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Updated: June 11, 2025
The crowded ranks of the Kafirs were ploughed as if by cannon, while hundreds of assagais were hurled into the enclosure, but happily with little effect, though a few of the defenders exposing themselves recklessly were wounded.
A few words sufficed, and the moment that the white man's intentions and wishes were understood the crowd dissolved, as if by magic, the men hurrying away to their huts to procure their weapons, while Dick and Grosvenor sauntered away toward the wagon, noting, as they went, that their team of oxen had been driven to a spot where the grass was especially good, close to the banks of the river, and that it was being zealously watched and guarded by a dozen well-grown lads armed with hunting assagais and knobkerries.
The man's shield and sheaf of assagais stood close at hand against the wall of the hut, and a ponderous knobkerrie hung just overhead, slung by a loop of rimpi; but the hut contained nothing to distinguish it from that of any other native, and I confess that my first feeling was one of disappointment, for I had never before been in the hut of a nyanga, and I had been led to believe by those who had that I should see all sorts of strange and weird-looking objects if I ever happened to penetrate to the interior of a Kafir witch doctor's hut.
"Boss Val going to fight?" he said inquiringly, and as he asked his question he fitted his long, elliptical shield well upon his left arm and arranged his assagais handy for throwing. "Two against all those, Joeboy? No; it would be folly."
A short gallop sufficed to carry them to the crest of the ridge, when they beheld the dogs baying and snarling round a fine, well-set-up native "boy", who, armed with assagais and knobkerrie, constituted one of a party of some thirty in number who appeared to be guarding a herd of about three hundred grazing cattle, while about half a mile farther on was a native village of some fifty Kafir huts of the usual beehived shape, built in the midst of a number of mealie fields occupying an area of, roughly, about half a square mile, situated near the banks of a small stream.
The kafir chief had resumed the weapons which, for convenience, he had left behind in the bush while prowling round the white man's camp, and now stalked along in all the panoply of a savage warrior-chief; with ox-hide shield, bundle of short sharp assagais, leopard-skin robe, and feathers.
Prudently reserving their fire, they made a rush towards the stables, "saddled up" in a few seconds, and, mounting, rode forth at a gallop straight back to the blood-stained hillock. To rescue, if possible, some of the females was their object. Regardless of several assagais that whizzed close to them, they galloped hither and thither among the bushes, but without success.
He was slightly above medium stature, and a trifle lighter in colour than the average Basuto; he was much more simply attired than the officer of the guard, his clothing consisting simply of a leopard-skin mucha and a lion-skin mantle: but the assured dignity of his carriage and the expression of arrogant pride upon his well-formed features would of themselves have sufficed to tell me that the man was none other than Moshesh, the king of the Basuto nation, even had the guard not given him the royal salute by raising their stabbing assagais aloft in their right hands as they thundered out the word "Bayete!"
The Kafirs had left all parts of the surrounding jungle to join in the assault on the mound, and when the fugitives made a dash through them, only a few had presence of mind to throw their assagais, and these missed their mark. A few bounds carried Hans and Charlie once more in advance of their enemies, but the clatter of hoofs immediately afterwards told that they were hotly pursued.
However, all seemed safe, for there was no cover on either side; but below the black warrior, and behind the ridge, there was ample space for a couple of hundred of his kin to be lying out of sight, ready at a signal to spring up and make a furious onslaught. "And turn me into a sort of human pin-cushion, which they would fill with their assagais," I said half-aloud.
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