章节正文
How old am I? Nay, I do not know. Very, very old. Had Chaka lived he
would have been as old as I.[2] None are living whom I knew when I was
a boy. I am so old that I must hasten. The grass withers, and the
winter comes. Yes, while I speak the winter nips my heart. Well, I am
ready to sleep in the cold, and perhaps I shall awake again in the
spring.
[2] This would have made him nearly a hundred years old, an age rarely
attained by a native. The writer remembers talking to an aged Zulu
woman, however, who told him that she was married when Chaka was
king.--ED.
Before the Zulus were a people--for I will begin at the beginning--I
was born of the Langeni tribe. We were not a large tribe; afterwards,
all our able-bodied men numbered one full regiment in Chaka's army,
perhaps there were between two and three thousand of them, but they
were brave. Now they are all dead, and their women and children with
them,--that people is no more. It is gone like last month's moon; how
it went I will tell you by-and-bye.
Our tribe lived in a beautiful open country; the Boers, whom we call
the Amaboona, are there now, they tell me. My father, Makedama, was
chief of the tribe, and his kraal was built on the crest of a hill,
but I was not the son of his head wife. One evening, when I was still
little, standing as high as a man's elbow only, I went out with my
mother below the cattle kraal to see the cows driven in. My mother was
very fond of these cows, and there was one with a white face that
would follow her about. She carried my little sister Baleka riding on
her hip; Baleka was a baby then. We walked till we met the lads
driving in the cows. My mother called the white-faced cow and gave it
mealie leaves which she had brought with her. Then the boys went on
with the cattle, but the white-faced cow stopped by my mother. She
said that she would bring it to the kraal when she came home. My
mother sat down on the grass and nursed her baby, while I played round
her, and the cow grazed. Presently we saw a woman walking towards us
across the plain. She walked like one who is tired. On her back was a
bundle of mats, and she led by the hand a boy of about my own age, but
bigger and stronger than I was. We waited a long while, till at last
the woman came up to us and sank down on the veldt, for she was very
weary. We saw by the way her hair was dressed that she was not of our
tribe.
"Greeting to you!" said the woman.
"Good-morrow!" answered my mother. "What do you seek?"
"Food, and a hut to sleep in," said the woman. "I have travelled far."
"How are you named?--and what is your people?" asked my mother.
"My name is Unandi: I am the wife of Senzangacona, of the Zulu tribe,"
said the stranger.
Now there had been war between our people and the Zulu people, and
Senzangacona had killed some of our warriors and taken many of our
cattle. So, when my mother heard the speech of Unandi she sprang up in
anger.
"You dare to come here and ask me for food and shelter, wife of a dog
of a Zulu!" she cried; "begone, or I will call the girls to whip you
out of our country."
The woman, who was very handsome, waited till my mother had finished
her angry words; then she looked up and spoke slowly, "There is a cow
by you with milk dropping from its udder; will you not even give me
and my boy a gourd of milk?" And she took a gourd from her bundle and
held it towards us.
"I will not," said my mother.
"We are thirsty with long travel; will you not, then, give us a cup of
water? We have found none for many hours."
"I will not, wife of a dog; go and seek water for yourself."
The woman's eyes filled with tears, but the boy folded his arms on his
breast and scowled. He was a very handsome boy, with bright black
eyes, but when he scowled his eyes were like the sky before a
thunderstorm.
"Mother," he said, "we are not wanted here any more than we were
wanted yonder," and he nodded towards the country where the Zulu
people lived. "Let us be going to Dingiswayo; the Umtetwa people will
protect us."
"Yes, let us be going, my son," answered Unandi; "but the path is
long, we are weary and shall fall by the way."
I heard, and something pulled at my heart; I was sorry for the woman
and her boy, they looked so tired. Then, without saying anything to my
mother, I snatched the gourd and ran with it to a little donga that
was hard by, for I knew that there was a spring. Presently I came back
with the gourd full of water. My mother wanted to catch me, for she
was very angry, but I ran past her and gave the gourd to the boy. Then
my mother ceased trying to interfere, only she beat the woman with her
tongue all the while, saying that evil had come to our kraals from her
husband, and she felt in her heart that more evil would come upon us
from her son. Her Ehlose[3] told her so. Ah! my father, her Ehlose
told her true. If the woman Unandi and her child had died that day on
the veldt, the gardens of my people would not now be a wilderness, and
their bones would not lie in the great gulley that is near
U'Cetywayo's kraal.
[3] Guardian spirit.--ED.
