g his living
child hidden on my back? Yet to waver was to be lost, to show fear was
to be lost, to disobey was to be lost.

"Good! I come," I answered. And we walked to the gate of the Intunkulu.

It was sundown. Chaka was sitting in the little courtyard in front of
his hut. I went down on my knees before him and gave the royal salute,
Bayete, and so I stayed.

"Rise, son of Makedama!" he said.

"I cannot rise, Lion of the Zulu," I answered, "I cannot rise, having
royal blood on my hands, till the king has pardoned me."

"Where is it?" he asked.

I pointed to the mat in my hand.

"Let me look at it."

Then I undid the mat, and he looked on the child, and laughed aloud.

"He might have been a king," he said, as he bade a councillor take it
away. "Mopo, thou hast slain one who might have been a king. Art thou
not afraid?"

"No, Black One," I answered, "the child is killed by order of one who is
a king."

"Sit down, and let us talk," said Chaka, for his mood was idle.
"To-morrow thou shalt have five oxen for this deed; thou shalt choose
them from the royal herd."

"The king is good; he sees that my belt is drawn tight; he satisfies my
hunger. Will the king suffer that I go? My wife is in labour and I would
visit her."

"Nay, stay awhile; say how it is with Baleka, my sister and thine?"

"It is well."

"Did she weep when you took the babe from her?"

"Nay, she wept not. She said, 'My lord's will is my will.'"

"Good! Had she wept she had been slain also. Who was with her?"

"The Mother of the Heavens."

The brow of Chaka darkened. "Unandi, my mother, what did she there? My
myself I swear, though she is my mother--if I thought"--and he ceased.

Thee was a silence, then he spoke again. "Say, what is in that mat?" and
he pointed with his little assegai at the bundle on my shoulders.

"Medicine, king."

"Thou dost carry enough to doctor an impi. Undo the mat and let me look
at it."

"Now, my father, I tell you that the marrow melted in my bones with
terror, for if I undid the mat I feared he must see the child and
then--"

"It is tagati, it is bewitched, O king. It is not wise to look on
medicine."

"Open!" he answered angrily. "What? may I not look at that which I am
forced to swallow--I, who am the first of doctors?"

"Death is the king's medicine," I answered, lifting the bundle, and
laying it as far from him in the shadow of the fence as I dared. Then
I bent over it, slowly undoing the ri