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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Those who walk the Bridge of Spears, O king, fall off into Nowhere," I answered darkly; "even witch-doctors cannot keep a footing on that bridge. Has not a witch-doctor a heart that can cease to beat? Has he not blood that can be made to flow?" Chaka looked at me strangely. "Thou art a bold man who darest to speak thus to me, Mopo," he said.
But those who have the Lion's blood in them or who are prone to charge like a buffalo, often neglect these matters and therefore in the end they fall into a pit." "Yes," I answered, "especially those who have the lion's blood in them, whether that lion be man or beast." This I said because of the rumours I had heard that this Slaughterer was in truth the son of Chaka.
"Where has the Axe-bearer gone?" I asked without surprise, for this news did not astonish me. "I neither know nor care, Macumazahn. To become a wanderer, I suppose. I have done with this lion's whelp, who is Chaka over again, but without Chaka's wit.
For two hours we walked, or more, till at last we came to the crest of the rise, and there, far away, we saw a large kraal. "Keep heart," I said. "See, there is the kraal of Chaka." "Yes, brother," she answered, "but what waits us there? Death is behind us and before us we are in the middle of death." Presently we came to a path that ran to the kraal from the ford of the Umfolozi.
It told of Life and of Death, of Joy and of Sorrow, of Time and of that sea in which Time is but a floating leaf, and of why all these things are. Many names also came into the song, and I knew but a few of them, yet my own was there, and the name of Baleka and the name of Umslopogaas, and the name of Chaka the Lion.
"Ah!" cried Umslopogaas, "you sought a youth to slay him, and have found an axe to be slain by it! Sleep softly, captain of Chaka." Then Umslopogaas spoke to Galazi, saying: "My brother, I will fight no more with the spear, but with the axe alone; it was to seek an axe that I ran to and fro like a coward. But this is a poor thing! See, the haft is split because of the greatness of my stroke!
Now it is, my father, that the white men come into my story, whom we named the Amaboona, but you call the Boers. Ou! I think ill of those Amaboona, though it was I who gave them the victory over Dingaan I and Umslopogaas. Before this time, indeed, a few white men had come to and fro to the kraals of Chaka and Dingaan, but these came to pray and not to fight.
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.
"Cease, my servant, cease!" said the mocking voice of Chaka; "but know this, thou hast done well to grieve aloud, because the Mother of the Heavens is no more, and ill wouldst thou have done to grieve because the fire from above has kissed thy gates.
Also I thought of the hints which in her jealous anger and disappointment at her lack of children, this woman had dropped about a plot against him who sat on the throne of Chaka, which of course must mean King Cetywayo himself. I came to the guest-hut, which proved to be a very good place and clean; also in it I found plenty of food made ready for me and for my servants.
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