“I see,” said Saduko, eyeing the strangers.  “But which of these may be the great man?  I ask that I may salute him.”

“You know well enough, umfokazana” (that is, low fellow), exclaimed Masapo angrily.

“I know that if you were outside this fence, Masapo, I would cram that word down your throat at the point of my assegai,” replied Saduko in a fierce voice.  “Oh, I can guess your business here, Masapo, and you can guess mine,” and he glanced towards Mameena.  “Tell me, Umbezi, is this little chief of the Amansomi your daughter’s accepted suitor?”

“Nay, nay, Saduko,” said Umbezi; “no one is her accepted suitor.  Will you not sit down and take food with us?  Tell us where you have been, and why you return here thus suddenly, and—­uninvited?”

“I return here, O Umbezi, to speak with the white chief, Macumazahn.  As to where I have been, that is my affair, and not yours or Masapo’s.”

“Now, if I were chief of this kraal,” said Masapo, “I would hunt out of it this hyena with a mangy coat and without a hole who comes to devour your meat and, perhaps,” he added with meaning, “to steal away your child.”

“Did I not tell you, Macumazahn, that when two bucks met they would fight?” whispered Mameena suavely into my ear.

“Yes, Mameena, you did—­or rather I told you.  But you did not tell me what the doe would do.”

“The doe, Macumazahn, will crouch in her form and see what happens—­as is the fashion of does,” and again she laughed softly.

“Why not do your own hunting, Masapo?” asked Saduko.  “Come, now, I will promise you good sport.  Outside this kraal there are other hyenas waiting who call me chief—­a hundred or two of them—­assembled for a certain purpose by the royal leave of King Panda, whose House, as we all know, you hate.  Come, leave that beef and beer and begin your hunting of hyenas, O Masapo.”

Now Masapo sat silent, for he saw that he who thought to snare a baboon had caught a tiger.

“You do not speak, O Chief of the little Amansomi,” went on Saduko, who was beside himself with rage and jealousy.  “You will not leave your beef and beer to hunt the hyenas who are captained by an umfokazana!  Well, then, the umfokazana will speak,” and, stepping up to Masapo, with the spear he carried poised in his right hand, Saduko grasped his rival’s short beard with his left.

“Listen, Chief,” he said.  “You and I are enemies.  You seek the woman I seek, and, mayhap, being rich, you will buy her.  But if so, I tell you that I will kill you and all your House, you sneaking, half-bred dog!”

With these fierce words he spat in his face and tumbled him backwards.  Then, before anyone could stop him, for Umbezi, and even Masapo’s headmen, seemed paralysed with surprise, he stalked through the kraal gate, saying as he passed me: 

“Inkoosi, I have words for you when you are at liberty.”