Then the vrouw exploded.
“Do you hear that, Henri Marais?” she screamed. “It is your stinkcat of a nephew again. Oh! I thought I smelt him! Your nephew has betrayed us to these Zulus that he may bring Allan to his death. Ask them, Allan, what this Dingaan has done with the stinkcat.”
So I asked, and was informed they believed that the king had let Pereira go on to his own people in payment of the information that he had given him.
“My God!” said the vrouw, “I hoped that he had knocked him on the head. Well, what is to be done now?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. Then an idea occurred to me, and I said to Kambula:
“It seems to be me, the son of George, that your king wants. Take me, and let these people go on their road.”
The three Zulus began to discuss this point, withdrawing themselves a little way so that I could not overhear them. But when the Boers understood the offer that I had made, Marie, who until now had been silent, grew more angry than ever I had seen her before.
“It shall not be!” she said, stamping her foot. “Father, I have been obedient to you for long, but if you consent to this I will be obedient no more. Allan saved my cousin Hernan’s life, as he saved all our lives. In payment for that good deed Hernan tried to murder him in the kloof—oh! be quiet, Allan; I know all the story. Now he has betrayed him to the Zulus, telling them that he is a terrible and dangerous man who must be killed. Well, if he is to be killed, I will be killed with him, and if the Zulus take him and let us free, I go with him. Now make up your mind.”
Marais tugged at his beard, staring first at his daughter and then at me. What he would have answered I do not know, for at that moment Kambula stepped forward and gave his decision.
It was to the effect that although it was the Son of George whom Dingaan wanted, his orders were that all with him were to be taken also. Those orders could not be disobeyed. The king would settle the matter as to whether some of us were to be killed and some let free, or if all were to be killed or let free, when we reached his House. Therefore he commanded that “we should tie the oxen to the moving huts and cross the river at once.”