Anonymous - "History of Steam on the Erie Canal"

Edward Bellamy - "The Duke of Stockbridge"

Forbes Robinson - "Letters to His Friends"

Franz Grillparzer - "Ein Bruderzwist in Habsburg"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Ghost Kings

H >> H. Rider Haggard >> The Ghost Kings




Mr. Dove could bear it no longer.

"Ishmael, or Smith, or Ibubesi--whichever name you may prefer," he broke
out, "do not lie to me about your servant, for now I know all the truth,
which I refused to believe when my daughter and Nonha told it me. You are
a black-hearted villain. But yesterday you dared to come and ask Rachel to
marry you, and now I find that you are living--oh! I cannot say it, it
makes me ashamed of my race. Listen to me, sir. If ever you dare to set
foot in Ramah again, or to speak to my wife and daughter, the Kaffirs
shall whip you off the place. Indeed," he added, shaking his sjambok in
Ishmael's face, "although I am an older man than you are, were it not for
my office I would give you the thrashing you deserve."

At first Ishmael had shrunk beneath this torrent of invective, but the
threat of violence roused his fierce nature. His face grew evil, and his
long black hair and beard bristled with wrath.

"You had best get out of this, you prayer-snuffling old humbug," he said
savagely, "for if you stop much longer I will make you sing another tune.
We have sea-cow whips here, too, and you shall learn what a hiding means,
such a hiding that your own family won't know you, if you live to get back
to them. Look here, I offered to marry your daughter on the square, and I
meant what I said. I'd have got rid of all this black baggage, and she
should have been the only one. Well, I'll marry her yet, only now she'll
just take her place with the others. We are all one flesh and blood, black
and white, ain't we? I have often heard you preach it. So what will she
have to complain of?" he sneered. "She can go and hoe mealies like the
rest."

As this brutal talk fell upon his ears Mr. Dove's reason departed from him
entirely. After all, he was an English gentleman first, and a clergyman
afterwards; also he loved his daughter, and to hear her spoken of like
this was intolerable to him, as it would have been to any father. Lifting
the sjambok he cut Ishmael across the mouth so sharply that the blood came
from his lips, then suddenly remembering that this deed would probably
mean his death, stood still awaiting the issue. As it chanced it did not,
for the man, like most brutes and bullies, was a coward, as Rachel had
already found out. Obeying his first impulse he sprang at the clergyman
with an oath, then seeing that his two guides, who carried assegais, had
ranged themselves beside him, checked himself, for he feared lest those
spears should pierce his heart.

"You are in my house," he said, wiping the blood from his beard, "and an
old man, so I can't kill you as I would anyone else. But you have made me
your enemy now, you fool, and others can. I have protected you so far for
your daughter's sake, but I won't do it any longer. You think of that when
your time comes."

"My time, like yours, will come when God wills," answered Mr. Dove
unflinchingly, "not when you or anyone else wills. I do not fear you in
the least. Still, I am sorry that I struck you, it was a sin of which I
repent as I pray that you may repent."

Then he mounted his horse and rode away from the kraal Mafooti.

* * * * *

When Mr. Dove reached Ramah he only said to Rachel that what she had heard
was quite true, and that he had forbidden Ishmael the house. Of course,
however, Noie soon learnt the whole story from the Kaffir guides, and
repeated it to her mistress. To his wife, on the other hand, he told
everything, with the result that she was very much disturbed. She pointed
out to him that this white outcast was a most dangerous man, who would
certainly be revenged upon them in one way or another. Again she implored
him, as she had often done before, to leave these savage countries wherein
he had laboured for all the best years of his life, saying that it was not
right that he should expose their daughter to the risks of them.

"But," answered her husband, "you have often told me that you were sure no
harm would come to Rachel, and I think that, too."

"Yes, dear, I am sure; still, for many reasons it does not seem right to
keep her here." She did not add, poor, unselfish woman, that there was
another who should be considered as well as Rachel.

"How can I go away," he went on excitedly, "just when all the seed that I
have sown is ripening to harvest? If I did so, my work would be utterly
lost, and my people relapse into barbarism again. I am not afraid of this
man, or of anything that he can do to my body, but if I ran away from him
it would be injuring my soul, and what account should I give of my
cowardice when my time comes? Do you go, my love, and take Rachel with you
if you wish, leaving me to finish my work alone."

