"Look on me now, O Chief Bulalio, O Slaughterer, who once was named
Umslopogaas--look on me and say who am I?" Then he looked at me and
his jaw fell.
"Either you are Mopo my father grown old--Mopo, who is dead, or the
Ghost of Mopo," he answered in a low voice.
"I am Mopo, your father, Umslopogaas," I said. "You have been long in
knowing me, who knew you from the first."
Then Umslopogaas cried aloud, but yet softly, and letting fall the axe
Groan-Maker, he flung himself upon my breast and wept there. And I
wept also.
"Oh! my father," he said, "I thought that you were dead with the
others, and now you have come back to me, and I, I would have lifted
the axe against you in my folly. Oh, it is well that I have lived, and
not died, since once more I look upon your face--the face that I
thought dead, but which yet lives, though it be sorely changed, as
though by grief and years."
"Peace, Umslopogaas, my son," I said. "I also deemed you dead in the
lion's mouth, though in truth it seemed strange to me that any other
man than Umslopogaas could have wrought the deeds which I have heard
of as done by Bulalio, Chief of the People of the Axe--ay, and thrown
defiance in the teeth of Chaka. But you are not dead, and I, I am not
dead. It was another Mopo whom Chaka killed; I slew Chaka, Chaka did
not slay me.
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