“How can that be, O King?” broke in Umnyamana the Prime Minister.  “How can any of your race sit in your seat while you still live?  Then indeed there would be war, war between tribe and tribe and Zulu and Zulu till none were left, and the white hyenas from Natal would come and chew our bones and with them the Boers that have passed the Vaal.  See now.  Why is this Nyanga (i.e. witch-doctor) here?” and he pointed to Zikali beyond the fire.  “Why has the Opener of Roads been brought from the Black Kloof which he has not left for years?  Is it not that he may give us counsel in our need and show us a sign that his counsel is good, whether it be for war or peace?  Then when he has made divination and given the counsel and shown the sign, then, O King, do you speak the word of war or peace, and send it to the Queen by yonder white man, and by that word we, the people, will abide.”

At this suggestion, which I had no doubt was made by some secret agreement between Umnyamana and Zikali, Cetewayo seemed to grasp.  Perhaps this was because it postponed for a little while the dreadful moment of decision, or perhaps because he hoped that in the eyes of the nation it would shift the responsibility from his shoulders to those of the Spirits speaking through the lips of their prophet.  At any rate he nodded and answered—­

“It is so.  Let the Opener of Roads open us a road through the forests and the swamps and the rocks of doubt, danger and fear.  Let him give us a sign that it is a good road on which we may safely travel, and let him tell us whether I shall live to walk that road and what I shall meet thereon.  I promise him in return the greatest fee that ever yet was paid to a doctor in Zululand.”

Now Zikali lifted his big head, shook his grey locks, and opening his wide mouth as though he expected manna to fall into it from the sky, he laughed out loud.

“O-ho-ho,” he laughed, “Oho-ho-ho-o, it is worth while to have lived so long when life has brought me to such an hour as this.  What is it that my ears hear?  That I, the Indwande dwarf, I whom Chaka named ‘The-Thing-that-never-should-have-been-born,’ I, one of the race conquered and despised by the Zulus, am here to speak a word which the Zulus dare not utter, which the King of the Zulus dares not utter.  O-ho-ho-ho!  And what does the King offer to me?  A fee, a great fee for the word that shall paint the Zulus red with blood or white with the slime of shame.  Nay, I take no fee that is the price of blood or shame.  Before I speak that word unknown—­for as yet my heart has not heard it, and what the heart has not heard the lips cannot shape—­I ask but one thing.  It is an oath that whatever follows on the word, while there is a Zulu left living in the world, I, the Voice of the Spirits, shall be safe from hurt or from reproach, I and those of my House and those over whom I throw my blanket, be they black or be they white.  That is my fee, without which I am silent.”