od. 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. Then my mother
fell down and died, and I cried very much, for I loved her, and it
was dreadful to see her cold and stiff, with not a word to say however
loudly I called to her. Well, they buried my mother, and she was soon
forgotten. I only remembered her, nobody else did--not even Baleka, for
she was too little--and as for my father he took another young wife and
was content. After that I was unhappy, for my brothers did not love me,
because I was much cleverer than they, and had greater skill with the
assegai, and was swifter in running; so they poisoned the mind of my
father against me and he treated me badly. But Baleka and I loved each
other, for we were both lonely, and she clung to me like a creeper to
the only tree in a plain, and though I was young, I learned this: that
to be wise is to be strong, for though he who holds the assegai kills,
yet he whose mind directs the battle is greater than he who kills. Now I
saw that the witch-finders and the medicine-men were feared in the land,
and that everybody looked up to them, so that, even when they had only
a stick in their hands, ten me