The covenant - James A. Michener [358]
So Tjaart and Paulus saddled their horses, and prepared to serve as bearers of sweet tidings. At last the Voortrekkers would have a home of their own, but before Paulus mounted his horse, William Wood slipped up to him, grasped his hand and whispered, 'I'm glad you're going. Because tomorrow the others will all be dead.'
On Tuesday morning, 6 February 1838, Piet Retief, accompanied by seventy Boer horsemen, rode up to the gates of Dingane's Kraal, where Zulu commanders ordered them to dismount, tether their horses and deposit their weapons in a pile, which would be guarded by one of the regiments: 'Out of respect for the king. He was frightened by that sudden blast the other day.' To these arrangements Retief, as a gentleman, agreed.
The seventy-one white men, including Retief, entered the great arena, followed by their thirty-one Colouredsone hundred and two in all. Since the day was extremely hot, the visitors were given those areas where the breeze was most likely to move the air, and they seated themselves and accepted the gourds of sorghum beer provided by Dambuza, the king's chief councillor. The land deed was presented to Dingane, who with a flourishing gesture put his mark on it and returned it to Retief. Then the dancing began, two regiments unarmed and wonderfully muscular performing intricate steps and maneuvers.
It was as peaceful a dance as the Zulu could have offered, and it pleased Retief and his men, but the boy William Wood, seeing that beyond the dancers three other regiments were silently moving into position, ran from the arena and told the people at the mission station, 'They are all going to be killed.'
'Hush,' a woman said. 'You've been reprimanded before for spreading rumors.'
The king, watching carefully the progress of the dance, decided that it had reached the designated moment, so while the steps continued he rose and proposed a toast, putting it into Zulu verse, which he composed on the spot:
'Let the white lips that thirst,
Thirst no more! Let the eyes that want everything,
See no more! Let the white hearts that beat . . .
Be still!'
Retief, understanding none of the words, nodded graciously to the king and raised his gourd. At that instant Dingane shouted, 'Seize them, my warriors! Slay the wizards!'
A thousand voices repeated the king's command, and the dancing regiments stepped aside, allowing the real soldiers to leap forward, assegais in hand. With these daggers pointing at their throats, the bewildered Boers stumbled to their feet, whipped out what knives they had, and tried to defend themselves. It was useless. Four, six, ten Zulu grabbed at each Boer, wrestled him to the floor, then, holding him by the legs, dragged him out of the kraal and along a climbing footpath to the place of execution. There on a hill, as William Wood and the missionary women watched from their homes, the Boers were clubbed to death, one by one, knobkerries rising and falling.
The Coloureds also were slain to a man. Piet Retief, pinioned, had to watch his own son being tortured to death before he, too, was clubbed mercilessly until his skull was shattered and he fell upon the heaped bodies of his comrades.
The Zulu commander who had supervised the killings cried, 'Cut out the liver and the heart of this man. Bury them in the middle of the road he traveled.'
So ended Piet Retief, a man who had led his people into the wilderness to build a country of their own, a man who trusted those he met and placed his faith in God. His laager was destroyed; his son was slain; his far designs left unattained. A failure in much that he attempted, he came to a terrible end, but it was also a noble beginning, for his legend would inspire a nation.
On the day ten months later when other Boers came upon his body, they would find in the leather pouch near his bones a document carefully marked by Dingane, King of the Zulu, granting him:
the Place called Port Natal