. Some, too, had wounds to attend to;
but all were sitting or lying about resting, and the place where I now
stood being a little depression in the ground, they had not noticed me.
Now, however, attracted by the sound of voices, several of them came
swaggering up.

"`Ha, Untuswa!' roared the foremost. `You have found more meat to kill.
Come, we will help you kill it.' And, poising his assegai, he sprang
forward to the old Mosutu witch-doctor.

[Mosutu and Basutu. Basutu is a plural word, and denotes the tribe, or
more than one member of it. The singular is Mosutu.]

"`Stand! Stand back!' I thundered. `This is not a man to kill. He
must be taken to the King.'

"`To the King! Ha, ha! The King does not want to see the faces of such
withered old images. You are mad, Untuswa.'

"`Mad or sane, this man shall be taken to the King,' I answered.

"`Ha! Since when has Untuswa, the _umfane_ been made an _induna_?' they
jeered. `Of a truth he believes himself a bigger man than the King.'

[Umfane: "boy," i.e., technically, one who has not attained to the
distinction of the head-ring.]

"And others, drawn by the tumult, had come to join the first, and now
the air rang with roars and shouts of derision. But above them all the
old man's marvellously prophetic words still echoed in my ears. At all
risks I was determined to save him.

"`Who is the most about the King, O pack of fools?' I cried.
`Yourselves or I? Know, then, that the Elephant, whose tread shaketh
the world, has heard much of these Basutu _izanusi_, who learn their
magic in dark caves of the mountains--has often wished to converse with
them and test their skill. Here is one of them at last, and go to the
King he shall. I would not give much for the life of the man who slays
him.'

"Standing over the old witch-doctor with my assegai in my hand
confronting that riotous, roaring crowd, flushed with victory and
bloodshed, I know not how things might have gone even then. But at that
moment the _induna_ Gungana, attracted by the tumult, himself drew near,
and that in time to catch my last words.

"`Give way!' he said, striding through the group--`give way! What is
this? An _isanusi_, and alive? By the head-ring of the Great Great One
from whose rule we have gone out, but he must have brought himself to
life again, for assuredly all were slain but a moment before. Ha! that
is well. Now shall the King have his oft-expressed wish. He shall