ing it in to attach to the yokes for the night, for it promised
soon to be pitch dark, and now the heads of the oxen looked spectral in
the mist. One especially, a great black one, with wide branching horns
rising above the fast gathering sea of vapour, seemed to float upon the
latter--a vast head without a trunk. The sight drew from Untuswa a
shake of the head and a few quick muttered words of wonderment. That
was all then, but when snug out of the drizzling rain, warmed by a
measure of whisky, and squatting happy and comfortable in a dry blanket,
snuff-box in hand, he began a story, and I--well, I thought I was in
luck's way, for a wet and cheerless and lonely evening stood to lose all
its depression and discomfort if spent in listening to one of old
Untuswa's stories.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE TALE OF THE RED DEATH.

There was that about the look of your oxen just now, _Nkose_--shadowed
like black ghosts against the mist--that brought back to my old mind a
strange and wonderful time. And the night is yet young. Nor will that
tale take very long in telling, unless--ah, that tale is but the door
opening into a still greater one; but of that we shall see--yes, we
shall see.

I have already unfolded to you, _Nkose_, all that befell at the Place of
the Three Rifts, and how at that place we met in fierce battle and
rolled back the might of Dingane and thus saved the Amandebeli as a
nation. Also have I told the tale of how I gained the White Shield by
saving the life of a king, and how it in turn saved the life of a
nation. Further have I told how I took for principal wife Lalusini, the
sorceress, in whose veins ran the full blood of the House of
Senzangakona, the royal House of Zululand, and whom I had first found
making strange and powerful _muti_ among the Bakoni, that disobedient
people whom we stamped flat.

For long after these events there was peace in our land. The arm of
Dingane was stretched out against us no more, and Umzilikazi, our king,
who had meditated moving farther northward, had decided to sit still in
the great kraal, Kwa'zingwenya, yet a little longer. But though we had
peace from our more powerful enemies, the King would not suffer the
might of our nation to grow soft and weak for lack of practice in the
arts of war--oh, no. The enrolling of warriors was kept up with
unabated vigour, and the young men thus armed were despatched at once to
try their strength upon tribes within striking dist