Child of Storm

"Would you also stick your claws into me, cat?" shouted Umbezi, catching

the old woman a savage cut across the back with the light dancing-stick

which he still held in his hand, whereon she fled away screeching and

cursing him.

"Oh, Saduko," he went on, "let not your ears be poisoned by these

falsehoods. Mameena never said anything of the sort, or if she did it

was not to me. Well, the moment that my daughter had consented to take

Masapo as her husband his people drove a hundred and twenty of the most

beautiful cattle over the hill, and would you have had me refuse them,

Saduko? I am sure that when you have seen them you will say that I

was quite right to accept such a splendid lobola in return for one

sharp-tongued girl. Remember, Saduko, that although you had promised a

hundred head, that is less by twenty, at the time you did not own one,

and where you were to get them from I could not guess. Moreover," he

added with a last, desperate, imaginative effort, for I think he saw

that his arguments were making no impression, "some strangers who called

here told me that both you and Macumazahn had been killed by certain

evil-doers in the mountains. There, I have spoken, and, Saduko, if you

now have cattle, why, on my part, I have another daughter, not quite so

good-looking perhaps, but a much better worker in the field. Come and

drink a sup of beer, and I will send for her."

"Stop talking about your other daughter and your beer and listen to me,"

replied Saduko, looking at the assegai which he had thrown to the ground

so ominously that I set my foot on it. "I am now a greater chief

than the boar Masapo. Has Masapo such a bodyguard as these

Eaters-up-of-Enemies?" and he jerked his thumb backwards towards the

serried lines of fierce-faced Amangwane who stood listening behind us.

"Has Masapo as many cattle as I have, whereof those which you see are

but a tithe brought as a lobola gift to the father of her who had been

promised to me as wife? Is Masapo Panda's friend? I think that I have

heard otherwise. Has Masapo just conquered a countless tribe by his

courage and his wit? Is Masapo young and of high blood, or is he but an

old, low-born boar of the mountains?

"You do not answer, Umbezi, and perhaps you do well to be silent. Now

listen again. Were it not for Macumazahn here, whom I do not desire to

mix up with my quarrels, I would bid my men take you and beat you to

death with the handles of their spears, and then go on and serve the

Boar in the same fashion in his mountain sty. As it is, these things

must wait a little while, especially as I have other matters to attend

to first. Yet the day is not far off when I will attend to them also.

Therefore my counsel to you, Cheat, is to make haste to die or to find

courage to fall upon a spear, unless you would learn how it feels to be

brayed with sticks like a green hide until none can know that you

were once a man. Send now and tell my words to Masapo the Boar. And to

Mameena say that soon I will come to take her with spears and not with

cattle. Do you understand? Oh! I see that you do, since already you weep

with fear like a woman. Then farewell to you till that day when I

return with the sticks, O Umbezi the cheat and the liar, Umbezi,

'Eater-up-of-Elephants,'" and turning, Saduko stalked away.