The Project Gutenberg EBook of Child of Storm, by H. Rider Haggard

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Title: Child of Storm

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Posting Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #1711]
Release Date: April, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHILD OF STORM ***

Produced by Christopher Hapka

CHILD OF STORM

by H. RIDER HAGGARD

Transcriber's Note:

Where italics are used to indicate non-English words, I have silently
omitted them or replaced them with quotation marks.

Haggard's spelling, especially of Zulu terms, is wildly inconsistent;
likewise his capitalization, especially of Zulu terms. For example,
Masapo is the chief of the Amansomi until chapter IX; thereafter his
tribe is consistently referred to as the "Amasomi". In general, I have
retained Haggard's spellings.

DEDICATION

Dear Mr. Stuart,

For twenty years, I believe I am right in saying, you, as Assistant
Secretary for Native Affairs in Natal, and in other offices, have been
intimately acquainted with the Zulu people. Moreover, you are one of
the few living men who have made a deep and scientific study of their
language, their customs and their history. So I confess that I was the
more pleased after you were so good as to read this tale--the
second book of the epic of the vengeance of Zikali, "the
Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born," and of the fall of the House of
Senzangakona[*]--when you wrote to me that it was animated by the true
Zulu spirit.

[*--"Marie" was the first. The third and final act in the
drama is yet to come.].

I must admit that my acquaintance with this people dates from a period
which closed almost before your day. What I know of them I gathered
at the time when Cetewayo, of whom my volume tells, was in his glory,
previous to the evil hour in which he found himself driven by the
clamour of his regiments, cut off, as they were, through the annexation
of the Transvaal, from their hereditary trade of war, to match himself
against the British strength. I learned it all by personal observation
in the 'seventies, or from the lips of the great Shepstone, my chief and
friend, and from my c