Books: Nada the Lily

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This etext was prepared by John Bickers, jbickers@templar.actrix.gen.nz

NADA THE LILY
By H. Rider Haggard

NADA THE LILY

BY

H. RIDER HAGGARD

DEDICATION

Sompseu:

For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been honoured
by every tribe between Zambesi and Cape Agulbas,--I greet you!

Sompseu, my father, I have written a book that tells of men and
matters of which you know the most of any who still look upon the
light; therefore, I set your name within that book and, such as it is,
I offer it to you.

If you knew not Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine, you
knew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that very
Mopo who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the Princes.
You have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the unconquerable
Zulu impis rushing to war; you have crowned their kings and shared
their counsels, and with your son's blood you have expiated a
statesman's error and a general's fault.

Sompseu, a song has been sung in my ears of how first you mastered
this people of the Zulu. Is it not true, my father, that for long
hours you sat silent and alone, while three thousand warriors shouted
for your life? And when they grew weary, did you not stand and say,
pointing towards the ocean: "Kill me if you wish, men of Cetywayo, but
I tell you that for every drop of my blood a hundred avengers shall
rise from yonder sea!"

Then, so it was told me, the regiments turned staring towards the
Black Water, as though the day of Ulundi had already come and they saw
the white slayers creeping across the plains.

Thus, Sompseu, your name became great among the people of the Zulu, as
already it was great among many another tribe, and their nobles did
you homage, and they gave you the Bayete, the royal salute, declaring
by the mouth of their Council that in you dwelt the spirit of Chaka.

Many years have gone by since then, and now you are old, my father. It
is many years even since I was a boy, and followed you when you went
up among the Boers and took their country for the Queen.

Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth. You
did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have stamped out
the Boers. Were not Cetywayo's impis gathered against the land, and
was it not because it became the Queen's land that at your word he
sent them murmuring to their kraals?[1] To save bloodshed you annexed
the country beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had been better to leave it,
since "Death chooses for himself," and after all there was killing--of
our own people, and with the killing, shame. But in those days we did
not guess what we should live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as
a little hill!

Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter, Sompseu,
you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet what does that
avail? When you have "gone beyond" it will be forgotten, since the
sting of ingratitude passes and lies must wither like the winter
veldt. Only your name will not be forgotten; as it was heard in life
so it shall be heard in story, and I pray that, however humbly, mine
may pass down with it. Chance has taken me by another path, and I must
leave the ways of action that I love and bury myself in books, but the
old days and friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I
forget them and you.

Therefore, though it be for the last time, from far across the seas I
speak to you, and lifting my hand I give your "Sibonga"[2] and that
royal salute, to which, now that its kings are gone and the "People of
Heaven" are no more a nation, with Her Majesty you are alone
entitled:--

Bayete! Baba, Nkosi ya makosi!
Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!
Wen' o wa vela wasi pata!
Wen' o wa hlul' izizwe zonke za patwa nguive!
Wa geina nge la Mabun' o wa ba hlul' u yedwa!
Umsizi we zintandane e ziblupekayo!
Si ya kuleka Baba!
Bayete, T' Sompseu![3]

and farewell!

H. RIDER HAGGARD.

To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal.
13 September, 1891.

[1] "I thank my father Sompseu for his message. I am glad that he has
sent it, because the Dutch have tired me out, and I intended to
fight them once and once only, and to drive them over the Vaal.
Kabana, you see my impis are gathered. It was to fight the Dutch
I called them together; now I send them back to their homes."
--Message from Cetywayo to Sir. T. Shepstone, April, 1877.

[2] Titles of praise.

[3] Bayete, Father, Chief of Chiefs!
Lion! Elephant that is not turned!
You who nursed us from of old!
You who overshadowed all peoples and took charge of them,
And ended by mastering the Boers with your single strength!
Help of the fatherless when in trouble!
Salutation to you, Father!
Bayete, O Sompseu!

