by-Night," I answered.

"Ah! a good name for one who must have watched well by night, and by day
too, to reach this country living where She-who-commands says that no
man of your colour has set foot for many generations. Indeed, I think
she told me once that two thousand years had gone by since she spoke to
a white man in the City of Kor."

"Did she indeed?" I exclaimed, stifling a cough.

"You do not believe me," he went on, smiling. "Well, She-who-commands
can explain matters for herself better than I who was not alive two
thousand years ago, so far as I remember. But what must I call him with
the Axe?"

"Warrior is his name."

"Again a good name, as to judge by the wounds on them, certain of those
rebels I think are now telling each other in Hell. And this man, if
indeed he be a man----" he added, looking doubtfully at Hans.

"Light-in-Darkness is his name."

"I see, doubtless because his colour is that of the winter sun in thick
fog, or a bad egg broken into milk. And the other white man who mutters
and whose brow is like a storm?"

"He is called Avenger; you will learn why later on," I answered
impatiently, for I grew tired of this catechism, adding, "And what are
you called and, if you are pleased to tell it to us, upon what errand do
you visit us in so fortunate an hour?"

"I am named Billali," he answered, "the servant and messenger of
She-who-commands, and I was sent to save you and to bring you safely to
her."

"How can this be, Billali, seeing that none knew of our coming?"

"Yet She-who-commands knew," he said with his benignant smile. "Indeed,
I think that she learned of it some moons ago through a message that was
sent to her and so arranged all things that you should be guided safely
to her secret home; since otherwise how would you have passed a great
pathless swamp with the loss, I think she said, of but one man whom a
snake bit?"

Now I stared at the old fellow, for how could he know of the death of
this man, but thought it useless to pursue the conversation further.

"When you are rested and ready," he went on, "we will start. Meanwhile I
leave you that I may prepare litters to carry those wounded men, and
you also, Watcher-by-Night, if you wish." Then with a dignified bow,
for everything about this old fellow was stately, he turned and vanished
into the kloof.

The next hour or so was occupied in the burial of the dead Zulus, a
ceremony in which I took no part beyond standing up and