CHAPTER III

NORTHWARDS

I make no apology to myself, or to anybody who may happen to read this narrative in future, for having set out the manner of my meeting with Indaba-zimbi:  first, because it was curious, and secondly, because he takes some hand in the subsequent events.  If that old man was a humbug, he was a very clever one.  What amount of truth there was in his pretensions to supernatural powers it is not for me to determine, though I may have my own opinion on the subject.  But there was no mistake as to the extraordinary influence he exercised over his fellow-natives.  Also he quite got round my poor father.  At first the old gentleman declined to have him at the station, for he had a great horror of these Kaffir wizards or witch-finders.  But Indaba-zimbi persuaded him that he was anxious to investigate the truths of Christianity, and challenged him to a discussion.  The argument lasted two years—­to the time of my father’s death, indeed.  At the conclusion of each stage Indaba-zimbi would remark, in the words of the Roman Governor, “Almost, praying white man, thou persuadest me to become a Christian,” but he never quite became one—­indeed, I do not think he ever meant to.  It was to him that my father addressed his “Letters to a Native Doubter.”  This work, which, unfortunately, remains in manuscript, is full of wise saws and learned instances.  It ought to be published together with a precis of the doubter’s answers, which were verbal.

So the talk went on.  If my father had lived I believe it would be going on now, for both the disputants were quite inexhaustible.  Meanwhile Indaba-zimbi was allowed to live on the station on condition that he practised no witchcraft, which my father firmly believed to be a wile of the devil.  He said that he would not, but for all that there was never an ox lost, or a sudden death, but he was consulted by those interested.

When he had been with us a year, a deputation came to him from the tribe he had left, asking him to return.  Things had not gone well with them since he went away, they said, and now the chief, his enemy, was dead.  Old Indaba-zimbi listened to them till they had done, and, as he listened, raked sand into a little heap with his toes.  Then he spoke, pointing to the little heap, “There is your tribe to-day,” he said.  Then he lifted his heel and stamped the heap flat.  “There is your tribe before three moons are gone.  Nothing is left of it.  You drove me away:  I will have no more to do with you; but when you are being killed think of my words.”

The messengers went.  Three months afterwards I heard that the whole community had been wiped out by an Impi of raiding Pondos.

When I was at length ready to start upon my expedition, I went to old Indaba-zimbi to say good-bye to him, and was rather surprised to find him engaged in rolling up medicine, assegais, and other sundries in his blankets.