Child of Storm

Nor was this all, for the figure was wrapped in a woman's hair, which I

knew at once for that of Mameena, this hair being held in place by the

necklet of big blue beads she used to wear about her throat.

* * * * * Some five years had gone by, during which many things had happened to me

that need not be recorded here, when one day I found myself in a rather

remote part of the Umvoti district of Natal, some miles to the east of a

mountain called the Eland's Kopje, whither I had gone to carry out a

big deal in mealies, over which, by the way, I lost a good bit of money.

That has always been my fate when I plunged into commercial ventures.

One night my wagons, which were overloaded with these confounded

weevilly mealies, got stuck in the drift of a small tributary of the

Tugela that most inopportunely had come down in flood. Just as darkness

fell I managed to get them up the bank in the midst of a pelting rain

that soaked me to the bone. There seemed to be no prospect of lighting

a fire or of obtaining any decent food, so I was about to go to bed

supperless when a flash of lightning showed me a large kraal situated

upon a hillside about half a mile away, and an idea entered my mind.

"Who is the headman of that kraal?" I asked of one of the Kafirs who had

collected round us in our trouble, as such idle fellows always do.

"Tshoza, Inkoosi," answered the man.

"Tshoza! Tshoza!" I said, for the name seemed familiar to me. "Who is

Tshoza?"

"Ikona [I don't know], Inkoosi. He came from Zululand some years ago

with Saduko the Mad."

Then, of course, I remembered at once, and my mind flew back to the

night when old Tshoza, the brother of Matiwane, Saduko's father, had cut

out the cattle of the Bangu and we had fought the battle in the pass.

"Oh!" I said, "is it so? Then lead me to Tshoza, and I will give you

a 'Scotchman.'" (That is, a two-shilling piece, so called because some

enterprising emigrant from Scotland passed off a vast number of them

among the simple natives of Natal as substitutes for half-crowns.) Tempted by this liberal offer--and it was very liberal, because I was

anxious to get to Tshoza's kraal before its inhabitants went to bed--the

meditative Kafir consented to guide me by a dark and devious path that

ran through bush and dripping fields of corn. At length we arrived--for

if the kraal was only half a mile away, the path to it covered fully two

miles--and glad enough was I when we had waded the last stream and found

ourselves at its gate.