PREFACE

The writer of this romance has been encouraged to his task by a
purpose somewhat beyond that of setting out a wild tale of savage
life. When he was yet a lad,--now some seventeen years ago,--fortune
took him to South Africa. There he was thrown in with men who, for
thirty or forty years, had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu
people, with their history, their heroes, and their customs. From
these he heard many tales and traditions, some of which, perhaps, are
rarely told nowadays, and in time to come may cease to be told
altogether. Then the Zulus were still a nation; now that nation has
been destroyed, and the chief aim of its white rulers is to root out
the warlike spirit for which it was remarkable, and to replace it by a
spirit of peaceful progress. The Zulu military organisation, perhaps
the most wonderful that the world has seen, is already a thing of the
past; it perished at Ulundi. It was Chaka who invented that
organisation, building it up from the smallest beginnings. When he
appeared at the commencement of this century, it was as the ruler of a
single small tribe; when he fell, in the year 1828, beneath the
assegais of his brothers, Umhlangana and Dingaan, and of his servant,
Mopo or Umbopo, as he is called also, all south-eastern Africa was at
his feet, and in his march to power he had slaughtered more than a
million human beings. An attempt has been made in these pages to set
out the true character of this colossal genius and most evil man,--a
Napoleon and a Tiberiius in one,--and also that of his brother and
successor, Dingaan, so no more need be said of them here. The author's
aim, moreover, has been to convey, in a narrative form, some idea of
the remarkable spirit which animated these kings and their subjects,
and to make accessible, in a popular shape, incidents of history which
are now, for the most part, only to be found in a few scarce works of
reference, rarely consulted, except by students. It will be obvious
that such a task has presented difficulties, since he who undertakes
it must for a time forget his civilisation, and think with the mind
and speak with the voice of a Zulu of the old regime. All the horrors
perpetrated by the Zulu tyrants cannot be published in this polite age
of melanite and torpedoes; their details have, therefore, been
suppressed. Still much remains, and those who think it wrong that
massacre and fighting should be written of,--except by special
correspondents,--or that the sufferings of mankind beneath one of the
world's most cruel tyrannies should form the groundwork of romance,
may be invited to leave this book unread. Most, indeed nearly all, of
the historical incidents here recorded are substantially true. Thus,
it is said that Chaka did actually kill his mother, Unandi, for the
reason given, and destroy an entire tribe in the Tatiyana cleft, and
that he prophesied of the coming of the white man after receiving his
death wounds. Of the incident of the Missionary and the furnace of
logs, it is impossible to speak so certainly. It came to the writer
from the lips of an old traveller in "the Zulu"; but he cannot
discover any confirmation of it. Still, these kings undoubtedly put
their soldiers to many tests of equal severity. Umbopo, or Mopo, as he
is named in this tale, actually lived. After he had stabbed Chaka, he
rose to great eminence. Then he disappears from the scene, but it is
not accurately known whether he also went "the way of the assegai," or
perhaps, as is here suggested, came to live near Stanger under the
name of Zweete. The fate of the two lovers at the mouth of the cave is
a true Zulu tale, which has been considerably varied to suit the
purposes of this romance. The late Mr. Leslie, who died in 1874, tells
it in his book "Among the Zulus and Amatongas." "I heard a story the
other day," he says, "which, if the power of writing fiction were
possessed by me, I might have worked up into a first-class sensational
novel." It is the story that has been woven into the plot of this
book. To him also the writer is indebted for the artifice by which
Umslopogaas obtained admission to the Swazi stronghold; it was told to
Mr. Leslie by the Zulu who performed the feat and thereby won a wife.
Also the writer's thanks are due to his friends, Mr. F. B. Fynney,[1]
late Zulu border agent, for much information given to him in bygone
years by word of mouth, and more recently through his pamphlet
"Zululand and the Zulus," and to Mr. John Bird, formerly treasurer to
the Government of Natal, whose compilation, "The Annals of Natal," is
invaluable to all who would study the early history of that colony and
of Zululand.

