Having secured these two men I looked in vain for a third to suit my purpose, so we determined to start without one, trusting to luck to find a suitable man on our way up country. But, as it happened, on the evening before the day we had fixed for our departure the Zulu Khiva informed me that a Kafir was waiting to see me. Accordingly, when we had done dinner, for we were at table at the time, I told Khiva to bring him in. Presently a tall, handsome-looking man, somewhere about thirty years of age, and very light-coloured for a Zulu, entered, and, lifting his knob-stick by way of salute, squatted himself down in the corner on his haunches, and sat silent. I did not take any notice of him for a while, for it is a great mistake to do so. If you rush into conversation at once, a Zulu is apt to think you a person of little dignity or consequence. I observed, however, that he was a ‘Keshla’ or ringed man; that is, he wore on his head the black ring, made of a species of gum polished with fat and worked up in the hair, which is usually assumed by Zulus on attaining a certain age or dignity. Also it struck me that his face was familiar to me.
‘Well,’ I said at last, ‘what is your name?’
‘Umbopa,’ answered the man in a slow, deep voice.
‘I have seen your face before.’
‘Yes; the Inkosi, the chief, my father, saw my face at the place of the Little Hand’ – that is Isandhlwana – ‘ on the day before the battle.’
Then I remembered. I was one of Lord Chelmsford’s guides in that unlucky Zulu War, and took part in the battle, which I had the good fortune to survive. I will say nothing about it here, indeed the subject is painful to, me. On the day before it happened, however, I fell into conversation with this man, who held some small command among the native auxiliaries, and he had expressed to me his doubts as to the safety of the camp. At the time I told him to hold his tongue, and leave such matters to wiser heads; but afterwards I thought of his words.
‘I remember,’ I said; ‘what is it you want?’
‘It is this, “Macumazahn”. (That is my Kafir name, and means the man who gets up in the middle of the night, or, in vulgar English, he who keeps his eyes open.) I hear that you go on a great expedition far into the North with the white chiefs from over the water. Is it a true word?’
‘It is.’
‘I hear that you go even to the Lukanga River, a moon’s journey beyond the Manick country. Is this so also, “Macumazahn”?’
‘Why do you ask whither we go? What is it to you?’ I answered suspiciously, for the objects of our journey had been kept a dead secret.
‘It is this, O white men, that if indeed you travel so far I would travel with you.’
There was a certain assumption of dignity in the man’s mode of speech, and especially in his use of the words ‘O white men,’ instead of ‘O Inkosis,’ or chiefs, which struck me.
‘You forget yourself a little,’ I said. ‘Your words run out unawares. That is not the way to speak. What is your name, and where is your kraal? Tell us, that we may know with whom we have to deal.’
‘My name is Umbopa. I am of the Zulu people, yet not of them. The house of my tribe is in the far North; it was left behind when the Zulus came down here a “thousand years ago,” long before Chaka reigned in Zulu-land. I have no kraal. I have wandered for many years. I came from the North as a child to Zululand. I was Cetewayo’s man in the Nkomabakosi Regiment, serving under the great captain, Umslopogaasi of the Axe,”1 who taught my hands to fight. Afterwards I ran away from Zululand and came to Natal because I wanted to see the white man’s ways. Next I fought against Cetewayo in the war. Since then I have been working in Natal. Now I am tired, and would go North again. Here is not my place. I want no money, but I am a brave man and well worth my place and meat. I have spoken.’
I was rather puzzled by this man and his way of speech. It was evident to me from his manner that in the main he was telling the truth, but somehow he seemed different from the ordinary run of Zulus, and I rather mistrusted his offer to come without pay. Being in a difficulty, I translated his words to Sir Henry and Good, and asked them their opinion.
Sir Henry told me to ask him to stand up. Umbopa did so, at the same time slipping off the long military greatcoat which he wore, and revealing himself naked except for the mocha round his centre and a necklace of lions’ claws. Certainly he was a magnificent looking man; I never saw a finer native. Standing about six foot three high, he was broad in proportion, and very shapely. In that light, too, his skin looked scarcely more than dark except here and there where deep black scars marked old assegai wounds. Sir Henry walked up to him and looked into his proud, handsome face.
‘They make a good pair, don’t they?’ said Good; ‘one as big as the other.’
‘I like your looks, Mr Umbopa, and I will take you as my servant,’ said Sir Henry in English.
Umbopa evidently understood him, for he answered in Zulu, ‘It is well’; and then added, with a glance at the white man’s great stature and breadth.
‘We are men, thou and I.’
Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of our long trek up to Sitanda’s Kraal, near the junction of the Lakanga and Kalukwe Rivers. It was a journey of more than a thousand miles from Durban, the last three hundred or so of which we had to make on foot, owing to the frequent presence of the dreadful ‘tsetse’ fly, whose bite is fatal to all animals except donkeys and men.
We left Durban at the end of January, and it was in the second week of May that we camped near Sitanda’s Kraal. Our adventures on the way were many and various, but as they are of the sort which befall every African hunter – with one exception to be presently detailed – I shall not set them down here, lest I should render this history too wearisome.
At Inyati, the outlying trading station in the Matabele country, of which Lobengula (a great and cruel scoundrel) is king, with many regrets we parted from our comfortable wagon. Only twelve oxen remained to us out of the beautiful span of twenty which I had bought at Durban. One we lost from the bite of a cobra, three had perished from ‘poverty’ and the want of water, one starved and the other three died from eating the poisonous herb called ‘tulip.’ Five more sickened from this cause, but we managed to cure them with doses of an infusion made by boiling down the tulip leaves. If administered in time this is a very effective antidote.
The wagon and oxen we left in the immediate charge of Goza and Tom, our driver and leader, both trustworthy boys, requesting a worthy Scotch missionary who lived in this distant place to keep an eye to them. Then, accompanied by Umbopa, Khiva, Ventvögel, and half a dozen bearers whom we hired on the spot, we started off on foot upon our wild quest. I remember we were all a little silent on the occasion of this departure, and I think that each of us was wondering if we should ever see our wagon again; for my part I never expected to do so. For a while we tramped on in silence, till Umbopa, who was marching in front, broke into a Zulu chant about how some brave men, tired of life and the tameness of things, started off into a vast wilderness to find new ones or die, and how, lo and behold! when they had travelled far into the wilderness they