“Do you not know me, Macumazahn?”

“Who calls?” I asked.  “Why, friend, your face is familiar to me.  How are you named?”

“Have you forgotten Saduko?” he said in a pained voice.

“No, no, of course not,” I answered.  “I know you now, although you seem somewhat changed since we went out hunting and fighting together—­I suppose because you are fatter.  I trust that you are well, Saduko?  Good-bye.  I must be going back to my wagons.  If you wish to see me you will find me there.”

These remarks, I may add, seemed to take Saduko very much aback.  At any rate, he found no reply to them, even when old Maputa, with whom I was walking, and some others sniggered aloud.  There is nothing that Zulus enjoy so much as seeing one whom they consider an upstart set in his place.

Well, a couple of hours afterwards, just as the sun was sinking, who should walk up to my wagons but Saduko himself, accompanied by a woman whom I recognised at once as his wife, the Princess Nandie, who carried a fine baby boy in her arms.  Rising, I saluted Nandie and offered her my camp-stool, which she looked at suspiciously and declined, preferring to seat herself on the ground after the native fashion.  So I took it back again, and after I had sat down on it, not before, stretched out my hand to Saduko, who by this time was quite humble and polite.

Well, we talked away, and by degrees, without seeming too much interested in them, I was furnished with a list of all the advancements which it had pleased Panda to heap upon Saduko during the past year.  In their way they were remarkable enough, for it was much as though some penniless country gentleman in England had been promoted in that short space of time to be one of the premier peers of the kingdom and endowed with great offices and estates.  When he had finished the count of them he paused, evidently waiting for me to congratulate him.  But all I said was: 

“By the Heavens above I am sorry for you, Saduko!  How many enemies you must have made!  What a long way there will be for you to fall one night!”—­a remark at which the quiet Nandie broke into a low laugh that I think pleased her husband even less than my sarcasm.  “Well,” I went on, “I see that you have got a baby, which is much better than all these titles.  May I look at it, Inkosazana?”

Of course she was delighted, and we proceeded to inspect the baby, which evidently she loved more than anything on earth.  Whilst we were examining the child and chatting about it, Saduko sitting by meanwhile in the sulks, who on earth should appear but Mameena and her fat and sullen-looking husband, the chief Masapo.

“Oh, Macumazahn,” she said, appearing to notice no one else, “how pleased I am to see you after a whole long year!”

I stared at her and my jaw dropped.  Then I recovered myself, thinking she must have made a mistake and meant to say “week.”