“Will the izanusi doctor themselves and then stand up and let themselves be shot at?” he answered. “Will they do this? Ou!”
This was a puzzler. His hearers were pretty sure they would do no such thing, yet so ingrained is this stale and flimsy superstition, that notwithstanding the numbers of times its utter fallacy had been proved, there is no getting it out of the native system.
“I made blades for that Elephant who fell by ‘the stroke of Sopuza,’ when your fathers were children,” went on the old man, “Dingana, who scourged the Amabuna as a whip-lash scourges an ox, until he had to take flight when our nation was divided. But then the guns of the Amabuna shot but feebly and there was opportunity to run in and make an end. But now, when the white man’s bullets fall thick as the stones in the fiercest hail storm, what chance have ye with these?” pointing to a row of blades which awaited the binding. Whereby it will be seen that Malemba was progressive.
Even this argument did not impress the group. They were inclined to make very light of it.
“We will not allow them time to fire their bullets at all, my father,” laughed another of them. “We shall eat them up while they sleep.”
“But will they sleep?” said the old man, his head on one side.
“Will they not? They are asleep even now,” came the answer. “We need not even wait until night. They are scattered. We can take them at any time—when ‘the word’ is given.”
“When ‘the word’ is given! Ah! ah! When the word is given.” And the old man chuckled darkly.
“What means our father?”
“What I mean? What if ‘the word’ is given too late? Or worse still—too soon? Ou!”