“Only, Baas, that if we do not want to be killed in this place from which there is no escape, it is necessary that you should find out exactly on what day and at what hour Dogeetah is going to arrive.”
“Look here, you yellow idiot,” I exclaimed, “if you are beginning that game too, I’ll——” then I stopped, reflecting that my temper was getting the better of me and that I had better hear what Hans had to say before I vented it on him.
“Baas, Mavovo is a great doctor; it is said that his Snake is the straightest and the strongest in all Zululand save that of his master, Zikali, the old slave. He told you that Dogeetah was laid up somewhere with a hurt leg and that he was coming to meet you here; no doubt therefore he can tell you also when he is coming. I would ask him, but he won’t set his Snake to work for me. So you must ask him, Baas, and perhaps he will forget that you laughed at his magic and that he swore you would never see it again.”
“Oh! blind one,” I answered, “how do I know that Mavovo’s story about Dogeetah was not all nonsense?”
Hans stared at me amazed.
“Mavovo’s story nonsense! Mavovo’s Snake a liar! Oh! Baas, that is what comes of being too much a Christian. Now, thanks to your father the Predikant, I am a Christian too, but not so much that I have forgotten how to know good magic from bad. Mavovo’s Snake a liar, and after he whom we buried yonder was the first of the hunters whom the feathers named to him at Durban!” and he began to chuckle in intense amusement, then added, “Well, Baas, there it is. You must either ask Mavovo, and very nicely, or we shall all be killed. I don’t mind much, for I should rather like to begin again a little younger somewhere else, but just think what a noise Sammy will make!” and turning he crept out as he had crept in.
“Here’s a nice position,” I groaned to Stephen when he had gone. “I, a white man, who, in spite of some coincidences with which I am acquainted, know that all this Kaffir magic is bosh am to beg a savage to tell me something of which he must be ignorant. That is, unless we educated people have got hold of the wrong end of the stick altogether. It is humiliating; it isn’t Christian, and I’m hanged if I’ll do it!”
“I dare say you will be—hanged I mean—whether you do it or whether you don’t,” replied Stephen with his sweet smile. “But I say, old fellow, how do you know it is all bosh? We are told about lots of miracles which weren’t bosh, and if miracles ever existed, why can’t they exist now? But there, I know what you mean and it is no use arguing. Still, if you’re proud, I ain’t. I’ll try to soften the stony heart of Mavovo—we are rather pals, you know—and get him to unroll the book of his occult wisdom,” and he went.
A few minutes later I was called out to receive a sheep which, with milk, native beer, some corn, and other things, including green forage for the donkeys, Bausi had sent for us to eat. Here I may remark that while we were among the Mazitu we lived like fighting cocks. There was none of that starvation which is, or was, so common in East Africa where the traveller often cannot get food for love or money—generally because there is none.
When this business was settled by my sending a message of thanks to the king with an intimation that we hoped to wait upon him on the morrow with a few presents, I went to seek Sammy in order to tell him to kill and cook the sheep. After some search I found, or rather heard him beyond a reed fence which divided two of the huts. He was acting as interpreter between Stephen Somers and Mavovo.