Nada the Lily | Page 7

to be done?" he asked.
One said this thing, one that, but all agreed that they must wait to act

until the snow melted.
"Or till we freeze, you whose mothers were fools!" said the White Man,
who was in the worst of tempers, for had he not lost four hundred
pounds' worth of oxen?
Then a Zulu spoke, who hitherto had remained silent. He was the driver
of the first wagon.
"My father," he said to the White Man, "this is my word. The oxen are
lost in the snow. No man knows whither they have gone, or whether
they live or are now but hides and bones. Yet at the kraal yonder," and
he pointed to some huts about two miles away on the hillside, "lives a
witch doctor named Zweete. He is old--very old--but he has wisdom,
and he can tell you where the oxen are if any man may, my father."
"Stuff!" answered the White Man. "Still, as the kraal cannot be colder
than this wagon, we will go and ask Zweete. Bring a bottle of
squareface and some snuff with you for presents."
An hour later he stood in the hut of Zweete. Before him was a very
ancient man, a mere bag of bones, with sightless eyes, and one hand--
his left--white and shrivelled.
"What do you seek of Zweete, my white father?" asked the old man in a
thin voice. "You do not believe in me and my wisdom; why should I
help you? Yet I will do it, though it is against your law, and you do
wrong to ask me,--yes, to show you that there is truth in us Zulu
doctors, I will help you. My father, I know what you seek. You seek to
know where your oxen have run for shelter from the cold! Is it not so?"
"It is so, Doctor," answered the White Man. "You have long ears."
"Yes, my white father, I have long ears, though they say that I grow
deaf. I have keen eyes also, and yet I cannot see your face. Let me
hearken! Let me look!"
For awhile he was silent, rocking himself to and fro, then he spoke:

"You have a farm, White Man, down near Pine Town, is it not? Ah! I
thought so--and an hour's ride from your farm lives a Boer with four
fingers only on his right hand. There is a kloof on the Boer's farm
where mimosa-trees grow. There, in the kloof, you shall find your oxen
--yes, five days' journey from here you will find them all. I say all, my
father, except three only--the big black Africander ox, the little red
Zulu ox with one horn, and the speckled ox. You shall not find these,
for they have died in the snow. Send, and you will find the others. No,
no! I ask no fee! I do not work wonders for reward. Why should I? I am
rich."
Now the White Man scoffed. But in the end, so great is the power of
superstition, he sent. And here it may be stated that on the eleventh day
of his sojourn at the kraal of Zweete, those whom he sent returned with
the oxen, except the three only. After that he scoffed no more. Those
eleven days he spent in a hut of the old man's kraal, and every
afternoon he came and talked with him, sitting far into the night.
On the third day he asked Zweete how it was that his left hand was
white and shrivelled, and who were Umslopogaas and Nada, of whom
he had let fall some words. Then the old man told him the tale that is
set out here. Day by day he told some of it till it was finished. It is not
all written in these pages, for portions may have been forgotten, or put
aside as irrelevant. Neither has it been possible for the writer of it to
render the full force of the Zulu idiom nor to convey a picture of the
teller. For, in truth, he acted rather than told his story. Was the death of
a warrior in question, he stabbed with his stick, showing how the blow
fell and where; did the story grow sorrowful, he groaned, or even wept.
Moreover, he had many voices, one for each of the actors in his tale.
This man, ancient and withered, seemed to live again in the far past. It
was the past that spoke to his listener, telling of deeds long forgotten,
of deeds that are no more known.
Yet as he best may, the White Man has set down the substance of the
story of Zweete in the spirit in which Zweete told it. And because the
history of Nada the Lily and