirst for vengeance, so I said to my heart, “Not yet
awhile; I will endure this also; afterwards, if need be, I can die.”

“I thank the king for his graciousness, and I will warm me at the fire.
Speak on, O king, while I warm myself, and thou shalt hear true words,”
I said boldly.

Then, my father, I stretched out my left hand and plunged it into the
fire—not into the hottest of the fire, but where the smoke leapt from
the flame. Now my flesh was wet with the sweat of fear, and for a
little moment the flames curled round it and did not burn me. But I
knew that the torment was to come.

For a short while Chaka watched me, smiling. Then he spoke slowly, that
the fire might find time to do its work.

“Say, then, Mopo, thou knowest nothing of this matter of the birth of a
son to thy sister Baleka?”

“I know this only, O king!” I answered, “that a son was born in past
years to thy wife Baleka, that I killed the child in obedience to thy
word, and laid its body before thee.”

Now, my father, the steam from my flesh had been drawn from my hand by
the heat, and the flame got hold of me and ate into my flesh, and its
torment was great. But of this I showed no sign upon my face, for I
knew well that if I showed sign or uttered cry, then, having failed in
the trial, death would be my portion.

Then the king spoke again, “Dost thou swear by my head, Mopo, that no
son of mine was suckled in thy kraals?”

“I swear it, O king! I swear it by thy head,” I answered.

And now, my father, the agony of the fire was such as may not be told.
I felt my eyes start forward in their sockets, my blood seemed to boil
within me, it rushed into my head, and down my face there ran two tears
of blood. But yet I held my hand in the fire and made no sign, while
the king and his councillors watched me curiously. Still, for a moment
Chaka said nothing, and that moment seemed to me as all the years of my
life.

“Ah!” he said at length, “I see that thou growest warm, Mopo! Withdraw
thy hand from the flame. I am answered; thou hast passed the trial; thy
heart is clean; for had there been lies in it the fire had given them
tongue, and thou hadst cried aloud, making thy last music, Mopo!”

Now I took my hand from the flame, and for awhile the torment left me.

“It is well, O king,” I said calmly. “Fire has no power of hurt on
those whose heart is pure.”

But as I spoke I looked at my left hand. It was black, my father—black
as a charred stick, and the nails were gone from the twisted fingers.
Look at it now, my father; you can see, though my eyes are blind. The
hand is white, like yours—it is white and dead and shrivelled. These
are the marks of the fire in Chaka’s hut—the fire that kissed me many,
many years ago; I have had but little use of that hand since this night
of torment. But my right arm yet remained to me, my father, and, ah! I
used it.

“It seems that Nobela, the doctress, who is dead, lied when she
prophesied evil on me from thee, Mopo,” said Chaka again. “It seems
that thou art innocent of this offence, and that Baleka, thy sister, is
innocent, and that the song which the Mother of the Heavens sang
through the singing flames was no true song. It is well for thee, Mopo,
for in such a matter my oath had not helped thee. But my mother is
dead—dead in the flames with thy wives and children, Mopo, and in this
there is witchcraft. We will have a mourning, Mopo, thou and I, such a
mourning as has not been seen in Zululand, for all the people on the
earth shall weep at it. And there shall be a ‘smelling out’ at this
mourning, Mopo. But we will summon no witch-doctors, thou and I will be
witch-doctors, and ourselves shall smell out those who have brought
these woes upon us. What! shall my mother die unavenged, she who bore
me and has perished by witchcraft, and shall thy wives and children die
unavenged—thou being innocent? Go forth, Mopo, my faithful servant,
whom I have honoured with the warmth of my fire, go forth!” And once
again he stared at me through the reek of the flame, and pointed with
his assegai to the door of the hut.




