It was a rough night.  Thunder muttered and rain fell in driving gusts.  I dozed off, only to be awakened by a sound of wailing.  Then I knew that the king was dead, for this was the Isililo, the cry of mourning.  I wondered whether the murderers—­for that he was poisoned I had no doubt—­were among those who wailed.

Towards dawn the storm rolled off and the night grew serene and clear, for a waning moon was shining in the sky.  The heat of that stiffing place oppressed me; my blood seemed to be afire.  I knew that there was a stream in a gorge about half a mile away, for it had been pointed out to me.  I longed for a swim in cool water, who, to tell truth, had found none for some days, and bethought me that I would bathe in this stream before I trekked from that hateful spot, for to me it had become hateful.  Calling my driver, who was awake and talking with the voorloopers, for they knew what was passing at the kraal and were alarmed, I told them to get the oxen ready to start as I would be back presently.  Then I set off for the stream and, after a longish walk, scrambled down a steep ravine to its banks, following a path made by Kaffir women going to draw water.  Arrived there at last I found that it was in flood and rising rapidly, at least so I judged from the sound, for in that deep, tree-hung place the light was too faint to allow me to see anything.  So I sat down waiting for the dawn and wishing that I had not come because of the mosquitoes.

At length it broke and the mists lifted, showing that the spot was one of great beauty.  Opposite to me was a waterfall twenty or thirty feet high, over which the torrent rushed into a black pool below.  Everywhere grew tall ferns and beyond these graceful trees, from whose leaves hung raindrops.  In the centre of the stream on the edge of the fall was a rock not a dozen feet away from me, round which the water foamed.  Something was squatted on this rock, at first I could not see what because of the mist, but thought that it was a grey-headed baboon, or some other animal, and regretted that I had not brought a gun with me.  Presently I became aware that it must be a man, for, in a chanting voice, it began to speak or pray in Zulu, and hidden behind a flowering bush, I could hear the words.  They were to this effect—­

“O my Spirit, here where thou foundest me when I was young, hundreds of years ago” (he said hundreds, but I suppose he meant tens), “I come back to thee.  In this pool I dived and beneath the waters found thee, my Snake, and thou didst wind thyself about my body and about my heart” (here I understood that the speaker was alluding to his initiation as a witch-doctor which generally includes, or used to include, the finding of a snake in a river that coils itself about the neophyte).  “About my body and in my heart thou hast dwelt from that sun to this, giving me wisdom and good and evil counsel, and that which thou hast counselled, I have done.  Now I return thee whence thou camest, there to await me in the new birth.