Once upon a time there appeared in our country a huge shapeless thing called Kho-dumo-dumo. It swallowed every living creature that came its way. At last it came through a pass in the mountains into a valley where there were several villages; it went to one after another, and swallowed the people, the cattle, the goats, the dogs, and the fowls. In the last village was a woman who had just happened to sit down on the ash heap. She saw the monster coming, smeared herself all over with ashes, and ran into the calves’ pen, where she crouched on the ground. Kho-dumo-dumo, having finished all the people and animals, came and looked into the place, but could see nothing moving, for, the woman being smeared with ashes and keeping quite still, it took her for a stone. It then turned and went away, but when it reached the narrow path at the entrance to the valley it had swelled to such a size that it could not get through and was forced to stay where it was.
Meanwhile the woman in the calves’ pen, who had been expecting a baby shortly, gave birth to a boy. She laid him down on the ground and left him for a minute or two, while she looked for something to make a bed for him. When she came back she found a grown man sitting there, with two or three spears in his hand and a string of divining bones around his neck. She said, “Hello, man! Where is my child?” And he answered, “It is I, Mother!” Then he asked what had become of the people, and the cattle and the dogs, and she told him.
“Where is this thing, Mother?”
“Come out and see, my child.”
So they both went out and climbed to the top of the wall surrounding the narrow path and they saw the thing, as big as a mountain. “That is Kho-dumo-dumo,” said the mother.
Her son Dit-ao-lane got down from the wall, fetched his spears, sharpened them on a stone, and set off to the end of the valley, where Kho-dumo-dumo lay. The beast saw him and opened its mouth to swallow him, but he dodged and went around its side—it was too unwieldy to turn and seize him—and drove one of his spears into it. Then he stabbed it again with his second spear, and it sank down and died.
He took his knife, and had already begun to cut it open when he heard a man’s voice crying out, “Do not cut me!” So he tried in another place, and another man cried out, but the knife had already slashed his leg. Dit-ao-lane then began cutting in a third place, and a cow lowed, and someone called out, “Don’t stab the cow!” Then he heard a goat bleat, a dog bark, and a hen cackle, but he managed to avoid them as he went on cutting, and so, in time, released all the inhabitants of the valley.
There was great rejoicing as the people collected their belongings, and all returned to their several villages praising their young deliverer, and saying, “This young man must be our chief.” They brought him gifts of cattle, so that, between one and another, he soon had a large herd, and he had his choice of wives among their daughters. So he built himself a fine kraal and married and settled down, and all went well for a time.
But the unintentionally wounded man never forgot his grudge and long after his leg was healed, whenever he noticed signs of discontent among the people, he would drop a cunning word here and there to encourage those who were secretly envious of Dit-ao-lane’s good fortune, as well as those who suspected him because, as they said, he could not be a normal human being, to give voice to their feelings.
So before long they were making plans to get rid of their chief. They dug a pit and covered it with dry grass—just as the Bapedi did in order to trap Huveane—but he avoided it. They kindled a great fire in the courtyard intending to throw him into it, but a kind of madness seized them; they began to struggle with each other and at last threw in one of their own party. The same thing happened when they tried to push him over a precipice; in this case he restored to life the man who was thrown over and killed.
Next they got up a big hunt, which meant an absence of several days from the village. One night when the party were sleeping in a cave they induced the chief to take the place farthest from the entrance, and when they thought he was asleep stole out and built a great fire in the mouth of the cave. But when they looked around, they saw him standing among them.
After this, he grew weary of defeating their stratagems and allowed them to kill him without offering any resistance. Some of the Basuto, when relating this story, add, “It is said that his heart went out and escaped and became a bird.”