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"I waited till dark, and creeping up to the place where the Zulus are encamped, hid myself behind a stone and listened. They are a great regiment of Umtetwas as Baas Botha yonder thought. They struck the spoor of the waggons three days ago and followed it. To-night they sleep upon their spears, to-morrow at daybreak they will attack the laager and kill everybody.
But I saw that the blood of the Umtetwas was up; they did not mean to be beaten back this time, and the end was near. See! six men had leapt on to a waggon, slain the man behind it, and sprung into the laager. They were killed there, but others followed, and then I turned my head. But I could not shut my ears to the cries of rage and death, and the terrible S'gee!
They were partially annihilated, and whilst some of the survivors, of whom the Umtetwas in Zululand are the descendants, were embodied in the Zulu regiments, others were scattered far and wide. Branches of this important tribe exist as far off as the Cape Colony.
He shook his head. "The Umtetwas will go after the oxen presently," he answered, "and we have seen enough of them." "Quite enough," I answered, with enthusiasm; "I never want to see another; but where are we to go? Here we are alone with one gun and a little girl in the vast and lonely veldt. Which way shall we turn?"
Dingiswayo, who was the chief of the Umtetwas when Chaka conquered the tribe, fled after his defeat into Basutoland, and is supposed to have died there. After the Zulu war Sir G. Wolseley divided the Umtetwa into two districts, appointing an Umtetwa chief named Somkeli ruler over one, and Umlandela over the other.
His appointment was a fatal mistake, and has already led to much bloodshed under the following curious circumstances, which are not without interest, as showing the intricacy of Zulu plots. The Umtetwas were in the days of Chaka a very powerful tribe, but suffered the same fate at his hands as did every other that ventured to cross spears with him.
"And now, Macumazahn," he said, "we had best be going, for those Umtetwas are coming back. I saw one of them on the brow of the rise." That was enough for me. I lifted little Tota on to the bow of my saddle, climbed into it, and rode off, holding her in front of me.
There are men in the world who can make people believe they see things which they do not see. Let us be going while we may, for when those Umtetwas have got over their fright, they will come back to loot the waggons, and then perhaps they will begin asking questions that I can't answer." And here I may as well state that I never got any further information on this matter from old Indaba-zimbi.
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.
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