meet again with man." Behold!
a messenger came up from Natal, "Macumazahn is dead!" cried he.
"The land knows Macumazahn no more." That is years ago. And
now, behold, now in this strange place of stinks I find Macumazahn,
my friend. There is no room for doubt. The brush of the old
jackal has gone a little grey; but is not his eye as keen, and
are not his teeth as sharp? Ha! ha! Macumazahn, mindest thou
how thou didst plant the ball in the eye of the charging buffalo
-- mindest thou --'

I had let him run on thus because I saw that his enthusiasm was
producing a marked effect upon the minds of the five Wakwafi,
who appeared to understand something of his talk; but now I thought
it time to put a stop to it, for there is nothing that I hate
so much as this Zulu system of extravagant praising -- 'bongering'
as they call it. 'Silence!' I said. 'Has all thy noisy talk
been stopped up since last I saw thee that it breaks out thus,
and sweeps us away? What doest thou here with these men -- thou
whom I left a chief in Zululand? How is it that thou art far
from thine own place, and gathered together with strangers?'

Umslopogaas leant himself upon the head of his long battleaxe
(which was nothing else but a pole-axe, with a beautiful handle
of rhinoceros horn), and his grim face grew sad.

'My Father,' he answered, 'I have a word to tell thee, but I
cannot speak it before these low people (umfagozana),' and he
glanced at the Wakwafi Askari; 'it is for thine own ear. My
Father, this will I say,' and here his face grew stern again,
'a woman betrayed me to the death, and covered my name with shame
-- ay, my own wife, a round-faced girl, betrayed me; but I escaped
from death; ay, I broke from the very hands of those who came
to slay me. I struck but three blows with this mine axe Inkosikaas
-- surely my Father will remember it -- one to the right, one
to the left, and one in front, and yet I left three men dead.
And then I fled, and, as my Father knows, even now that I am
old my feet are as the feet of the Sassaby {Endnote 2}, and there
breathes not the man who, by running, can touch me again when
once I have bounded from his side. On I sped, and after me came
the messengers of death, and their voice was as the voice of
dogs that hunt. From my own kraal I flew, and, as I passed,
she who had betrayed me was drawing water from the spring. I
fleeted by her like the shadow of Death, and as I went I smote
with mine a