“That’s a grand idea,” said Denham. “I had begun to think I was never going to see this ‘show’ chief of yours.”
“By Jove! what a beautifully built kraal!” exclaimed Denham, as they came upon it suddenly, over the lip of the hollow. “Rather different from those wretched, slovenly-looking affairs you see further down.”
“Yes; Sapazani is an intense Conservative,” said Ben Halse; “wherefore he isn’t beloved by those in authority. But the old-time kraals were all built like this one, except in the open country where there was no bush to make fences of. They used stone walls instead, and still do.”
They found the chief sitting in the shade of a dried bullock-skin just against the fence of the central open space. He gave them greeting in a dignified way, as between equals, but did not rise. That was a European custom, and therefore abhorrent to his conservative soul. But he called to an attendant to rig up a similar bullock-skin and to spread mats, not even rugs, for his visitors.
“Case of doing in Zululand as Zulus do, Alaric,” laughed Verna. “You’ll have to learn the native art of squatting. It’s all right when you get used to it.”
“Of course. I say, this is an uncommonly fine-looking chap. Do you think he’d let me fire the kodak at him? I put it in my pocket on spec.”
“We’ll try presently, but I doubt it.”
Meanwhile Sapazani was asking Halse who his guest was. He knew perfectly, but still he asked. Denham the while was watching him with intense interest. He had seen two or three chiefs at Ezulwini, looking thorough “slouches” in waistcoats and shirt-sleeves and ragged smasher hats. But this was a splendid specimen in every way. He looked every inch a chief, they did not, every inch a king, even. He hardly liked to present this dignified-looking savage with a superfluous pair of binoculars, by no means new, which he had brought along to that end. But Verna, consulted, set his doubts at rest on that score.
“What is he yarning about?” he asked.