Chapter Four.
A Human Spider.
Shiminya resumed his seat upon the ground, with the múti bowl in his hands. The wolf he had already secured in one of the huts. The grim beast was in truth his familiar spirit, and as such not to be gazed upon by profane eyes, and in broad daylight. And now footsteps were heard approaching the scherm, together with the rattle of assegai hafts. Three men entered by the narrow gateway. Shiminya looked up.
“Greeting, Izinduna,” he said.
“Greeting to thee, Umtwana ’Mlimo,” came the reply in a deep-voiced hum, as the newcomers deposited their assegais just within the gate, and advanced a few steps nearer in. With two of these we are already acquainted, they being, in fact, Madúla and his brother Samvu. The third was another influential chief by name Zazwe.
Shiminya seemed to take no further notice of their presence, continuing to sway the múti bowl from side to side, muttering the while. The faces of the three indunas wore an expression of scarcely to be concealed disgust; that of Zazwe in addition showed unutterable contempt. He was an unprepossessing looking man, lean, and of middle height, with a cold, cruel countenance. At bottom he loathed and despised the whole Umlimo hierarchy as a pack of rank impostors, but it suited him now to cultivate them, for he was an arrant schemer, and would fain see every white man in the country cut to pieces.
“There are three goats in thy kraal beyond the river, Shiminya,” he began presently, tired of the silence.
“That is good, my father,” the sorcerer condescended to reply. “They are for Umlimo?”
“Nay; for his child.”