Child of Storm & Magepa the Buck. Генри Райдер Хаггард
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while he was speaking he handled the gun, that was loaded, observing which I moved behind him. Off it went in due course, its recoil knocking him backwards – for that gun was a devil to kick – and its bullet cutting the top off the ear of one of his wives. The lady fled screaming, leaving a little bit of her ear upon the ground.
“What does it matter?” said Umbezi, as he picked himself up, rubbing his shoulder with a rueful look. “Would that the evil spirit in the gun had cut off her tongue and not her ear! It is the Worn-out-Old-Cow’s own fault; she is always peeping into everything like a monkey. Now she will have something to chatter about and leave my things alone for awhile. I thank my ancestral Spirit it was not Mameena, for then her looks would have been spoiled.”
“Who is Mameena?” I asked. “Your last wife?”
“No, no, Macumazahn; I wish she were, for then I should have the most beautiful wife in the land. She is my daughter, though not that of the Worn-out-Old-Cow; her mother died when she was born, on the night of the Great Storm. You should ask Saduko there who Mameena is,” he added with a broad grin, lifting his head from the gun, which he was examining gingerly, as though he thought it might go off again while unloaded, and nodding towards someone who stood behind him.
I turned, and for the first time saw Saduko, whom I recognised at once as a person quite out of the ordinary run of natives.
He was a tall and magnificently formed young man, who, although his breast was scarred with assegai wounds, showing that he was a warrior, had not yet attained to the honour of the “ring” of polished wax laid over strips of rush bound round with sinew and sewn to the hair, the “isicoco” which at a certain age or dignity, determined by the king, Zulus are allowed to assume. But his face struck me more even than his grace, strength and stature. Undoubtedly it was a very fine face, with little or nothing of the negroid type about it; indeed, he might have been a rather dark-coloured Arab, to which stock he probably threw back. The eyes, too, were large and rather melancholy, and in his reserved, dignified air there was something that showed him to be no common fellow, but one of breeding and intellect.
“Siyakubona” (that is, “we see you,” anglice “good morrow”) “Saduko,” I said, eyeing him curiously. “Tell me, who is Mameena?”
“Inkoosi,” he answered in his deep voice, lifting his delicately shaped hand in salutation, a courtesy that pleased me who, after all, was nothing but a white hunter, “Inkoosi, has not her father said that she is his daughter?”
“Aye,” answered the jolly old Umbezi, “but what her father has not said is that Saduko is her lover, or, rather, would like to be. Wow! Saduko,” he went on, shaking his fat finger at him, “are you mad, man, that you think a girl like that is for you? Give me a hundred cattle, not one less, and I will begin to think of it. Why, you have not ten, and Mameena is my eldest daughter, and must marry a rich man.”
“She loves me, O Umbezi,” answered Saduko, looking down, “and that is more than cattle.”
“For you, perhaps, Saduko, but not for me who am poor and want cows. Also,” he added, glancing at him shrewdly, “are you so sure that Mameena loves you though you be such a fine man? Now, I should have thought that whatever her eyes may say, her heart loves no one but herself, and that in the end she will follow her heart and not her eyes. Mameena the beautiful does not seek to be a poor man’s wife and do all the hoeing. But bring me the hundred cattle and we will see, for, speaking truth from my heart, if you were a big chief there is no one I should like better as a son-in-law, unless it were Macumazahn here,” he said, digging me in the ribs with his elbow, “who would lift up my House on his white back.”
Now, at this speech Saduko shifted his feet uneasily; it seemed to me as though he felt there was truth in Umbezi’s estimate of his daughter’s character. But he only said:
“Cattle can be acquired.”
“Or stolen,” suggested Umbezi.
“Or taken in war,” corrected Saduko. “When I have a hundred head I will hold you to your word, O father of Mameena.”
“And then what would you live on, fool, if you gave all your beasts to me? There, there, cease talking wind. Before you have a hundred head of cattle Mameena will have six children who will not call you father. Ah, don’t you like that? Are you going away?”
“Yes, I am going,” he answered, with a flash of his quiet eyes; “only then let the man whom they do call father beware of Saduko.”
“Beware of how you talk, young man,” said Umbezi in a grave voice. “Would you travel your father’s road? I hope not, for I like you well; but such words are apt to be remembered.”
Saduko walked away as though he did not hear.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“One of high blood,” answered Umbezi shortly. “He might be a chief to-day had not his father been a plotter and a wizard. Dingaan smelt him out” – and he made a sideways motion with his hand that among the Zulus means much. “Yes, they were killed, almost every one; the chief, his wives, his children and his headmen – every one except Chosa his brother and his son Saduko, whom Zikali the dwarf, the Smeller-out-of-evil-doers, the Ancient, who was old before Senzangakona became a father of kings, hid him. There, that is an evil tale to talk of,” and he shivered. “Come, White Man, and doctor that old Cow of mine, or she will give me no peace for months.”
So I went to see the Worn-out-Old-Cow – not because I had any particular interest in her, for, to tell the truth, she was a very disagreeable and antique person, the cast-off wife of some chief whom at an unknown date in the past the astute Umbezi had married from motives of policy – but because I hoped to hear more of Miss Mameena, in whom I had become interested.
Entering a large hut, I found the lady so impolitely named “the Old Cow” in a parlous state. There she lay upon the floor, an unpleasant object because of the blood that had escaped from her wound, surrounded by a crowd of other women and of children. At regular intervals she announced that she was dying, and emitted a fearful yell, whereupon all the audience yelled also; in short, the place was a perfect pandemonium.
Telling Umbezi to get the hut cleared, I said that I would go to fetch my medicines. Meanwhile I ordered my servant, Scowl, a humorous-looking fellow, light yellow in hue, for he had a strong dash of Hottentot in his composition, to cleanse the wound. When I returned from the wagon ten minutes later the screams were more terrible than before, although the chorus now stood without the hut. Nor was this altogether wonderful, for on entering the place I found Scowl trimming up “the Old Cow’s” ear with a pair of blunt nail-scissors.
“O Macumazana,” said Umbezi in a hoarse whisper, “might it not perhaps be as well to leave her alone? If she bled to death, at any rate she would be quieter.”
“Are you a man or a hyena?” I answered sternly, and set about the job, Scowl holding the poor woman’s head between his knees.
It was over at length; a simple operation in which I exhibited – I believe that is the medical term – a strong solution of caustic applied with a feather.
“There, Mother,” I said, for now we were alone in the hut, whence Scowl had fled, badly bitten in the calf, “you won’t die now.”
“No, you vile White Man,” she sobbed. “I shan’t die, but how about my beauty?”
“It will be greater than ever,” I answered; “no one else will have an ear with such a curve in it. But, talking of beauty, where is Mameena?”
“I don’t know where she is,” she replied with fury, “but I very well know where she would be if I had my way. That peeled willow-wand of a girl” – here she added certain descriptive epithets I will not repeat – “has brought this misfortune upon me. We had a slight quarrel yesterday, White Man, and, being a witch as she is, she prophesied evil. Yes, when by accident I scratched her ear, she said that before long mine should burn, and surely burn it does.” (This, no doubt, was true, for the caustic had begun to bite.)
“O devil of a White Man,” she went on, “you have bewitched me; you have filled