can remember none better, although I have been in far greater
battles, which is well as it is my last. I foreknew it, my father, for
though I never told it you, the first death lot that I drew down yonder
in Durban was my own. Take back the gun you gave me, my father. You did
but lend it me for a little while, as I said to you. Now I go to the
Underworld to join the spirits of my ancestors and of those who have
fallen at my side in many wars, and of those women who bore my children.
I shall have a tale to tell them there, my father, and together we will
wait for you--till you, too, die in war!"

Then he lifted up his arm from the neck of Babemba, and saluted me with
a loud cry of _Baba! Inkosi!_ giving me certain great titles which I
will not set down, and having done so sank to the earth.

I sent one of the Mazitu to fetch Brother John, who arrived presently
with his wife and daughter. He examined Mavovo and told him straight out
that nothing could help him except prayer.

"Make no prayers for me, Dogeetah," said the old heathen; "I have
followed my star," (i.e. lived according to my lights) "and am ready to
eat the fruit that I have planted. Or if the tree prove barren, then to
drink of its sap and sleep."

Waving Brother John aside he beckoned to Stephen.

"O Wazela!" he said, "you fought very well in that fight; if you go on
as you have begun in time you will make a warrior of whom the Daughter
of the Flower and her children will sing songs after you have come to
join me, your friend. Meanwhile, farewell! Take this assegai of mine and
clean it not, that the red rust thereon may put you in mind of Mavovo,
the old Zulu doctor and captain with whom you stood side by side in the
Battle of the Gate, when, as though they were winter grass, the fire
burnt up the white-robed thieves of men who could not pass our spears."

Then he waved his hand again, and Stephen stepped aside muttering
something, for he and Mavovo had been very intimate and his voice choked
in his throat with grief. Now the old Zulu's glazing eye fell upon Hans,
who was sneaking about, I think with a view of finding an opportunity of
bidding him a last good-bye.

"Ah! Spotted Snake," he cried, "so you have come out of your hole now
that the fire has passed it, to eat the burnt frogs in the cinders. It
is a pity that you who are so clever should be a coward, since our lord
Macumazana needed one to load for him on the hill and would have killed
more