“Yet it did not, for it reached not the ground.”
“Ntwezi is ever suspicious,” commented the old man.
“Ever suspicious. But there is one who serves him who would serve him no longer. He will be here to-night.”
“That is well. We will hear him.”
This witch-doctor, Zisiso, was a mild, pleasant, genial-mannered old man, to all outward appearance, especially when he came in contact with Europeans. Then, there was no limit to the gentle, self-deprecating plausibility with which he alluded to himself. Elvesdon, for one, had been completely taken in by him, and was, in fact, rather partial to him. More than one missionary had taken him in hand; with conspicuous success from the point of view of the missionary. But he never attended their services or meetings. He was too old, he said. Still he was glad to have heard such a good ‘word.’ He would welcome death now, because he was longing to see all the beautiful things which the Abafundisi had told him were coming after.
The witch-doctor’s trade is forbidden by the laws of the Colony, but it is carried on for all that. The good old custom of ‘smelling out’ has of course disappeared, but what may not be done impressively and in the light of day can be done just as effectively without making any fuss. Someone obnoxious dies or disappears, there are plenty of ways of accounting for his absence. He has gone away to the mines to earn money, or he has trodden on a nail, and contracted tetanus, or his cows gave diseased milk—and so forth. For old Zisiso was a past master on the subject of both external and internal poisons.
It may readily be imagined in what respectful dread he was held among the tribes. Even influential chiefs, such as these here assembled, dared not incur his ill-will, otherwise it is probable that he would have met with a violent and mysterious death long before; besides they never knew when they might not be glad to turn his services to their own account. Even the educated, semi-civilised natives dared not for their lives have done anything to arouse his hostility.
The new Ethiopian movement was to Zisiso utterly laughable, and such exponents of it as the Rev. Job Magwegwe too contemptible for words. But he was too polite to make public his views. A considerable section of the people had thrown themselves into it, and the movement seemed spreading. As an isanusi all his instincts were to make a study of it lest haply he might turn it to account.
Old Zisiso’s professional instincts were not in themselves ignoble, in that they were not dictated by lust of gain, or cupidity, beyond a certain ingrained acquisitiveness common to all savages. Thanks to his wide and mysterious powers, to which allusion has been made, he was already rich in possessions beyond his needs, for he was too old to lobola for more wives. No, it was sheer pride in his profession, similar to that which might prompt the civilised man of science to welcome and investigate any new departure in scientific discovery. But of course the aim towards which Magwegwe and his associates and employers were supposed to be working, was, in the shrewd eyes of this old sorcerer, the veriest humbug.
Personally he had no particular desire to see the whites ‘driven into the sea’; an eventuality he was far too astute to believe for a moment possible. He was old enough to remember how, under former kings in Zululand, those of his craft, no matter how eminent and skilled, held their lives and possessions on precarious tenure. Dingane and Mpande, for instance, expected a great deal—a great deal too much—from their sorcerers. Cetywayo, to be sure, did not bother his head about them, to speak of. But there, under the rule of the Amangisi, he and his brother witch-doctors could practise unhindered, always provided they did so with due care and secrecy. What, then, was to be gained by trying to upset the existing state of things?