CHAPTER XI.
THE COUNSEL OF BALEKA


I rose, I praised the king with a loud voice, and I went from the
_Intunkulu_, the house of the king. I walked slowly through the gates,
but when I was without the gates the anguish that took me because of my
burnt hand was more than I could bear. I ran to and fro groaning till I
came to the hut of one whom I knew. There I found fat, and having
plunged my hand in the fat, I wrapped it round with a skin and passed
out again, for I could not stay still. I went to and fro, till at
length I reached the spot where my huts had been. The outer fence of
the huts still stood; the fire had not caught it. I passed through the
fence; there within were the ashes of the burnt huts—they lay
ankle-deep. I walked in among the ashes; my feet struck upon things
that were sharp. The moon was bright, and I looked; they were the
blackened bones of my wives and children. I flung myself down in the
ashes in bitterness of heart; I covered myself over with the ashes of
my kraal and with the bones of my wives and children. Yes, my father,
there I lay, and on me were the ashes, and among the ashes were the
bones. Thus, then, did I lie for the last time in my kraal, and was
sheltered from the frost of the night by the dust of those to whom I
had given life. Such were the things that befell us in the days of
Chaka, my father; yes, not to me alone, but to many another also.

I lay among the ashes and groaned with the pain of my burn, and groaned
also from the desolation of my heart. Why had I not tasted the poison,
there in the hut of Chaka, and before the eyes of Chaka? Why did I not
taste it now and make an end? Nay, I had endured the agony; I would not
give him this last triumph over me. Now, having passed the fire, once
more I should be great in the land, and I would become great. Yes, I
would bear my sorrows, and become great, that in a day to be I might
wreak vengeance on the king. Ah! my father, there, as I rolled among
the ashes, I prayed to the _Amatongo_, to the ghosts of my ancestors. I
prayed to my _Ehlosé_, to the spirit that watches me—ay, and I even
dared to pray to the Umkulunkulu, the great soul of the world, who
moves through the heavens and the earth unseen and unheard. And thus I
prayed, that I might yet live to kill Chaka as he had killed those who
were dear to me. And while I prayed I slept, or, if I did not sleep,
the light of thought went out of me, and I became as one dead. Then
there came a vision to me, a vision that was sent in answer to my
prayer, or, perchance, it was a madness born of my sorrows. For, my
father, it seemed to me that I stood upon the bank of a great and wide
river. It was gloomy there, the light lay low upon the face of the
river, but far away on the farther side was a glow like the glow of a
stormy dawn, and in the glow I saw a mighty bed of reeds that swayed
about in the breath of dawn, and out of the reeds came men and women
and children, by hundreds and thousands, and plunged into the waters of
the river and were buffeted about by them. Now, my father, all the
people that I saw in the water were black people, and all those who
were torn out of the reeds were black—they were none of them white like
your people, my father, for this vision was a vision of the Zulu race,
who alone are “torn out of the reeds.” Now, I saw that of those who
swam in the river some passed over very quickly and some stood still,
as it were, still in the water—as in life, my father, some die soon and
some live for many years. And I saw the countless faces of those in the
water, among them were many that I knew. There, my father, I saw the
face of Chaka, and near him was my own face; there, too, I saw the face
of Dingaan, the prince, his brother, and the face of the boy
Umslopogaas and the face of Nada, my daughter, and then for the first
time I knew that Umslopogaas was not dead, but only lost.

Now I turned in my vision, and looked at that bank of the river on
which I stood. Then I saw that behind the bank was a cliff, mighty and
black, and in the cliff were doors of ivory, and through them came
light and the sound of laughter; there were other doors also, black as
though fashioned of coal, and through them came darkness and the sounds
of groans. I saw also that in front of the doors was set a seat, and on
the seat was the figure of a glorious woman. She was tall, and she
alone was white, and clad in robes of white, and her hair was like gold
which is molten in the fire, and her face shone like the midday sun.
Then I saw that those who came up out of the river stood before the
woman, the water yet running from them, and cried aloud to her.

“Hail, _Inkosazana-y-Zulu!_ Hail, Queen of the Heavens!”

Now the figure of the glorious woman held a rod in either hand, and the
rod in her right hand was white and of ivory, and the rod in her left
hand was black and of ebony. And as those who came up before her throne
greeted her, so she pointed now with the wand of ivory in her right
hand, and now with the wand of ebony in her left hand. And with the
wand of ivory she pointed to the gates of ivory, through which came
light and laughter, and with the wand of ebony she pointed to the gates
of coal, through which came blackness and groans. And as she pointed,
so those who greeted her turned, and went, some through the gates of
light and some through the gates of blackness.

