He paused and we stared at each other through the veil of fire. Then as I made no answer, he went on—
“Oh! I remember now, she was called Mameena, was she not, a name taken from the wailing of the wind? Hark! It is wailing now.”
I listened; it was, and I shivered to hear it, since but a minute before the night had been quite still. Yes, the wind moaned and wailed about the rocks of the Black Kloof.
“Well, enough of her. Why trouble about the dead when there are so many to be sent to join them? Macumazahn, the hour is at hand. The fool Cetewayo has quarrelled with your people, the English, and on my counsel. He has sent and killed women, or allowed others to do so, across the river in Natal. His messengers came to me asking what he should do. I answered, 'Shall a king of the blood of Chaka fear to allow his own wicked ones to be slain because they have stepped across a strip of water, and still call himself king of the Zulus?’ So those women were dragged back across the water and killed; and now the Queen’s man from the Cape asks many things, great fines of cattle, the giving up of the slayers, and that an end should be made of the Zulu army, which is to lay down its spears and set to hoeing like the old women in the kraals.”
“And if the king refuses, what then, Zikali?”
“Then, Macumazahn, the Queen’s man will declare war on the Zulus; already he gathers his soldiers for the war.”
“Will Cetewayo refuse, Zikali?”
“I do not know. His mind swings this way and that, like a pole balanced on a rock. The ends of the pole are weighted with much counsel, and it hangs so even that if a grasshopper lit on one end or the other, it would turn the scale.”
“And do you wish me to be that grasshopper, Zikali?”
“Who else? That is why I brought you to Zululand.”