



Produced by John Bickers





NADA THE LILY

By H. Rider Haggard




DEDICATION

Sompseu:

For I will call you by the name that for fifty years has been honoured
by every tribe between Zambesi and Cape Agulbas,--I greet you!

Sompseu, my father, I have written a book that tells of men and matters
of which you know the most of any who still look upon the light;
therefore, I set your name within that book and, such as it is, I offer
it to you.

If you knew not Chaka, you and he have seen the same suns shine, you
knew his brother Panda and his captains, and perhaps even that very Mopo
who tells this tale, his servant, who slew him with the Princes. You
have seen the circle of the witch-doctors and the unconquerable Zulu
impis rushing to war; you have crowned their kings and shared their
counsels, and with your son's blood you have expiated a statesman's
error and a general's fault.

Sompseu, a song has been sung in my ears of how first you mastered this
people of the Zulu. Is it not true, my father, that for long hours you
sat silent and alone, while three thousand warriors shouted for your
life? And when they grew weary, did you not stand and say, pointing
towards the ocean: "Kill me if you wish, men of Cetywayo, but I tell
you that for every drop of my blood a hundred avengers shall rise from
yonder sea!"

Then, so it was told me, the regiments turned staring towards the Black
Water, as though the day of Ulundi had already come and they saw the
white slayers creeping across the plains.

Thus, Sompseu, your name became great among the people of the Zulu, as
already it was great among many another tribe, and their nobles did you
homage, and they gave you the Bayete, the royal salute, declaring by the
mouth of their Council that in you dwelt the spirit of Chaka.

Many years have gone by since then, and now you are old, my father. It
is many years even since I was a boy, and followed you when you went up
among the Boers and took their country for the Queen.

Why did you do this, my father? I will answer, who know the truth. You
did it because, had it not been done, the Zulus would have stamped out
the Boers. Were not Cetywayo's impis gathered against the land, and was
it not because it became the Queen's land that at your word he sent them
murmuring to their kraals? (1) To save bloodshed you annexed the country
beyond the Vaal. Perhaps it had been better to leave it, since "Death
chooses for himself," and after all there was killing--of our own
people, and with the killing, shame. But in those days we did not guess
what we should live to see, and of Majuba we thought only as a little
hill!

Enemies have borne false witness against you on this matter, Sompseu,
you who never erred except through over kindness. Yet what does that
avail? When you have "gone beyond" it will be forgotten, since the sting
of ingratitude passes and lies must wither like the winter veldt. Only
your name will not be forgotten; as it was heard in life so it shall be
heard in story, and I pray that, however humbly, mine may pass down with
it. Chance has taken me by another path, and I must leave the ways
of action that I love and bury myself in books, but the old days and
friends are in my mind, nor while I have memory shall I forget them and
you.

Therefore, though it be for the last time, from far across the seas I
speak to you, and lifting my hand I give your "Sibonga" (2) and that
royal salute, to which, now that its kings are gone and the "People of
Heaven" are no more a nation, with Her Majesty you are alone entitled:--

    Bayete! Baba, Nkosi ya makosi!
    Ngonyama! Indhlovu ai pendulwa!
    Wen' o wa vela wasi pata!
    Wen' o wa hlul' izizwe zonke za patwa nguive!
    Wa geina nge la Mabun' o wa ba hlul' u yedwa!
    Umsizi we zintandane e ziblupekayo!
    Si ya kuleka Baba!
    Bayete, T' Sompseu! (3)

and farewell!

H. RIDER HAGGARD.


To Sir Theophilus Shepstone, K.C.M.G., Natal. 13 September, 1891.

 (1) "I thank my father Sompseu for his message. I am glad that he has
    sent it, because the Dutch have tired me out, and I intended to
    fight them once and once only, and to drive them over the Vaal.
    Kabana, you see my impis are gathered. It was to fight the Dutch
    I called them together; now I send them back to their homes."
    --Message from Cetywayo to Sir. T. Shepstone, April, 1877.

 (2) Titles of praise.

 (3) Bayete, Father, Chief of Chiefs!
    Lion! Elephant that is not turned!
    You who nursed us from of old!
    You who overshadowed all peoples and took charge of them,
    And ended by mastering the Boers with your single strength!
    Help of the fatherless when in trouble!
    Salutation to you, Father!
    Bayete, O Sompseu!




