Well, I disentangled myself somehow, and seizing what I took to be a gourd of water in that dim light, poured it over her head, only to discover too late that it was not water but clotted milk.  However the result was the same, for presently she sat up, made a dreadful-looking object by this liberal application of curds and whey, whereon I explained matters to her to the best of my power.  The end of it was that after Indudu and Goza had wiped her down with tufts of thatch dragged from the hut and I had collected her gear with the rest of my own, we set her on the horse straddlewise, and started, the objects of much interest among such Zulus as were already abroad.

At the gate of the town there was a delay which made me nervous, since in such a case as mine delay might always mean a death-warrant.  I knew that it was quite possible Cetewayo had changed, or been persuaded to change his mind and issue a command that I should be killed as one who had seen and knew too much.  Indeed this fear was my constant companion during all the long journey to the Drift of the Tugela, causing me to look askance at every man we met or who overtook us, lest he should prove to be a messenger of doom.

Nor were these doubts groundless, for as I learned in the after days, the Prime Minister, Umnyamana, and others had urged Cetewayo strongly to kill me, and what we were waiting for at the gate were his final orders on the subject.  However, in this matter, as in more that I could mention, the king played the part of a man of honour, and although he seemed to hesitate for reasons of policy, never had any intention of allowing me to be harmed.  On the contrary the command brought was that any one who harmed Macumazahn, the king’s guest and messenger, should die with all his House.

Whilst we tarried a number of women gathered round us whose conversation I could not help overhearing.  One of them said to another—­

“Look at the white man, Watcher-by-Night, who can knock a fly off an ox’s horn with a bullet from further away than we could see it.  He it was who loved and was loved by the witch Mameena, whose beauty is still famous in the land.  They say she killed herself for his sake, because she declared that she would never live to grow old and ugly, so that he turned away from her.  My mother told me all about it only last night.”

Then you have a liar for a mother, thought I to myself, for to contradict such a one openly would have been undignified.

“Is it so?” asked one of her friends, deeply interested.  “Then the lady Mameena must have had a strange taste in men, for this one is an ugly little fellow with hair like the grey ash of stubble and a wrinkled face of the colour of a flayed skin that has lain unstretched in the sun.  However, I have been told that witches always love those who look unnatural.”

“Yes,” said Number one, “but you see now that he is old he has to be satisfied with a different sort of wife.  She is not beautiful, is she, although she has dipped her head in milk to make herself look white?”