'Has all thy noisy talk been stopped up since last I saw thee that it breaks out thus, and sweeps us away?
What doest thou here with these men -- thou whom I left a chief in Zululand?
How is it that thou art far from thine own place, and gathered together with strangers ?' Umslopogaas leant himself upon the head of his long battleaxe (which was nothing else but a pole-axe, with a beautiful handle of rhinoceros horn), and his grim face grew sad.
'My Father,' he answered, 'I have a word to tell thee, but I cannot speak it before these low people (umfagozana),' and he glanced at the Wakwafi Askari; 'it is for thine own ear.

My Father, this will I say,' and here his face grew stern again, 'a woman betrayed me to the death, and covered my name with shame -- ay, my own wife, a round-faced girl, betrayed me; but I escaped from death; ay, I broke from the very hands of those who came to slay me.

I struck but three blows with this mine axe Inkosikaas -- surely my Father will remember it -- one to the right, one to the left, and one in front, and yet I left three men dead.
And then I fled, and, as my Father knows, even now that I am old my feet are as the feet of the Sassaby {Endnote 2}, and there breathes not the man who, by running, can touch me again when once I have bounded from his side.

On I sped, and after me came the messengers of death, and their voice was as the voice of dogs that hunt.

From my own kraal I flew, and, as I passed, she who had betrayed me was drawing water from the spring.