“As the child makes a plaything of the sleeping serpent, so now are you walking over your graves, you two children,” said Sobuza, contemptuously. “Who are you?”
“Greeting, induna of the king’s impi,” returned the speaker, after a steady stare at the chief. “We are sent by our father, the Lion of the Igazipuza, to warn you to return. There is múti (medicine, or philtre) spread on the mountain-side leading to his kraal, which is death to twenty times the number you have here.”
“Have done with such childishness,” returned Sobuza, sternly. “Is your father, the Lion of the Igazipuza, as you name him”—with a sneer—“prepared to come down here and proceed to Undini to lay his neck beneath the paw of the Lion of the Zulu whose wrath he has incurred?”
The two emissaries fairly laughed.
“Not he,” was the reply. “This is the word of Ingonyama: ‘There is a white man named Jandosi here. When the king’s hunting-dogs first behold the home of the Igazipuza, they shall view many things. They shall see the white man, Jandosi, writhing upon the point of The Tooth—he and all his following. The English will then make war in their anger upon the people of Zulu, and will set up a white king. They shall find their game, but the game of the king’s hunting-dogs will be not jackals, but lions. Now—let them come!’”
The utter audacity of this speech seemed to take away everybody’s breath. They stared at the foolhardy speaker as men who dream. He, before they had recovered, catching sight of Gerard among the group of chiefs, broke into a loud laugh.
“Ha! The other white man! The alligators have spat him up again whole. Well, Umlúngu. New friends are better than old ones. You and your new friends shall see your ‘brother’ being bitten by The Tooth.”
“Seize them!” said Sobuza.
There was a rush and a struggle. Lithe, quick as they were, the two emissaries were overpowered; the blows which would have let the life out of one or more were beaten down by the solid fence of the Udhloko shields. As they lay on the ground, powerless, disarmed—those holding them gazing eagerly, hungrily, at the chief, awaiting the word to bury the broad spears in their prostrate bodies—Gerard recognised, in him who had spoken, the man who had so barbarously slaughtered the unfortunate Swazi, Kazimbi.
“Ho, Umlúngu,” called out the fearless young barbarian. “With the first advance of the king’s impi, your ‘brother’ shall be bitten on The Tooth. Ha, ha!”