“Izwa!  We hear you.  We swear it on behalf of the people,” said every councillor in the semi-circle in front of him; yes, and the king said it also, stretching out his hand.

“Good,” said Zikali, “it is an oath, it is an oath, sworn here upon the bones of the dead.  Evil-doers you call them, but I say to you that many of those who sit before me have more evil in their hearts than had those dead.  Well, let it be proclaimed, O King, and with it this—­that ill shall it go with him who breaks the oath, with his family, with his kraal and all with whom he has to do.

“Now what is it you ask of me?  First of all, counsel as to whether you should fight the English Queen, a matter on which you, the Great Ones, are evenly divided in opinion, as is the nation behind you.  O King, Indunas, and Captains, who am I that I should judge of such a matter which is beyond my trade, a matter of the world above and of men’s bodies, not of the world below and of men’s spirits?  Yet there was one who made the Zulu people out of nothing, as a potter fashions a vessel from clay, as a smith fashions an assegai out of the ore of the hills, yes, and tempers it with human blood.* Chaka the Lion, the Wild Beast, the King among Kings, the Conqueror.  I knew Chaka as I knew his father, yes, and his father.  Others still living knew him also, say you, Sigananda there for instance,” and he pointed to the old chief who had spoken first.  “Yes, Sigananda knew him as a boy knows a great man, as a soldier knows a general.  But I knew his heart, aye, I shaped his heart, I was its thought.  Had it not been for me he would never have been great.  Then he wronged me”—­here Zikali took up the skull which he said was that of his daughter, and stroked it—­“and I left him.

[*—­The old Zulu smiths dipped their choicest blades in the blood of men.—­A.  Q.]

“He was not wise, he should have killed one whom he had wronged, but perhaps he knew that I could not be killed; perhaps he had tried and found that he was but throwing spears at the moon which fell back on his own head.  I forget.  It is so long ago, and what does it matter?  At least I took away from him the prop of my wisdom, and he fell—­to rise no more.  And so it has been with others.  So it has been with others.  Yet while he was great I knew his heart who lived in his heart, and therefore I ask myself, had he been sitting where the King sits to-day, what would Chaka have done?  I will tell you.  If not only the English but the Boers also and with them the Pondos, the Basutos and all the tribes of Africa had threatened him, he would have fought them—­yes, and set his heel upon their necks.  Therefore, although I give no counsel upon such a matter, I say to you that the counsel of Chaka is—­fight—­and conquer.  Hearken to it or pass it by—­I care not which.”