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Then came the punitive expedition of 450 Boers, armed with flint-locks only, who utterly defeated Dingaan's most redoubtable impi of 10,000 warriors, and resulted in the complete overthrow of that Zulu monarch.
"I understand," answered Kambula; "Dingaan's thoughts are his thoughts and your thoughts are your thoughts, and perhaps that is why he does not want to see you. Still, remember, Inkoos, that Dingaan has saved your life, snatching you unburned out of a very great fire, perhaps because you are of a different sort of wood, which he thinks it a pity to burn. Now, if you are ready, let us go."
All that night I heard them talking off and on I, who lay awake plunged into new miseries. I was sure that some other dreadful thing had happened. Probably Dingaan's armies had destroyed all the Boers, and, if so, oh! what had become of Marie? Was she dead, or had she perhaps been taken prisoner, as Dingaan had told me would be done for his own vile purposes?
Although fifteen years or so have passed since Dingaan's death in 1840 the Kaffirs are very shy of talking about this poor lady, and, I think, only did so to me because I am neither an official nor a missionary, but one whom they look upon as a friend because I have doctored so many of them.
Once, long years before, I had heard that laugh, when I was a prisoner in Dingaan's kraal, after the massacre of Retief and his company, and I recognised it again.
She told me how, when she had been at Dingaan's Place nearly a year, she left the town one morning, accompanied by two young Zulu girls, to go down to a favourite haunt of hers near the river; "and," said she, "when we were passing just about here, where this wagon is outspanned, a very strange thing happened.
They learned of the massacre and that the Zulus were all gone yesterday morning. Also they got the bad news that Retief and everyone with him had been killed at Dingaan's town, it is said through the treachery of the English, who arranged with Dingaan that he should kill them." "That is false," I said; "but go on."
In him the Town Guard lost a capable captain, and Kimberley a worthy citizen. Saturday was Dingaan's day a sad reminder of the rejoicings associated with the anniversary, and which had to be skipped for once. Despite the prevailing glumness, however, the populace turned out to patronise a gymkhana entertainment at the Light Horse camp. Amid such gala surroundings the week ended.
On they went, expecting death at every step, but always escaping it, until they reached a wide clearing in the forest. In the centre of this clearing grew a tree more huge than any that Rachel had ever dreamed of, the bole of it, that sprang a hundred feet without a branch, was thicker than Dingaan's Great Hut, and its topmost boughs were lost in the scudding clouds.
"The Zulus about here have a strange story of a white girl who in Dingaan's day was supposed to 'hold the spirit' of some legendary goddess of theirs who is also white. This girl, they say, was very beautiful and brave, and had great power in the land before the battle of the Blood River, which they fought with the emigrant Boers.
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