But now, as before, Mrs. Dove would not go, and Rachel, when she was
asked, shrugged her shoulders and answered laughing that she was not
afraid of anybody or anything, and, except for her mother's sake, did not
care whether she went or stayed. Certainly she would not leave her, nor,
she added, did she wish to say goodbye to Africa.

When she was asked why, she replied vaguely that she had grown up there,
and it was her home. But her mother, watching her, knew well enough that
she had another reason, although no word of it every passed her lips. In
Africa she had met Richard Darrien as a child, and in Africa and nowhere
else she believed she would meet him again as a woman.

The weeks and months went by, bringing to the Ramah household no sight or
tidings of the white man, Ishmael. They heard through the Kaffirs, indeed,
that although he still kept his kraal at Mafooti, he himself had gone away
on some trading journey far to the north, and did not expect to return for
a year, news at which everyone rejoiced, except Noie, who shook her wise
little head and said nothing.

So all fear of the man gradually died away, and things were very peaceful
and prosperous at Ramah.

In fact this quiet proved to be but the lull before the storm.

One day, about eight months after Mr. Dove had visited the kraal Mafooti,
another embassy came to Rachel from the Zulu king, Dingaan, bringing with
it a present of more white cattle. She received them as she had done
before, at night and alone, for they refused to speak to her in the
presence of other people.

In substance their petition was the same that it had been before, namely,
that she would visit Zululand, as the king and his indunas desired her
counsel upon an important matter. When asked what this matter was they
either were, or pretended to be, ignorant, saying that it had not been
confided to them. Thereon she said that if Dingaan chose to submit the
question to her by messenger, she would give him her opinion on it, but
that she could not come to his kraal. They asked why, seeing that the
whole nation would guard her, and no hair of her head be harmed.

"Because I am a child in the house of my people, and they will not allow
me to leave even for a day," she answered, thinking that this reply would
appeal to a race who believe absolutely in obedience to parents and every
established authority.

"Is it so?" remarked the old induna who spoke as Dingaan's Mouth--not
Mopo, but another. "Now, how can the Inkosazana-y-Zoola, before whom a
whole nation will bow, be in bonds to a white _Umfundusi_, a mere
sky-doctor? Shall the wide heavens obey a cloud?"

"If they are bred of that cloud," retorted Rachel.

"The heavens breed the cloud, not the cloud the heavens," answered the
induna aptly.

Now it occurred to Rachel that this thing was going further than it
should. To be set up as a kind of guardian spirit to the Zulus had seemed
a very good joke, and naturally appealed to the love of power which is
common to women. But when it involved, at any rate in the eyes of that
people, dominion over her own parents, the joke was, she felt, becoming
serious. So she determined suddenly to bring it to an end.

"What mean you, Messenger of the King?" she asked. "I am but the child of
my parents, and the parents are greater than the child, and must be obeyed
of her."

"Inkosazana," answered the old man with a deprecatory smile, "if it
pleases you to tell us such tales, our ears must listen, as if it pleased
you to order us to be killed, we must be killed. But learn that we know
the truth. We know how as a child you came down from above in the
lightning, and how these white people with whom you dwell found you lying
in the mist on the mountain top, and took you to their home in place of a
babe whom they had buried."

"Who told you that story?" asked Rachel amazed.

"It was revealed to the council of the doctors, Lady."

"Then that was revealed which is not true. I was born as other women are,
and my name of 'Lady of the Heavens' came to me by chance, as by chance I
resemble the Spirit of your people."

"We hear you," answered the "Mouth" politely. "You were born as other
women are, by chance you had your high name, by chance you are tall and
fair and golden-haired like the Spirit of our people. We hear you."

Then Rachel gave it up.

"Bear my words to the King," she said, and they rose, saluted her with a
Bayete, that royal salute which never before had been given to woman, and
departed.

When they had gone Rachel went into supper and told her parents all the
story. Mr. Dove, now that she seemed to take a serious view of the matter,
affected to treat it as absurd, although when she had laughed, his
attitude, it may be remembered, was different. He talked of the silly Zulu
superstitions, showed how they had twisted up the story of the death of
her baby brother, and her escape from the flood in the Umtavuna river,
into that which they had narrated to her. He even suggested that the whole
thing was nonsense, part of some political move to enable the King, or a
party in the state, to declare that they had with them the word of their
traditional spirit and oracle.

