|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 24
"Yes, Umbopa," answered Sir Henry, "I would journey there."
"The desert is wide and there is no water in it, the mountains are
high and covered with snow, and man cannot say what lies beyond them
behind the place where the sun sets; how shalt thou come thither,
Incubu, and wherefore dost thou go?"
I translated again.
"Tell him," answered Sir Henry, "that I go because I believe that a
man of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I journey
to seek him."
"That is so, Incubu; a Hottentot I met on the road told me that a
white man went out into the desert two years ago towards those
mountains with one servant, a hunter. They never came back."
"How do you know it was my brother?" asked Sir Henry.
"Nay, I know not. But the Hottentot, when I asked what the white man
was like, said that he had thine eyes and a black beard. He said, too,
that the name of the hunter with him was Jim; that he was a Bechuana
hunter and wore clothes."
"There is no doubt about it," said I; "I knew Jim well."
Sir Henry nodded. "I was sure of it," he said. "If George set his mind
upon a thing he generally did it. It was always so from his boyhood.
If he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some
accident overtook him, and we must look for him on the other side."
Umbopa understood English, though he rarely spoke it.
"It is a far journey, Incubu," he put in, and I translated his remark.
"Yes," answered Sir Henry, "it is far. But there is no journey upon
this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There
is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may
not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a
desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he
holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it
or lose it as Heaven above may order."
I translated.
"Great words, my father," answered the Zulu--I always called him a
Zulu, though he was not really one--"great swelling words fit to fill
the mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is
life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and
thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes
carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it
may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to
try and journey one's road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At
the worst he can but die a little sooner. I will go with thee across
the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the
ground on the way, my father."
He paused awhile, and then went on with one of those strange bursts of
rhetorical eloquence that Zulus sometimes indulge in, which to my
mind, full though they are of vain repetitions, show that the race is
by no means devoid of poetic instinct and of intellectual power.
"What is life? Tell me, O white men, who are wise, who know the
secrets of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that
lies above and around the stars; who flash your words from afar
without a voice; tell me, white men, the secret of our life--whither
it goes and whence it comes!
"You cannot answer me; you know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the
dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night
we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the
light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life
is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death.
It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the
morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the
little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset."
"You are a strange man," said Sir Henry, when he had ceased.
Umbopa laughed. "It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu.
Perhaps /I/ seek a brother over the mountains."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|