company the soldiers,
hundreds of cannon whereof a single shot would give Ulundi to the
flames. Out of the sea they will come, shipload after shipload,
white men from where the sun sets and black men from where the
sun rises, so many that Zululand would not hold them."

Now at these words, which I delivered as grandly as I could,
something like a groan burst from the Council, though one man
cried--

"Do not listen to the white traitor, O King, who is sent here to
turn our hearts to water with his lies."

"Macumazahn may lie to us," went on Cetewayo, "though in the past
none in the land have ever known him to lie, but he was not sent
to do so, for I brought him here. For my part I do not believe
that he lies. I believe that these English are as many as the
pebbles in a river bed, and that to them Natal, yes, and all the
Cape is but as a single, outlying cattle kraal, one cattle kraal
out of a hundred. Did not Sompseu once tell us that they were
countless, on that day when he came many years ago after the
battle of the Tugela to name me to succeed my father Panda, the
day when my faction, the Usutu, roared round him for hours like a
river in flood, and he sat still like a rock in the centre of a
river? Also I am minded of the words that Chaka said when
Dingaan and Umbopa had stabbed him and he lay dying at the kraal
Duguza, that although the dogs of his own House whom his hand
fed, had eaten him up, he heard the sound of the running of the
feet of a great white people that should stamp them and the Zulus
flat."

He paused; and the silence was so intense that the crackling of
Zikali's fire, which kept on burning brightly although I saw no
fuel added to it, sounded quite loud. Presently it was broken,
first by a dog near at hand, howling horribly at the moon, and
next by the hooting of a great owl that flitted across the donga,
the shadow of its wide wings falling for a moment on the king.

"Listen!" exclaimed Cetewayo, "a dog that howls! Methinks that
it stands upon the roof of the House of Senzangacona. And an owl
that hoots. Methinks that owl has its nest in the world of
Spirits! Are these good omens, Councillors? I trow not. I say
that I will not decide this matter of peace or war. If there is
one of my own blood here who will do so, come, let him take my
place and let me go away to my own lordship of Gikazi that I had
when I was a prince before the witch Mameena who played with all
men and loved b