Mrs. Dove, however, who that night was strangely depressed and uneasy,
thought far otherwise. She pointed out that they were playing with vast
and cruel forces, and that whatever these people exactly believed about
Rachel, it was a dreadful thing for a girl to be put in a position in
which the lives of hundreds might hang upon her nod.

"Yes, and," she added hysterically, "perhaps our own lives also--perhaps
our own lives also!"

To change the conversation, which was growing painful, Rachel asked if
anyone had seen Noie. Her father answered that two hours ago, just before
the embassy arrived, he had met her going down to the banks of the stream,
as he supposed, to gather flowers for the table. Then he began to talk
about the girl, saying what a sweet creature she was, and how strange it
seemed to him that although she appeared to accept all the doctrines of
the Christian faith, as yet she had never consented to be baptised.

It was while he was speaking thus that Rachel suddenly observed her mother
fall forward, so that her body rested on the table, as though a kind of
fit had seized her. Rachel sprang towards her, but before she reached her
she appeared to have quite recovered, only her face looked very white.

"What on earth is the matter, mother?"

"Oh! don't ask me," she answered, "a terrible thing, a sort of fancy that
came to me from talking about those Zulus. I thought I saw this place all
red with blood and tongues of fire licking it up. It went as quickly as it
came, and of course I know that it is nonsense."



CHAPTER IX

THE TAKING OF NOIE


Presently Mrs. Dove, who seemed to have quite recovered from, her curious
seizure, went to bed.

"I don't like it, father," said Rachel when the door had closed behind
her. "Of course it is contrary to experience and all that, but I believe
that mother is fore-sighted."

"Nonsense, dear, nonsense," said her father. "It is her Scotch
superstition, that is all. We have been married for five-and-twenty years
now, and I have heard this sort of thing again and again, but although we
have lived in wild places where anything might happen to us, nothing out
of the way ever has happened; in fact, we have always been most mercifully
preserved."

"That's true, father, still I am not sure; perhaps because I am rather
that way myself, sometimes. Thus I _know_ that she is right about me; no
harm will happen to me, at least no permanent harm. I feel that I shall
live out my life, as I feel something else."

"What else, Rachel?"

"Do you remember the lad, Richard Darrien?" she asked, colouring a little.

"What? The boy who was with you that night on the island? Yes, I remember
him, although I have not thought of him for years."

"Well, I feel that I shall see him again."

Mr. Dove laughed. "Is that all?" he said. "If he is still alive and in
Africa, it wouldn't be very wonderful if you did, would it? And at any
rate, of course, you will one day when we all cease to be alive. Really,"
he added with irritation, "there are enough bothers in life without
rubbish of this kind, which comes from living among savages and absorbing
their ideas. I am beginning to think that I shall have to give way and
leave Africa, though it will break my heart just when, after all the
striving, my efforts are being crowned with success."

"I have always told you, father, that I don't want to leave Africa,
still, there is mother to be considered. Her health is not what it was."

"Well," he said impatiently, "I will talk to her and weigh the thing.
Perhaps I shall receive guidance, though for my part I cannot see what it
matters. We've got to die some time, and if necessary I prefer that it
should be while doing my duty. 'Take no thought for the morrow, sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof,' has always been my motto, who am
content with what it pleases Providence to send me."

Then Rachel, seeing no use in continuing the conversation, bade him
good-night, and went to look for Noie, only to discover that she was not
in the house. This disturbed her very much, although it occurred to her
that she might possibly be with friends in the village, hiding till she
was sure the Zulu embassy had gone. So she went to bed without troubling
her father.

At daybreak next morning she rose, not having slept very well, and went
out to look for the girl, without success, for no one had heard or seen
anything of her. As she was returning to the house, however, she met a
solitary Zulu, a dignified middle-aged man, whom she thought she
recognised as one of the embassy, although of this she could not be sure,
as she had only seen these people in the moonlight. The man, who was quite
unarmed, except for a kerry which he carried, crouched down on catching
sight of heir in token of respect. As she approached he rose, and gave her
the royal salute. Then she was sure.

"Speak," she said.

"Inkosazana," he answered humbly, "be not angry with me, I am Tamboosa,
one of the King's indunas. You saw me with the others last night."

"I saw you."

"Inkosazana, there has been dwelling with you one Noie, the daughter of
Seyapi the wizard, who with all his house was slain at this place by order
of the King. She also should have been slain, but we have learned that you
called down lightning from Heaven, and that with it you slew the soldier
who had run her down, slew him and burned him up, as you had the right to
do, and took the girl to be your slave, as you had the right to do."

