Nada the Lily

by H. Rider Haggard

“‘Not so fast, old wife,’ I said. ‘Will you lend me this club to hold in my hand while I go to find the bones of your son and to snatch them from the people of the ghosts?’

“‘Lend you the Watcher, boy? Nay, nay! I should see little of you again or of the good club either.’

“‘I am no thief,’ I answered. ‘If the ghosts kill me, you will see me no more, or the club either; but if I live I will bring you back the bones, or, if I do not find them, I will render the Watcher into your hands again. At the least I say that if you will not lend me the club, then I will not go into the haunted place.’

“‘Boy, your eyes are honest,’ she said, still peering at me. ‘Take the Watcher, go seek the bones. If you die, let the club be lost with you; if you fail, bring it back to me; but if you win the bones, then it is yours, and it shall bring you glory and you shall die a man’s death at last holding him aloft among the dead.’

“So on the morrow at dawn I took the club Watcher in my hand and a little dancing shield, and made ready to start. The old woman blessed me and bade me farewell, but the other people of the kraal mocked, saying: ‘A little man for so big a club! Beware, little man, lest the ghosts use the club on you!’ So they spoke, but one girl in the kraal—she is a granddaughter of the old woman—led me aside, praying me not to go, for the forest on the Ghost Mountain had an evil name: none dared walk there, since it was certainly full of spirits, who howled like wolves. I thanked the girl, but to the others I said nothing, only I asked of the path to the Ghost Mountain.

“Now stranger, if you have strength, come to the mouth of the cave and look out, for the moon is bright.”

So Umslopogaas rose and crept through the narrow mouth of the cave. There, above him, a great grey peak towered high into the air, shaped like a seated woman, her chin resting upon her breast, the place where the cave was being, as it were, on the lap of the woman. Below this place the rock sloped sharply, and was clothed with little bushes. Lower down yet was a forest, great and dense, that stretched to the top of a cliff, and at the foot of the cliff, beyond the waters of the river, lay the wide plains of Zululand.

“Yonder, stranger,” said Galazi, pointing with the club Watcher of the Fords far away to the plain beneath; “yonder is the kraal where the aged woman dwelt. There is a cliff rising from the plain, up which I must climb; there is the forest where dwell the Amatongo, the people of the ghosts; there, on the hither side of the forest, runs the path to the cave, and here is the cave itself. See this stone lying at the mouth of the cave, it turns thus, shutting up the entrance hole—it turns gently; though it is so large, a child may move it, for it rests upon a sharp point of rock. Only mark this, the stone must not be pushed too far; for, look! if it came to here,” and he pointed to a mark in the mouth of the cave, “then that man need be strong who can draw it back again, though I have done it myself, who am not a man full grown. But if it pass beyond this mark, then, see, it will roll down the neck of the cave like a pebble down the neck of a gourd, and I think that two men, one striving from within and one dragging from without, scarcely could avail to push it clear. Look now, I close the stone, as is my custom of a night, so,”—and he grasped the rock and swung it round upon its pivot, on which it turned as a door turns. “Thus I leave it, and though, except those to whom the secret is known, none would guess that a cave was here, yet it can be rolled back again with a push of the hand. But enough of the stone. Enter again, wanderer, and I will go forward with my tale, for it is long and strange.

“I started from the kraal of the old woman, and the people of the kraal followed me to the brink of the river. It was in flood, and few had dared to cross it.

“‘Ha! ha!’ they cried, ‘now your journey is done, little man; watch by the ford you who would win the Watcher of the Ford! Beat the water with the club, perhaps so it shall grow gentle that your feet may pass it!’