omitting to tell the chief how
Dick Selmes had interfered to protect the fallen man at the risk of his
own life. The frontier was in a very disturbed state, and there was no
telling what might happen. There was no telling, either, of what
service the act might not prove to one or both of them in the fortunes
of war, and none knew this better than the old campaigner and up-country
man.

The ground was like a regular battlefield. Injured men lay around,
unconscious some, and breathing heavily.

Others would never breathe again; others, too, recovering from their
temporary stunning, were raising themselves labouringly, staring
stupidly around, as though anything but sure as to what had happened.
Broken kerries lay about, and, here and there, a great smear of blood.
Tyala, having filled his pipe from the new and bountiful supply he had
just received, lit it and stalked around the scene of the late disorder.

"_Au_! This is not good, Kulondeka," he said. "Some will be punished
for this. But the fewest lying here are Ndimba's people. That would
seem to tell that ours did not begin the fight."

"That may or may not be, Councillor of the House of Gaika," answered
Harley Greenoak, drily. "It may only mean that the Amandhlambe are the
better fighters."

"_Whau_!" cried Tyala, bringing his hand to his mouth with a quizzical
laugh. "Now, Kulondeka, I would ask where are better fighters than the
men of the House of Gaika? Where?"

"Time will show," was the sententious reply. And on both faces was the
same dry pucker, in both pairs of eyes the same comical glance. They
understood each other.

Then the two talked "dark." Greenoak was anxious to get at the temper
and drift of thought of the Gaika clans under the chieftainship of the
historic Sandili, all located along the border of the Cape Colony and
within the same. Tyala, shrewd and wily, as all native politicians are,
was trying to say as much as he could, and yet give away as little. It
was a battle of wits. Yet, in actual fact, this chief threw all his
influence into the scale for peace.

"_Whau_, Kulondeka, you know the Great Chief, as who, indeed, among all
the peoples do you not know?" he said at last. "Well, then, why does
not _Ihuvumente_ [Government] act accordingly? You know, and
_Ihuvumente_ knows, that the man who has the Great Chief's ear last has
the Great Chief. Sandili does not wish for war, but his young men are
hot of blood. Yet his `w