As for the wilder and more romantic incidents of this story, such as
the hunting of Umslopogaas and Galazi with the wolves, or rather with
the hyaenas,--for there are no true wolves in Zululand,--the author
can only say that they seem to him of a sort that might well have been
mythically connected with the names of those heroes. Similar beliefs
and traditions are common in the records of primitive peoples. The
club "Watcher of the Fords," or, to give its Zulu name, U-nothlola-
mazibuko, is an historical weapon, chronicled by Bishop Callaway. It
was once owned by a certain Undhlebekazizwa. He was an arbitrary
person, for "no matter what was discussed in our village, he would
bring it to a conclusion with a stick." But he made a good end; for
when the Zulu soldiers attacked him, he killed no less than twenty of
them with the Watcher, and the spears stuck in him "as thick as reeds
in a morass." This man's strength was so great that he could kill a
leopard "like a fly," with his hands only, much as Umslopogaas slew
the traitor in this story.

Perhaps it may be allowable to add a few words about the Zulu
mysticism, magic, and superstition, to which there is some allusion in
this romance. It has been little if at all exaggerated. Thus the
writer well remembers hearing a legend how the Guardian Spirit of the
Ama-Zulu was seen riding down the storm. Here is what Mr. Fynney says
of her in the pamphlet to which reference has been made: "The natives
have a spirit which they call Nomkubulwana, or the Inkosazana-ye-Zulu
(the Princess of Heaven). She is said to be robed in white, and to
take the form of a young maiden, in fact an angel. She is said to
appear to some chosen person, to whom she imparts some revelation;
but, whatever that revelation may be, it is kept a profound secret
from outsiders. I remember that, just before the Zulu war,
Nomkubulwana appeared, revealing something or other which had a great
effect throughout the land, and I know that the Zulus were quite
impressed that some calamity was about to befall them. One of the
ominous signs was that fire is said to have descended from heaven, and
ignited the grass over the graves of the former kings of Zululand.
. . . On another occasion Nomkubulwana appeared to some one in
Zululand, the result of that visit being, that the native women buried
their young children up to their heads in sand, deserting them for the
time being, going away weeping, but returning at nightfall to unearth
the little ones again."

For this divine personage there is, therefore, authority, and the same
may be said of most of the supernatural matters spoken of in these
pages. The exact spiritual position held in the Zulu mind by the
Umkulunkulu,--the Old--Old,--the Great--Great,--the Lord of Heavens,--
is a more vexed question, and for its proper consideration the reader
must be referred to Bishop Callaway's work, the "Religious System of
the Amazulu." Briefly, Umkulunkulu's character seems to vary from the
idea of an ancestral spirit, or the spirit of an ancestor, to that of
a god. In the case of an able and highly intelligent person like the
Mopo of this story, the ideal would probably not be a low one;
therefore he is made to speak of Umkulunkulu as the Great Spirit, or
God.

It only remains to the writer to express his regret that this story is
not more varied in its hue. It would have been desirable to introduce
some gayer and more happy incidents. But it has not been possible. It
is believed that the picture given of the times is a faithful one,
though it may be open to correction in some of its details. At the
least, the aged man who tells the tale of his wrongs and vengeance
could not be expected to treat his subject in an optimistic or even in
a cheerful vein.

[1] I grieve to state that I must now say the late Mr. F. B. Fynney.

NADA THE LILY

INTRODUCTION

Some years since--it was during the winter before the Zulu War--a
White Man was travelling through Natal. His name does not matter, for
he plays no part in this story. With him were two wagons laden with
goods, which he was transporting to Pretoria. The weather was cold and
there was little or no grass for the oxen, which made the journey
difficult; but he had been tempted to it by the high rates of
transport that prevailed at that season of the year, which would
remunerate him for any probable loss he might suffer in cattle. So he
pushed along on his journey, and all went well until he had passed the
little town of Stanger, once the site of Duguza, the kraal of Chaka,
the first Zulu king and the uncle of Cetywayo. The night after he left
Stanger the air turned bitterly cold, heavy grey clouds filled the
sky, and hid the light of the stars.

