“Listen, Nkose; I have fought for another king than him whom you English have taken from us, and for whom our hearts are crying. Though in my old age I fought for Cetywayo as an ordinary warrior, yet I was, while yet young, a great induna at the right hand of another king, and the second in command of his armies. For my youth, and, indeed, most of my life, was passed among a kindred people who dwell to the north. I am from the Amandebili.”
(Amandebili: commonly known as Matabili.)
Chapter One.
Tshaka’s Impi.
Now I saw I was going to get at a wonderful story. The incidents and recollections which would cluster round that beautifully-made dark-handled spear could not fail to be copious as well as passing strange. Then, in his pleasant and flowing Zulu voice—the voice par excellence for narrative purposes—the old man began:
“I am Untúswa, the son of Ntelani, a Zulu of the tribe of Umtetwa. I was a boy in the days when Tshaka, the great King, ruled this land, and trampled his enemies flatter than the elephant tramples the grass-blades. But I was full of the fighting blood which has made our people what they are—what they wore, rather”—he parenthesised sadly, recollecting that we were looking down upon the relics of fallen greatness, as represented by the silent desolation of the razed capital—“ah, yes! But instead of fighting for Tshaka I fought under a very different sort of king.
(Tshaka: The name of the celebrated Zulu King should, in strict accuracy, be written Tyaka. The above spelling, however, has been adopted throughout this narrative in consideration for the British ear. To spell the name with a C is quite erroneous.)
“When there are two bulls of nearly equal size in one kraal, they will not look long at each other before locking their horns. There were two such bulls in those days in the land of Zulu, and they were Tshaka, the son of Senzangakona, who was the King, and Umzilikazi, the son of Matyobane. I was but a boy, I repeat, in those days, but they tell me that Umzilikazi loved not the house of Senzangakona. But he was wiser than the serpent if braver than the bull-buffalo in full charge. He thought it better to be a live king than a dead induna.