PREFACE

The writer of this romance has been encouraged to his task by a purpose
somewhat beyond that of setting out a wild tale of savage life. When he
was yet a lad,--now some seventeen years ago,--fortune took him to South
Africa. There he was thrown in with men who, for thirty or forty years,
had been intimately acquainted with the Zulu people, with their history,
their heroes, and their customs. From these he heard many tales and
traditions, some of which, perhaps, are rarely told nowadays, and in
time to come may cease to be told altogether. Then the Zulus were still
a nation; now that nation has been destroyed, and the chief aim of
its white rulers is to root out the warlike spirit for which it was
remarkable, and to replace it by a spirit of peaceful progress. The Zulu
military organisation, perhaps the most wonderful that the world has
seen, is already a thing of the past; it perished at Ulundi. It was
Chaka who invented that organisation, building it up from the smallest
beginnings. When he appeared at the commencement of this century, it was
as the ruler of a single small tribe; when he fell, in the year 1828,
beneath the assegais of his brothers, Umhlangana and Dingaan, and of his
servant, Mopo or Umbopo, as he is called also, all south-eastern Africa
was at his feet, and in his march to power he had slaughtered more than
a million human beings. An attempt has been made in these pages to set
out the true character of this colossal genius and most evil man,--a
Napoleon and a Tiberius in one,--and also that of his brother and
successor, Dingaan, so no more need be said of them here. The author's
aim, moreover, has been to convey, in a narrative form, some idea of the
remarkable spirit which animated these kings and their subjects, and to
make accessible, in a popular shape, incidents of history which are now,
for the most part, only to be found in a few scarce works of reference,
rarely consulted, except by students. It will be obvious that such a
task has presented difficulties, since he who undertakes it must for a
time forget his civilisation, and think with the mind and speak with the
voice of a Zulu of the old regime. All the horrors perpetrated by the
Zulu tyrants cannot be published in this polite age of melanite and
torpedoes; their details have, therefore, been suppressed. Still much
remains, and those who think it wrong that massacre and fighting
should be written of,--except by special correspondents,--or that the
sufferings of mankind beneath one of the world's most cruel tyrannies
should form the groundwork of romance, may be invited to leave this
book unread. Most, indeed nearly all, of the historical incidents
here recorded are substantially true. Thus, it is said that Chaka did
actually kill his mother, Unandi, for the reason given, and destroy an
entire tribe in the Tatiyana cleft, and that he prophesied of the coming
of the white man after receiving his death wounds. Of the incident of
the Missionary and the furnace of logs, it is impossible to speak so
certainly. It came to the writer from the lips of an old traveller in
"the Zulu"; but he cannot discover any confirmation of it. Still, these
kings undoubtedly put their soldiers to many tests of equal severity.
Umbopo, or Mopo, as he is named in this tale, actually lived. After he
had stabbed Chaka, he rose to great eminence. Then he disappears from
the scene, but it is not accurately known whether he also went "the way
of the assegai," or perhaps, as is here suggested, came to live near
Stanger under the name of Zweete. The fate of the two lovers at the
mouth of the cave is a true Zulu tale, which has been considerably
varied to suit the purposes of this romance. The late Mr. Leslie, who
died in 1874, tells it in his book "Among the Zulus and Amatongas." "I
heard a story the other day," he says, "which, if the power of writing
fiction were possessed by me, I might have worked up into a first-class
sensational novel." It is the story that has been woven into the plot of
this book. To him also the writer is indebted for the artifice by which
Umslopogaas obtained admission to the Swazi stronghold; it was told to
Mr. Leslie by the Zulu who performed the feat and thereby won a wife.
Also the writer's thanks are due to his friends, Mr. F. B. Fynney, (1)
late Zulu border agent, for much information given to him in bygone
years by word of mouth, and more recently through his pamphlet "Zululand
and the Zulus," and to Mr. John Bird, formerly treasurer to the
Government of Natal, whose compilation, "The Annals of Natal," is
invaluable to all who would study the early history of that colony and
of Zululand.

As for the wilder