While my mother talked I and the cow with the white face stood still
and watched, and the baby Baleka cried aloud. The boy, Unandi's son,
having taken the gourd, did not offer the water to his mother. He
drank two-thirds of it himself; I think that he would have drunk it
all had not his thirst been slaked; but when he had done he gave what
was left to his mother, and she finished it. Then he took the gourd
again, and came forward, holding it in one hand; in the other he
carried a short stick.
"What is your name, boy?" he said to me as a big rich man speaks to
one who is little and poor.
"Mopo is my name," I answered.
"And what is the name of your people?"
I told him the name of my tribe, the Langeni tribe.
"Very well, Mopo; now I will tell you my name. My name is Chaka, son
of Senzangacona, and my people are called the Amazulu. And I will tell
you something more. I am little to-day, and my people are a small
people. But I shall grow big, so big that my head will be lost in the
clouds; you will look up and you shall not see it. My face will blind
you; it will be bright like the sun; and my people will grow great
with me; they shall eat up the whole world. And when I am big and my
people are big, and we have stamped the earth flat as far as men can
travel, then I will remember 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
blood. He caught up people after people in his hands and tore them, he
stamped their kraals flat with his feet. Before him was the green of
summer, behind him the land was black as when the fires have eaten the
grass. I saw our people, Mopo; they were many and fat, their hearts
laughed, the men were brave, the girls were fair; I counted their
children by the hundreds. I saw them again, Mopo. They were bones,
white bones, thousands of bones tumbled together in a rocky place, and
he, Chaka, stood over the bones and laughed till the earth shook.
Then, Mopo, in my dream, I saw you grown a man. You alone were left of
our people. You crept up behind the giant Chaka, and with you came
others, great men of a royal look. You stabbed him with a little
spear, and he fell down and grew small again; he fell down and cursed
you. But you cried in his ear a name--the name of Baleka, your sister
--and he died. Let us go home, Mopo, let us go home; the darkness
falls."
So we rose and went home. But I held my peace, for I was afraid, very
much afraid.
CHAPTER II
MOPO IS IN TROUBLE
Now, I must tell how my mother did what the boy Chaka had told her,
and died quickly. For where his stick had struck her on the forehead
there came a sore that would not be healed, and in the sore grew an
abscess, and the abscess ate inwards till it came to the brain. Then
my mother fell down and died, and I cried very much, for I loved her,
and it was dreadful to see her cold and stiff, with not a word to say
however loudly I called to her. Well, they buried my mother, and she
was soon forgotten. I only remembered her, nobody else did--not even
Baleka, for she was too little--and as for my father he took another
young wife and was content. After that I was unhappy, for my brothers
did not love me, because I was much cleverer than they, and had
greater skill with the assegai, and was swifter in running; so they
poisoned the mind of my father against me and he treated me badly. But
Baleka and I loved each other, for we were both lonely, and she clung
to me like a creeper to the only tree in a plain, and though I was
young, I learned this: that to be wise is to be strong, for though he
who holds the assegai kills, yet he whose mind directs the battle is
greater than he who kills. Now I saw that the witch-finders and the
medicine-men were feared in the land, and that everybody looked up to
them, so that, even when they had only a stick in their hands, ten men
armed with spears would fly before them. Therefore I determined that I
should be a witch-doctor, for they alone can kill those whom they hate
with a word. So I learned the arts of the medicine-men. I made
sacrifices, I fasted in the veldt alone, I did all those things of
which you have heard, and I learned much; for there is wisdom in our
magic as well as lies--and you know it, my father, else you had not
come here to ask me about your lost oxen.
So things went on till I was twenty years of age--a man full grown. By
now I had mastered all I could learn by myself, so I joined myself on
to the chief medicine-man of our tribe, who was named Noma. He was
old, had one eye only, and was very clever. Of him I learned some
tricks and more wisdom, but at last he grew jealous of me and set a
trap to catch me. As it chanced, a rich man of a neighbouring tribe
had lost some cattle, and came with gifts to Noma praying him to smell
them out. Noma tried and could not find them; his vision failed him.
Then the headman grew angry and demanded back his gifts; but Noma
would not give up that which he once had held, and hot words passed.
The headman said that he would kill Noma; Noma said that he would
would have been as old as I.[2] None are living whom I knew when I was
a boy. I am so old that I must hasten. The grass withers, and the
winter comes. Yes, while I speak the winter nips my heart. Well, I am
ready to sleep in the cold, and perhaps I shall awake again in the
spring.
[2] This would have made him nearly a hundred years old, an age rarely
attained by a native. The writer remembers talking to an aged Zulu
woman, however, who told him that she was married when Chaka was
king.--ED.
Before the Zulus were a people--for I will begin at the beginning--I
was born of the Langeni tribe. We were not a large tribe; afterwards,
all our able-bodied men numbered one full regiment in Chaka's army,
perhaps there were between two and three thousand of them, but they
were brave. Now they are all dead, and their women and children with
them,--that people is no more. It is gone like last month's moon; how
it went I will tell you by-and-bye.
