r your tribe--the tribe of the Langeni, who would not give me
and my mother a cup of milk when we were weary. You see this gourd; for
every drop it can hold the blood of a man shall flow--the blood of one
of your men. But because you gave me the water I will spare you, Mopo,
and you only, and make you great under me. You shall grow fat in my
shadow. You alone I will never harm, however you sin against me; this I
swear. But for that woman," and he pointed to my mother, "let her make
haste and die, so that I do not need to teach her what a long time death
can take to come. I have spoken." And he ground his teeth and shook his
stick towards us.

My mother stood silent awhile. Then she gasped out: "The little liar! He
speaks like a man, does he? The calf lows like a bull. I will teach him
another note--the brat of an evil prophet!" And putting down Baleka, she
ran at the boy.

Chaka stood quite still till she was near; then suddenly he lifted the
stick in his hand, and hit her so hard on the head that she fell down.
After that he laughed, turned, and went away with his mother Unandi.

These, my father, were the first words I heard Chaka speak, and they
were words of prophecy, and they came true. The last words I heard him
speak were words of prophecy also, and I think that they will come true.
Even now they are coming true. In the one he told how the Zulu people
should rise. And say, have they not risen? In the other he told how they
should fall; and they did fall. Do not the white men gather themselves
together even now against U'Cetywayo, as vultures gather round a dying
ox? The Zulus are not what they were to stand against them. Yes, yes,
they will come true, and mine is the song of a people that is doomed.

But of these other words I will speak in their place.

I went to my mother. Presently she raised herself from the ground and
sat up with her hands over her face. The blood from the wound the stick
had made ran down her face on to her breast, and I wiped it away with
grass. She sat for a long while thus, while the child cried, the cow
lowed to be milked, and I wiped up the blood with the grass. At last she
took her hands away and spoke to me.

"Mopo, my son," she said, "I have dreamed a dream. I dreamed that I
saw the boy Chaka who struck me: he was grown like a giant. He stalked
across the mountains and the veldt, his eyes blazed like the lightning,
and in his hand he shook a little assegai that was red with blo