The two old men held steadily on their way, walking with an ease and elasticity that many a youth might have envied—over rough ground and smooth—now and again sitting down to take snuff, which is far too serious an operation to be performed during the process of locomotion. As nearly as possible they travelled in a direct line, accomplishing this by taking short cuts through the bush by tracks known to themselves, but to a mounted man quite, impracticable, and so faint that a white man would get hopelessly lost.
Following one of these, they were about to come out upon opener ground. The sun had dropped, and in the black gloom of forest trees it would be night in a very few minutes. In front however showed a temporary lightening where the foliage thinned. Overhanging this opener ground was a tumble of rocks and boulders rising to no great height.
“I would fain have been earlier, brother,” murmured Zavula. “My eyes are over old to see in the dark, and—”
He did not finish his words; instead he dropped to the earth, felled by the murderous blow which had crashed upon his unsuspecting head from behind. His companion sprang aside just in time to dodge a like blow aimed at him, and raising his stick leaped furiously at the foremost assailant, determined that one should die at any rate. It was a futile resistance, for what could an old man with nothing but an ordinary stick do against half a dozen armed miscreants. These sprang at him at once, yet even then so energetic was his defence that they drew back for a moment.
“Have done!” growled a voice from behind these. “Make an end. No—no blood,” as one fiend was poising an assegai for a throw. “Make an end, fools, make an end.”
“It is Nxala who hounds on these cowardly dogs,” jeered this brave old man, recognising the voice out of the darkness. “Whau! Nxala!”
It was his last utterance. A heavy knobstick, hurled with tremendous force, struck him full between the eyes, and he, too, dropped.
The murderers were upon him at once, battering his skull to atoms with their knobsticks, in the fury of their savagery forgetting their instigator’s warning as to the shedding of blood.
While this was happening old Zavula had half raised himself.
“Dog’s son, Nxala,” he exclaimed. “I have found my end. Thine shall be the white man’s rope.”