“We will take him, I say. Bring him out.”
“Bring him out—bring him out,” roared the crowd, brandishing assegais and rapping their shields, in an indescribable clamour.
“Hau! Umfane! I will cut thee into little pieces,” cried one fellow, seizing my boy Tom by the throat and brandishing a big assegai as though he would rip him up.
“Have done!” I said pulling my revolver and covering the savage. “See. We hold plenty of lives here.”
Falkner too had drawn his and was eagerly expecting the word from me to let go.
“Hold!” roared the spokesman, in such wise as to cause the aggressive one to fall back. “Now, Umlungu, give us the dog.”
“First of all,” I said, “if the dog belongs to Udolfu, why is not Udolfu here himself to claim him? Is he afraid?”
“He is not afraid, Umlungu,” answered the man, with a wave of the hand. “For—here he is.”
A man on horseback came riding furiously up. With him were a lot more armed Zulus running hard to keep pace with him. In a twinkling I recognised we were in a hard tight place, for the number around us already I estimated at a couple of hundred. He was armed this time, for he carried a rifle and I could see a business-like six-shooter peeping out of a side pocket. It was our old friend, Dolf Norbury.
“Hallo, you two damned slinking dog thieves,” he sung out, as the crowd parted to make way for him. “Here we are again you see. Not yet within British jurisdiction, eh?”