“So you are here again, Macumazahn,” he said, “grown older, but still the same; here at the appointed hour.  What do you come to seek from the Opener of Roads?  Not Mameena as I think this time.  No, no, it is she who seeks you this time, Macumazahn.  She found you once, did she not?  Far away to the north among a strange people who worshipped an Ivory Child, a people of whom I knew in my youth, and afterwards, for was not their prophet, Harut, a friend of mine and one of our brotherhood?  She found you beneath the tusks of the elephant, Jana, whom Macumazahn the skilful could not hit.  Oh! do not look astonished.”

“How do you know?” I asked in my dream.

“Very simply, Macumazahn.  A little yellow man named Hans has been with me and told me all the story not an hour ago, after which I sent for Mameena to learn if it were true.  She will be glad to meet you, Macumazahn, she who has a hungry heart that does not forget.  Oh! don’t be afraid.  I mean here beneath the sun, in the land beyond there will be no need for her to meet you since she will dwell ever at your side.”

“Why do you lie to me, Zikali?” I seemed to ask.  “How can a dead man speak to you and how can I meet a woman who is dead?”

“Seek the answer to that question in the hour of the battle when the white men, your brothers, fall beneath assegai as weeds fall before the hoe—­or perhaps before it.  But have done with Mameena, since she who never grows more old can well afford to wait.  It is not of Mameena that you came to speak to me; it is of a fair white woman named Heddana you would speak, and of the man she loves, you, who will ever be mixing yourself up in affairs of others, and therefore must bear their burdens with no pay save that of honour.  Hearken, for the time is short.  When the storm bursts upon them bring hither the fair maiden, Heddana, and the white lord, Mauriti, and I will shelter them for your sake.  Take them nowhere else.  Bring them hither if they would escape trouble.  I shall be glad to see you, Macumazahn, for at last I am about to smite the Zulu House of Senzangacona, my foes, with a bladder full of blood, and oh! it stains their doorposts red.”

Then I woke up, feeling afraid, as one does after a nightmare, and was comforted to hear Anscombe sleeping quietly on the other side of the room.

“Mauriti.  Why did Zikali call him Mauriti?” I wondered drowsily to myself.  “Oh! of course his name is Maurice, and it was a Zulu corruption of a common sort as was Heddana of Heda.”  Then I dozed off again, and by the morning had forgotten all about my dream until it was brought back to me by subsequent events.  Still it was this and nothing else that put it into my head to fly to Zululand on an emergency that was to arise ere long.*

[*—­For the history of Zikali and Mameena see the book called Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard.]