There she stood—she on whom my thoughts had dwelt day and night—she for whom I had sought so carefully and yet so fruitlessly—she whom I had never expected to behold again. There she stood, and as quick murmurs of amazement, of admiration, went up from all who beheld, her eyes swept around our circle and rested upon my face—yet hardly rested—for in them there was no brightening, no recognition. She looked at me as she looked at the others—as though she had never seen me before.
Now I remembered Masuka’s strange, dark, prophecy—how that the “she-eagle” should return, but that then the alligators should be fed. The King would remember the name as spoken by Tauane—and that, coupled with Nangeza’s accusation, ah—good night! Well, I cared not. I, like others, leaned eagerly forward as I crouched, straining my eyes to gaze upon the beauty of the sorceress. Yet even then, while her glance was not directly meeting mine, I seemed to read in her eyes an unspoken, yet none the less vividly-flashed, message—even as I had read the glance of old Masuka that dreadful day upon which I stood between the King’s assegai and doom. And the language I read in this glance was—“Caution!”
She was attired in the short, apron-like girdle of the Bakoni, ornamented with rich bead-work, and a light mantle of dressed fawn-skin similarly adorned hung from one shoulder. As when I saw her first, she wore upon her arms and neck bands of solid gold, after the manner of the richer of the Bakoni, and her hair was gathered up from the scalp into a high cone as the Zulu women wear it.
“Who art thou, my sister?” said the King, not choosing to show the astonishment which even he felt.
“I am of the Bakoni, Great Great One. I am called Lalusini,” she answered in purest Zulu.
“Of the Bakoni? Lalusini? Hau! That is no name ever brought forth of the twisted tongues of those chattering dogs. It is a full ripe Zulu name, born of the race of the Heavens,” returned the King. “Say now, Lalusini. What wert thou among the Bakoni dogs whom we have stamped flat? A prisoner?”
“Yea and nay, Black Black One. I was the Queen of their múti.”
“Ha! Yet another magician! It seems that all the magicians in the world find their way, or are brought here: first old Masuka, then the white man—now this one,” said Umzilikazi. “Ha, Untúswa—thou magician-finder! How is it thou didst not find this one—thou who didst find the rest?”
I only made murmur, for I guessed that the King was mocking me. And the moment was in truth a trial as he went on—
“Say now, Queen of the Bakoni múti. How didst thou escape death or capture when my children stamped flat thy people?”