“‘Hau!’ I exclaimed hurriedly and in alarm. ‘Speak low, my father, speak low! Even the whisper of such a thing cannot but work me harm, almost as much as though it were really so.’
“‘As though it were really so! That is well said, son of Ntelani,’ he replied, with a chuckle.
“I was very much confused, for this old wizard seemed to divine the deepest secrets of men’s hearts. How knew he this thing? He had never seen me speak with Nangeza, had certainly never witnessed our meetings, and he talked with nobody. The girls who had surprised us that day had, I knew, let fall no word.
“‘I am sore at heart indeed, father,’ I answered.
“‘My greatest desire seems impossible of accomplishment. Yet once you declared I should obtain it.’
“‘If you obtain it, son of Ntelani, it will be at the cost of passing through such unknown terrors as will turn your heart to water, of doing such deeds of peril and daring as no man surely ever did before. At this and at no other cost. Are you prepared to earn it at such a price?’
“‘Hau! I fear nothing. I am a warrior of the Amazulu,’ I answered boastfully.
“Masuka eyed me strangely.
“‘Of múti were we speaking just now, warrior of the Amazulu who knows not fear,’ he said. ‘Now see. Are you sufficiently devoid of fear to dare to look into the future?’
“Then, Nkose, I felt that I had spoken like a liar and a braggart. Even the burning of the old magician’s spider-like eyes in the half-gloom of the hut caused me to quail. What would it be when I should follow him into the dark mysteries as yet unveiled? But it was not in me to eat up my word.