For a while we went on in safety, then suddenly I heard a noise. A great
man plunged past me, breaking through the bush like a buffalo, and came
to a halt upon a rock which overhung the Tugela, for the floods had
eaten away the soil beneath.

"Umbelazi!" said Scowl, and as he spoke we saw another man following as
a wild dog follows a buck.

"Saduko!" said Scowl.

I rode on. I could not help riding on, although I knew it would be safer
to keep away. I reached the edge of that big rock. Saduko and Umbelazi
were fighting there.

In ordinary circumstances, strong and active as he was, Saduko would
have had no chance against the most powerful Zulu living. But the prince
was utterly exhausted; his sides were going like a blacksmith's bellows,
or those of a fat eland bull that has been galloped to a standstill.
Moreover, he seemed to me to be distraught with grief, and, lastly, he
had no shield left, nothing but an assegai.

A stab from Saduko's spear, which he partially parried, wounded him
slightly on the head, and cut loose the fillet of his ostrich plume,
that same plume which I had seen blown off in the morning, so that
it fell to the ground. Another stab pierced his right arm, making
it helpless. He snatched the assegai with his left hand, striving to
continue the fight, and just at that moment we came up.

"What are you doing, Saduko?" I cried. "Does a dog bite his own master?"

He turned and stared at me; both of them stared at me.

"Aye, Macumazahn," he answered in an icy voice, "sometimes when it is
starving and that full-fed master has snatched away its bone. Nay, stand
aside, Macumazahn" (for, although I was quite unarmed, I had stepped
between them), "lest you should share the fate of this woman-thief."

"Not I, Saduko," I cried, for this sight made me mad, "unless you murder
me."

Then Umbelazi spoke in a hollow voice, sobbing out his words:

"I thank you, White Man, yet do as this snake bids you--this snake that
has lived in my kraal and fed out of my cup. Let him have his fill of
vengeance because of the woman who bewitched me--yes, because of the
sorceress who has brought me and thousands to the dust. Have you heard,
Macumazahn, of the great deed of this son of Matiwane? Have you heard
that all the while he was a traitor in the pay of Cetewayo, and that he
went over, with the regiments of his command, to the Usutu just when the
battle hung upon the turn? Come, Traitor, here is my heart--the heart