He sprang at me, and, though I put up the best fight that I could in my injured state, got his hands about my throat and began to choke me. Scowl ran to help me, but his wound–for he was hurt–or his utter exhaustion took effect on him. Or perhaps it was excitement. At any rate, he fell down in a fit. I thought that all was over, when again I heard Umbelazi’s voice, and felt Saduko’s grip loosen at my throat, and sat up.
“Dog,” said the Prince, “where is your assegai? And as he spoke he threw it from him into the river beneath, for he had picked it up while we struggled, but, as I noted, retained his own. “Now, dog, why do I not kill you, as would have been easy but now? I will tell you. Because I will not mix the blood of a traitor with my own. See!” He set the haft of his broad spear upon the rock and bent forward over the blade. “You and your witch-wife have brought me to nothing, O Saduko. My blood, and the blood of all who clung to me, is on your head. Your name shall stink for ever in the nostrils of all true men, and I whom you have betrayed–I, the Prince Umbelazi–will haunt you while you live; yes, my spirit shall enter into you, and when you die–ah! then we’ll meet again. Tell this tale to the white men, Macumazahn, my friend, on whom be honour and blessings.”
He paused, and I saw the tears gush from his eyes–tears mingled with blood from the wound in his head. Then suddenly he uttered the battle-cry of “Laba! Laba!” and let his weight fall upon the point of the spear.
It pierced him through and through. He fell on to his hands and knees. He looked up at us–oh, the piteousness of that look!–and then rolled sideways from the edge of the rock.
A heavy splash, and that was the end of Umbelazi the Fallen–Umbelazi, about whom Mameena had cast her net.
A sad story in truth. Although it happened so many years ago I weep as I write it–I weep as Umbelazi wept.
CHAPTER XIV
UMBEZI AND THE BLOOD ROYAL
After this I think that some of the Usutu came up, for it seemed to me that I heard Saduko say:
“Touch not Macumazahn or his servant. They are my prisoners. He who harms them dies, with all his House.”
So they put me, fainting, on my horse, and Scowl they carried away upon a shield.
When I came to I found myself in a little cave, or rather beneath some overhanging rocks, at the side of a kopje, and with me Scowl, who had recovered from his fit, but seemed in a very bewildered condition. Indeed, neither then nor afterwards did he remember anything of the death of Umbelazi, nor did I ever tell him that tale. Like many others, he thought that the Prince had been drowned in trying to swim the Tugela.
“Are they going to kill us?” I asked of him, since, from the triumphant shouting without, I knew that we must be in the midst of the victorious Usutu.
“I don’t know, Baas,” he answered. “I hope not; after we have gone through so much it would be a pity. Better to have died at the beginning of the battle.”
I nodded my head in assent, and just at that moment a Zulu, who had very evidently been fighting, entered the place carrying a dish of toasted lumps of beef and a gourd of water.
“Cetewayo sends you these, Macumazahn,” he said, “and is sorry that there is no milk or beer. When you have eaten a guard waits without to escort you to him.” And he went.
“Well,” I said to Scowl, “if they were going to kill us, they would scarcely take the trouble to feed us first. So let us keep up our hearts and eat.”
“Who knows?” answered poor Scowl, as he crammed a lump of beef into his big mouth. “Still, it is better to die on a full than on an empty stomach.”