Clear—clear through the night—sounded her voice, the voice of the little one whom we had lost. It sounded in warning.
“Waken, waken, Untúswa, my father! Waken for thy life’s sake; lest a nation be a nation no more!”
Now I leaped up; noiselessly, cautiously, as is our habit when alarmed. So strangely clear, so distinct the voice, that I gazed eagerly around, expecting to behold the little one standing before me in the moonlight. And her last words! “Lest a nation be a nation no more.” Whau! Even such had been the words of Lalusini, in her divining vision, when she declared that again should that voice be heard in warning, and charging that its utterances should not be neglected. But the apparition of my dream had faded. I was alone in the silence of the night.
Then, Nkose, I could have wept, for I had loved the little one; and now, deceived by my dream, had hoped to have, by some wonderful means, discovered her, alive and well. For the moment, I forgot all wizardry and presages, as I peered around, calling her softly by name. And then came a sound which put all other thoughts to flight, and stirred my blood until it tingled again—the sound which is as no other—the quivering rattle of assegai-hafts held bunched together in the hands of warriors.
Who were these, moving thus abroad at midnight? Surely, none of our people would find themselves away here in this wizard spot at such an hour. Ha! Could it be some of our own people who had come in search of me, seeing I did not return? Yet, somehow, this did not seem the explanation of it.
While I listened, the sounds were drawing nearer, and they were above me; and now, with the rattle of the supple wood, came the deep smothered tone of a voice or two. Then, before I could move to carry out the plan of concealment which my instinct prompted, there dropped down into the little hollow wherein I stood ten or a dozen men.
Note: This is an allusion—first, to the Zulu method of burying the dead in a sitting posture; second, to the custom of leaving the bodies of those executed for a criminal offence exposed to the carrion beasts and birds, a practice somewhat analogous to the not so very old English one of gibbeting highwaymen and other malefactors in chains.