Bertram Mitford
"The Triumph of Hilary Blachland"
Chapter One.
The Camp on the Matya’mhlope.
“There! That is Umzilikazi’s grave,” said Christian Sybrandt, pointing out a towering pile of rocks some little way off, across the valley.
“Is it? Let’s go and have a look at it then,” was the prompt reply. But immediately upon having made it, the second speaker knew that he had spoken like a fool, for the first gave a short laugh.
“Go over and have a look at it?” he echoed. “Why we’d all be cut to bits before we got within half a mile. It’s holy ground, man; guarded, picketed by armed majara, rigidly watched, day and night. You couldn’t get near it, no, not at any price.”
“Well, I’ve a great notion to try,” persisted the other, to the imaginative side of whose temperament the place of sepulture of that remarkable savage, the remorseless, all-destroying war-leader, the founder and consolidator of a martial nation, irresistibly appealed, no less than the mystery and peril enshrouding the undertaking did to the adventurous side. “No white man has ever seen it close, I think you said, Sybrandt?”