Then I, too, called across the river, asking where was that fat
captain of theirs, as I would talk with him. One of the men
shouted back that he had stopped behind, very sick, because of a
ghost that he had seen.

"Ah!" I answered, "a ghost who pricked him in the throat. Well,
I was that ghost, and such are the things that happen to those
who would harm Macumazahn and his friends. Did you not say last
night that he is a leopard who leaps out in the dark, bites and
is gone again?"

"Yes," the man shouted back, "and it is true, though had we
known, O Macumazahn, that you were the ghost hiding in those
stones, you should never have leapt again. Oh! that white
medicine-man who is dead has sent us on a mad errand."

"So you will think when I come to visit you among your koppies.
Go home and take a message from Macumazahn to Sekukuni, who
believes that the English have run away from him. Tell him that
they will return again and these Swazis with them, and that then
he will cease to live and his town will be burnt and his tribe
will no more be a tribe. Away now, more swiftly than you came,
since the water by which you thought to trap us is falling, and a
Swazi impi gathers to make an end of every one of you."

The man attempted no answer, nor did his people so much as fire
on us. They turned tail and crept off like a pack of frightened
jackals--pursued by the mocking of the Swazis.

Still in a way they had the laugh of us, seeing that they gave us
a terrible fright and stole our wagon and thirty-two oxen. Well,
a year or two later I helped to pay them back for that fright and
even recovered some of the oxen.

When they had gone the Swazis led us to a kraal about two miles
from the river, sending on a runner with orders to make huts and
food ready for us. It was just as much as we could do to reach
it, for we were all utterly worn out, as were the horses. Still
we did get there at last, the hot sun warming us as we went.
Arrived at the kraal I helped Heda and Kaatje from the cart--the
former could scarcely walk, poor dear--and into the guest hut
which seemed clean, where food of a sort and fur karosses were
brought to them in which to wrap themselves while their clothes
dried.

Leaving them in charge of two old women, I went to see to
Anscombe, who as yet could not do much for himself, also to the
outspanning of the horses which were put into a cattle kraal,
where they lay down at once without attempting to