It was the king vulture falling from the heavens—­dead!

Down it came 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 at all.  With all my thought and experience, it had never occurred to me that the wonderful eyes of the vultures would see the flash of the powder even through the pervading sunlight, and swerve before the deadly bullet could reach them.