ers. No, no! I ask no fee! I do not work wonders for reward. Why
should I? I am rich."

Now the White Man scoffed. But in the end, so great is the power of
superstition, he sent. And here it may be stated that on the eleventh
day of his sojourn at the kraal of Zweete, those whom he sent returned
with the oxen, except the three only. After that he scoffed no more.
Those eleven days he spent in a hut of the old man's kraal, and every
afternoon he came and talked with him, sitting far into the night.

On the third day he asked Zweete how it was that his left hand was white
and shrivelled, and who were Umslopogaas and Nada, of whom he had let
fall some words. Then the old man told him the tale that is set out
here. Day by day he told some of it till it was finished. It is not all
written in these pages, for portions may have been forgotten, or put
aside as irrelevant. Neither has it been possible for the writer of it
to render the full force of the Zulu idiom nor to convey a picture of
the teller. For, in truth, he acted rather than told his story. Was the
death of a warrior in question, he stabbed with his stick, showing how
the blow fell and where; did the story grow sorrowful, he groaned, or
even wept. Moreover, he had many voices, one for each of the actors in
his tale. This man, ancient and withered, seemed to live again in the
far past. It was the past that spoke to his listener, telling of deeds
long forgotten, of deeds that are no more known.

Yet as he best may, the White Man has set down the substance of the
story of Zweete in the spirit in which Zweete told it. And because the
history of Nada the Lily and of those with whom her life was intertwined
moved him strangely, and in many ways, he has done more, he has printed
it that others may judge of it.

And now his part is played. Let him who was named Zweete, but who had
another name, take up the story.

CHAPTER I. THE BOY CHAKA PROPHESIES

You ask me, my father, to tell you the tale of the youth of Umslopogaas,
holder of the iron Chieftainess, the axe Groan-maker, who was named
Bulalio the Slaughterer, and of his love for Nada, the most beautiful of
Zulu women. It is long; but you are here for many nights, and, if I live
to tell it, it shall be told. Strengthen your heart, my father, for I
have much to say that is sorrowful, and even now, when I think of Nada
the tears creep through the horn that shuts out my old eyes from light.

Do you know who I am,