So I said; but, oh! my heart was heavy, and this was my plan—to fly far from Zululand. I could not, and I dared not do this thing. What? should I kill my own child that its life might be given for the life of the babe of Baleka? And should I lift up my will against the will of the king, saving the child to look upon the sun which he had doomed to darkness? Nay, I would fly, leaving all, and seek out some far tribe where I might begin to live again. Here I could not live; here in the shadow of Chaka was nothing but death.
I reached my own huts, there to find that my wife Macropha was delivered of twins. I sent away all in the hut except my other wife, Anadi, she who eight days gone had borne me a son. The second of the twins was born; it was a boy, born dead. The first was a girl, she who lived to be Nada the Beautiful, Nada the Lily. Then a thought came into my heart. Here was a path to run on.
“Give me the boy,” I said to Anadi. “He is not dead. Give him to me that I may take him outside the kraal and wake him to life by my medicine.”
“It is of no use—the child is dead,” said Anadi.
“Give him to me, woman!” I said fiercely. And she gave me the body.
Then I took him and wrapped him up in my bundle of medicines, and outside of all I rolled a mat of plaited grass.
“Suffer none to enter the hut till I return,” I said; “and speak no word of the child that seems to be dead. If you allow any to enter, or if you speak a word, then my medicine will not work and the babe will be dead indeed.”
So I went, leaving the women wondering, for it is not our custom to save both when twins are born; but I ran swiftly to the gates of the Emposeni.
“I bring the medicines, men of the king!” I said to the guards.
“Pass in,” they answered.