“Again a good name, as to judge by the wounds on them, certain of those rebels I think are now telling each other in Hell. And this man, if indeed he be a man——” he added, looking doubtfully at Hans.
“Light-in-Darkness is his name.”
“I see, doubtless because his colour is that of the winter sun in thick fog, or a bad egg broken into milk. And the other white man who mutters and whose brow is like a storm?”
“He is called Avenger; you will learn why later on,” I answered impatiently, for I grew tired of this catechism, adding, “And what are you called and, if you are pleased to tell it to us, upon what errand do you visit us in so fortunate an hour?”
“I am named Billali,” he answered, “the servant and messenger of She-who-commands, and I was sent to save you and to bring you safely to her.”
“How can this be, Billali, seeing that none knew of our coming?”
“Yet She-who-commands knew,” he said with his benignant smile. “Indeed, I think that she learned of it some moons ago through a message that was sent to her and so arranged all things that you should be guided safely to her secret home; since otherwise how would you have passed a great pathless swamp with the loss, I think she said, of but one man whom a snake bit?”
Now I stared at the old fellow, for how could he know of the death of this man, but thought it useless to pursue the conversation further.
“When you are rested and ready,” he went on, “we will start. Meanwhile I leave you that I may prepare litters to carry those wounded men, and you also, Watcher-by-Night, if you wish.” Then with a dignified bow, for everything about this old fellow was stately, he turned and vanished into the kloof.
The next hour or so was occupied in the burial of the dead Zulus, a ceremony in which I took no part beyond standing up and raising my hat as they were borne away, for as I have said somewhere, it is best to leave natives alone on these occasions. Indeed, I lay down, reflecting that strangely enough there seemed to be something in old Zikali’s tale of a wonderful white Queen who lived in a mountain fastness, since there was the mountain as he had drawn it on the ashes, and the servants of that Queen who, apparently, had knowledge of our coming, appeared in the nick of time to rescue us from one of the tightest fixes in which ever I found myself.