chief should be weakened and a foe should be attacked at no cost
to the king, in such fashion also that perhaps it might come about that
the king would shortly have the Lily at his side.

Then I sat down to wait what might befall.

Now it is, my father, that the white men come into my story, whom we
named the Amaboona, but you call the Boers. Ou! I think ill of those
Amaboona, though it was I who gave them the victory over Dingaan--I and
Umslopogaas.

Before this time, indeed, a few white men had come to and fro to the
kraals of Chaka and Dingaan, but these came to pray and not to fight.
Now the Boers both fight and pray, also they steal, or used to steal,
which I do not understand, for the prayers of you white men say that
these things should not be done.

Well, when I had been back from the Ghost Mountain something less than a
moon, the Boers came, sixty of them commanded by a captain named
Retief, a big man, and armed with roers--the long guns they had in
those days--or, perhaps they numbered a hundred in all, counting their
servants and after-riders. This was their purpose: to get a grant of
the land in Natal that lies between the Tugela and the Umzimoubu rivers.
But, by my council and that of other indunas, Dingaan, bargained with
the Boers that first they should attack a certain chief named Sigomyela,
who had stolen some of the king's cattle, and who lived near the
Quathlamba Mountains, and bring back those cattle. This the Boers agreed
to, and went to attack the chief, and in a little while they came back
again, having destroyed the people of Sigomyela, and driving his cattle
before them as well as those which had been stolen from the king.

The face of Dingaan shone when he saw the cattle, and that night he
called us, the council of the Amapakati, together, and asked us as
to the granting of the country. I spoke the first, and said that it
mattered little if he granted it, seeing that the Black One who was dead
had already given it to the English, the People of George, and the end
of the matter would be that the Amaboona and the People of George would
fight for the land. Yet the words of the Black One were coming to pass,
for already it seemed we could hear the sound of the running of a white
folk who should eat up the kingdom.

Now when I had spoken thus the heart of Dingaan grew heavy and his face
dark, for my words stuck in his breast like a barbed spear. Still, he
made no answer, but dismissed the coun