He thanked them for their service.
He said it was natural that "girls" should faint at the sight of blood
and turn to seek their kraals. Yet he had bid them come back no more and
they had come back! What then was there now left for him to do? And he
covered his face with his blanket. Then the soldiers killed them all,
nearly two thousand of them--killed them with taunts and jeers.

That is how we dealt with cowards in those days, my father. After that,
one Zulu was a match for five of any other tribe. If ten came against
him, still he did not turn his back. "Fight and fall, but fly not," that
was our watchword. Never again while Chaka lived did a conquered force
pass the gates of the king's kraal.

That fight was but one war out of many. With every moon a fresh impi
started to wash its spears, and came back few and thin, but with victory
and countless cattle. Tribe after tribe went down before us. Those of
them who escaped the assegai were enrolled into fresh regiments, and
thus, though men died by thousands every month, yet the army grew.
Soon there were no other chiefs left. Umsuduka fell, and after him
Mancengeza. Umzilikazi was driven north; Matiwane was stamped flat. Then
we poured into this land of Natal. When we entered, its people could not
be numbered. When we left, here and there a man might be found in a hole
in the earth--that was all. Men, women, and children, we wiped them out;
the land was clean of them. Next came the turn of U'Faku, chief of the
Amapondos. Ah! where is U'faku now?

And so it went on and on, till even the Zulus were weary of war and the
sharpest assegais grew blunt.

CHAPTER VI. THE BIRTH OF UMSLOPOGAAS

This was the rule of the life of Chaka, that he would have no children,
though he had many wives. Every child born to him by his "sisters" was
put away at once.

"What, Mopo," he said to me, "shall I rear up children to put me to the
assegai when they grow great? They call me tyrant. Say, how do those
chiefs die whom men name tyrants? They die at the hands of those whom
they have bred. Nay, Mopo, I will rule for my life, and when I join the
spirits of my fathers let the strongest take my power and my place!"

Now it chanced that shortly after Chaka had spoken thus, my sister
Baleka, the king's wife, fell in labour; and on that same day my wife
Macropha was brought to bed of twins, and this but eight days after my
second wife, Anadi, had given birth to a son. You ask, my father,