But—somehow, with the faintest possible twinge of uneasiness, the emphasis on those words ‘our most delightful drive’ jarred on her.
Chapter Seventeen.
A Trap—and a Tragedy.
Four men were seated together within a hut. This hut was one of half a dozen which constituted a small kraal, standing at the foot of a smooth perpendicular cliff.
Two of these four we have already seen and two we have not. The former were Babatyana and Nxala; of the latter, one was Nteseni, an influential chief whose kraals adjoined those of Babatyana, while the fourth was Zisiso, a witch-doctor of great, though secret repute. As was to be expected they were plotting. It was night, and the other inhabitants of the kraal, if such there were, slept.
“So my múti was not strong enough, Nxala?” the witch-doctor was saying. “Au! I have never known it like that before.”
“He who is gone was old, my father, and his hand shook,” was the answer. “Who, then, may say as to the strength of the múti when scattered upon the floor of a hut? And now Ntwezi has the vessel that contained it.”
“That should have broken in pieces,” murmured Zisiso.