who would live and fall as a warrior should.

"Never again, mayhap, shall I see the Ghost-Mountain where the wolves
ravened and the old Witch sits in stone waiting for the world to die,
or sleep in the town of the People of the Axe. What do I want with wives
and oxen while I have _Inkosikaas_ the Groan-maker and she is true to
me?" he added, shaking the ancient axe above his head so that the sun
gleamed upon the curved blade and the hollow gouge or point at the back
beyond the shaft socket. "Where the Axe goes, there go the strength and
virtue of the Axe, O Macumazahn."

"It is a strange weapon," I said.

"Aye, a strange and an old, forged far away, says Zikali, by a
warrior-wizard hundreds of years ago, a great fighter who was also the
first of smiths and who sits in the Under-world waiting for it to return
to his hand when its work is finished beneath the sun. That will be
soon, Macumazahn, since Zikali told me that I am the last Holder of the
Axe."

"Did you then see the Opener-of-Roads?" I asked.

"Aye, I saw him. He it was who told me which way to go to escape from
Zululand. Also he laughed when he heard how the flooded rivers brought
you to my kraal, and sent you a message in which he said that the spirit
of a snake had told him that you tried to throw the Great Medicine into
a pool, but were stopped by that snake, whilst it was still alive. This,
he said, you must do no more, lest he should send another snake to stop
_you_."

"Did he?" I replied indignantly, for Zikali's power of seeing or
learning about things that happened at a distance puzzled and annoyed
me.

Only Hans grinned and said,

"I told you so, Baas."

On we travelled from day to day, meeting with such difficulties and
dangers as are common on roadless veld in Africa, but no more, for the
grass was good and there was plenty of game, of which we shot what we
wanted for meat. Indeed, here in the back regions of what is known as
Portuguese South East Africa, every sort of wild animal was so numerous
that personally I wished we could turn our journey into a shooting
expedition.

But of this Umslopogaas, whom hunting bored, would not hear. In fact,
he was much more anxious than myself to carry out our original purpose.
When I asked him why, he answered because of something Zikali had told
him. What this was he would not say, except that in the country whither
we wandered he would fight a great fight and win much honour.

Now Umslopogaa