"Yes, Zikali; how old?"
"There, there, Macumazahn, as you know, we poor Kafirs cannot count very
well. How old? Well, when I was young I came down towards the coast from
the Great River, you call it the Zambesi, I think, with Undwandwe, who
lived in the north in those days. They have forgotten it now because it
is some time ago, and if I could write I would set down the history of
that march, for we fought some great battles with the people who used to
live in this country. Afterwards I was the friend of the Father of the
Zulus, he whom they still call Inkoosi Umkulu--the mighty chief--you may
have heard tell of him. I carved that stool on which you sit for him and
he left it back to me when he died."
"Inkoosi Umkulu!" I exclaimed. "Why, they say he lived hundreds of years
ago."
"Do they, Macumazahn? If so, have I not told you that we black people
cannot count as well as you do? Really it was only the other day.
Anyhow, after his death the Zulus began to maltreat us Undwandwe and the
Quabies and the Tetwas with us--you may remember that they called us
the Amatefula, making a mock of us. So I quarrelled with the Zulus and
especially with Chaka, he whom they named 'Uhlanya' [the Mad One].
You see, Macumazahn, it pleased him to laugh at me because
I am not as other men are. He gave me a name which means
'The-thing-which-should-never-have-been-born.' I will not speak that
name, it is secret to me, it may not pass my lips. Yet at times he
sought my wisdom, and I paid him back for his names, for I gave him very
ill counsel, and he took it, and I brought him to his death, although
none ever saw my finger in that business. But when he was dead at the
hands of his brothers Dingaan and Umhlangana and of Umbopa, Umbopa who
also had a score to settle with him, and his body was cast out of the
kraal like that of an evil-doer, why I, who because I was a dwarf was
not sent with the men against Sotshangana, went and sat on it at
night and laughed thus," and he broke into one of his hideous peals of
merriment.
"I laughed thrice: once for my wives whom he had taken; once for my
children whom he had slain; and once for the mocking name that he had
given me. Then I became the counsellor of Dingaan, whom I hated worse
than I had hated Chaka, for he was Chaka again without his greatness,
and you know the end of Dingaan, for you had a share in that war, and of
Umhlangana, his brother and fellow-murderer, whom I counselled Dingaan
to slay. This I did through the lips of the old Princess Menkabayi,
Jama's daughter, Senzangakona's sister, the Oracle before whom all men
bowed, causing her to say that 'This land of the Zulus cannot be ruled
by a crimson assegai.' For, Macumazahn, it was Umhlangana who first
struck Chaka with the spear. Now Panda reigns, the last of the sons of
Senzangakona, my enemy, Panda the Fool, and I hold my hand from Panda
because he tried to save the life of a child of mine whom Chaka slew.
But Panda has sons who are as Chaka was, and against them I work as I
worked against those who went before them."