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Updated: June 11, 2025
So presently they went, and from the spot whence Meyer used to shoot at the Matabele camp, looked down upon the Makalanga moving about the first enclosure far below. By the aid of the glasses Benita even thought that she recognised Tamas, although of this it was difficult to be sure, for they were all very much alike. Still, the discovery quite excited her. "I am sure it is Tamas," she said.
On she struggled, above her the pearly sky in which the stars were fading, around her the wet reeds, and pervading all the heavy low-lying mists of dawn. She was past the round of the walls, and at length stood upon dry ground where the Matabele had made their camp. But in that fog she saw no Matabele; probably their fires were out, and she chanced to pass between the sentries.
Presently there was a slight rattle of trinkets, and a swish of the tall yellow grass, followed by the apparition of a naked Matabele warrior standing glistening among the rocks of the streamlet, within thirty yards of me.
She gathered that although they spoke a dialect of Zulu, they had none of the bravery of the Zulus, and indeed lived in deadly terror of the Matabele, who are bastard Zulus such terror, in fact, that she greatly doubted whether the hundred rifles would be of much use to them, should they ever be attacked by that tribe.
The two tribes were, however, hostile to each other; and, to overcome this hostility, it was determined to simultaneously establish missions among both tribes. With this object in mind the Directors wrote to Robert Moffat, proposing that he should go for a twelvemonth to the Matabele, taking two younger men with him, and plant a mission among this people.
Still there ARE times which turn even the most peaceful of us perforce into fighters times when those we love, those we are bound to protect, stand in danger of their lives; and at moments like that, no man can doubt what is his plain duty. The Matabele revolt was one such moment. In a conflict of race we MUST back our own colour.
With our company were two American scouts, named Colebrook and Doolittle, irregular fighters whose value in South African campaigns had already been tested in the old Matabele war against Lo-Bengula. Colebrook, in particular, was an odd-looking creature a tall, spare man, bodied like a weasel.
I, Mambo, the Molimo of Bambatse, send you greeting, and will give you good welcome and fulfil my promise, if you come with the far-shooting guns, ten times ten of them, and the powder, and the bullets wherewith I may drive off the Matabele, but not otherwise. My son, Tamas, and my councillors will drive your waggon into my country but you must bring no strange servants.
A certain number of men were also sent out as spies to discover, if possible, the whereabouts of the Matabele impi.
By nine o'clock these excitements were usually over, and half an hour afterwards nearly every soul not on duty was asleep, secure in the feeling that for every one who reposed two were on watch; while, as regards Colonel Baden-Powell, he was always prowling about, and the natives revived his old Matabele nickname of "the man that walks by night." "There is a reaper whose name is Death."
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