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Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider), 1856-1925

"Nada the Lily"


Umhlangana smote him on the left shoulder, Dingaan struck him in the
right side. Chaka dropped the little spear handled with the red wood
and looked round, and so royally that the princes, his brothers, grew
afraid and shrank away from him.
Twice he looked on each; then he spoke, saying: "What! do you slay me,
my brothers--dogs of mine own house, whom I have fed? Do you slay me,
thinking to possess the land and to rule it? I tell you it shall not
be for long. I hear a sound of running feet--the feet of a great white
people. They shall stamp you flat, children of my father! They shall
rule the land that I have won, and you and your people shall be their
slaves!"
Thus Chaka spoke while the blood ran down him to the ground, and again
he looked on them royally, like a buck at gaze.
"Make an end, O ye who would be kings!" I cried; but their hearts had
turned to water and they could not. Then I, Mopo, sprang forward and
picked from the ground that little assegai handled with the royal wood
--the same assegai with which Chaka had murdered Unandi, his mother,
and Moosa, my son, and lifted it on high, and while I lifted it, my
father, once more, as when I was young, a red veil seemed to wave
before my eyes.
"Wherefore wouldst thou kill me, Mopo?" said the king.
"For the sake of Baleka, my sister, to whom I swore the deed, and of
all my kin," I cried, and plunged the spear through him.


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