As I was being conducted back to the Boer camp by Kambula, who was waiting for me outside the gate of the labyrinth which is called isiklohlo, I met Thomas Halstead, who was lounging about, I think in order to speak with me. Halting, I asked him straight out what the king’s intentions were towards the Boers.
“Don’t know,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders, “but he seems so sweet on them that I think he must be up to mischief. He is wonderfully fond of you, too, for I heard him give orders that the word was to be passed through all the regiments that if anyone so much as hurt you, he should be killed at once. Also, you were pointed out to the soldiers when you rode in with the rest, that they might all of them know you.”
“That’s good for me as far as it goes,” I replied. “But I don’t know why I should need special protection above others, unless there is someone who wants to harm me.”
“There is that, Allan Quatermain. The indunas tell me that the good-looking Portugee, whom they call ‘Two-faces,’ asks the king to kill you every time he sees him. Indeed, I’ve heard him myself.”
“That’s kind of him,” I answered, “but, then, Hernan Pereira and I never got on. Tell me what is he talking about to the king when he isn’t asking him to kill me.”
“Don’t know,” he said again. “Something dirty, I’ll be bound. One may be sure of that by the native name they have given him. I think, however,” he added in a whisper, “that he has had a lot to do with the Boers being allowed to come here at all in order to get their treaty signed. At least, one day when I was interpreting and Dingaan swore that he would not give them more land than was enough to bury them in, Pereira told him that it didn’t matter what he signed, as ‘what was written with the pen could be scratched out with the spear.’”
“Indeed! And what did the king say to that?”
“Oh! he laughed and said it was true, and that he would give the Boer commission all their people wanted and something over for themselves. But don’t you repeat that, Quatermain, for if you do, and it gets to the ear of Dingaan, I shall certainly be killed. And, I say, you’re a good fellow, and I won a big bet on you over that vulture shooting, so I will give you a bit of advice, which you will be wise to take. You get out of this country as soon as you can, and go to look after that pretty Miss Marais, whom you are sweet on. Dingaan wants her, and what Dingaan wants he gets in this part of the world.”
Then, without waiting to be thanked, he turned and disappeared among a crowd of Zulus, who were following us from curiosity, leaving me wondering whether or no Dingaan was right when he called this young man a liar. His story seemed to tally so well with that told by the king himself, that on the whole I thought he was not.
Just after I had passed the main gateway of the great town, where, his office done, Kambula saluted and left me, I saw two white men engaged in earnest conversation beneath one of the milk trees which, as I think I have already mentioned, grow, or grew, there. They were Henri Marais and his nephew. Catching sight of me, Marais walked off, but Pereira advanced and spoke to me, although, warned perhaps by what had happened to him in the case of Retief, I am glad to say he did not offer me his hand.