Child of Storm | Page 4

sound of the wind that wailed about the hut when she was born.*
[*--The Zulu word "Meena"--or more correctly "Mina"--means "Come
here," and would therefore be a name not unsuitable to one of the
heroine's proclivities; but Mr. Quatermain does not seem to accept this
interpretation.--EDITOR.]
Since I have been settled in England I have read--of course in a
translation--the story of Helen of Troy, as told by the Greek poet,
Homer. Well, Mameena reminds me very much of Helen, or, rather,
Helen reminds me of Mameena. At any rate, there was this in common
between them, although one of them was black, or, rather,
copper-coloured, and the other white--they both were lovely; moreover,
they both were faithless, and brought men by hundreds to their deaths.
There, perhaps, the resemblance ends, since Mameena had much more
fire and grit than Helen could boast, who, unless Homer misrepresents
her, must have been but a poor thing after all. Beauty Itself, which
those old rascals of Greek gods made use of to bait their snares set for
the lives and honour of men, such was Helen, no more; that is, as I
understand her, who have not had the advantage of a classical
education. Now, Mameena, although she was superstitious--a common
weakness of great minds--acknowledging no gods in particular, as we
understand them, set her own snares, with varying success but a very
definite object, namely, that of becoming the first woman in the world
as she knew it--the stormy, bloodstained world of the Zulus.
But the reader shall judge for himself, if ever such a person should
chance to cast his eye upon this history.
It was in the year 1854 that I first met Mameena, and my acquaintance
with her continued off and on until 1856, when it came to an end in a
fashion that shall be told after the fearful battle of the Tugela in which
Umbelazi, Panda's son and Cetewayo's brother--who, to his sorrow, had
also met Mameena--lost his life. I was still a youngish man in those
days, although I had already buried my second wife, as I have told
elsewhere, after our brief but happy time of marriage.

Leaving my boy in charge of some kind people in Durban, I started into
"the Zulu"--a land with which I had already become well acquainted as
a youth, there to carry on my wild life of trading and hunting.
For the trading I never cared much, as may be guessed from the little
that ever I made out of it, the art of traffic being in truth repugnant to
me. But hunting was always the breath of my nostrils--not that I am
fond of killing creatures, for any humane man soon wearies of
slaughter. No, it is the excitement of sport, which, before breechloaders
came in, was acute enough, I can assure you; the lonely existence in
wild places, often with only the sun and the stars for companions; the
continual adventures; the strange tribes with whom I came in contact;
in short, the change, the danger, the hope always of finding something
great and new, that attracted and still attracts me, even now when I
have found the great and the new. There, I must not go on writing like
this, or I shall throw down my pen and book a passage for Africa, and
incidentally to the next world, no doubt--that world of the great and
new!
It was, I think, in the month of May in the year 1854 that I went
hunting in rough country between the White and Black Umvolosi
Rivers, by permission of Panda--whom the Boers had made king of
Zululand after the defeat and death of Dingaan his brother. The district
was very feverish, and for this reason I had entered it in the winter
months. There was so much bush that, in the total absence of roads, I
thought it wise not to attempt to bring my wagons down, and as no
horses would live in that veld I went on foot. My principal companions
were a Kafir of mixed origin, called Sikauli, commonly abbreviated
into Scowl, the Zulu chief Saduko, and a headman of the Undwandwe
blood named Umbezi, at whose kraal on the high land about thirty
miles away I left my wagon and certain of my men in charge of the
goods and some ivory that I had traded.
This Umbezi was a stout and genial-mannered man of about sixty years
of age, and, what is rare among these people, one who loved sport for
its own sake. Being aware of his tastes, also that he knew the country
and was skilled in finding game, I had promised him a gun if he would

accompany me and bring a few hunters. It was a particularly bad gun
that