"Speak on," said Rachel, showing none of the surprise which she felt.

"Inkosazana, we know that you have come to love this girl. Therefore,
yesterday before we spoke with you we seized her as we were commanded, and
hid her away, awaiting your answer to our message. Had you consented to
visit the King at his Great Place, we would have let her go. But as you
did not consent my companions have taken her to the King."

"An ill deed. What more, Tamboosa?"

"This; the King says by my mouth--Let the Inkosazana come and command, and
her servant Noie shall go free and unharmed, for is she not a dog in her
hut? But if she comes not and at once, then the girl dies."

"How know I that this tale is true, Tamboosa?" asked Rachel, controlling
herself with an effort, for she loved Noie dearly.

The man turned towards some bushes that grew at a distance of about twenty
paces, and cried: "Come hither."

Thereon from among the bushes where she lay hidden, rose a little maid of
about fourteen, whom Rachel knew well as a girl that Noie often took with
her to carry baskets and other things.

"Tell now the tale of the taking of Noie and deliver the message that she
gave to you," commanded Tamboosa.

Thereon the trembling child began, and after the native fashion,
suppressing no detail or circumstance, however small, narrated how the
Zulus had surprised her and Noie while they were gathering flowers, and
having bound their arms, had caused them to be hurried away unseen to some
dense bush about four miles off. Here they had been kept hidden till in
the night the embassy returned. Then they had spoken with Noie, who in the
end called her and gave her a message. This was the message: "Say to the
Inkosazana that the Zulus have caught me, and are taking me to Dingaan the
King. Say that they declare that if she is pleased to come and speak the
word, I shall be set free unharmed, that is, if she comes at once. But if
she does not come, then I shall be killed. Say to her that I do not ask
that she should come who am ready to die, and that though I believe that
no harm will happen to her in Zululand, I think that she had better not
come. Say that, living or dead, I love her."

Then the maid described how the embassy went on with Noie, leaving her in
the charge of the man Tamboosa, who at the first break of dawn brought her
back to Ramah, and made her hide in the bush.

Now Rachel had no more doubts. Clearly the tale was true, and the question
was--what must be done? She thought a while, then bade Tamboosa and the
child to follow her to the mission-house. On the stoep she found her
father and mother sitting in the sun and drinking coffee, after the South
African fashion.

"What is it?" asked Mr. Dove, looking at the man anxiously.

Rachel ordered him to repeat his story, and this he did, addressing Rachel
alone, for of her father and mother he would take no notice. When he had
done the child told her tale also.

"Go now, and wait without," said Rachel, when it was finished.

"Inkosazana, I go," answered the man, "but if it pleases you to save your
servant, know that you must come swiftly. If you are not across the Tugela
by sunset this night, word will be passed to the King, and she dies at
once. Know also that you must come alone with me, for if any, white or
black, accompany you, they will be killed."

"Now," said Rachel when the three of them were left alone, "now what is to
be done?"

Mrs. Dove shook her head helplessly, and looked at her husband, who broke
into a tirade against the Zulus, their superstitions, cruelties, customs,
and everything that was theirs, and ended by declaring that it was of
course utterly impossible that Rachel should go upon such a mad errand,
and thus place herself in the power of savages.

"But, father," she said when he had done, "do you understand that you are
pronouncing Noie's death sentence? If you were in my place, would you not
go?"

"Of course I would. In fact I propose to do so as it is. No doubt Dingaan
will listen to me."

"You mean that Dingaan will kill you. Did you not hear what that man
Tamboosa said? Father, you must not go."

"No, John," broke in Mrs. Dove, "Rachel is right, you must not go, for you
would never come back again. Also, how can you be so cruel as to think of
leaving me here alone?"

"Then I suppose that we must abandon that poor girl to her fate,"
exclaimed Mr. Dove.

"How can you suppose anything so merciless, father, when it is in my power
to save her?" asked Rachel. "If I let those horrible Zulus kill her I
shall never be happy again all my life."

"And what if the horrible Zulus kill you?"

