“Perhaps it is worth trying and perhaps it is not, my uncle,” answered Umslopogaas. “One thing I know: I had rather see Nada at my gates to-night than hear all the chiefs in the land crying ‘Hail, O King!’”
“You will live to think otherwise, Umslopogaas; and now spies must be set at the kraal Umgugundhlovu to give us warning of the mind of the king, lest he should send an impi suddenly to eat you up. Perhaps his hands may be too full for that ere long, for those white Amaboona will answer his assegais with bullets. And one more word: let nothing be said of this matter of your birth, least of all to Zinita your wife, or to any other woman.”
“Fear not, uncle,” he answered; “I know how to be silent.”
Now after awhile Umslopogaas left me and went to the hut of Zinita, his Inkosikasi, where she lay wrapped in her blankets, and, as it seemed, asleep.
“Greeting, my husband,” she said slowly, like one who wakens. “I have dreamed a strange dream of you. I dreamed that you were called a king, and that all the regiments of the Zulus filed past giving you the royal salute, Bayéte.”
Umslopogaas looked at her wondering, for he did not know if she had learned something or if this was an omen. “Such dreams are dangerous,” he said, “and he who dreams them does well to lock them fast till they be forgotten.”
“Or fulfilled,” said Zinita, and again Umslopogaas looked at her wondering.
Now after this night I began my work, for I established spies at the kraal of Dingaan, and from them I learned all that passed with the king.
At first he gave orders that an impi should be summoned to eat up the People of the Axe, but afterwards came tidings that the Boers, to the number of five hundred mounted men, were marching on the kraal Umgugundhlovu. So Dingaan had no impi to spare to send to the Ghost Mountain, and we who were beneath its shadow dwelt there in peace.
This time the Boers were beaten, for Bogoza, the spy, led them into an ambush; still few were killed, and they did but draw back that they might jump the further, and Dingaan knew this. At this time also the English white men of Natal, the people of George, who attacked Dingaan by the Lower Tugela, were slain by our soldiers, and those with them.