As I expected, however, within about six feet of me they halted suddenly and stood there still as statues. For my part I went on lighting my pipe as though I did not see them and when at length I was obliged to lift my head, surveyed them with an air of mild interest.

Then I took a little book out of my pocket, it was my favourite copy of the Ingoldsby Legends—and began to read.

The passage which caught my eye, if “axe” be substituted for “knife” was not inappropriate. It was from “The Nurse’s Story,” and runs,

“But, oh! what a thing ‘tis to see and to know 

That the bare knife is raised in the hand of the foe, 

Without hope to repel or to ward off the blow!” 

This proceeding of mine astonished them a good deal who felt that they had, so to speak, missed fire. At last the soldier in the middle said,

“Are you blind, White Man?”

“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.

“Is he indeed? Then away with you back to him and tell this King of whom I have never heard, though I have a message for a certain Umslopogaas, that Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, intends to visit him to-morrow, if he will send a guide at the first light to show the best path for the waggon.”

“Hearken,” said the man to his companions, “this is Macumazahn himself and no other. Well, we thought it, for who else would have dared——”

Then they saluted with their axes, calling me “Chief” and other fine names, and departed as they had come, at a run, calling out that my message should be delivered and that doubtless Umslopogaas would send the guide.