“Do the Amabuna believe it?” went on the King.
“They believe it, Great Great One—but not the whole of it.”
“Ha! Not the whole of it! They are a lying and treacherous race, deadly as a swarm of locusts! Say, my father, if they believed the whole of it, they would lie, and steal land, and make slaves no more?”
“That is so, Black Elephant.”
The King smiled grimly to himself as he took snuff. We, too, smiled. Here were teachings which would never do for us—for although we of the Zulu race did not lie, yet we took land and slaves, even as the Amabuna did, and made war. Now these were customs we could not by any possibility give up. Then the Great Great One leaned over, and whispered a word to me.
Now the little white child we had taken from among the Amabuna was fast becoming one of ourselves. Yet not; for those with whom she played she would somehow cause to konza to her, even in their games, as though she were born to rule. If they played at building kraals, she it was whose hut was always the largest. If the boys were playing soldiers, it was always before her they came, singing the mimic war-song, and forcing the defeated side to konza. She reigned among them as a little queen. Even my two younger wives, who had the care of her, she seemed to rule. They would not, however, allow her to run wild with our children, but, as her clothing wore out, they made her garments of the softest of dressed fawn-skins, ornamented largely with the most valued of beads. And now, as in obedience to the word of the King, I led the little one forth into his presence, and the stranger looked for the first time upon the fair skin and flower-like little face—the heaven-blue eyes, and hair like a stream of sunlight falling down the beaded robe of the child—he made as though he would have leaped from his seat.
“See now, my father,” said the King, as the little one put up her hand and cried the Bayéte, “here is one of thine own colour, though but a tiny child. See now if thy story of the God of Peace is known in any way to her.”
Now the white isanusi hardly waited for the word of the King, and the change which came upon him was strange indeed. He sprang to his feet, and advanced to the little one, who stared at him with her great blue eyes, yet did not shrink from him as in fear of a stranger. Then he put his hand over her head, and, looking upward and then down at her, his lips moved.
“Au! he is placing a spell upon her,” growled one who sat near me.
“It is not a spell that will harm,” murmured another in reply. But no more was said, for now the stranger was talking quick and fast in his own language, and the little one might have been his own child, long, long lost; for tears stood in his eyes as he talked, and soon rolled down upon his great beard. Haul It was a strange sight. He wept, this white man who knew not fear: yes, here, in the presence of the King, and of we izinduna and war-captains, he wept, and that at the sight of a little blue-eyed child!