Maiwa’s Revenge by H. Rider Haggard

Author:H. Rider Haggard
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Africa -- Fiction, Revenge -- Fiction, Hunting guides -- Fiction, Allan (Fictitious character) -- Fiction, Quatermain
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2025-06-02T18:45:50+00:00

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Here old Quater­main broke off sud­denly.

“Look here, you fel­lows,” he said, “I can’t bear to go on with this part of the story, be­cause I nev­er could stand either see­ing or talk­ing of the suf­fer­ings of chil­dren. You can guess what that dev­il did, and what the poor moth­er was forced to wit­ness. Would you be­lieve it, she told me the tale without a tremor, in the most mat­ter-of-fact way. Only I no­ticed that her eye­lid quivered all the time.

“ ‘Well,’ I said, as un­con­cern­edly as though I had been talk­ing of the death of a lamb, though in­wardly I was sick with hor­ror and boil­ing with rage, ‘and what do you mean to do about the mat­ter, Maiwa, wife of Wambe?’

“ ‘I mean to do this, white man,’ she answered, draw­ing her­self up to her full height, and speak­ing in tones as hard as steel and cold as ice—‘I mean to work, and work, and work, to bring this to pass, and to bring that to pass, un­til at length it comes to pass that with these liv­ing eyes I be­hold Wambe dy­ing the death that he gave to his child and my child.’

“ ‘Well said,’ I answered.

“ ‘Ay, well said, Mac­u­mazahn, well said, and not eas­ily for­got­ten. Who could for­get, oh, who could for­get? See where this dead hand rests against my side; so once it res­ted when alive. And now, though it is dead, now every night it creeps from its nest and strokes my hair and clasps my fin­gers in its tiny palm. Every night it does this, fear­ing lest I should for­get. Oh, my child! my child! ten days ago I held thee to my breast, and now this alone re­mains of thee,’ and she kissed the dead hand and shivered, but nev­er a tear did she weep.

“ ‘See now,’ she went on, ‘the white man, the pris­on­er at Wambe’s kraal, he was kind to me. He loved the child that is dead, yes, he wept when its fath­er slew it, and at the risk of his life told Wambe, my hus­band—ah, yes, my hus­band!—that which he is! He too it was who made a plan. He said to me, “Go, Maiwa, after the cus­tom of thy people, go puri­fy thy­self in the bush alone, hav­ing touched a dead one. Say to Wambe thou goest to puri­fy thy­self alone for fif­teen days, ac­cord­ing to the cus­tom of thy people. Then fly to thy fath­er, Nala, and stir him up to war against Wambe for the sake of the child that is dead.” This then he said, and his words seemed good to me, and that same night ere I left to puri­fy my­self came news that a white man hunted in the coun­try, and Wambe, be­ing mad with drink, grew very wrath, and gave or­ders that an impi should be gathered to slay the white man and his people and seize his goods. Then did the “Smiter of Iron” (Every) write the mes­sage on the green leaves, and

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