Epilogue.

Now as old Untúswa ended, the other two Zulus—who had been intently, eagerly, listening throughout—never interrupting, though uttering an emphatic murmur of assent or astonishment now and again, fell to discussing this tale they had heard—the Tale of the White Shield. They compared it with other traditions of magic feats and magic arms, wholly heroic and three parts mythical. But the old follower of Umzilikazi stood aloof with a good-humoured, yet pitying, kind of smile. He had other stories, he more than hinted; for this stirring epic which he had just narrated covered a time which was to his life as less than the blade of an assegai is to its whole length.

Then indeed, I, the stranger and the civilised, felt a growing compunction that time—and other things—forbade further dalliance amid the wild mountain haunts of these genuinely interesting barbarians, for from where we sat to Kambtila, whither the wagon had proceeded, was a far cry at that time of night; nor was the way better known to me than any other road I had never travelled before, and it was already growing dusk. Wherefore my steed, grazing hard by, was caught and saddled, and the splendid old veteran of a hundred fights, stood holding my stirrup in his courteous Zulu manner, and thus with hearty farewells we parted.

The darkness drew down, curtaining the grey cliffs above with shadowy gloom, and now lights twinkled forth from the little eyrie-like kraal, and as I slanted down the steep side of the mountain I could still see the dark forms of the three warriors, could hear the quivering rattle of assegai-hafts and the deep bass of voices, as they took their way homeward, half-hidden among the rocks and long grass.

So, too, did I take mine, reflecting on the completeness of this grand savage epic—the Tale of the White Shield; also of that other I had heard from the same narrator. What tales they were! What deeds, too, which most of these quiet-looking, pleasant-featured, courtly-mannered savages could tell of if they chose! dramas hardly credible as fitting in with the latter quarter of this prosaic nineteenth century. And I marvelled exceedingly—not for the first time—over the boundless stupidity of certain Britons of the denser sort, who in official or private capacity could move among such for a greater or lesser period of time, and yet bring away no more of an impression than that of a lot of “blacks” who wore precious little clothing and were not eager to learn the arts of “civilisation.”