“No use, Manamandhla. You would be dead before you had taken five steps.”
The Zulu knew this. Even were it otherwise he had no wish for the other’s death—not just yet, at any rate. It was more profitable to himself to keep him alive. But for the moment he felt like a cornered animal, quick, desperate, dangerous.
“One of the beasts has gone over, Inqoto,” he said. “I would have prevented it, but when I tried to drive it back I drove it over instead. It is a pity.”
“It is. You were in want of beef, I think, Manamandhla,” was the answer, faintly mocking.
“Whau! Inqoto has not a very open hand, and I was tired of goat. There are ‘mouths’ on this mountain that do not return that which—those whom—they swallow. But there is one which can be got into by men with long lines. And—what would they find? Ah—ah! What would they find?”
The Zulu felt secure now, and yet, had he only known it, he had never stood in more deadly peril in his life. Thornhill had been waiting for some such chance as this and now it had come. For, from the moment he had arrived unobserved upon the scene all its opportunities had flashed upon his mind. The Zulu had deliberately driven one of his cattle over the krantz, and on being detected in the act had rushed upon him with an assegai; for he could pretty shrewdly guess what the other held concealed beneath the blanket. He had shot his assailant dead, in self defence, as he had no other alternative than to do. Thus he would be rid of this incubus, this blackmailer, and once more would be at peace. The time and opportunity had come.
Manamandhla must have read his thoughts. Hard and desperately, yet with the quickness of lightning, he was calculating his chances. A sudden zig-zagging spring might cause his enemy to miss, and he would be upon him before he had time to fire again. The two—the white man and the dark man—thus stood fronting each other in the spectral wreaths of the drear mist, each resolved that one or other of them should not leave that spot alive. Thornhill spoke again.
“I am tired of you, Manamandhla. You can leave this place, do you hear? and it will not be well for you to come near it again. You are of no further use to me. So you may go. Hamba gahle.”
But these last words of farewell, which the speaker intended should signal Manamandhla’s departure in a very different sense, were scarcely uttered. A dark form, the form of a man, immediately behind the Zulu, and in a direct line with him, loomed through the mist; and the voice of old Patolo, the cattle-herd, was raised in greeting to his master. The latter knew that his opportunity had passed. He could not shoot Manamandhla in the presence of a witness, and of course the could not shoot old Patolo at all.
“Nkose,” said the latter. “I fear that the cattle will be difficult to collect in the thickness of this cloud. But those that remain out will not stray far, and we can collect them in the morning.”