“To you we have nothing to say. To your captain”—for so he designated the King—“we have nothing to say. When the time comes we shall act, and come it will, very soon.”
“We, too, know how to act,” answered Tambusa. “Hlalani gahle! I retire.”
He turned to leave—turned, to find a line of guns pointed full upon him at but a few paces distant.
“Halt—Kafir!”
The tone, the insult, the scowl on the shaggy faces which glared at him from under their wide-brimmed hats, roused all the savage fighting blood in Tambusa, and those who beheld him say that the great veins in his forehead swelled until they seemed about to burst with the pressure of his head-ring. “Kafir!” Thus these refuse whites dared to address the chief induna of the royal race of Zulu, second only in greatness to the King himself! But he was helpless, for, as a peace ambassador, he had of course been obliged to lay down his arms on entering the camp.
Now he turned to the leaders of the Amabuna, who were talking with their heads together.
“See you this?” he said, waving his hand towards the line of men who stood threatening him with their guns. “See you this? I, a peace messenger, am insulted and threatened. I, a peace messenger, am detained, when I would depart as I came. In truth, it is not good to trust to the good faith of the Amabuna.”
“In truth it is not good to trust to the good faith of the Amazulu,” answered the leader sternly. “Say, were not our people peace messengers—our people whose bones lie outside Nkunkundhlovu—who trusted in the good faith of that murderer, your chief?”
“Ha! But you? You are a holy people—a people of God, you told the King. We are only poor, ignorant black people,” said Tambusa, taunting them, in his scornful wrath.
“But there is a God of justice,” quickly replied the leader, “and He has delivered you into our hands to be dealt with as one of the chief murderers of our people. The others He will deliver to us in time. But enough of that. This is the matter now. The treacherous and cruel murder of our people at Nkunkundhlovu was counselled by you, Tambusa. By you it was planned and arranged, by your orders it was carried out. What have you to say?”