“They were hardly in the field at all, Baas,” he said in an undertone, and excellent English. “Zulu nigger one damn great big liar.”
The speaker being some shades darker in colour than any Zulu there present I could hardly restrain a laugh. Falkner couldn’t. He guffawed outright. The chief looked angry.
“Steady, Sewin,” I warned. “You’re spoiling everything.” Then to Magebe. “We had better all go and look what has been done. Then we can settle it.”
The mealie crop was only just over the rise, so we were there very soon. I had told Falkner to come too, fearing he might get into more mischief if left behind: and yet it was almost as bad having him, for he eyed the two Zulus with a sort of resentful contempt, more than once expressing a desire to knock their qualified heads together.
Even as Jan Boom had said, the damage proved to be very slight; but Magebe, an old man and avaricious, set to work to make the most of it. Half his crop was ruined and so forth. I must pay him two oxen.
Of course I had no intention of doing anything of the sort, so we adjourned to the waggons again to talk it over. There the discussion became long and heated, notwithstanding the fact that I opened it by filling them up with a great deal of black coffee and sugar. Nonguza, who did most of the talking, and I felt sure would claim the lion’s share of the spoil whatever it might be, was especially curt and offensive. I got sick of it at last.
“Here,” I said, spreading a new green blanket on the ground, and piling upon it a couple of big butcher knives—which Zulus dearly love—some strings of black and white beads, a few brass buttons and a goodly length of roll tobacco. “This is more than twice the damage my oxen have done. So now, Magebe, take it, and I will send one of my drivers with these two,” pointing to the two young Zulus who had explained matters, “and he will bring back the oxen.”
But Magebe objected that this was not enough, no, not nearly enough.
“There it is. Take it or leave it. If you leave it, then we leave the Zulu country—walk out of it, for we cannot drag our waggons. Then, when the Great Great One—he who sits at Undini—is called upon to make good the loss of two spans of oxen, two waggons and the whole of their contents—to the Englishmen whose oxen were taken—were taken by Nonguza, the induna whom he sent to keep order here on the boundary, what will he say, that Lion—what will he do? Tell me that. What will he do?”
“I know nothing of your oxen, Umlúngu,” said Nonguza, sullenly. “It is not I who have taken them.”