me between the Vrouw Prinsloo and the slayers, smashing the
lifted assegai of one of them and hurling him to the earth. Down it
came, and lay there a mere mass of pulp and feathers.

"O Dingaan," I said in the midst of the intense silence that followed,
"it seems that it is I who have won the bet, not you. I killed this king
of birds, but being a king it chose to die high up and alone, that is
all."

Dingaan hesitated, for he did not wish to spare the Boers, and I, noting
his hesitation, lifted my rifle a little. Perhaps he saw it, or perhaps
his sense of honour, as he understood the word, overcame his wish for
their blood. At any rate, he said to one of his councillors:

"Search the carcase of that vulture and see if there is a bullet hole in
it."

The man obeyed, feeling at the mass of broken bones and flesh. By
good fortune he found, not the hole, for that was lost in the general
destruction of the tissues, but the ball itself, which, having pierced
the thick body from below upwards, had remained fast in the tough skin
just by the back-bone where the long, red neck emerges from between the
wings. He picked it out, for it was only hanging in the skin, and held
it up for all to see.

"Macumazahn has won his bet," said Dingaan. "His magic has conquered,
though by but a very little. Macumazahn, take these Boers, they are
yours, and begone with them out of my country."

CHAPTER XV. RETIEF ASKS A FAVOUR

Now and again during our troubled journey through life we reach little
oases of almost perfect happiness, set jewel-like here and there in
the thorny wilderness of time. Sometimes these are hours of mere animal
content. In others they are made beautiful by waters blowing from our
spiritual springs of being, as in those rare instances when the material
veil of life seems to be rent by a mighty hand, and we feel the presence
and the comfort of God within us and about us, guiding our footsteps to
the ineffable end, which is Himself. Occasionally, however, all these,
physical satisfaction and love divine and human, are blended to a whole,
like soul and body, and we can say, "Now I know what is joy."

Such an hour came to me on the evening of that day of the winning of my
bet with Dingaan, when a dozen lives or so were set against my nerve and
skill. These had not failed me, although I knew that had it not been
for the inspiration of the Hottentot Hans (who sent it, I wonder?)
they would have been of no service a