These were seven-pounder Royal Artillery guns.
'I cannot,' replied Florian.
'Why?'
'Because I am not a gunner—neither am I a mechanic,' he replied, unwilling to perform this task for the service of the enemy.
'The king desires me to tell you that if you can do this, and teach his young men the way to handle these guns, he will give you a hundred head of oxen, a kraal by the Pongola River, where your people will never find you, and you will ever after be a great man among the Zulus.'
Again Florian protested his inability, assuring them that he knew nothing of artillery.
When questioned as to the strength of the three columns that entered Zululand, the king and all his indunas seemed incredulous as to their extreme weakness when compared to the vast forces they were to encounter, and when told that there were hundreds of thousands of red soldiers who could come from beyond the sea, they laughed aloud with unbelief, and Cetewayo said the more that came the more there would be to kill, and that when he had driven the last of the British and the last of the Boers into the salt sea together, he would divide all their lands among his warriors.
Cetewayo waved his hand, as much as to say the interview was over, and said something in a menacing tone to Cornelius Viljoen.
'You had better consider the king's wish,' said the latter to Florian; 'he tells me that if you do not obey him in the matter of the guns, you will be cut in small pieces with an assegai, joint by joint, beginning with the toes and finger-tips, so that you may be long, long of dying, and pray for death.'
For three successive days he was visited by the Dutchman, who repeated the king's request and threat, and, in pity perhaps for his youth, the speaker besought him to comply; but Florian was resolute.