--jackal!" he snarled. "Is this how my orders are obeyed?
Instead of carrying them out promptly, were ye all asleep or drinking
beer with the women? Yonder cattle should have been halfway to Jonemi's
by this time, and lo now, Madula and his herd of Amaholi are laughing at
us. Thou, Singisa--I will have thee flogged out of the ranks with
raw-hide whips. Was I to keep Madula talking for a moon instead of a
very small piece of a day, to give thee time to rest thy lazy carcase
and go to sleep? Ye shall all suffer for this, and dearly."

But the corporal was not much perturbed by this threat. He merely
shrugged his shoulders.

"I know not," he said. "But this I know, Nanzicele. Seven men cannot
move quicker than two hundred, and as many were yonder"--pointing in the
direction of the retreating dust-clouds. "And we were under no orders
to fire upon Madula's people, nor indeed do I think we were under orders
to take his cattle at all."

"Thou art a fool, Singisa," retorted Nanzicele, with a savage scowl.

But whether Singisa was a fool or not, the fact remained with them that
Nanzicele's plan had miscarried. All he had effected by his attempted
_coup de main_ was to render the name of the Matabele police a trifle
more putrescent in the nostrils of the Matabele than it already was, and
in the mean time Madula's cattle were still in Madula's possession.
And, after all, that possession is nine points of the law--meaning
presumably nine-tenths--still remains a good old English axiom.

CHAPTER TWO.

JOHN AMES.

John Ames was Native Commissioner for the district of Sikumbutana.

Now, the area of the said district contained about as many square miles
as did one half of England. It likewise contained some thousands of its
original inhabitants, a considerable percentage of which were Matabele,
and the residue Makalaka, the bulk of whom had, prior to the war of
occupation, been incorporated into the ranks of Lo Bengula's
fighting-men. Indeed, they reckoned themselves as integral with the
nation--as much so as the original Abezantzi, even then fast dwindling
numerically--and by no means welcomed their so-called emancipation at
the hands of the British with the acclaim our theoretically humane
civilisation had striven to persuade itself they would. They were
settled upon reservations there as in other districts under the charge
of Native Commissioners appointed by the Government of the Chartered
Company.

Now t