This decision on the part of those stupid Zulus put us in an awkward fix, since it was impossible for us to carry over all our baggage and ammunition without help.  Therefore glad was I when before dawn on the fifth morning the nocturnal Hans crept into the wagon, in the after part of which Ragnall and I were sleeping, and informed us that he heard men’s voices on the farther side of the river, though how he could hear anything above that roar of water passed my comprehension.

At the first break of dawn again we climbed the tallest of the “Doctor” rocks and stared into the mist.  At length it rolled away and there on the farther side of the river I saw quite a hundred men who by their dress and spears I knew to be Mazitu.  They saw me also and raising a cheer, dashed into the water, groups of them holding each other round the middle to prevent their being swept away.  Thereupon our silly Zulus seized their spears and formed up upon the bank.  I slid down the steep side of the “Great Doctor” and ran forward, calling out that these were friends who came.

“Friends or foes,” answered their captain sullenly, “it is a pity that we should walk so far and not have a fight with those Mazitu dogs.”

Well, I drove them off to a distance, not knowing what might happen if the two peoples met, and then went down to the bank.  By now the Mazitu were near, and to my delight at the head of them I perceived no other than my old friend, their chief general, Babemba, a one-eyed man with whom Hans and I had shared many adventures.  Through the water he plunged with great bounds and reaching the shore, greeted me literally with rapture.

“O Macumazana,” he said, “little did I hope that ever again I should look upon your face.  Welcome to you, a thousand welcomes, and to you too, Light-in-Darkness, Lord-of-the-Fire, Cunning-one whose wit saved us in the battle of the Gate.  But where is Dogeetah, where is Wazeela, and where are the Mother and the Child of the Flower?”

“Far away across the Black Water, Babemba,” I answered.  “But here are two others in place of them,” and I introduced him to Ragnall and Savage by their native names of Igeza and Bena.

He contemplated them for a moment, then said: 

“This,” pointing to Ragnall, “is a great lord, but this,” pointing to Savage, who was much the better dressed of the two, “is a cock of the ashpit arrayed in an eagle’s feathers,” a remark I did not translate, but one which caused Hans to snigger vacuously.

While we breakfasted on food prepared by the “Cock of the Ashpit,” who amongst many other merits had that of being an excellent cook, I heard all the news.  Bausi the king was dead but had been succeeded by one of his sons, also named Bausi, whom I remembered.  Beza-Town had been rebuilt after the great fire that destroyed the slavers, and much more strongly fortified than before.  Of the slavers themselves nothing more had been seen, or of the Pongo either, though the Mazitu declared that their ghosts, or those of their victims, still haunted the island in the lake.  That was all, except the ill tidings as to two of our messengers which the third, who had returned with the Mazitu, reported to us.