lk the
Sindabele?"

"A little. Enough to make myself understood for the ordinary purposes.
But I am learning it. You seem to have got it well, though."

"I wish I had it better. You see I am a bit interested in these people.
They--and their history--appeal to me. Poor devils! I can't help
sympathising with them to a certain extent. It must be rotten hard luck
for a lot of these older ones, like Zwabeka for instance, who have been
big-wigs in their time, having to knuckle down to a new and strange form
of government in which they come out very under-dog indeed. Still, it's
the universal law and there's no help for it. But--I'm sorry for them
for all that."

Could he have seen what was in Zwabeka's mind,--Zwabeka, nominally
asleep in one of the huts a few yards away,--could he have heard what
was on Zwabeka's tongue, yea, at that very moment, where would his
sympathy have been? The course of but a few days was destined to change
it, like that of many another who desired to treat the conquered race
with fairness and consideration, and who like himself were sitting on
the brink of the hitherto quiescent vent of a raging volcano.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

ZWABEKA'S KRAAL.

"Isn't that a perfect picture of savage life, set in a savage
surrounding?" said Lamont, as he stood with his travelling companion
before the door of the hut allotted to them. "It is artistically
complete."

"It is indeed," was the answer.

And it was. The circle of the kraal, with its great open space and the
conical huts, four deep, ringing it in: the dark, lithe forms of its
occupants, unclothed save for a _mutya_ of dangling monkey skins; or in
the case of the women a greasy hide apron: the sinuous movements as the
young men and boys ran in and out among the multi-coloured cattle: the
reek of smoke and kine: the wild background of wooded ridge and craggy
rock, and the swirling streamers of the storm-cloud above, pouring forth
jetty beams of steely blue light and reverberating roll against the
bushy spurs and darksome recesses. All this in the fast-gathering dusk
made up a picture of sombre, impressive grandeur, the very soul of which
seemed to permeate the minds of its two civilised spectators.

Then the full force of the storm broke overhead, and it was as though
the whole world were on fire, and split in twain; what with the
unintermittent electric glare, and the ear-splitting crashes, hardly
more intermittent. But, with it all, n