Presently, as I stood, a handful of people came up from the bank of the
river. I looked on them and knew them. There was Unandi, the mother of
Chaka, there was Anadi, my wife, and Moosa, my son, and all my other
wives and children, and those who had perished with them.

They stood before the figure of the woman, the Princess of the Heavens,
to whom the Umkulunkulu has given it to watch over the people of the
Zulu, and cried aloud, “Hail, _Inkosazana-y-Zulu!_ Hail!”

Then she, the Inkosazana, pointed with the rod of ivory to the gates of
ivory; but still they stood before her, not moving. Now the woman spoke
for the first time, in a low voice that was sad and awful to hear.

“Pass in, children of my people, pass in to the judgment. Why tarry ye?
Pass in through the gates of light.”

But still they tarried, and in my vision Unandi spoke: “We tarry, Queen
of the Heavens—we tarry to pray for justice on him who murdered us. I,
who on earth was named Mother of the Heavens, on behalf of all this
company, pray to thee, Queen of the Heavens, for justice on him who
murdered us.”

“How is he named?” asked the voice that was low and awful.

“Chaka, king of the Zulus,” answered the voice of Unandi. “Chaka, my
son.”

“Many have come to ask for vengeance on that head,” said the voice of
the Queen of the Heavens, “and many more shall come. Fear not, Unandi,
it shall fall. Fear not, Anadi and ye wives and children of Mopo, it
shall fall, I say. With the spear that pierced thy breast, Unandi,
shall the breast of Chaka be also pierced, and, ye wives and children
of Mopo, the hand that pierces shall be the hand of Mopo. As I guide
him so shall he go. Ay, I will teach him to wreak my vengeance on the
earth! Pass in, children of my people—pass in to the judgment, for the
doom of Chaka is written.”

Thus I dreamed, my father. Ay, this was the vision that was sent me as
I lay in pain and misery among the bones of my dead in the ashes of my
kraal. Thus it was given me to see the Inkosazana of the Heavens as she
is in her own place. Twice more I saw her, as you shall hear, but that
was on the earth and with my waking eyes. Yes, thrice has it been given
to me in all to look upon that face that I shall now see no more till I
am dead, for no man may look four times on the Inkosazana and live. Or
am I mad, my father, and did I weave these visions from the woof of my
madness? I do not know, but it is true that I seemed to see them.

I woke when the sky was grey with the morning light; it was the pain of
my burnt hand that aroused me from my sleep or from my stupor. I rose
shaking the ashes from me, and went without the kraal to wash away
their defilement. Then I returned, and sat outside the gates of the
_Emposeni_, waiting till the king’s women, whom he named his sisters,
should come to draw water according to their custom. At last they came,
and, sitting with my kaross thrown over my face to hide it, looked for
the passing of Baleka. Presently I saw her; she was sad-faced, and
walked slowly, her pitcher on her head. I whispered her name, and she
drew aside behind an aloe bush, and, making pretence that her foot was
pierced with a thorn, she lingered till the other women had gone by.
Then she came up to me, and we greeted one another, gazing heavily into
each other’s eyes.

“In an ill day did I hearken to you, Baleka,” I said, “to you and to
the Mother of the Heavens, and save your child alive. See now what has
sprung from this seed! Dead are all my house, dead is the Mother of the
Heavens—all are dead—and I myself have been put to the torment by
fire,” and I held out my withered hand towards her.

“Ay, Mopo, my brother,” she answered, “but flesh is nearest to flesh,
and I should think little of it were not my son Umslopogaas also dead,
as I have heard but now.”

“You speak like a woman, Baleka. Is it, then, nothing to you that I,
your brother, have lost—all I love?”

“Fresh seed can yet be raised up to you, my brother, but for me there
is no hope, for the king looks on me no more. I grieve for you, but I
had this one alone, and flesh is nearest to flesh. Think you that I
shall escape? I tell you nay. I am but spared for a little, then I go
where the others have gone. Chaka has marked me for the grave; for a
little while I may be left, then I die: he does but play with me as a
leopard plays with a wounded buck. I care not, I am weary, but I grieve
for the boy; there was no such boy in the land. Would that I might die
swiftly and go to seek him.”

“And if the boy is not dead, Baleka, what then?”

