."

"Quite near it is, Iqalaqala," slipping into rather an unwarrantable
familiarity in addressing me by my native name, but this didn't exercise
me you may be sure. "Quite near, but--nowhere near the snake pool.
Quite the other way. You will take the nephew of Nyamaki with you."

"Ah! And--what of Umsindo?"

"Ha! Umsindo? He is a good fighting bull--but then he is a blundering
bull. Yet we will take him, for his strength will be useful. For, we
will take Ukozi alive."

"That will not be easy, Jan Boom. And then--just think, how much easier
it will be to kill him."

"Yet we will do it. We will take him alive. You were asking but now,
_Nkose_, what other motive I had in helping you," he answered, with a
dash of significance.

"Ah!"

"So we will take Ukozi alive. Is that to be?"

"Most certainly, if possible. But will it be possible? He is sure to
fight. He will have people with him of course."

"Two, at the most. We had better take them alive too, if we can. It
will make things worse for Ukozi. But to no one living save to the two
we have named will you by word or hint give knowledge of what I have
told you. To do so will mean certain failure."

I promised.

"Tell me now about this place, Jan Boom, and how you learned of its
existence," I said, for now in my feverish impatience I would rather
talk for the remainder of the night than go in to shut myself up with my
thoughts throughout its hours of silence.

"I will do better, _Nkose_, I will show it you," he answered. "_Whau_!
if we succeed in what we are to do--and we must if the three of you only
keep strictly to my directions--why then I may tell you; and with it a
tale so strange that you, or other white people, will give it half
belief or perhaps not any. Now I must go. There is still some of the
night left, and it is important that none should know we have talked or
even that I have been away from Isipanga. Return as silently as you
came, and to-morrow, well before the sun goes down ride up to the house
on a very lame horse."

"And with the other two?"

"With the other two. _Nkose_!" With which parting salute he was gone.

I waited a little, listening. No sound disturbed the dead silence save
here and there the ordinary voices of the night. Then I regained my
room.

Sleep was of course out of the question, and now I set to work
deliberately to marshal my thoughts and bring them to bear on the
situation. I felt no misg