night wore away, till at length I woke to see the gleam of
dawn penetrating the smoke-hole and dimly illuminating the
recumbent form of Kaatje, which to me looked most unattractive.
Presently I heard a discreet tapping on the doorboard of the hut
which I at once removed, wriggling swiftly through the hole,
careless in my misery as to whether I met an assegai the other
side of it or not. Without a guard of eight soldiers was
standing, and with them Goza, who asked me if I were ready to
start.

"Quite," I answered, "as soon as I have saddled my horse," which
by the way had been led up to the hut.

Very soon this was done, for I brought out most of my few
belongings with me and the bag of jewels was in my pocket. Then
it was that the officer of the guard, a thin and
melancholy-looking person, said in a hollow voice, addressing
himself to Goza--

"The orders are that the White Man's wife is to go with him.
Where is she?"

"Where a man's wife should be, in his hut I suppose," answered
Goza sleepily.

Rage filled me at the words. Seldom do I remember being so
angry.

"Yes," I said, "if you mean that Half-cast whom someone has
thrust upon me, she is in there. So if she is to come with us,
perhaps you will get her out."

Thus adjured the melancholy-looking captain, who was named
Indudu, perhaps because he or his father had longed to the Dudu
regiment, crawled into the hut, whence presently emerged sounds
not unlike those which once I heard when a ringhals cobra
followed a hare that I had wounded into a hole, a muffled sound
of struggling and terror. These ended in the sudden and violent
appearance of Kaatje's fat and dishevelled form, followed by that
of the snakelike Indudu.

Seeing me standing there before a bevy of armed Zulus, she
promptly fell upon my neck with a cry for help, for the silly
woman thought she was going to be killed by them. Gripping me as
an octopus grips its prey, she proceeded to faint, dragging me to
my knees beneath the weight of eleven stone of solid flesh.

"Ah!" said one of the Zulus not unkindly, "she is much afraid for
her husband whom she loves."

Well, I disentangled myself somehow, and seizing what I took to
be a gourd of water in that dim light, poured it over her head,
only to discover too late that it was not water but clotted milk.
However the result was the same, for presently she sat up, made a
dreadful-looking object by this liberal application of curds and
whey,