“I will not, wife of a dog; go and seek water for yourself.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears, but the boy folded his arms on his breast and scowled. He was a very handsome boy, with bright black eyes, but when he scowled his eyes were like the sky before a thunderstorm.
“Mother,” he said, “we are not wanted here any more than we were wanted yonder,” and he nodded towards the country where the Zulu people lived. “Let us be going to Dingiswayo; the Umtetwa people will protect us.”
“Yes, let us be going, my son,” answered Unandi; “but the path is long, we are weary and shall fall by the way.”
I heard, and something pulled at my heart; I was sorry for the woman and her boy, they looked so tired. Then, without saying anything to my mother, I snatched the gourd and ran with it to a little donga that was hard by, for I knew that there was a spring. Presently I came back with the gourd full of water. My mother wanted to catch me, for she was very angry, but I ran past her and gave the gourd to the boy. Then my mother ceased trying to interfere, only she beat the woman with her tongue all the while, saying that evil had come to our kraals from her husband, and she felt in her heart that more evil would come upon us from her son. Her Ehlosé[[3]] told her so. Ah! my father, her Ehlosé told her true. If the woman Unandi and her child had died that day on the veldt, the gardens of my people would not now be a wilderness, and their bones would not lie in the great gulley that is near U’Cetywayo’s kraal.
[3] Guardian spirit.—ED.
While my mother talked I and the cow with the white face stood still and watched, and the baby Baleka cried aloud. The boy, Unandi’s son, having taken the gourd, did not offer the water to his mother. He drank two-thirds of it himself; I think that he would have drunk it all had not his thirst been slaked; but when he had done he gave what was left to his mother, and she finished it. Then he took the gourd again, and came forward, holding it in one hand; in the other he carried a short stick.
“What is your name, boy?” he said to me as a big rich man speaks to one who is little and poor.
“Mopo is my name,” I answered.
“And what is the name of your people?”