United States or Namibia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
But the Chief now felt safe from the avenging wrath of Tshaka. Three of the Zulus were, however, still alive. Kondwana the induna, Senzanga the man without a head-ring, and one other, had fallen into an old elephant-pit, the surface of which was completely covered over with brushwood. Dry leaves and twigs had accumulated at the bottom, and thus the shock of their fall had been lessened.
But Usibebu and the induna Untshingwayo, who afterwards commanded at Isandhlwana, were for fighting, as were Sirayo, the husband of the two women who had been taken on English territory and killed, and Umbilini, the chief of Swazi blood whose surrender was demanded by Sir Bartle Frere and who afterwards commanded the Zulus in the battle at Ihlobane.
All these things were at Degaza's kraal before sunrise the next morning. The Induna Kabane, at the magistrate's office at Newcastle, knows of the money, and from whence it came. All the money is our money.
"I cannot grant it," answered Cetywayo, "you are a spy sent by Sompseu, or by the Queen's Induna in Natal. Get you gone." "Indeed," said Hadden, with a shrug of his shoulders; "then I hope that Sompseu, or the Queen's Induna, or both of them, will pay me when I return to my own country. Meanwhile I will obey you because I must, but I should first like to make you a present."
Then the Induna said that I must come to the King and repeat to him all the words that I had spoken. I replied that I could not possibly do so as, having finished my trading, I had arranged to go north to shoot elephants. He answered that elephants lived a long while and would not die while I was visiting the King.
We were now upon what may be termed sacred ground, that is to say, ground reserved for the exclusive use of the king himself and the members of his immediate household; nobody being permitted to enter here except persons belonging to the royal family, those especially invited by the king, the chief witch doctor, and the king's own bodyguard, consisting of one hundred specially picked men, under the command of an induna who also filled the office of chief adviser, or prime minister, to the king.
Of this I am sure, that when he has slain my son he will slay me, me also, and make himself chief in my place. I fear Indaba-zimbi. Ou!" "Black One," answered the induna, "wizards die as dogs die, and, once dead, dogs bark no more." "And once dead," said the chiefs, "wizards work no more spells," and he bent and whispered in the induna's ear, looking at the assegai in his hand as he whispered.
"Then you could dwell among us as one of ourselves." "One might do worse, induna of the king," he returned tranquilly, with a glance at the group of bright-faced, merry, and extremely well-shaped damsels, whom he had been convulsing with laughter. "Yau! Listen to our father," they cried. "He is joking, indeed. Yau! Farewell, Nyonyoba. Fare thee well."
Whereupon, at a word from the induna, a man dismounted, and, uncoiling his hobble rope, slipped the noose round one of the ankles of the corpse, attached the other end to his horse's girth, and, mounting, galloped off toward the edge of the plateau, dragging the body after him until it was removed to a sufficient distance to be quite out of the way of the manoeuvring troops, when it was abandoned to become a prey to the jackals and vultures!
"Lo!" said the induna, pointing down with his knob-stick. "Lo! there lies the land of the People of the Spider; there rests the throne of the Strong Wind that burns from the North. Lo! his dwelling, Imvungayo." From where they stood the ground fell away in great wooded spurs to a broad level valley, or rather plain, shut in on the farther side by rolling ranges of forest-clad hills.
Word Of The Day