tion>W. C. Scully
The White Hecatomb, and Other Stories
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066141929
Table of Contents
Chapter Two.
The Vengeance of Dogolwana.
“The dark places of the earth are full
Of the habitations of cruelty.”
Psalm lxxiv. “Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit.” Ezekiel XXXII, 23.
The Death of the Chief
The old chief of the Amagamedse tribe lay dying in his hut. It was a warm summer’s evening, with a sense of moisture on the almost silent breeze, which was borne from the other side of the valley, over which a slight thunder-storm had passed.
Umsoala, the chief, lay on a mat under which some dry grass had been spread to ease his loosened bones. He was partially propped against the body of old Dogolwana, his faithful and tried attendant. Dogolwana sat with his left arm around his beloved master’s waist. He had bravely sustained for a long time a painfully strained position.
Sitting silently on the ground, against the circular wall of the hut, were a number of old men and a few women, all clad in blankets, their knees drawn up to their chins. Between the centre-pole and the dying man sat a young woman, who held a little boy of about five years of age in her arms. On a log of wood, near the dying man’s feet, sat the Magistrate of the district and the District Surgeon. They had been hurriedly sent for on the previous day when the paralytic stroke, which was putting a sudden period to the old chief’s existence, had fallen.
The dying chief was a man of enormous build. He was covered by a blanket to the middle, but his trunk and arms, gaunt and wrinkled with age, were bare. His chest did not heave, as he was breathing from the diaphragm. His face was grey and shrunken, and but for the eyes, which were bright and lively, one might have almost thought him already dead.
After his lips had been moistened with water brought by the young woman in a cleft calabash, the chief spoke, his voice at first broken and trembling, but gaining steadiness and volume under the stimulus of excitement as he proceeded:
“I am dying alone … alone … for a man is alone when his children desert him. Where are my sons? Have they not been sent for?”
Old Dogolwana replied in a low tone:
“Yes, my chief and father.”
“My sons, for whose sakes I have striven, leave me lonely at the hour of my death. There is Songoza, my ‘Great Son,’ whom I have asked the Government to recognise as chief in my place. I made him rich and now he is poor. I filled his kraal with cattle, and he has filled his huts with women until to-day his kraal stands empty. There is Gonyolo, eldest son of my right hand. I gave him the cattle of his house last year and told him to keep his mother in comfort till she died. One by one the cattle are driven to the village and sold for brandy. They tell me his mother has to go to a neighbouring kraal to beg for a drink of milk. When I went to visit Bawela a few months ago, I found him drunk with beer. He and his friends mocked me to my face. The bones of cattle were strewn around the huts, and a fat cow had just been slaughtered. And Philip, that I sent to school and kept there until he had learned nearly as much as a Magistrate—does he not ride around amongst the people telling them not to listen to my words? Nomtsheke—Zoduba and the others—all children, though men in years. And now I am near my death, and none but this poor little Gqomisa is near me. Come here, boy.”
The mother half arose and pushed forward the little boy, who shrank back at first; then crouching down on his face and knees at his father’s side, he began to cry.
Old Dogolwana seemed to divine what the old chief wanted. He lifted the powerless arm from the elbow, and let the hand rest on the back of the crouching child.
After another sip of water, Umsoala recommenced speaking. He now addressed the Magistrate:
“You have always been a father to me and to my people, and your coming now makes my heart lighter. We have known each other for many years, and the knowledge has brought trust. This little boy Gqomisa is my youngest child. There sits his mother Notemba, the daughter of Dogolwana. I wish to tell you, so that all may know, that the herd of black cattle here at my ‘great place’ belongs to Gqomisa, and is left in charge of his mother, old Dogolwana, and Dogolwana’s son Kèlè. I have paid out their shares of cattle to Songoza and to all my other sons, and if they should try to take what belongs to this boy, I want the strength of the Government to shield him from wrong. Will you promise to protect him?”
“I will protect him,” replied the Magistrate.
“He is such a little child. It is true he has Dogolwana, and Kèlè who is the bravest and strongest man of my tribe, to protect him, but his enemies will be many. I ask the Government, in its strength, to stand on his side. I took the side of the Government when the Tshobeni raised the war-cry in the great rebellion, and the Governor himself told me that I dammed the flood
