“But he was dead before you arrived in Natal, wasn’t he?” asked Ernest.
“Yes. I told you he had been dead some years, and his brother Dingaan was on the throne. Dingaan, who was quite as bloody, and even more treacherous than Chaka, caused him to be assassinated while he was sitting in his kraal, and then was made king in his place. But Dingaan was not his brother’s equal in ability or force of character, and he lost a great deal of the power which Chaka had acquired.”
“Did you ever come into contact with him, sir?” asked Wilhelm.
“He never sent his soldiers to attack us, but he was continually threatening us with his displeasure, and making demands, which we were obliged to comply with as well as we could. A Zulu Impi would have been no joke to encounter. We must have all fled for our lives, and our houses would have been burnt and our cattle driven off at the least.”
“How long did he reign?” asked Redgy.
“About twelve years. In the year 1836 the discontent of the Boers at Cape Town grew so great, that they too moved off to Natal—some five or six thousand of them. That, of course, made a great difference to our position. We could only have mustered a few hundreds to oppose Dingaan, if we had gone to war with him. But now it would be a few thousands.”
“And men who knew how to fight the Zulus, too,” remarked Walter.
“Yes. Dingaan found that out in 1837, when a war broke out between him and the Boers. Then the Zulus suffered for the first time a disastrous defeat. They rushed upon the Boers with their assegays, but the moment they came within range they were shot down like a flight of birds. They hardly got within hurling distance, and the stout leathern doublets of the Dutch repelled such assegays as did reach them. Not a single man, I believe, was so much as wounded. But it was an unfortunate victory in some ways. It caused Dingaan, instead of using force, to resort to treachery—treachery which was very nearly being the death of me, though in the end things turned out well.”
“Ah, now you are going to tell us the story of how you first got acquainted with mother,” said Wilhelm, laughing.
“Well, I daresay it will interest Mr Rivers to hear it,” said Baylen. “But, to be sure, it is a shocking history. It happened forty years ago, or one couldn’t speak so coolly of it.