etewayo and tell him all I knew
about Zikali, even if it involved the breaking of confidences.

But stay! Even if I were believed, this far-seeing wizard held
hostages for my good behaviour, and if I betrayed him what would
happen to those hostages? He sent me messages saying that they
were safe, suggesting that they had escaped to Natal. How was I
to know that these were true? I was utterly bewildered; I could
not guess why I had been beguiled into Zululand, and I dared not
step either this way or that for fear lest I should fall into
some pit dug by his cunning hands and, what was worse, drag down
others with me.

Moreover, was this man quite human, or perhaps an emissary of
Satan upon earth who had knowledge denied to other men and a
certain mastery over the Powers of Ill? Again I could not say.
His term of life seemed to be extraordinarily prolonged, though
none knew how old exactly he might be. Also he had a wonderful
knowledge of what was passing in the minds of others, and by his
arts, as I had experienced only the other day, could summon up
apparitions or illusions before their eyes. Further, he was
aware of events which had happened at a distance and could send
or read dreams, since otherwise how did Nombe know what I had
dreamt at Marnham's house? Lastly he could foretell the future,
as once he had done in my own case, prophecying that I should be
injured by a buffalo with a split horn.

Yet all of this might be nothing more than a mixture of keen
observation, clever spying, trickery and mesmerism. I could not
say which it was, nor can I with certainty to this hour.

Such were the thoughts that passed through my mind as I walked
back from the Vale of Bones by the side of the big-paunched Goza,
whom I caught eyeing me from time to time as a curious crow eyes
any object that has attracted his attention.

"Goza," I said at last, "do the Zulus really mean to fight the
English?"

He turned and pointed to a spot where the hills ran down into the
great plain. Here two regiments were manoeuvring. One of these
held the slopes of the hill and the other was attacking them from
the plain, so fiercely that at a distance their onslaught looked
like that of actual warfare.

"That looks like fighting, does it not, Macumazahn?" he replied.

"Yes, Goza, yet it may be but play."

"Quite so, Macumazahn. It may be fighting or it may be but play.
Am I a prophet that I should be able to say which it is? Of