Our tribe lived in a beautiful open country; the Boers, whom we call
the Amaboona, are there now, they tell me. My father, Makedama, was
chief of the tribe, and his kraal was built on the crest of a hill,
but I was not the son of his head wife. One evening, when I was still
little, standing as high as a man's elbow only, I went out with my
mother below the cattle kraal to see the cows driven in. My mother was
very fond of these cows, and there was one with a white face that
would follow her about. She carried my little sister Baleka riding on
her hip; Baleka was a baby then. We walked till we met the lads
driving in the cows. My mother called the white-faced cow and gave it
mealie leaves which she had brought with her. Then the boys went on
with the cattle, but the white-faced cow stopped by my mother. She
said that she would bring it to the kraal when she came home. My
mother sat down on the grass and nursed her baby, while I played round
her, and the cow grazed. Presently we saw a woman walking towards us
across the plain. She walked like one who is tired. On her back was a
bundle of mats, and she led by the hand a boy of about my own age, but
bigger and stronger than I was. We waited a long while, till at last
the woman came up to us and sank down on the veldt, for she was very
weary. We saw by the way her hair was dressed that she was not of our
tribe.
"Greeting to you!" said the woman.
"Good-morrow!" answered my mother. "What do you seek?"
"Food, and a hut to sleep in," said the woman. "I have travelled far."
"How are you named?--and what is your people?" asked my mother.
"My name is Unandi: I am the wife of Senzangacona, of the Zulu tribe,"
said the stranger.
Now there had been war between our people and the Zulu people, and
Senzangacona had killed some of our warriors and taken many of our
cattle. So, when my mother heard the speech of Unandi she sprang up in
anger.
"You dare to come here and ask me for food and shelter, wife of a dog
of a Zulu!" she cried; "begone, or I will call the girls to whip you
out of our country."
The woman, who was very handsome, waited till my mother had finished
her angry words; then she looked up and spoke slowly, "There is a cow
by you with milk dropping from its udder; will you not even give me
and my boy a gourd of milk?" And she took a gourd from her bundle and
held it towards us.
"I will not," said my mother.
"We are thirsty with long travel; will you not, then, give us a cup of
water? We have found none for many hours."
"I will not, wife of a dog; go and seek water for yourself."
The woman's eyes filled with tears, but the boy folded his arms on his
breast and scowled. He was a very handsome boy, with bright black
eyes, but when he scowled his eyes were like the sky before a
thunderstorm.
"Mother," he said, "we are not wanted here any more than we were
wanted yonder," and he nodded towards the country where the Zulu
people lived. "Let us be going to Dingiswayo; the Umtetwa people will
protect us."
"Yes, let us be going, my son," answered Unandi; "but the path is
long, we are weary and shall fall by the way."
I heard, and something pulled at my heart; I was sorry for the woman
and her boy, they looked so tired. Then, without saying anything to my
mother, I snatched the gourd and ran with it to a little donga that
was hard by, for I knew that there was a spring. Presently I came back
with the gourd full of water. My mother wanted to catch me, for she
was very angry, but I ran past her and gave the gourd to the boy. Then
my mother ceased trying to interfere, only she beat the woman with her
tongue all the while, saying that evil had come to our kraals from her
husband, and she felt in her heart that more evil would come upon us
from her son. Her Ehlose[3] told her so. Ah! my father, her Ehlose
told her true. If the woman Unandi and her child had died that day on
the veldt, the gardens of my people would not now be a wilderness, and
their bones would not lie in the great gulley that is near
U'Cetywayo's kraal.
[3] Guardian spirit.--ED.
While my mother talked I and the cow with the white face stood still
and watched, and the baby Baleka cried aloud. The boy, Unandi's son,
having taken the gourd, did not offer the water to his mother. He
drank two-thirds of it himself; I think that he would have drunk it
all had not his thirst been slaked; but when he had done he gave what
was left to his mother, and she finished it. Then he took the gourd
again, and came forward, holding it in one hand; in the other he
carried a short stick.
"What is your name, boy?" he said to me as a big rich man speaks to
one who is little and poor.
"Mopo is my name," I answered.
"And what is the name of your people?"
I told him the name of my tribe, the Langeni tribe.
