“What does that matter?  Cannot a man have more wives than one?  And, Macumazahn,” she added, leaning forward and looking at me, “how do you know that you have even one?  You may be divorced or a widower by now.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I?  I mean nothing; do not look at me so fiercely, Macumazahn.  Surely such things happen in the world, do they not?”

“Naya,” I said, “you are two bad things—­a bait and a spy—­and you know it.”

“Perhaps I do, Macumazahn,” she answered.  “Am I to blame for that, if my life is on it, especially when I really like you for yourself?”

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Tell me, when am I going to get out of this place?”

“How can I tell you, Macumazahn?” Naya replied, patting my hand in her genial way, “but I think before long.  When you are gone, Macumazahn, remember me kindly sometimes, as I have really tried to make you as comfortable as I could with a watcher staring through every straw in the hut.”

I said whatever seemed to be appropriate, and next morning my deliverance came.  While I was eating my breakfast in the courtyard at the back of the hut, Naya thrust her handsome and pleasant face round the corner and said that there was a messenger to see me from the king.  Leaving the rest of the meal unswallowed, I went to the doorway of the yard and there found my old friend, Kambula.

“Greeting, Inkoos,” he said to me; “I am come to take you back to Natal with a guard.  But I warn you to ask me no questions, for if you do I must not answer them.  Dingaan is ill, and you cannot see him, nor can you see the white praying-man, or anyone; you must come with me at once.”

“I do not want to see Dingaan,” I replied, looking him in the eyes.

“I understand,” answered Kambula; “Dingaan’s thoughts are his thoughts and your thoughts are your thoughts, and perhaps that is why he does not want to see you.  Still, remember, Inkoos, that Dingaan has saved your life, snatching you unburned out of a very great fire, perhaps because you are of a different sort of wood, which he thinks it a pity to burn.  Now, if you are ready, let us go.”

“I am ready,” I answered.

At the gate I met Naya, who said: 

“You never thought to say good-bye to me, White Man, although I have tended you well.  Ah! what else could I expect?  Still, I hope that if I should have to fly from this land for my life, as may chance, you will do for me what I have done for you.”

“That I will,” I answered, shaking her by the hand; and, as it happened, in after years I did.

Kambula led me, not through the kraal Umgungundhlovu, but round it.  Our road lay immediately past the death mount, Hloma Amabutu, where the vultures were still gathered in great numbers.  Indeed, it was actually my lot to walk over the new-picked bones of some of my companions who had been despatched at the foot of the hill.  One of these skeletons I recognised by his clothes to be that of Samuel Esterhuizen, a very good fellow, at whose side I had slept during all our march.  His empty eye-sockets seemed to stare at me reproachfully, as though they asked me why I remained alive when he and all his brethren were dead.  I echoed the question in my own mind.  Why of that great company did I alone remain alive?