"Now if I were not in Natal, I should say that there was a heavy fall
of snow coming," said the White Man to himself. "I have often seen the
sky look like that in Scotland before snow." Then he reflected that
there had been no deep snow in Natal for years, and, having drunk a
"tot" of squareface and smoked his pipe, he went to bed beneath the
after-tent of his larger wagon.

During the night he was awakened by a sense of bitter cold and the low
moaning of the oxen that were tied to the trek-tow, every ox in its
place. He thrust his head through the curtain of the tent and looked
out. The earth was white with snow, and the air was full of it, swept
along by a cutting wind.

Now he sprang up, huddling on his clothes and as he did so calling to
the Kaffirs who slept beneath the wagons. Presently they awoke from
the stupor which already was beginning to overcome them, and crept
out, shivering with cold and wrapped from head to foot in blankets.

"Quick! you boys," he said to them in Zulu; "quick! Would you see the
cattle die of the snow and wind? Loose the oxen from the trek-tows and
drive them in between the wagons; they will give them some shelter."
And lighting a lantern he sprang out into the snow.

At last it was done--no easy task, for the numbed hands of the Kaffirs
could scarcely loosen the frozen reims. The wagons were outspanned
side by side with a space between them, and into this space the mob of
thirty-six oxen was driven and there secured by reims tied crosswise
from the front and hind wheels of the wagons. Then the White Man crept
back to his bed, and the shivering natives, fortified with gin, or
squareface, as it is called locally, took refuge on the second wagon,
drawing a tent-sail over them.

For awhile there was silence, save for the moaning of the huddled and
restless cattle.

"If the snow goes on I shall lose my oxen," he said to himself; "they
can never bear this cold."

Hardly had the words passed his lips when the wagon shook; there was a
sound of breaking reims and trampling hoofs. Once more he looked out.
The oxen had "skrecked" in a mob. There they were, running away into
the night and the snow, seeking to find shelter from the cold. In a
minute they had vanished utterly. There was nothing to be done, except
wait for the morning.

At last it came, revealing a landscape blind with snow. Such search as
could be made told them nothing. The oxen had gone, and their spoor
was obliterated by the fresh-fallen flakes. The White Man called a
council of his Kaffir servants. "What was to be done?" he asked.

One said this thing, one that, but all agreed that they must wait to
act until the snow melted.

"Or till we freeze, you whose mothers were fools!" said the White Man,
who was in the worst of tempers, for had he not lost four hundred
pounds' worth of oxen?

Then a Zulu spoke, who hitherto had remained silent. He was the driver
of the first wagon.

"My father," he said to the White Man, "this is my word. The oxen are
lost in the snow. No man knows whither they have gone, or whether they
live or are now but hides and bones. Yet at the kraal yonder," and he
pointed to some huts about two miles away on the hillside, "lives a
witch doctor named Zweete. He is old--very old--but he has wisdom, and
he can tell you where the oxen are if any man may, my father."

"Stuff!" answered the White Man. "Still, as the kraal cannot be colder
than this wagon, we will go and ask Zweete. Bring a bottle of
squareface and some snuff with you for presents."

An hour later he stood in the hut of Zweete. Before him was a very
ancient man, a mere bag of bones, with sightless eyes, and one hand--
his left--white and shrivelled.

"What do you seek of Zweete, my white father?" asked the old man in a
thin voice. "You do not believe in me and my wisdom; why should I help
you? Yet I will do it, though it is against your law, and you do wrong
to ask me,--yes, to show you that there is truth in us Zulu doctors, I
will help you. My father, I know what you seek. You seek to know where
your oxen have run for shelter from the cold! Is it not so?"

