So the grandfather, the father, and the son were hustled before Dingaan by the soldiers, and greeted him with the royal salute of “bayete.”

“O king,” said the old man, “I and my children are innocent.  Yet if it pleases you, O king, I am ready to die, and so is my son.  Yet we pray you to spare the little one.  He is but a boy, who may grow up to do you good service, as I have done to you and your House for many years.”

“Be silent, you white-headed dog!” answered Dingaan fiercely.  “This lad is a wizard, like the rest of you, and would grow up to bewitch me and to plot with my enemies.  Know that I have stamped out all your family, and shall I then leave him to breed another that would hate me?  Begone to the World of Spirits, and tell them how Dingaan deals with sorcerers.”

The old man tried to speak again, for evidently he loved this grandchild of his, but a soldier struck him in the face, and Dingaan shouted: 

“What!  Are you not satisfied?  I tell you that if you say more I will force you to kill the boy with your own hand.  Take them away.”

Then I turned and hid my face, as did all the white folk.  Presently I heard the old man, whom they had saved to the last that he might witness the deaths of his descendants, cry in a loud voice: 

“On the night of the thirtieth full moon from this day I, the far-sighted, I, the prophet, summon thee, Dingaan, to meet me and mine in the Land of Ghosts, and there to pay—­”

Then with a roar of horror the executioners fell on him and he died.  When there was silence I looked up, and saw that the king, who had turned a dirty yellow hue with fright, for he was very superstitious, was trembling and wiping the sweat from his brow.

“You should have kept the wizard alive,” he said in a shaky voice to the head slayer, who was engaged in cutting three more nicks on the handle of his dreadful kerry.  “Fool, I would have heard the rest of his lying message.”

The man answered humbly that he thought it best it should remain unspoken, and got himself out of sight as soon as possible.  Here I may remark that by an odd coincidence Dingaan actually was killed about thirty moons from that time.  Mopo, his general, who slew his brother Chaka, slew him also with the help of Umslopogaas, the son of Chaka.  In after years Umslopogaas told me the story of the dreadful ghost-haunted death of this tyrant, but, of course, he could not tell me exactly upon what day it happened.  Therefore I do not know whether the prophecy was strictly accurate.*

[*—­For the history of the death of Dingaan, see the Author’s “Nada the Lily.”]