"Very well, Mopo; now I will tell you my name. My name is Chaka, son
of Senzangacona, and my people are called the Amazulu. And I will tell
you something more. I am little to-day, and my people are a small
people. But I shall grow big, so big that my head will be lost in the
clouds; you will look up and you shall not see it. My face will blind
you; it will be bright like the sun; and my people will grow great
with me; they shall eat up the whole world. And when I am big and my
people are big, and we have stamped the earth flat as far as men can
travel, then I will remember 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
blood. He caught up people after people in his hands and tore them, he
stamped their kraals flat with his feet. Before him was the green of
summer, behind him the land was black as when the fires have eaten the
grass. I saw our people, Mopo; they were many and fat, their hearts
laughed, the men were brave, the girls were fair; I counted their
children by the hundreds. I saw them again, Mopo. They were bones,
white bones, thousands of bones tumbled together in a rocky place, and
he, Chaka, stood over the bones and laughed till the earth shook.
Then, Mopo, in my dream, I saw you grown a man. You alone were left of
our people. You crept up behind the giant Chaka, and with you came
others, great men of a royal look. You stabbed him with a little
spear, and he fell down and grew small again; he fell down and cursed
you. But you cried in his ear a name--the name of Baleka, your sister
--and he died. Let us go home, Mopo, let us go home; the darkness
falls."
So we rose and went home. But I held my peace, for I was afraid, very
much afraid.
CHAPTER II
MOPO IS IN TROUBLE
Now, I must tell how my mother did what the boy Chaka had told her,
and died quickly. For where his stick had struck her on the forehead
there came a sore that would not be healed, and in the sore grew an
abscess, and the abscess ate inwards till it came to the brain. Then
my mother fell down and died, and I cried very much, for I loved her,
and it was dreadful to see her cold and stiff, with not a word to say
however loudly I called to her. Well, they buried my mother, and she
was soon forgotten. I only remembered her, nobody else did--not even
Baleka, for she was too little--and as for my father he took another
young wife and was content. After that I was unhappy, for my brothers
did not love me, because I was much cleverer than they, and had
greater skill with the assegai, and was swifter in running; so they
poisoned the mind of my father against me and he treated me badly. But
Baleka and I loved each other, for we were both lonely, and she clung
to me like a creeper to the only tree in a plain, and though I was
young, I learned this: that to be wise is to be strong, for though he
who holds the assegai kills, yet he whose mind directs the battle is
greater than he who kills. Now I saw that the witch-finders and the
medicine-men were feared in the land, and that everybody looked up to
them, so that, even when they had only a stick in their hands, ten men
armed with spears would fly before them. Therefore I determined that I
should be a witch-doctor, for they alone can kill those whom they hate
with a word. So I learned the arts of the medicine-men. I made
sacrifices, I fasted in the veldt alone, I did all those things of
which you have heard, and I learned much; for there is wisdom in our
magic as well as lies--and you know it, my father, else you had not
come here to ask me about your lost oxen.
So things went on till I was twenty years of age--a man full grown. By
now I had mastered all I could learn by myself, so I joined myself on
to the chief medicine-man of our tribe, who was named Noma. He was
old, had one eye only, and was very clever. Of him I learned some
tricks and more wisdom, but at last he grew jealous of me and set a
trap to catch me. As it chanced, a rich man of a neighbouring tribe
had lost some cattle, and came with gifts to Noma praying him to smell
them out. Noma tried and could not find them; his vision failed him.
Then the headman grew angry and demanded back his gifts; but Noma
would not give up that which he once had held, and hot words passed.
The headman said that he would kill Noma; Noma said that he would
- hasten [´heisən]
vt.催促；促进 vi.赶紧 (初中英语单词) - writer [´raitə] n.作者；作家 (初中英语单词)
- regiment [´redʒimənt] n.团；一大群 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- driven [´driv(ə)n] drive 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- bundle [´bʌndl] n.包，捆；包袱(裹) (初中英语单词)
- interfere [,intə´fiə] vi.干涉；妨碍；打扰 (初中英语单词)
- wilderness [´wildənis] n.荒地，荒野 (初中英语单词)
- thirst [θə:st] n.渴，口渴；渴望 (初中英语单词)
- pointed [´pɔintid] a.尖(锐)的；中肯的 (初中英语单词)
- awhile [ə´wail] ad.少顷；片刻 (初中英语单词)
- dreadful [´dredful] a.可怕的；讨厌的 (初中英语单词)
- unhappy [ʌn´hæpi] a.不幸的；不快乐的 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- lonely [´ləunli] a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词)
- therefore [´ðeəfɔ:] ad.&conj.因此；所以 (初中英语单词)
- wisdom [´wizdəm] n.智慧，聪明，才智 (初中英语单词)
- jealous [´dʒeləs] a.妒忌的 (初中英语单词)
- vision [´viʒən] n.视觉；想象力；幻影 (初中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- guardian [´gɑ:diən] n.监护人；保护人 (高中英语单词)
- prophecy [´prɔfisi] n.预言(能力) (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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