Then, like one who wished to answer no questions, Nombe turned and went back to the cart, where she began to talk indifferently with Heda, for as soon as we entered the kloof her servants had drawn back the curtains and let fall the blanket.  As for me, I groaned, for of course I knew that Zikali, who was well acquainted with the appearance of Mameena, had instructed Nombe to say all this to me in order to impress my mind for some reason of his own.  Yet he had done it cleverly, for such words as those Mameena might well have uttered could her great spirit have need to walk the earth again.  Was such a thing possible, I wondered?  No, it was not possible, yet it was true that her atmosphere seemed to cling about this place and that my imagination, excited by memory and Nombe’s suggestions, seemed to apprehend her presence.

As I reflected the horse advanced round the little bend in the ever-narrowing cliffs, and there in front of me, under the gigantic mass of overhanging rock, appeared the kraal of Zikali surrounded by its reed fence.  The gate of the fence was open, and beyond it, on his stool in front of the large hut, sat Zikali.  Even at that distance it was impossible to mistake his figure, which was like no other that I had known in the world.  A broad-shouldered dwarf with a huge head, deep, sunken eyes and snowy hair that hung upon his shoulders; the whole frame and face pervaded with an air of great antiquity, and yet owing to the plumpness of the flesh and that freshness of skin which is sometimes seen in the aged, comparatively young-looking.

Such was the great wizard Zikali, known throughout the land for longer than any living man could remember as “Opener of Roads,” a title that referred to his powers of spiritual vision, also as the “Thing-that-should-never-have-been-born,” a name given to him by Chaka, the first and greatest of the Zulu kings, because of his deformity.

There he sat silent, impassive, staring open-eyed at the red ball of the setting sun, looking more like some unshapely statue than a man.  His silent, fierce-faced servants appeared.  To me they looked like the same men whom I had seen here three and twenty years before, only grown older.  Indeed, I think they were, for they greeted me by name and saluted by raising their broad spears.  I dismounted and waited while Anscombe, whose foot was now quite well again, helped Heda from the cart which was led away by the servants.  Anscombe, who seemed a little oppressed, remarked that this was a strange place.

“Yes,” said Heda, “but it is magnificent.  I like it.”

Then her eye fell upon Zikali seated before the hut and she turned pale.

“Oh! what a terrible-looking man,” she murmured, “if he is a man.”

The maid Kaatje saw him also and uttered a little cry.

“Don’t be frightened, dear,” said Anscombe, “he is only an old dwarf.”

“I suppose so,” she exclaimed doubtfully, “but to me he is like the devil.”