eady crashing through it away from me. I made out the form of a man.

"Now, stop!" I cried--a casting assegai poised for a throw. "Stop! or
I cleave thee to the heart."

I was about to hurl the spear fair between the shoulders of the fleeing
man--who was now not many paces in front--when he stopped suddenly. I
went at him. He turned round and faced me, a glare of hate and fury in
his eyes that seemed to scorch--to burn. And I--_Whau_! I stood as one
suddenly turned to stone, the uplifted assegai powerless in my stiffened
grasp. For the face was that of a ghost--the dreadful glare of hate and
fury that paralysed me was upon the face of a ghost. I was gazing upon
one whom I had seen slain, whom my own eyes had beheld clubbed to death
by the King's slayers--Tola, the chief of the witch doctors.

We stood for a moment thus, motionless, I gazing upon the horrible form
of one I knew to be dead, as it stood there, shadowed in the gloom of
the trees. Then, slowly raising an arm, the voice came, deep and
hollow--

"Retire--or I put that upon thee which shall blast and wither thy heart
and turn to water thy courage; which shall change the most valiant of
fighting-men into the most cowardly of women."

Awful as were the words, the effect upon me was not that intended. He
had better have kept silence, for now I knew him to be alive, and I
sprang upon him. He had a spear, and struck furiously at me with it;
but I turned the blow, and then we closed. He fought and bit and
kicked, and, powerful as I was, the lithe and slippery witch doctor for
long defied my efforts to secure him, for I was anxious to take him
alive. At last it seemed I should be obliged to kill him, when
something was dropped over his head which, the next moment, was rolled
round and round in a thick covering of stuff. It was Lalusini's
blanket. She had come to my aid just at the right time. We had no
difficulty in securing him now, and with strips cut from his own skin
cloak we bound his hands firmly behind him, and his feet. Then we
removed the blanket.

"Greeting, Tola!" I said. "I thought thou wert dead; but I had
forgotten, a great _izanusi_ such as thou could not die, which is well,
for not far off is one who longeth to welcome thee."

"Have a care, Untuswa, have a care," he snarled. "Dost thou not fear?"

"Why, no," I answered. "The _muti_ which protects me is greater than
any which can be turned against me. But thou, what canst