“Let him wait,” said the king angrily; and, turning, he continued the discussion with his counsellors.
Now, as has been said, Hadden thoroughly understood Zulu; and, when from time to time the king raised his voice, some of the words he spoke reached his ear.
“What!” Cetywayo said, to a wizened and aged man who seemed to be pleading with him earnestly; “am I a dog that these white hyenas should hunt me thus? Is not the land mine, and was it not my father’s before me? Are not the people mine to save or to slay? I tell you that I will stamp out these little white men; my impis shall eat them up. I have said!”
Again the withered aged man interposed, evidently in the character of a peacemaker. Hadden could not hear his talk, but he rose and pointed towards the sea, while from his expressive gestures and sorrowful mien, he seemed to be prophesying disaster should a certain course of action be followed.
For a while the king listened to him, then he sprang from his seat, his eyes literally ablaze with rage.
“Hearken,” he cried to the counsellor; “I have guessed it for long, and now I am sure of it. You are a traitor. You are Sompseu’s[*] dog, and the dog of the Natal Government, and I will not keep another man’s dog to bite me in my own house. Take him away!”
[*] Sir Theophilus Shepstone’s.
A slight involuntary murmur rose from the ring of indunas, but the old man never flinched, not even when the soldiers, who presently would murder him, came and seized him roughly. For a few seconds, perhaps five, he covered his face with the corner of the kaross he wore, then he looked up and spoke to the king in a clear voice.
“O King,” he said, “I am a very old man; as a youth I served under Chaka the Lion, and I heard his dying prophecy of the coming of the white man. Then the white men came, and I fought for Dingaan at the battle of the Blood River. They slew Dingaan, and for many years I was the counsellor of Panda, your father. I stood by you, O King, at the battle of the Tugela, when its grey waters were turned to red with the blood of Umbulazi your brother, and of the tens of thousands of his people. Afterwards I became your counsellor, O King, and I was with you when Sompseu set the crown upon your head and you made promises to Sompseu—promises that you have not kept. Now you are weary of me, and it is well; for I am very old, and doubtless my talk is foolish, as it chances to the old. Yet I think that the prophecy of Chaka, your great-uncle, will come true, and that the white men will prevail against you and that through them you shall find your death. I would that I might have stood in one more battle and fought for you, O King, since fight you will, but the end which you choose is for me the best end. Sleep in peace, O King, and farewell. Bayéte!”[*]
[*] The royal salute of the Zulus.