round to listen, and a different
expression came into his face. This time he looked pleased.

"`Rest easy, son of Ntelani,' he said. `The man _whom I sent_ to set
fire to the kraal will not be forgotten.'

"We Zulus are not like you white people, _Nkose_, whose faces are to be
read like a white man reads a book, else had I been quite undone that
day. For the idea of setting the kraal on fire had been entirely my
own--planned by me, carried out by me alone; that, too, only in time to
save us from defeat, which would have meant ruin to Gungana, if not
death. And now he coolly gave me to understand that all the credit of
it, the generalship of it, was to belong to him. This I had thought was
the feat which should win me honour among the people, and my head-ring
at the approving word of the King, and now it was all to go to the
credit of my commander. I could hardly keep my face from speaking the
wrath and disgust I felt--yet I did so, and called out that Gungana was
my father, and as his child I had been privileged to do his bidding.
For although it flashed upon me that if ever a day of reckoning should
come Gungana would fare badly at my hands, yet now I wanted his good
word; wherefore I flattered him.

"Just then my eye was attracted by a movement among a heap of bodies
lying piled up near me. I thought I heard a smothered groan. Then all
the wolf-nature of my warrior blood sprang up within me. Here, then,
was something more to slay. Good! With kindling eyes I gripped anew my
broad assegai and leaped to the group of bodies. Yes; it was a groan.
A pair of legs was protruding from the pile and feebly moving. Seizing
them by the ankles, I tugged with all my might.

"`Come forth,' I growled, for I was holding my assegai in my mouth to
leave both hands free. `Come forth, and taste blade over again. Ha!
killing is the only thing good to live for, after all. Come forth!'

"Jerking out these words, I threw the corpses aside as one might throw
faggots from a stack of firewood. Then another tug, and I found I was
holding by the legs the body of an old man, wrinkled and white-bearded.
Beyond a gash or two in the chest, he seemed unwounded, but his head was
covered with blood. Clearly, a blow had felled him, but how was he
still alive, how had he escaped being ripped, as is our custom?

"`Ha! I will make that good,' I muttered savagely, seizing my assegai
with that intent.

"But something in the old man's