Well, that was the first I heard of Mameena.

That night as I sat smoking my pipe under the flap lean-to attached to the wagon, laughing to myself over the adventure of “the Old Cow,” falsely described as “worn out,” and wondering whether Umbezi had got the honey out of his hair, the canvas was lifted, and a Kafir wrapped in a kaross crept in and squatted before me.

“Who are you?” I asked, for it was too dark to see the man’s face.

“Inkoosi,” answered a deep voice, “I am Saduko.”

“You are welcome,” I answered, handing him a little gourd of snuff in token of hospitality.  Then I waited while he poured some of the snuff into the palm of his hand and took it in the usual fashion.

“Inkoosi,” he said, when he had scraped away the tears produced by the snuff, “I have come to ask you a favour.  You heard Umbezi say to-day that he will not give me his daughter, Mameena, unless I give him a hundred head of cows.  Now, I have not got the cattle, and I cannot earn them by work in many years.  Therefore I must take them from a certain tribe I know which is at war with the Zulus.  But this I cannot do unless I have a gun.  If I had a good gun, Inkoosi—­one that only goes off when it is asked, and not of its own fancy, I who have some name could persuade a number of men whom I know, who once were servants of my father, or their sons, to be my companions in this venture.”

“Do I understand that you wish me to give you one of my good guns with two mouths to it (i.e. double-barrelled), a gun worth at least twelve oxen, for nothing, O Saduko?” I asked in a cold and scandalised voice.

“Not so, O Watcher-by-Night,” he answered; “not so, O He-who-sleeps-with-one-eye-open” (another free and difficult rendering of my native name, Macumazahn, or more correctly, Macumazana)—­“I should never dream of offering such an insult to your high-born intelligence.”  He paused and took another pinch of snuff, then went on in a meditative voice:  “Where I propose to get those hundred cattle there are many more; I am told not less than a thousand head in all.  Now, Inkoosi,” he added, looking at me sideways, “suppose you gave me the gun I ask for, and suppose you accompanied me with your own gun and your armed hunters, it would be fair that you should have half the cattle, would it not?”

“That’s cool,” I said.  “So, young man, you want to turn me into a cow-thief and get my throat cut by Panda for breaking the peace of his country?”

“Neither, Macumazahn, for these are my own cattle.  Listen, now, and I will tell you a story.  You have heard of Matiwane, the chief of the Amangwane?”

“Yes,” I answered.  “His tribe lived near the head of the Umzinyati, did they not?  Then they were beaten by the Boers or the English, and Matiwane came under the Zulus.  But afterwards Dingaan wiped him out, with his House, and now his people are killed or scattered.”