s cold, and my
medicine also, that which protects me from the ghosts, who are thick
to-night. Macumazahn brings them, I think. _Oho-ho!_"

I turned to depart but when I had gone a little way Zikali called me
back again and said, speaking very low,

"When you meet this Umslopogaas, as you will meet him, he who is called
the Woodpecker and the Slaughterer, say these words to him,

"'A bat has been twittering round the hut of the Opener-of-Roads, and
to his ears it squeaked the name of a certain Lousta and the name of a
woman called Monazi. Also it twittered another greater name that may not
be uttered, that of an elephant who shakes the earth, and said that this
elephant sniffs the air with his trunk and grows angry, and sharpens his
tusks to dig a certain Woodpecker out of his hole in a tree that grows
near the Witch Mountain. Say, too, that the Opener-of-Roads thinks that
this Woodpecker would be wise to fly north for a while in the company of
one who watches by night, lest harm should come to a bird that pecks at
the feet of the great and chatters of it in his nest.'"

Then Zikali waved his hand and I went, wondering into what plot I had
stumbled.

CHAPTER II

THE MESSENGERS

I did not rest as I should that night who somehow was never able to
sleep well in the neighbourhood of the Black Kloof. I suppose that
Zikali's constant talk about ghosts, with his hints and innuendoes
concerning those who were dead, always affected my nerves till, in a
subconscious way, I began to believe that such things existed and were
hanging about me. Many people are open to the power of suggestion, and I
am afraid that I am one of them.

However, the sun which has such strength to kill noxious things, puts an
end to ghosts more quickly even than it does to other evil vapours and
emanations, and when I woke up to find it shining brilliantly in a pure
heaven, I laughed with much heartiness over the whole affair.

Going to the spring near which we were outspanned, I took off my
shirt to have a good wash, still chuckling at the memory of all the
hocus-pocus of my old friend, the Opener-of-Roads.

While engaged in this matutinal operation I struck my hand against
something and looking, observed that it was the hideous little ivory
image of Zikali, which he had set about my neck. The sight of the
thing and the memory of his ridiculous talk about it, especially of its
assertion that it had come down to him through the ages, whi