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.