“No, Black Fellow,” I answered, “but I am short-sighted. Would you be so good as to stand out of my light?” a remark which puzzled them so much that all three drew back a few paces.
When I had read a little further I came to the following lines,
“‘Tis plain,
As anatomists tell us, that never again,
Shall life revisit the foully slain
When once they’ve been cut through the jugular vein.”
In my circumstances at that moment this statement seemed altogether too suggestive, so I shut up the book and remarked,
“If you are wanderers who want food, as I judge by your being so thin, I am sorry that I have little meat, but my servants will give you what they can.”
“Ow!” said the spokesman, “he calls us wanderers! Either he must be a very great man or he is mad.”
“You are right. I am a great man,” I answered, yawning, “and if you trouble me too much you will see that I can be mad also. Now what do you want?”
“We are messengers from the great Chief Umslopogaas, Captain of the People of the Axe, and we want tribute,” answered the man in a somewhat changed tone.
“Do you? Then you won’t get it. I thought that only the King of Zululand had a right to tribute, and your Captain’s name is not Cetywayo, is it?”
“Our Captain is King here,” said the man still more uncertainly.