Our farewells were spoken at the precise spot where we had met on my outward journey, but I did not pause there, pushing some twenty miles into the defile where we had seen the man-monkeys before we outspanned for the night. Two days later we passed the grave of the unhappy Siluce, and I had the melancholy satisfaction of seeing that, thus far, it had not been disturbed by wild animals. And on the following day we arrived at the spot where, according to the vision in which Bimbane had revealed to me the route I must follow in order to find Nell Lestrange, it became necessary for us to forsake our former trail and enter upon the new one. I took up this new trail without hesitation, the conviction being strong upon me that I should be right in so doing; and the event justified me, for on the evening of the sixty-second day after my departure from Masakisale I arrived upon the north bank of the Pongola River, and was informed by an astonished Kafir whom I encountered that Zululand, the country of the redoubtable Dingaan, lay upon the opposite shore of the stream. Of course I did not accomplish this journey of two months’ duration through a savage country without meeting with a few adventures, yet they were surprisingly few, all things considered, for I hunted now only for food for myself and my followers; moreover, they were of a very similar character to those of my outward journey, with a few unimportant variations in details. They may, therefore, be passed over with merely this brief reference to them, since to record them in detail would only render my story of altogether too unwieldy dimensions, without adding very greatly to its interest.
Arrived upon the Zululand border, I lost no time in dispatching a message to the formidable and somewhat unscrupulous king of the country, requesting his permission to pass through his territory on my way to Cape Colony from the north; and four days later ’Mfuni, who was my messenger for the occasion, returned with a reply to the effect that Dingaan granted my request, with the proviso that I did not linger unduly upon my journey, and that I should call upon him at his Place, Umgungundhlovu, on my way, to pay my respects—and also, as I fully understood, tribute, in the shape of a handsome present, for the privilege. This, of course, suited me admirably, as I intended to call upon the king in any case; and on the morning following the return of ’Mfuni we forded the river and entered upon the somewhat risky journey across Zululand, taking things fairly easy, as I wished to keep my team of zebras in good condition, in case it should be necessary to hurry, later on, after my interview with the king.
Two days later, about mid-afternoon, we arrived at Umgungundhlovu (or the Multitude of Houses), and before we reached it the leading features of the landscape began to assume an appearance of familiarity, until finally I beheld with my bodily eyes the entire scene, complete down to the smallest detail, which Mafuta, the Basuto nyanga, had revealed to me in a vision some six months before. There was the great “town”—containing, I suppose, quite two thousand huts—built upon the crest of a gently rising hill, and completely surrounded by a stout, high palisade with an open gateway in it through which passed a number of people going about their business, and merely pausing for a minute or two to gaze in wonder at my handsome team of zebras; and there, too, close at hand, was the singular-looking hog-backed kopje, with its straggling bushes and its tumbled masses of dark rock, upon which were perched some fifty or sixty vultures that seemed to be quite at home there. Little did I dream of the ghastly tragedy of which that weird kopje had been the scene a few months earlier, when, on the preceding sixth of February, the treacherous and ruthless king had caused the massacre upon it of the ill-fated Boer general, Pieter Retief, and some sixty of his followers; otherwise I should have been a good deal more uneasy in my mind than I actually was when I gave the order to outspan.
Yet, although I had no knowledge of it, the memory of that tragedy, and the fear lest the whites should eventually determine to avenge it, proved of the utmost service to me in my negotiations with the savage monarch; for when, adopting my usual tactics of “bluffing” boldly in my dealings with savages, I informed Dingaan bluntly that my object in visiting him was to demand the surrender of the white ’ntombozaan whom he held in captivity, I saw at once that, for some reason which I could not then guess, he was very greatly perturbed. But, like the savage he was, he also attempted to “bluff”, so that the matter soon resolved itself into a “bluffing match” between us, in which, although I did not know it, I held the advantage. First the king indignantly denied all knowledge of the girl for whom I was then seeking; then, when I not only insisted that she was in his power, but also minutely described her and her two girl companions, just as I had seen them in my vision, he retorted by declaring that it was in his mind to kill me and my followers, destroy my wagon, and turn my zebras loose, so that no trace should be left of any of us. Upon this I countered by asking him whether he really believed me such a fool as to venture into his country without sending a messenger to my countrymen by another way, informing them where I had gone, and asking them to investigate my fate if I did not arrive at home in due course. This retort proved to be my winning card, for he gave in at once, acknowledging Nell’s presence in the place; but insinuating that, since he had kept her alive and treated her well ever since the Tembu had sent her to him as a present, I ought to buy her of him. Of course, after this, the remainder of our negotiation was merely a matter of bargaining, and as I was not at all disposed to prolong the agony by being over particular in the matter of price, another half-hour saw the dear child sobbing happily in my arms, in exchange for practically the whole of the “truck” that still remained to me.
