“But this girl thou didst not kill, O King, for I saved her.”
“It is so, White One. I have heard lately how thou didst call down the lightning and burn up my soldier who followed after her, so that nothing of him remained.”
“Yes,” said Rachel quietly, “as, were it to please me, I could burn thee up also, O King,” a saying at which. Dingaan looked afraid.
“Yet,” he went on, waving his hand as though to put aside this unpleasant suggestion, “the maid is mine, not thine, and therefore I took her.”
“How didst thou learn that she dwelt at my kraal?” asked Rachel.
The King hesitated.
“The white man, Ishmael, he whom thou callest Ibubesi, told thee, did he not?”
Dingaan bowed his head.
“And he told thee that thou couldst make what promises thou wouldst to me as to the girl’s life, but that afterwards when thou hadst called me here to claim it, thou mightest kill her or keep her as a wife, as it pleased thee.”
“I can hide nought from thee; it is so,” said Dingaan.