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.
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