"They will not kill me, father; mother knows they will not, and so do I.
But as they have got this madness into their heads, I am sure that if I do
not go they will send an impi here to kill everybody else, and take me
prisoner. The kidnapping of Noie is only a first move. It is one of two
things: either I must visit Zululand, save Noie, and play my part there as
best I can, or we must desert Noie, and all leave this place at once,
tomorrow if possible. But then, as I told you, I shall never forgive
myself, especially as I am not in the least afraid of the Zulus."

"It is true that God can protect you as much in Zululand as He can here,"
replied Mr. Dove, beginning to weaken in face of this desperate
alternative.

"Of course, father, but if I go to Zululand I want you and mother to trek
to Durban, and remain there till I return."

"Why, Rachel? It is absurd."

"Because I do not think that you are safe here, and it is not at all
absurd," she answered stubbornly. "These people choose to believe that I
am in some way in bondage to you; you remember all their talk about the
heavens and the cloud. Of course it may mean nothing, but you will be much
better in Durban for a while, where you can take to the water if
necessary."

Now Mr. Dove's obstinacy asserted itself. He refused to entertain any such
idea, giving reason after reason why he should not do so. Thus for another
half hour the argument raged till at length a compromise was arrived at,
as usual in such cases, not of too satisfactory an order. Rachel was to be
allowed to undertake her mission on behalf of Noie, and her parents were
to remain at Ramah. On her return, which they hoped would be within a week
or eight days, the question of the abandonment of the mission was to be
settled by the help of the experience she had gained. To this arrangement,
then, they agreed, reluctantly enough all of them, in order, to save
Noie's life, and for no other reason.

The momentous decision once taken, in half an hour Rachel was ready for
her journey, which she determined she would make upon her own horse, a
grey mare that she had ridden for a long while, and could rely on in every
way. The white riding-ox that Dingaan had sent as a present was also to
accompany her, to carry her spare garments and other articles packed in
skin bags, such as coffee, sugar and a few medicines, and to serve as a
remount in case anything should happen to the horse. When it was laden
Rachel sent for the Zulu, Tamboosa, and, pointing to the ox, said:

"I come to visit Dingaan the king, and to claim my servant. Lead the beast
on, I will overtake you presently."

The man saluted and began to _bonga_, that is, to give her titles of
praise, but she cut him short with a wave of her hand, and he departed
leading the ox.

Now while Mr. Dove saw to the saddling of the horses, for he was to ride
with her as far as the Tugela, Rachel went to bid farewell to her mother.
She found her by herself in the sitting-room, seated at an open window,
and looking out sadly towards the sea.

"I am quite ready, dear," she said in a cheerful voice. "Don't look so
sad, I shall be back again in a week with Noie."

"Yes," answered Mrs. Dove, "I think that you and Noie will come back
safely, but--" and she paused.

"But what, mother?"

"Oh! I don't know. I am very much oppressed, my heart is heavy in me. I
hate parting with you, Rachel. Remember we have never been separated since
you were born."

Her daughter looked at her, and was filled with grief and compunction.

"Mother," she said, "if you feel like that--well, I love Noie, but after
all you are more to me than Noie, and if you wish I will give up this
business and stop with you. It is very terrible, but it can't be helped;
Noie will understand, poor thing," and her eyes filled with tears at the
thought of the girl's dreadful fate.

"No, Rachel, somehow I think it best that you should go, not only for
Noie's sake, but for your own. If your father would leave here to-day or
to-morrow, as you suggested, it might be otherwise, but he won't do that,
so it is no use talking of it. Let us hope for the best."

"As you wish, mother."

"Now, dear kiss me and go. I hear your father calling you; and, Rachel, if
we should not meet again in this world, I know you won't forget me, or
that there is another where we shall. I did not want to frighten you with
my fancies, which come from my not being well. Goodbye, my love, good-bye.
God be with you, and make you happy, always--always."

Then Rachel kissed her in silence, for she could not trust herself to
speak, and turning, left the room whence her mother watched her go, also
in silence. In another minute she was mounted, and, accompanied by her
father, riding on the road along which Tamboosa had led the white ox.

Presently they overtook him, whereon he stopped, and looking at Mr. Dove,
said:

"Inkosazana, the King's orders are that none should accompany you into
Zululand."

"Be silent," answered Rachel, proudly. "He rides with me as far as the
river bank."

Then they went on, and Rachel was relieved to find that whatever might
have been her mother's mood, that of her father was fairly cheerful.
Indeed, his mind was so occupied with the details and object of her
journey that he quite forgot its dangers.

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