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"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!"
"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.
But I wondered in my heart who this young man with an axe might be; for I thought that he had dealt with Jikiza and with the sons of Jikiza as Umslopogaas would have dealt with them had he come to the years of his manhood. But I also said nothing of the matter. Now on this day also there came to me news that my wife Macropha and my daughter Nada were dead among their people in Swaziland.
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.
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.
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.
"And of Nada, what of Nada, my sister?" he said. "Macropha, your mother, and Nada, your sister, are dead, Umslopogaas. They are dead at the hands of the people of the Halakazi, who dwell in Swaziland." "I have heard of that people," he answered presently, "and so has Galazi the Wolf, yonder.
"Let the fruit ripen before you pluck it, Nada," he answered. "If you love me and will wed me, it is enough." "I pray that it may not be more than enough," she said, stretching out her hand to him. "Listen, Umslopogaas: ask my father here what were the words I spoke to him many years ago, before I was a woman, when, with my mother, Macropha, I left him to go among the Swazi people.
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.
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?"
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