The ejaculation, quick and eager; a sudden intensity wherewith the answer had been received was not lost on Harley Greenoak. As we heard him tell the Commandant, he was here to feel the pulse of the people. Already he had got his finger upon it.
“The people are mad, son of the Great Chief,” he went on. “Mad—quite mad. The people here.”
Matanzima laughed—and it struck his hearer there was a note of great relief in the tone.
“Why, as to that, Kulondeka,” he said, “they are only a little excited. They are all young men, those out yonder. They have been dancing all night, and have not worn it off. But—mad? Au!”
“And Mafutana, and Sikonile, and others who gave me speech on the way hither—are they young men, and have they been dancing all night?” said Greenoak, innocently, and with his head on one side. “They talked ‘dark’ as they followed on behind me, but—not dark enough, son of Sandili. Ah—ah—not dark enough. They are mad. Shall I say why?”
The young chief nodded and uttered a murmur of assent.
“Then why are the children of the House of Gaika preparing for war?”
This was putting things straightly. Matanzima brought his hand to his mouth with a quick exclamation. Then, laughing softly, he shook his head.
“Now, nay, Kulondeka,” he said. “You are my father, but your dreams have been bad. The war was not with us, and it is over now. And I would ask—If we sat still then, if we did not rise in our might to aid our brethren over yonder, would it not be the act of fools and madmen to rise now, when there is no one to aid, and the whites are all armed and prepared? Now, would it not?”
“It would. It would be the act of just such as these. That is why I say that the news I bring is that your people are all mad, Matanzima.”