“A wanderer again! Well, if it must be. But how is it that these people, if refugees, are allowed to dwell in the heart of the land unsought for?”
“Because the King does not really desire their death. They are made up of men who have been smelt out by the izanusi, and have managed to escape; others whom the King has doomed, not really meaning that they should be slain, or the izinduna have plotted to destroy, and who having been warned in time, fled; also the relatives of these men, dreading lest the doom should fall upon them also. Now these men are so numerous as almost to constitute a tribe in themselves; they are wild and fierce, but will welcome such another fighter. That is the only plan, Untúswa; thou must flee to the Bapongqolo. Did not even the warning of Silwane convey that? Was it not about a hunted buffalo who found safety in the Ngome forests?”
“That is so, Lalusini,” I answered. “Yet it seems that I have found thee after all this time of sorrow, only that we must lose sight of each other immediately.” And I looked at her sadly.
“Patience, Untúswa,” she said. “I am planning to make thee great, that thou and I together may rule the world. Say, are we not of the sort who are born to that end?” And, coming over to me, she placed both hands upon my shoulders, looking up into my face; nor had she to look up very much, for, tall as I was, she, for a woman, was of splendid stature.
“I think, indeed, we are well fitted to rule it,” I answered, with pride.
“Then go now, a wanderer once more, Untúswa, but only for a short while. Besides, it may be that I will find thee but, even among the fierce Bapongqolo, from time to time,” she added.
“Why, then, go I forth with joy,” I answered. “Farewell, Lalusini. Delay not to find me out.”
She gave me a few things which I might need, food, and a casting-spear or two, and a large new war-shield—I having come forth with but a small dancing shield—and thus once more fared I forth a wanderer, a fugitive from the parent nation, even as from its offshoot. Verily it seemed as though I were to find no rest.
Now the undertaking before me was, to a man of my experience and familiarity with peril, no very great one, for by using ordinary caution I could always travel unobserved. I avoided the kraals of men, moving mostly at night. Twice I saw in the distance bodies of armed warriors who might or might not have been in search of me; but these I easily eluded, though delayed thereby; and the third evening after parting with Lalusini I was well in among the wildest solitudes of the Ngome forest.
And they were solitudes, Nkose. The great slopes and spurs of the mountains were covered with dense forest surging up in seas of foliage against the immense rock walls of the Lebombo mountains. Below, chasms and deep ravines through which the mountain streams whimpered, half hidden beneath the decaying vegetation and rotting tree-trunks of ages. And of animal life, of bird life, of insect life—whau! the air was never still. By day the black chasms boomed with the hoarse bark of the dog-snouted baboons, and at night thundered from cliff to cliff the roar of the lion. Birds chattered and piped, and the buzz of insects hung ever upon the air, but of man and his habitations never a sign.