The Ghost Kings

The Ghost Kings

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Haggard #47 in our series by H. Rider Haggard
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Title: The Ghost Kings
Author: H. Rider Haggard
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THE GHOST KINGS
By
H. Rider Haggard

First published July 1908. Reprinted March 1909.
Cheap Edition December 1911.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER
1. THE GIRL
2. THE BOY
3. GOOD-BYE
4. ISHMAEL
5. NOIE
6. THE CASTING OF THE LOTS
7. THE MESSAGE OF THE KING
8. MR. DOVE VISITS ISHMAEL

9. THE TAKING OF NOIE
10. THE OMEN OF THE STAR
11. ISHMAEL VISITS THE Inkosazana
12. RACHEL SEES A VISION
13. RICHARD COMES
14. WHAT CHANCED AT RAMAH
15. RACHEL COMES HOME
16. THE THREE DAYS
17. RACHEL LOSES HER SPIRIT
18. THE CURSE OF THE Inkosazana
19. RACHEL FINDS HER SPIRIT
20. THE MOTHER OF THE TREES
21. THE CITY OF THE DEAD
22. IN THE SANCTUARY
23. THE DREAM IN THE NORTH
24. THE END AND THE BEGINNING

EXTRACT
FROM LETTER HEADED "THE KING'S KRAAL, ZULULAND,
12TH MAY, 1855."
_"The Zulus about here have a strange story of a white girl who in
Dingaan's day was supposed to 'hold the spirit' of some legendary
goddess of theirs who is also white. This girl, they say, was very

beautiful and brave, and had great power in the land before the battle of
the Blood River, which they fought with the emigrant Boers. Her title
was Lady of the Zulus, or more shortly, Zoola, which means Heaven.
"She seems to have been the daughter of a wandering, pioneer
missionary, but the king, I mean Dingaan, murdered her parents, of
whom he was jealous, after which she went mad and cursed the nation,
and it is to this curse that they still attribute the death of Dingaan, and
their defeats and other misfortunes of that time.
"Ultimately, it appears, in order to be rid of this girl and her evil eye,
they sold her to the doctors of a dwarf people, who lived far away in a
forest and worshipped trees, since when nothing more has been heard
of her. But according to them the curse stopped behind.
"If I can find out anything more of this curious story I will let you
know, but I doubt if I shall be able to do so. Although fifteen years or
so have passed since Dingaan's death in 1840 the Kaffirs are very shy
of talking about this poor lady, and, I think, only did so to me because I
am neither an official nor a missionary, but one whom they look upon
as a friend because I have doctored so many of them. When I asked the
Indunas about her at first they pretended total ignorance, but on my
pressing the question, one of them said that 'all that tale was unlucky
and "went beyond" with Mopo.' Now Mopo, as I think I wrote to you,
was the man who stabbed King Chaka, Dingaan's brother. He is
supposed to have been mixed up in the death of Dingaan also, and to be
dead himself. At any rate he vanished away after Panda came to the
throne."_

CHAPTER I
THE GIRL
The afternoon was intensely, terribly hot. Looked at from the high
ground where they were encamped above the river, the sea, a mile or
two to her right--for this was the coast of Pondo-land--to little Rachel
Dove staring at it with sad eyes, seemed an illimitable sheet of stagnant
oil. Yet there was no sun, for a grey haze hung like a veil beneath the
arch of the