All misgivings on that score, however, was soon set at rest. At the foot of the cliff, shattered, shivered into a horrible mangled mass, lay the body of Vunawayo—a great gash over the heart, showing where it had received the stab which had, as by a hair’s breadth, saved Gerard from being dragged over by the fierce and desperate savage. At this ghastly evidence of the terrible fate from which he had so narrowly escaped, Gerard shuddered.
“Há! Jeriji!” said Sobuza, with a grim smile. “My broad umkonto (the short-handled stabbing spear) has done its work well, as well as your fists did among those Amakafula dogs near the Umgeni. That was a great day; but this has been a greater one.”
“It has indeed, Sobuza,” answered Gerard. “And so yours was the stroke that saved my life? Well, we are very much more than quits now, at any rate.”
Close beside the shattered remains of Vunawayo, lay those of the warrior who had leaped of his own accord from the summit, choosing rather to die by his own act than that his enemies should have the satisfaction of boasting that they had slain him.
“The wizards have died hard, and we have had a right merry fight,” said Sobuza, turning away. “With more men we could have crushed them quicker, but then we should not have had so grand a fight. I think, Jeriji, that the Great Great One knew this when he sent but a thousand men, for in such blood-letting do we keep our spears sharp in these peaceable times.”
As they rejoined the impi, it became evident that an altercation of some kind was going forward; the parties thereto being a young unringed man and an Udhloko warrior.
“It is mine, I say!” vociferated the former, who was being backed up by more and more of his friends. “It is mine! I won it!”
“You won it!” was the contemptuous reply of the kehla. “Ha! umfane (‘Boy,’ i.e. an unringed man). I have it. I took it. Come now, you, and take it!”
“I will,” shouted the other in answer to this direct challenge. And supported by a gathering number of his friends he rushed upon the ringed man. The latter, however, seemed equally well supported. Spears waved threateningly as the parties confronted each other. It seemed as if civil strife was going to follow upon the extermination of the legitimate enemy.
“Peace!” cried Sobuza, sternly. “What it this, that the king’s hunting-dogs snarl against each other?”