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It seems that these same gentlemen have actually been appointed by the Government to 'investigate matters' in the district where these Kaffirs live. Poor Toeremetsjani and the unfortunate indunas, as a contemporary remarks, may be expected to give a grovelling welcome. No more High Court for them.
Cronjé admitted that he did not know whether these were indunas. He considered them guilty, not because they had done anything, but because in their position as advisers of the Chieftainess they ought to have advised her better than they appeared to have done. Instructions had therefore been given to arrest these indunas, and they had caught as many as they could.
On the whole, then, it seemed wisest to grant him an interview, especially as she gathered from the fact that the question was raised by Dingaan's indunas, that for some reason of his own, the King hoped that she would do so. Still she hesitated, loathing and despising him as she did. "You have heard," she said in English to Noie, who stood behind her. "Now what shall I say?"
Listen to the rumbling of the Elephant," said the Indunas taking the point, while one bolder than the rest added: "Soon we will tell them another tale, the white Talking Ones, a red tale, a tale of spears, and the regiments shall sing it in their ears." At the words an enthusiasm caught hold of the listeners, as the sudden flame catches hold of dry grass.
"Hearken," he cried to the counsellor; "I have guessed it for long, and now I am sure of it. You are a traitor. Take him away!" A slight involuntary murmur rose from the ring of indunas, but the old man never flinched, not even when the soldiers, who presently would murder him, came and seized him roughly.
We like to be married to men who are great in the nation powerful indunas if not too old, or those who have much cattle, or who will name us for their principal wife; but we know not how to love. Yet you have taught me, Nyonyoba. Say now, is it through the magic of the white people you have done it?"
When I asked the Indunas about her at first they pretended total ignorance, but on my pressing the question, one of them said that 'all that tale was unlucky and "went beyond" with Mopo. Now Mopo, as I think I wrote to you, was the man who stabbed King Chaka, Dingaan's brother. He is supposed to have been mixed up in the death of Dingaan also, and to be dead himself.
This was their purpose: to get a grant of the land in Natal that lies between the Tugela and the Umzimoubu rivers. But, by my council and that of other indunas, Dingaan, bargained with the Boers that first they should attack a certain chief named Sigomyela, who had stolen some of the king's cattle, and who lived near the Quathlamba Mountains, and bring back those cattle.
"My heart," she answered smiling. "I dreamed it all. I suppose that I was allowed to save your life that I might bring you here to save me. Listen now, Richard, while I tell you the strangest story that you ever heard; and if you don't believe it, go and ask the King and his indunas." Then she told him of her vision by the pool and all that happened after it.
Laurence, standing upright within it, could make out three seated figures, the shimmer of their head-rings and the occasional shine of eyeballs being the only distinct feature about them. Then somebody threw an armful of dry twigs upon the fire which burned in the centre, and as the light crackled up he saw before him the king and the two fighting indunas, Ngumúnye and Silawayo.
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