"It is so, Doctor," answered the White Man. "You have long ears."

"Yes, my white father, I have long ears, though they say that I grow
deaf. I have keen eyes also, and yet I cannot see your face. Let me
hearken! Let me look!"

For awhile he was silent, rocking himself to and fro, then he spoke:
"You have a farm, White Man, down near Pine Town, is it not? Ah! I
thought so--and an hour's ride from your farm lives a Boer with four
fingers only on his right hand. There is a kloof on the Boer's farm
where mimosa-trees grow. There, in the kloof, you shall find your oxen
--yes, five days' journey from here you will find them all. I say all,
my father, except three only--the big black Africander ox, the little
red Zulu ox with one horn, and the speckled ox. You shall not find
these, for they have died in the snow. Send, and you will find the
others. 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, my father? You do not know. You think that I am
an old, old witch-doctor named Zweete. So men have thought for many
years, but that is not my name. Few have known it, for I have kept it
locked in my breast, lest, thought I live now under the law of the
White Man, and the Great Queen is my chieftainess, an assegai still
might find this heart did any know my name.

Look at this hand, my father--no, not that which is withered with
fire; look on this right hand of mine. You see it, though I who am
blind cannot. But still, within me, I see it as it was once. Ay! I see
it red and strong--red with the blood of two kings. Listen, my father;
bend your ear to me and listen. I am Mopo--ah! I felt you start; you
start as the regiment of the Bees started when Mopo walked before
their ranks, and from the assegai in his hand the blood of Chaka[1]
dropped slowly to the earth. I am Mopo who slew Chaka the king. I
killed him with Dingaan and Umhlangana the princes; but the wound was
mine that his life crept out of, and but for me he would never have
been slain. I killed him with the princes, but Dingaan, I and one
other slew alone.

[1] The Zulu Napoleon, one of the greatest geniuses and most wicked
men who ever lived. He was killed in the year 1828, having
slaughtered more than a million human beings.--ED.

What do you say? "Dingaan died by the Tongola."

Yes, yes, he died, but not there; he died on the Ghost Mountain; he
lies in the breast of the old Stone Witch who sits aloft forever
waiting for the world to perish. But I also was on the Ghost Mountain.
In those days my feet still could travel fast, and vengeance would not
let me sleep. I travelled by day, and by night I found him. I and
another, we killed him--ah! ah!

Why do I tell you this? What has it to do with the loves of
Umslopogaas and Nada the Lily? I will tell you. I stabbed Chaka for
the sake of my sister, Baleka, the mother of Umslopogaas, and because
he had murdered my wives and children. I and Umslopogaas slew Dingaan
for the sake of Nada, who was my daughter.

There are great names in the story, my father. Yes, many have heard
the names: when the Impis roared them out as they charged in battle, I
have felt the mountains shake and seen the waters quiver in their
sound. But where are they now? Silence has them, and the white men
write them down in books. I opened the gates of distance for the
holders of the names. They passed through and they are gone beyond. I
cut the strings that tied them to the world. They fell off. Ha! ha!
They fell off! Perhaps they are falling still, perhaps they creep
about their desolate kraals in the skins of snakes. I wish I knew the
snakes that I might crush them with my heel. Yonder, beneath us, at
the burying place of kings, there is a hole. In that hole lies the
bones of Chaka, the king who died for Baleka. Far away in Zululand
there is a cleft upon the Ghost Mountain. At the foot of that cleft
lie the bones of Dingaan, the king who died for Nada. It was far to
fall and he was heavy; those bones of his are broken into little
pieces. I went to see them when the vultures and the jackals had done
their work. And then I laughed three times and came here to die.

All that is long ago, and I have not died; though I wish to die and
follow the road that Nada trod. Perhaps I have lived to tell you this
tale, my father, that you may repeat it to the white men if you will.
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.

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