The great man smiled. “Thou art not altogether right, Macumazahn,” he said; “I have plotted in my time, but it was not ambition that led me to my fall; but, shame on me that I should have to say it, a fair woman’s face. Let it pass. So we are going to see something like the old times again, Macumazahn, when we fought and hunted in Zululand? Ay, I will come. Come life, come death, what care I, so that the blows fall fast and the blood runs red? I grow old, I grow old, and I have not fought enough! And yet am I a warrior among warriors; see my scars”—and he pointed to countless cicatrices, stabs and cuts, that marked the skin of his chest and legs and arms. “See the hole in my head; the brains gushed out therefrom, yet did I slay him who smote, and live. Knowest thou how many men I have slain, in fair hand-to-hand combat, Macumazahn? See, here is the tale of them”—and he pointed to long rows of notches cut in the rhinoceros-horn handle of his axe. “Number them, Macumazahn—one hundred and three—and I have never counted but those whom I have ripped open,[[3]] nor have I reckoned those whom another man had struck.”
[3] Alluding to the Zulu custom of opening the stomach of a dead foe. They have a superstition that, if this is not done, as the body of their enemy swells up so will the bodies of those who killed him swell up.—A. Q.
“Be silent,” I said, for I saw that he was getting the blood-fever on him; “be silent; well art thou called the ‘Slaughterer’. We would not hear of thy deeds of blood. Remember, if thou comest with us, we fight not save in self-defence. Listen, we need servants. These men,” and I pointed to the Wakwafi, who had retired a little way during our “indaba” (talk), “say they will not come.”
“Will not come!” shouted Umslopogaas; “where is the dog who says he will not come when my Father orders? Here, thou”—and with a single bound he sprang upon the Wakwafi with whom I had first spoken, and, seizing him by the arm, dragged him towards us. “Thou dog!” he said, giving the terrified man a shake, “didst thou say that thou wouldst not go with my Father? Say it once more and I will choke thee”—and his long fingers closed round his throat as he said it—“thee, and those with thee. Hast thou forgotten how I served thy brother?”
“Nay, we will come with the white man,” gasped the man.
“White man!” went on Umslopogaas, in simulated fury, which a very little provocation would have made real enough; “of whom speakest thou, insolent dog?”
“Nay, we will go with the great chief.”
“So!” said Umslopogaas, in a quiet voice, as he suddenly released his hold, so that the man fell backward. “I thought you would.”
“That man Umslopogaas seems to have a curious moral ascendency over his companions,” Good afterwards remarked thoughtfully.