e might know if I were a true
man or not. Then, after pausing a while, he looked at me in his piercing
fashion and asked:

"Have you brought me a present of that tall white girl with eyes like
two stars, Macumazahn? I mean the girl whom you refused to me, and whom
I could not take because you had won your bet, which gave all the white
people to you; she for whose sake you make brothers of these Boers, who
are traitors to their king?"

"No, O Dingaan," I answered; "there are no women among us. Moreover,
this maid is now my wife."

"Your wife!" he exclaimed angrily. "By the Head of the Black One, have
you dared to make a wife of her whom I desired? Now say, boy, you clever
Watcher by Night; you little white ant, who work in the dark and only
peep out at the end of your tunnel when it is finished; you wizard, who
by your magic can snatch his prey out of the hand of the greatest king
in all the world--for it was magic that killed those vultures on Hloma
Amabutu, not your bullets, Macumazahn--say, why should I not make an end
of you at once for this trick?"

I folded my arms and looked at him. A strange contrast we must have
made, this huge, black tyrant with the royal air, for to do him justice
he had that, at whose nod hundreds went the way of death, and I, a mere
insignificant white boy, for in appearance, at any rate, I was nothing
more.

"O Dingaan," I said coolly, knowing that coolness was my only chance,
"I answer you in the words of the Commandant Retief, the great chief.
Do you take me for a child that I should give up my own wife to you who
already have so many? Moreover, you cannot kill me because I have the
word of your captain, Kambula, that I am safe with you."

This reply seemed to amuse him. At any rate, with one of those almost
infantile changes of mood which are common to savages of every degree,
he passed from wrath to laughter.

"You are quick as a lizard," he said. "Why should I, who have so many
wives, want one more, who would certainly hate me? Just because she is
white, and would make the others, who are black, jealous, I suppose.
Indeed, they would poison her, or pinch her to death in a month, and
then come to tell me she had died of fretting. Also, you are right; you
have my safe conduct, and must go hence unharmed this time. But look
you, little lizard, although you escape me between the stones, I will
pull off your tail. I have said that I want to pluck this tall white
flower of yours, an