There was a pause, then Kalipe answered, for he was well disposed towards me, and, moreover, liked not to wed with a sorceress himself.
“The bearer of the white shield, Great Great One. He is the bravest of our warriors—none braver.”
And all the others shouted aloud in assent of Kalipe’s words.
“Hear ye what these say, Lalusini?” said the King.
“I hear them, Black Elephant,” she replied, turning and smiling on me now for the first time.
“Let it be so, then, for my word stands,” said Umzilikazi.
Thus it came about, Nkose, that I took for my chief wife Lalusini, the daughter of great Tshaka, but as to this the King enjoined upon us to keep her birth a secret. And we dwelt long together and loved each other much, and there was peace in our kraal; for Lalusini was tender-hearted as well as beautiful, and not as Nangeza, who was hard and desired to be chief over all upon whom she looked. But save on very great and momentous occasions, Lalusini gave up practising sorcery, and, indeed, she told me afterwards how she had been able to sing the Song of the Shield in our ears in such wise as to turn the tide of the battle, and how that the great cliff above us was so formed at one place as to throw back the voice even when the singer was a long distance off: so had the song been heard as though it sprang out of nowhere, to the saving of our nation.
And I, after that I carried the white shield and the King’s broad spear into many a fray, and the might of the Amandebeli stood as it had ever done, nor was the arm of Dingane stretched out again to strike us until—Well, there came a time.
But it will soon grow dark, Nkose, nor is there time to begin another story. Whau! and a long one indeed has this been, for I think the sun had but just risen when I began, and now it is about to sink below the rim of the world again. In the lives of men, as in the lives of nations, strange things befall, and in mine, who am now old, strange things have befallen. I have lived under the shadow of five Kings—all mighty and great—but of them all, saving perhaps Tshaka, none was so great as Umzilikazi, the Father and Founder of a great and mighty nation.