“The son of Mambane, who helped hoot thee out of his kraal when thou wouldst not offer enough lobola for Nompiza. He is to die.”
Nanzicele leaped with delight. “When? How?” he cried. “Now will my eyes have a feast indeed.”
“At thy hand. The manner and the time are of thine own choosing. To thee has Umlimo left it.”
Nanzicele’s glee was dashed. His jaw fell.
“Au! I have no wish to dance in the air at the end of a long rope,” he growled; “and such would assuredly be my fate if I slew Pukele, even as it was that of Fondosa, the son of Mbai, who was an innyanga even as thyself, my father. Whau! I saw it with these eyes. All Fondosa’s múti did not save him there, my father, and the whites hanged him dead the same as any rotten Maholi.”
“Didst thou glance over one shoulder on the way hither, Nanzicele? Didst thou see Lupiswana following thee, yea, even running at thy side? I traced thy course from here. I saw thee from the time of leaving Jonemi’s. He was waiting for thee was Lupiswana. It is not good for a man when such is the case,” said Shiminya, whose esprit de corps resented the sneering, contemptuous tone which the other had used in speaking of a member of his “cloth.”
For the event referred to was the execution of a Mashuna witch-doctor for the murder of a whole family, whose death he had ordered.
The snake-like stare of Shiminya, the appeal to his superstitions, the sinister associations of the place he was in, a stealthy, mysterious sound even then becoming audible—all told, Nanzicele looked somewhat cowed, remembering, too, how his return journey had to be effected alone and by night.
Having, in vulgar and civilised parlance, taken down his man a peg or two, Shiminya could afford to let the matter of Pukele stand over. Now he said softly—
“And the other ten cartridges, those in thy bag, Nanzicele? Give them to me, for I have a better revenge, here, ready at thy hand, and a safer one.”