confess, as I thought upon it there,
under the midnight moon--for I had started back rather later than I had
intended--a sort of creepy feeling came over me. What the deuce had
become of the man? If he had got a fit of mental aberration, and taken
himself off, he would have left some spoor, yet no sign of any had been
lighted upon by those who had again and again made diligent search. I
looked around. The bush sprays seemed to take on all manner of weird
shapes; and once my horse, shying and snorting at a big hare, squatting
up on its haunches like a big idiot, bang in the middle of the path,
gave me quite an unpleasant start. The black brow of the krantz cut the
misty, star-speckled skyline now receding on my left behind--and then--
my horse gave forth another snort and at the same time shied so
violently as to have unseated me, but that my nerves were--again I
confess it--at something of an abnormal tension.

A figure was stealing along in the not very distinct moonlight; a human
figure or--was it? Suddenly it stopped, half in shadow.

"Hi! Hallo! Who's that," I sung out.

There was no answer. Then I remembered that with my mind running upon
Hensley I had used English. Yet the figure was that of a native. It
wanted not the blackness of it in the uncertain light; the stealthy,
sinuous movement of it was enough to show that. Yet, this certainty
only enhanced the mystery. Natives are not wont to prowl about after
dark with no apparent object, especially alone. In the first place they
have a very whole-hearted dread of the night side of Nature--in the next
such a proceeding is apt to gain for them more than a suspicion of
practising the arts of witchcraft--a fatal reputation to set up yonder
beyond the river, and, I hesitate not to assert, a very dangerous one to
gain even here on the Queen's side.

The figure straightened up, causing my fool of a horse to snort and
describe further antics. Then a voice:

"Inkose! Iqalaqala. Be not afraid. It is only Ukozi, who watches over
the world while the world sleeps--ah--ah! while the world sleeps."

I must own to feeling something of a thrill at the name. This Ukozi was
a diviner, or witch doctor, whose reputation was second to none among
the Natal border tribes--ay and a great deal wider--and that is saying a
good deal. Now of course the very mention of a witch doctor should
arouse nothing but contemptuous merriment; yet the pretentions of the
class are