t I found Nangeza, my principal wife, awaiting me
with ill-concealed impatience.

"Welcome, Untuswa," she said. "And so upon the news you bring it
depends whether we move onward or no?"

"Who am I, to seek to interpret the mind of the King?" I answered
darkly, for Nangeza was ever trying to wring out of me what went on in
the secret councils of the _izinduna_, and even in my private
conferences with the Great Great One himself. This was all very well
while I was unringed and a thoughtless boy, but now things were
different. The less women had to say to such matters the better; but
although I could see this now, Nangeza never could be brought to do so.
She would show an evil temper at such times, and hint that she had been
the making of me--that I had been ready enough to take counsel of her in
times past, but that now I was somebody I thought I could do without
her. Then she would bid me beware, saying that, even as she had made
me, it might still be within her power to unmake me. Now of this sort
of talk, _Nkose_, I began to have more than enough. Nangeza might be
the _inkosikazi_--she deserved that--but she should not be the chief,
too.

[Inkosikazi means Chieftainess. The principal wife of a man of rank.]

She was now a tall, fine, commanding woman, and as fearless and ready of
wit as she had been when a girl, yet with the lapse of time she had
become too commanding--had developed an expression of hardness which
does not become a woman. She had slaves to wait on her, and had little
or no hard work to do herself. Moreover, by this time, I had two other
wives, those two girls whom I had promised to _lobola_ for when they had
surprised me and Nangeza together; and I had kept my word. They were
soft-hearted, merry, laughing girls, who never dreamed that the second
fighting _induna_ of the King's army ought to take his commands from
women; wherefore it not unfrequently befell that I preferred their huts
to that of Nangeza, my _inkosikazi_.

[Note: It is customary for each wife of a Zulu of rank to have a hut to
herself.]

A woman of Nangeza's disposition could not be other than a jealous
woman. She hated my other two wives. She had borne me one child, a
daughter, whereas the other two had each borne me a son, and she feared
lest I should name one of these as my successor, and as chief son, thus
conferring precedence over any she might hereafter bear me. You white
people, _Nkose_, think that we Zulus k