“What is that you said?” she answered, turning on me with wild eyes.
“Oh, say it again—again, Mopo! I would gladly die a hundred deaths to
know that Umslopogaas still lives.”

“Nay, Baleka, I know nothing. But last night I dreamed a dream,” and I
told her all my dream, and also of that which had gone before the
dream.

She listened as one listens to the words of a king when he passes
judgement for life or for death.

“I think that there is wisdom in your dreams, Mopo,” she said at
length. “You were ever a strange man, to whom the gates of distance are
no bar. Now it is borne in upon my heart that Umslopogaas still lives,
and now I shall die happy. Yes, gainsay me not; I shall die, I know it.
I read it in the king’s eyes. But what is it? It is nothing, if only
the prince Umslopogaas yet lives.”

“Your love is great, woman,” I said; “and this love of yours has
brought many woes upon us, and it may well happen that in the end it
shall all be for nothing, for there is an evil fate upon us. Say now,
what shall I do? Shall I fly, or shall I abide here, taking the chance
of things?”

“You must stay here, Mopo. See, now! This is in the king’s mind. He
fears because of the death of his mother at his own hand—yes, even he;
he is afraid lest the people should turn upon him who killed his own
mother. Therefore he will give it out that he did not kill her, but
that she perished in the fire which was called down upon your kraals by
witchcraft; and, though all men know the lie, yet none shall dare to
gainsay him. As he said to you, there will be a smelling out, but a
smelling out of a new sort, for he and you shall be the witch-finders,
and at that smelling out he will give to death all those whom he fears,
all those whom he knows hate him for his wickedness and because with
his own hand he slew his mother. For this cause, then, he will save you
alive, Mopo—yes, and make you great in the land, for if, indeed, his
mother Unandi died through witchcraft, as he shall say, are you not
also wronged by him, and did not your wives and children also perish by
witchcraft? Therefore, do not fly; abide here and become great—become
great to the great end of vengeance, Mopo, my brother. You have much
wrong to wreak; soon you will have more, for I, too, shall be gone, and
my blood also shall cry for vengeance to you. Hearken, Mopo. Are there
not other princes in the land? What of Dingaan, what of Umhlangana,
what of Umpanda, brothers to the king? Do not these also desire to be
kings? Do they not day by day rise from sleep feeling their limbs to
know if they yet live, do they not night by night lie down to sleep not
knowing if it shall be their wives that they shall kiss ere dawn or the
red assegai of the king? Draw near to them, my brother; creep into
their hearts and learn their counsel or teach them yours; so in the end
shall Chaka be brought to that gate through which your wives have
passed, and where I also am about to tread.”

Thus Baleka spoke and she was gone, leaving me pondering, for her words
were heavy with wisdom. I knew well that the brothers of the king went
heavily and in fear of death, for his shadow was on them. With Panda,
indeed, little could be done, for he lived softly, speaking always as
one whose wits are few. But Dingaan and Umhlangana were of another
wood, and from them might be fashioned a kerrie that should scatter the
brains of Chaka to the birds. But the time to speak was not now; not
yet was the cup of Chaka full.

Then, having finished my thought, I rose, and, going to the kraal of my
friend, I doctored my burnt hand, that pained me, and as I was
doctoring it there came a messenger to me summoning me before the king.

I went in before the king, and prostrated myself, calling him by his
royal names; but he took me by the hand and raised me up, speaking
softly.

“Rise, Mopo, my servant!” he said. “Thou hast suffered much woe because
of the witchcraft of thine enemies. I, I have lost my mother, and thou,
thou hast lost thy wives and children. Weep, my councillors, weep,
because I have lost my mother, and Mopo, my servant, has lost his wives
and children, by the witchcraft of our foes!”

Then all the councillors wept aloud, while Chaka glared at them.

“Hearken, Mopo!” said the king, when the weeping was done. “None can
give me back my mother; but I can give thee more wives, and thou shalt
find children. Go in among the damsels who are reserved to the king,
and choose thee six; go in among the cattle of the king, and choose
thee ten times ten of the best; call upon the servants of the king that
they build up thy kraal greater and fairer than it was before! These
things I give thee freely; but thou shalt have more, Mopo—yes! thou
shalt have vengeance! On the first day of the new moon I summon a great
meeting, a _bandhla_ of all the Zulu people: yes, thine own tribe, the
Langeni, shall be there also. Then we will mourn together over our
woes; then, too, we will learn who brought these woes upon us. Go now,
Mopo, go! And go ye also, my councillors, leaving me to weep alone
because my mother is dead!”

