"It is the end!" he croaked. "I die! I die!... The king dies! But the king will die like a man! The king will die on his feet, like a warrior!"
With superhuman strength he heaved himself up and sat bolt upright. Tuys and several of the indunas sprang to his aid, and in a moment they had him on his feet. His legs seemed perfectly stiff.
"Let go! Let go!" he cried. "I am a man and will meet death face to face!"
They took their hands off him, and he stood swaying back and forth, his mouth working as he tried to speak. The light from the smoke-hole struck him on the head and deepened the lines of his face, throwing heavy shadows under the eyes and chin. These shadows intensified the cruelty of his face, and I felt a cold shudder. Buno dying was even more terrible than Buno killing!
He must have stood for a moment only, but it seemed an age to me. His rolling eyes passed from chief to chief and his shaking right hand tore an assegai from the nearest. Then the end!
Raising himself on his toes, his body straight and head thrown back, he threw both hands up and brought the spear down with a vicious stabbing motion.
"Soukbulala! Soukbulala!" he shouted, and pitched forward dead. Tuys, I remember, almost caught him as he fell. Later I learned that his last cry was the war-shout of the Swazis. It means "I'll kill you!"
"He died as he lived," Tuys said to me in Dutch out of the corner of his mouth, while he leaned down and turned Buno over. Then he assisted the indunas in laying him out with his head on the block and a wonderful fur robe over his wasted body.
When this was completed the indunas stepped back and gave their dead king the royal salute. A moment later one of them stepped out of the hut and raised his deep voice in a solemn shout.
"Nkoos ou pelela! E' Buno impela e baba amaswazi ou pelela guti!" he cried. This he repeated over and over until it became a sort of chant. It was the announcement of Buno's death and, translated, was about as follows, "The king is dead! Buno the Great, the father of his people, is dead!"
We got out of the hut as soon as we could, and found the natives running from all directions. Soon there was a great mob. They were quiet, but each seemed apprehensive. Their voices rose in a subdued murmur. As I watched, it occurred to me that I did not see Umzulek anywhere. It seemed queer that the king's brother should not be there.