Chapter Twenty Eight.
The “Pulse of the People.”
Harley Greenoak was not sorry to exchange the riot and racket outside for the cool interior of the young chief’s hut. The latter was by no means as neat and clean as he had been wont to find in similar dwellings among the Zulus; because the Xosa has a sort of passion for grease—and dogs. Two of the latter got up growling as he entered, but slunk out of the doorway with astonishing celerity at a peremptory word from their master. Then two of Matanzima’s wives appeared, bearing food, in the shape of stamped mealies and curdled milk, also a large calabash of native beer, and here again there was a suggestion of but half-washed vessels, and a flavour of grease and red-ochre seemed to permeate the stuff itself. But to Greenoak little matters of this sort were the merest trifles.
“It is good to see you again, Kulondeka,” said the young chief, when breakfast was well under way. “Now—what is the news?”
“News? Why as for that, son of Sandili, the news is great.”
“Great?”
“It is. And such as it is I bring it from—no further distance from here than I could shoot with this gun.”
“Ha!”