For all answer the wizard laughed softly but disdainfully. Then reaching to the door, he opened it. The wolf leaped in, snarling.
“See now, thou obstinate Nompiza,” he went on, restraining the brute with a flourish of a large stick painted red, before which it cowered back. “This is Lupiswana—no ordinary wolf. Whoever this one bites becomes tagati, and will be hunted through the night by him after death, until they can escape only by riding on him as the white men ride their horses. Then, if they fall off, they are hunted again night after night—for ever and ever. Ha!”
At the enunciation of this grim superstition the unfortunate prisoner tugged at her bonds, uttering a shriek of terror. She recognised here not the dog she had at first expected to see, but the horrid mongrel beast held in abhorrence by the superstitious. The growlings of the brute redoubled.
“Now, tell quickly,” went on the wizard. “The news of the meeting thou didst make known to two people only. Their names? Hesitate not, or—”
“Shall I be allowed to depart from here if I tell, child of the Umlimo?” she gasped eagerly.
“Thou shalt be taken hence. Oh yes, thou shalt be taken hence.”
“Swear it. Swear it,” she cried.
“Umzilikazi!” rejoined the wizard, thus ratifying his assertion by the sacred name of the great king, founder of the nation.
But now, seeing its master’s vigilance relaxed, the wolf sprang forward, and, with a horrid mumbling snarl, buried its fangs in the helpless prisoner’s thigh. A wild, piteous, despairing shriek rent the interior of this fiend’s den.