A sad story in truth. Although it happened so many years ago I weep as I write it—I weep as Umbelazi wept.
Chapter XIV.
UMBEZI AND THE BLOOD ROYAL
After this I think that some of the Usutu came up, for it seemed to me that I heard Saduko say:
“Touch not Macumazahn or his servant. They are my prisoners. He who harms them dies, with all his House.”
So they put me, fainting, on my horse, and Scowl they carried away upon a shield.
When I came to I found myself in a little cave, or rather beneath some overhanging rocks, at the side of a kopje, and with me Scowl, who had recovered from his fit, but seemed in a very bewildered condition. Indeed, neither then nor afterwards did he remember anything of the death of Umbelazi, nor did I ever tell him that tale. Like many others, he thought that the Prince had been drowned in trying to swim the Tugela.
“Are they going to kill us?” I asked of him, since, from the triumphant shouting without, I knew that we must be in the midst of the victorious Usutu.
“I don’t know, Baas,” he answered. “I hope not; after we have gone through so much it would be a pity. Better to have died at the beginning of the battle.”
I nodded my head in assent, and just at that moment a Zulu, who had very evidently been fighting, entered the place carrying a dish of toasted lumps of beef and a gourd of water.
“Cetewayo sends you these, Macumazahn,” he said, “and is sorry that there is no milk or beer. When you have eaten a guard waits without to escort you to him.” And he went.