Zulu (African people) -- Fiction; Zululand (South Africa) -- History -- Fiction
Then the dawn broke, an awful, blood-red dawn, and by degrees they saw.
Beneath them ran a shallow river, and beyond it, stretching for league
upon league farther than the eye could see, lay the mighty forest
whereof the trees soared two hundred feet or more into the air; the
dark illimitable forest that rolled as the sea rolls beneath the
pressure of the gale, and indeed, seen from above, looked like a green
and tossing ocean. At the sight of the water Rachel and Noie began to
run towards it hand in hand, for they were parched with thirst whose
mouths were full of the salt dust of the desert. The bearers of the
litters in which were the three priests ran also, paying no heed to the
cries of the dwarfs within. At length it was reached, and throwing
themselves down they drank until that raging thirst of theirs was
satisfied; even Eddo and his companions crawled out of their litters
and drank. Then having washed their hands and faces in the cool water,
they forded the fleet stream, and, filled with a new life, followed the
road that ran beyond towards the forest. Scarcely had they set foot
upon the farther bank when the heart of the tempest, which had been
eddying round them all night long, burst over them in its fury. The
lightnings blazed, the thunder rolled, and the wild wind grew to a
hurricane, so fierce that the litters in which were Eddo, Pani, and
Hana were torn from the grasp of the bearers and rolled upon the
ground. From the wreck of them, for they were but frail things, the
little grey priests emerged trembling, or rather were dragged by the
hands of their giant bearers, to whom they clung as a frightened infant
clings to its mother. Rachel saw them and laughed.
“Look at the Masters of Magic!” she cried to Noie, “those who kill with
a curse, those who rule the Ghosts,” and she pointed to the tiny,
contemptible figures with fluttering robes being dragged along by those
giants whom but a little while before they had threatened with death.
“I see them,” answered Noie into her ear. “Their spirits are strong
when they are at peace, but in trouble they fear doom more than others.
Now, if I were those Umkulu, I would make an end of them while they
can.”
But these great, patient men did otherwise; indeed, when the dwarfs,
worn out and bewildered by the hurricane, could walk no more, they took
them up and carried them as a woman carries a babe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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