“That so? You ever fight Matabele before?”
“Yes. I was up here with the column in ’93. That used to be the programme then.”
The wind was singing in frosty puffs through the grass, bitterly cold. Riding along in the darkness, the numbed feet of most there advancing could hardly feel the stirrups. Then upon the raw air arose a sound—a strange, long-drawn wailing sound, not devoid of rhythm, and interspersed every now and then with a kind of humming hiss.
“They are holding a war-dance, so there must be plenty of them there,” whispered John Ames. “Listen! I can hear the words now.”
It was even as he said. They were near enough for that. Louder and louder the war-song of Lobengula swelled forth upon the darkness, coming from just beyond the rise—
“Woz ’ubone! Woz ’ubone, kiti kwazula! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba yemkonto—Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!
“Nants ’indaba. Indaba yezizwe. Akwazimúntu. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí! Woz ’ubone! Nants ’indaba. Indaba kwa Matyobane. Jjí-jjí! Jjí-jjí!”
(“Jjí-jjí” is the cry on striking a foe.)
A translation of the war-song:
“Come behold, come behold, at the High Place!
Come behold. That is the tale - the tale of the spear.
That is the tale - the tale of the nation. Nobody knows.
Come behold. That is the tale - the tale of Matyobane.”
The barbaric strophes rolled in a wave of sound, rising higher with each repetition, and to the measured accompaniment of the dull thunder of stamping feet, the effect was weirdly grand in the darkness.
“It makes something very like nonsense if turned into English,” whispered John Ames, in reply to his comrade’s query, “but it contains allusions well understood by themselves. There isn’t anything particularly bloodthirsty about it, either. That sort of hiss, every now and then, is what we shall hear if we get to close quarters.”