“On the morrow about eight o’clock the head man came again, and said that Nala requested that I would visit him.  I followed him into the private enclosure and was introduced to the chief, a fine-looking man of about fifty, with very delicately-shaped hands and feet, and a rather nervous mouth.  The chief was seated on a tanned ox-hide outside his hut.  By his side stood his daughter Maiwa, and squatted on their haunches round him were some twenty head men or Indunas, whose number was continually added to by fresh arrivals.  These men saluted me as I entered, and the chief rose and took my hand, ordering a stool to be brought for me to sit on.  When this was done, with much eloquence and native courtesy he thanked me for protecting his daughter in the painful and dangerous circumstances in which she found herself placed, and also complimented me very highly upon what he was pleased to call the bravery with which I had defended the pass in the rocks.  I answered in appropriate terms, saying that it was to Maiwa herself that thanks were due, for had it not been for her warning and knowledge of the country we should not have been here to-day; while as to the defence of the pass, I was fighting for my life, and that put heart into me.

“These courtesies concluded, Nala called upon his daughter Maiwa to tell her tale to the head men, and this she did most simply and effectively.  She reminded them that she had gone as an unwilling bride to Wambe—­that no cattle had been paid for her, because Wambe had threatened war if she was not sent as a free gift.  Since she had entered the kraal of Wambe her days had been days of heaviness and her nights nights of weeping.  She had been beaten, she had been neglected and made to do the work of a low-born wife—­she, a chief’s daughter.  She had borne a child, and this was the story of the child.  Then amidst a dead silence she told them the awful tale which she had already narrated to me.  When she had finished, her hearers gave a loud ejaculation. ‘Ou!’ they said, ’ou! Maiwa, daughter of Nala!’

“‘Ay,’ she went on with flashing eyes, ’ay, it is true; my mouth is as full of truth as a flower of honey, and for tears my eyes are like the dew upon the grass at dawn.  It is true I saw the child die—­here is the proof of it, councillors,’ and she drew forth the little dead hand and held it before them.

“‘Ou!’ they said again, ‘ou! it is the dead hand!’

“‘Yes,’ she continued, ’it is the dead hand of my dead child, and I bear it with me that I may never forget, never for one short hour, that I live that I may see Wambe die, and be avenged.  Will you bear it, my father, that your daughter and your daughter’s child should be so treated by a Matuku?  Will ye bear it, men of my own people?’

“‘No,’ said an old Induna, rising, ’it is not to be borne.  Enough have we suffered at the hands of these Matuku dogs and their loud-tongued chief; let us put it to the issue.’