There was some murmuring.
His eyes flashed like steel.
"You can kill me," he said, "but you cannot conquer me."
The Black Prince of Eighty
If you rode as a guest toward Khama's town over seventy years after those far-off days when Livingstone first went there, as you came in sight of the great stone church that the chief has built, you would see tearing across the African plain a whirlwind of dust. It would race toward you, with the soft thunder of hoofs in the loose soil. When the horses were almost upon you—with a hand of steel—chief Khama would rein in his charger and his bodyguard would pull up behind him.
Over eighty years old, grey and wrinkled, he would spring from his horse, without help, to greet you—still Khama, the Antelope. Old as he is, he is as alert as ever. He heard that a great all Africa aeroplane route was planned after the Great War. At once he offered to make a great aerodrome, and the day at last came when Khama—eighty-five years old—who had seen Livingstone, the first white man to visit his tribe—stood watching the first aeroplane come bringing a young officer from the clouds.
He stands there, the splendid chief of the Bamangwato—"steel-true, blade-straight." He is the Black Prince of Africa—who has indeed won his spurs against the enemies of his people.
And if you were to ask him the secret of the power by which he has done these things, Khama the silent, who is not used to boasting, would no doubt lead you at dawn to the Kgotla before his huts. There at every sunrise he gathers his people together for their morning prayers at the feet of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Captain and King of our Great Crusade for the saving of Africa.