The Ingoma when sung by twenty or thirty thousand men

rushing down to battle must, indeed, have been a song to

hear.--EDITOR.] The spirit of this fierce Ingoma, conveyed by sound, gesture and

inflection of voice, not the exact words, remember, which are very rude

and simple, leaving much to the imagination, may perhaps be rendered

somewhat as follows. An exact translation into English verse is almost

impossible--at any rate, to me: "Loud on their lips is lying,

Rebels their King defying.

There shall be dead and dying, Red are their eyes with hate;

Lo! where our impis wait

Vengeance insatiate!"

It was early on the morning of the 2nd of December, a cold, miserable

morning that came with wind and driving mist, that I found myself with

the Amawombe at the place known as Endondakusuka, a plain with some

kopjes in it that lies within six miles of the Natal border, from which

it is separated by the Tugela river.

As the orders of the Amawombe were to keep out of the fray if that were

possible, we had taken up a position about a mile to the right of what

proved to be the actual battlefield, choosing as our camping ground

a rising knoll that looked like a huge tumulus, and was fronted at a

distance of about five hundred yards by another smaller knoll. Behind us

stretched bushland, or rather broken land, where mimosa thorns grew in

scattered groups, sloping down to the banks of the Tugela about four

miles away.

Shortly after dawn I was roused from the place where I slept, wrapped

up in some blankets, under a mimosa tree--for, of course, we had no

tents--by a messenger, who said that the Prince Umbelazi and the white

man, John Dunn, wished to see me. I rose and tidied myself as best I

could, since, if I can avoid it, I never like to appear before natives

in a dishevelled condition. I remember that I had just finished brushing

my hair when Umbelazi arrived.

I can see him now, looking a veritable giant in that morning mist.

Indeed, there was something quite unearthly about his appearance as

he arose out of those rolling vapours, such light as there was being

concentrated upon the blade of his big spear, which was well known as

the broadest carried by any warrior in Zululand, and a copper torque he

wore about his throat.

There he stood, rolling his eyes and hugging his kaross around him

because of the cold, and something in his anxious, indeterminate

expression told me at once that he knew himself to be a man in terrible

danger. Just behind him, dark and brooding, his arms folded on

his breast, his eyes fixed upon the ground, looking, to my moved

imagination, like an evil genius, stood the stately and graceful Saduko.

On his left was a young and sturdy white man carrying a rifle and

smoking a pipe, whom I guessed to be John Dunn, a gentleman whom, as it

chanced, I had never met, while behind were a force of Natal Government

Zulus, clad in some kind of uniform and armed with guns, and with them a

number of natives, also from Natal--"kraal Kafirs," who carried stabbing

assegais. One of these led John Dunn's horse.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024