with all the cattle of your people, and come before him who sits in the
kraal Duguza, and lay in his hands the great axe Groan-Maker. Rise up
swiftly and do this bidding, lest ye sit down shortly and for the last
time of all.'" (1)

(1) The Zulu are buried sitting.

Masilo heard, and said that it should be so, though the way was far, and
he feared greatly to appear before him who was called the Slaughterer,
and who sat twenty days' journey to the north, beneath the shadow of the
Witch Mountain.

"Begone," said the king, "and stand before me on the thirtieth day from
now with the answer of this boy with an axe! If thou standest not before
me, then some shall come to seek thee and the boy with an axe also."

So Masilo turned and fled swiftly to do the bidding of the king, and
Chaka spoke no more of that matter. But I wondered in my heart who this
young man with an axe might be; for I thought that he had dealt with
Jikiza and with the sons of Jikiza as Umslopogaas would have dealt with
them had he come to the years of his manhood. But I also said nothing of
the matter.

Now on this day also there came to me news that my wife Macropha and
my daughter Nada were dead among their people in Swaziland. It was said
that the men of the chief of the Halakazi tribe had fallen on their
kraal and put all in it to the assegai, and among them Macropha and
Nada. I heard the news, but I wept no tear, for, my father, I was so
lost in sorrows that nothing could move me any more.

CHAPTER XX. MOPO BARGAINS WITH THE PRINCES

Eight-and-twenty days went by, my father, and on the nine-and-twentieth
it befell that Chaka, having dreamed a dream in his troubled sleep,
summoned before him certain women of the kraal, to the number of
a hundred or more. Some of these were his women, whom he named his
"sisters," and some were maidens not yet given in marriage; but all
were young and fair. Now what this dream of Chaka may have been I do not
know, or have forgotten, for in those days he dreamed many dreams, and
all his dreams led to one end, the death of men. He sat in front of his
hut scowling, and I was with him. To the left of him were gathered the
girls and women, and their knees were weak with fear. One by one they
were led before him, and stood before him with bowed heads. Then he
would bid them be of good cheer, and speak softly to them, and in the
end would ask them this question: "Hast thou, my sister, a cat in thy
hut?"

Now, so