"Why?" I asked.
"Why? Oh! if I were to tell you all my story you would understand why,
Macumazahn. Well, perhaps I will one day." (Here I may state that as a
matter of fact he did, and a very wonderful tale it is, but as it has
nothing to do with this history I will not write it here.) "I dare say," I answered. "Chaka and Dingaan and Umhlangana and the
others were not nice people. But another question. Why do you tell
me all this, O Zikali, seeing that were I but to repeat it to a
talking-bird you would be smelt out and a single moon would not die
before you do?"
"Oh! I should be smelt out and killed before one moon dies, should I?
Then I wonder that this has not happened during all the moons that are
gone. Well, I tell the story to you, Macumazahn, who have had so much to
do with the tale of the Zulus since the days of Dingaan, because I wish
that someone should know it and perhaps write it down when everything
is finished. Because, too, I have just been reading your spirit and see
that it is still a white spirit, and that you will not whisper it to a
'talking-bird.'"
Now I leant forward and looked at him.
"What is the end at which you aim, O Zikali?" I asked. "You are not one
who beats the air with a stick; on whom do you wish the stick to fall at
last?"
"On whom?" he answered in a new voice, a low, hissing voice. "Why, on
these proud Zulus, this little family of men who call themselves the
'People of Heaven,' and swallow other tribes as the great tree-snake
swallows kids and small bucks, and when it is fat with them cries to the
world, 'See how big I am! Everything is inside of me.' I am a Ndwande,
one of those peoples whom it pleases the Zulus to call 'Amatefula'--poor
hangers-on who talk with an accent, nothing but bush swine. Therefore I
would see the swine tusk the hunter. Or, if that may not be, I would
see the black hunter laid low by the rhinoceros, the white rhinoceros
of your race, Macumazahn, yes, even if it sets its foot upon the Ndwande
boar as well. There, I have told you, and this is the reason that I live
so long, for I will not die until these things have come to pass, as
come to pass they will. What did Chaka, Senzangakona's son, say when the
little red assegai, the assegai with which he slew his mother, aye and
others, some of whom were near to me, was in his liver? What did he say
to Mbopa and the princes? Did he not say that he heard the feet of a
great white people running, of a people who should stamp the Zulus flat?
Well, I, 'The-thing-who-should-not-have-been-born,' live on until that
day comes, and when it comes I think that you and I, Macumazahn, shall
not be far apart, and that is why I have opened out my heart to you, I
who have knowledge of the future. There, I speak no more of these things
that are to be, who perchance have already said too much of them. Yet do
not forget my words. Or forget them if you will, for I shall remind
you of them, Macumazahn, when the feet of your people have avenged the
Ndwandes and others whom it pleases the Zulus to treat as dirt."