Zulu (African people) -- Fiction; Zululand (South Africa) -- History -- Fiction
When the waggon had creaked to the top of the rise, for, of course,
there was no road, and the Kaffirs were beginning to unyoke the hungry
oxen, Rachel, who was riding with her father, sprang from her horse and
ran to it to help her mother to descend. She was now a tall young
woman, full of health and vigour, strong and straightly shaped. Mrs.
Dove, frail, delicate, grey-haired, placed her foot upon the disselboom
and hesitated, for to her the ground seemed far off, and the heels of
the cattle very near.
“Jump,” said Rachel in her clear, laughing voice, as she smacked the
near after-ox to make it turn round, which it did obediently, for all
the team knew her. “I’ll catch you.”
But her mother still hesitated, so thrusting her way between the ox and
the front wheel Rachel stretched out her arms and lifted her bodily to
the ground.
“How strong you are, my love!” said her mother, with a sort of
wondering admiration and a sad little smile; “it seems strange to think
that I ever carried you.”
“One had need to be in this country, dear,” replied Rachel cheerfully.
“Come and walk a little way, you must be stiff with sitting in that
horrid waggon,” and she led her quite to the top of the knoll. “There,”
she added, “isn’t the view lovely? I never saw such a pretty place in
all Africa. And oh! look at those buck, and yes—that is a rhinoceros. I
hope it won’t charge us.”
Mrs. Dove obeyed, gazing first at the glorious sea, then at the plain
and the trees, and lastly behind her at the towering cliff steeped in
shadow—for the sun was westering—down the face of which the waterfall
seemed to hang like a silver rope.
As her eyes fell upon this cliff Mrs. Dove’s face changed.
“I know this spot,” she said in a hurried voice. “I have seen it
before.”
“Nonsense, mother,” answered Rachel. “We have never trekked here, so
how could you?”
“I can’t say, love, but I have. I remember that cliff and the
waterfall; yes, and those three trees, and the buck standing under
them.”
“One often feels like that, about having seen places, I mean, mother,
but of course it is all nonsense, because it is impossible, unless one
dreams of them first.”
“Yes, love, unless one dreams. Well, I think that I must have dreamt.
What was the dream now? Rachel weeping—Rachel weeping—my love, I think
that we are going to live here, and I think—I think——”
“All right,” broke in her daughter quickly, with a shade of anxiety in
her voice as though she did not wish to learn what her mother thought.
“I don’t mind, I am sure. I don’t want to go to Zululand, and see this
horrid Dingaan, who is always killing people, and I am quite sure that
father would never convert him, the wicked monster. It is like the
Garden of Eden, isn’t it, with the sea thrown in. There are all the
animals, and that green tree with the fruit on it might be the Tree of
Life, and—oh, my goodness, there is Adam!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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