t Chaka, who stood shaking the
little red spear, and thought swiftly, for the hour had come.

"Help!" I cried, "one is slaying the King!"

As I spoke the reed fence burst asunder, and through it plunged the
princes Umhlangana and Dingaan, as bulls plunge through a brake.

Then I pointed to Chaka with my withered hand, saying, "Behold your
king!"

Now, from beneath the shelter of his kaross, each Prince drew out a
short stabbing spear, and plunged it into the body of Chaka the king.
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. He sank down upon
the tanned ox-hide, and lay there dying. Once more he spoke, and once
only, saying: "Would now that I had hearkened to the voice of Nobela,
who warned me against thee, thou dog!"

Then he was silent for ever. But I knelt over him and called in his ear
the names of all those of my blood who had died at his hands--the names
of Makedama, my father, of my mother, of Anadi my wife, of Moosa my son,
and all my other wives and children, and of Baleka my sister. His eyes
and ears were open, and I think, my father, that he saw and understood;
I