Nell sat up quite late that night talking with me and telling her adventures, beginning with that awful time when she awoke to find her room full of armed Tembu warriors, who forced her to rise from her bed, dress, and go with them; but although her tale was interesting enough to me, I have no space in which to record it here.
One incident, however, struck me as being sufficiently peculiar to be worthy of mention, and it was this. She told me how, when she had been at Dingaan’s Place nearly a year, she left the town one morning, accompanied by two young Zulu girls, to go down to a favourite haunt of hers near the river; “and,” said she, “when we were passing just about here, where this wagon is outspanned, a very strange thing happened. For, although I was not thinking of you at all just then, I suddenly believed for an instant that I saw you standing two or three yards away, with your hands outstretched and your lips moving as though you wanted to speak to me. I seemed to see you so distinctly that for a moment I was quite startled—indeed I believe I actually stopped under the impression that you were really there; but, as I did so, you vanished, and although I remember looking back I did not see you again.” Now, the most remarkable thing about this occurrence is that, by carefully questioning the child, I was at length forced to the conclusion that it had happened at the precise moment when I was beholding the vision conjured up for me by Mafuta, the Basuto nyanga.
We inspanned with the arrival of the dawn on the following morning, and, pushing the zebras to their utmost capacity, swept down through Zululand into Natal, and thence more leisurely through Kaffraria to Cape Colony, arriving in Somerset East on the seventeenth day after our departure from Umgungundhlovu, to the amazement and delight of Henderson and a host of other friends who had long given me up as “wiped out”. I told them as much of my story as I deemed fit, though not all of it by any means; neither did I ask anybody’s advice, for my wanderings in the wilds had given me so much self-reliance that I felt quite able to depend upon my own judgment. In the first place I negotiated with the manager of the local bank for the exchange of five hundred pounds’ worth of gold for coin, and then, learning that there were ships loading for England at Algoa Bay, I installed ’Mfuni, Piet, Jan, and ’Ngulubi on my estate, leaving the horses and zebras with them to be looked after during my absence, packed up my belongings, and transferred Nell and myself to Port Elizabeth, where I engaged passages for us both on a ship which was on the point of sailing for home, leaving us just time to procure our outfit prior to our departure.
A pleasant voyage of a little under three months ended in our finding ourselves in London in the early part of February, 1839, and although we found the climate of England exceedingly cold and unpleasant after the brilliant sunshine and warmth of South Africa, we managed to enjoy ourselves thoroughly during the ensuing two months. Then, with Nell’s cordial approval, I put her to a first-rate school at Bath, where she remained until her eighteenth birthday, emerging therefrom a very beautiful, accomplished, and lovable young woman.
Meanwhile, having disposed of Nell for the time being, I next turned my attention to the disposal of my treasure. The Bank of England took all my gold from me at its current value, thus placing me in immediate possession of abundant funds; and eventually, before returning to South Africa, I succeeded in finding a firm of jewellers who were prepared, for a consideration, to undertake the task of disposing of my diamonds, a small parcel at a time, so as not to flood the market. The reader may gather some idea of the number of those diamonds when I say that now, at the time of writing, this process is still going on, yet I have nearly half of the original number left. The arrangement, although no doubt exceedingly profitable to the firm of jewellers in question, has provided me with a princely annual income, much of which has been spent in restoring and extending Bella Vista, which is now one of the finest and best-stocked estates in the whole of South Africa.
Need I add that she who was once known as Nell Lestrange has been for many years the beloved and cherished mistress of the beautiful house that replaced the one in which the tragedy of more than fifty years ago occurred?