Thus, then, my father, did the words of Baleka come true, and thus,
because of the crafty policy of Chaka, I grew greater in the land than
ever I had been before. I chose the cattle, they were fat; I chose the
wives, they were fair; but I took no pleasure in them, nor were any
more children born to me. For my heart was like a withered stick; the
sap and strength had gone from my heart—it was drawn out in the fire of
Chaka’s hut, and lost in my sorrow for those whom I had loved.




CHAPTER XII.
THE TALE OF GALAZI THE WOLF


Now, my father, I will go back a little, for my tale is long and winds
in and out like a river in a plain, and tell of the fate of Umslopogaas
when the lion had taken him, as he told it to me in the after years.

The lioness bounded away, and in her mouth was Umslopogaas. Once he
struggled, but she bit him hard, so he lay quiet in her mouth, and
looking back he saw the face of Nada as she ran from the fence of
thorns, crying “Save him!” He saw her face, he heard her words, then he
saw and heard little more, for the world grew dark to him and he
passed, as it were, into a deep sleep. Presently Umslopogaas awoke
again, feeling pain in his thigh, where the lioness had bitten him, and
heard a sound of shouting. He looked up; near to him stood the lioness
that had loosed him from her jaws. She was snorting with rage, and in
front of her was a lad long and strong, with a grim face, and a wolf’s
hide, black and grey, bound about his shoulders in such fashion that
the upper jaw and teeth of the wolf rested on his head. He stood before
the lioness, shouting, and in one hand he held a large war-shield, and
in the other he grasped a heavy club shod with iron.

Now the lioness crouched herself to spring, growling terribly, but the
lad with the club did not wait for her onset. He ran in upon her and
struck her on the head with the club. He smote hard and well, but this
did not kill her, for she reared herself upon her hind legs and struck
at him heavily. He caught the blow upon his shield, but the shield was
driven against his breast so strongly that he fell backwards beneath
it, and lay there howling like a wolf in pain. Then the lioness sprang
upon him and worried him. Still, because of the shield, as yet she
could not come at him to slay him; but Umslopogaas saw that this might
not endure, for presently the shield would be torn aside and the
stranger must be killed. Now in the breast of the lioness still stood
the half of Umslopogaas’s broken spear, and its blade was a span deep
in her breast. Then this thought came into the mind of Umslopogaas,
that he would drive the spear home or die. So he rose swiftly, for
strength came back to him in his need, and ran to where the lioness
worried at him who lay beneath the shield. She did not heed him, so he
flung himself upon his knees before her, and, seizing the haft of the
broken spear, drove it deep into her and wrenched it round. Now she saw
Umslopogaas and turned roaring, and clawed at him, tearing his breast
and arms. Then, as he lay, he heard a mighty howling, and, behold! grey
wolves and black leaped upon the lioness and rent and worried her till
she fell and was torn to pieces by them. After this the senses of
Umslopogaas left him again, and the light went out of his eyes so that
he was as one dead.

At length his mind came back to him, and with it his memory, and he
remembered the lioness and looked up to find her. But he did not find
her, and he saw that he lay in a cave upon a bed of grass, while all
about him were the skins of beasts, and at his side was a pot filled
with water. He put out his hand and, taking the pot, drank of the
water, and then he saw that his arm was wasted as with sickness, and
that his breast was thick with scars scarcely skinned over.

Now while he lay and wondered, the mouth of the cave was darkened, and
through it entered that same lad who had done battle with the lioness
and been overthrown by her, bearing a dead buck upon his shoulders. He
put down the buck upon the ground, and, walking to where Umslopogaas
lay, looked at him.

“_Ou!_” he said, “your eyes are open—do you, then, live, stranger?”

“I live,” answered Umslopogaas, “and I am hungry.”

“It is time,” said the other, “since with toil I bore you here through
the forest, for twelve days you have lain without sense, drin

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