“I am not afraid,” he answered, setting his teeth, “because I know that whatever your heart may desire, my will follows you, and while I live that is a cord you cannot break unless I choose to loose it, Noma.  I command you to be faithful to me and to return to me, and these commands you must obey.  Hearken:  you taunted me just now, saying that I sat like a dotard in the sun and advanced you nothing.  Well, I will advance you, for both our sakes, but mostly for your own, since you desire it, and it must be done through the Prince Hafela.  I cannot leave this kraal, for day and night I am watched, and before I had gone an hour’s journey I should be seized; also here I have work to do.  But the Place of Purification is secret, and when you reach it you need not bide there, you can travel on into the mountains till you come to the town of the Prince Hafela.  He will receive you gladly, and you shall whisper this message in his ear:—­

“’These are the words of Hokosa, my husband, which he has set in my mouth to deliver to you, O Prince.  Be guided by them and grow great; reject them and die a wanderer, a little man of no account.  But first, this is the price that you shall swear by the sacred oath to pay to Hokosa, if his wisdom finds favour in your sight and through it you come to victory:  That after you, the king, he, Hokosa, shall be the first man in our land, the general of the armies, the captain of the council, the head of the doctors, and that to him shall be given half the cattle of Nodwengo, who now is king.  Also to him shall be given power to stamp out the new faith which overruns the land like a foreign weed, and to deal as he thinks fit with those who cling thereto.’

“Now, Noma, when he has sworn this oath in your ear, calling down ruin upon his own head, should he break one word of it, and not before, you shall continue the message thus:  ’These are the other words that Hokosa set in my mouth:  “Know, O Prince, that the king, your brother, grows very strong, for he is a great soldier, who learned his art in bygone wars; also the white man that is named Messenger has taught him many things as to the building of forts and walls and the drilling and discipline of men.  So strong is he that you can scarcely hope to conquer him in open war—­yet snakes may crawl where men cannot walk.  Therefore, Prince, let your part be that of a snake.  Do you send an embassy to the king, your brother and say to him:—­

“’My brother, you have been preferred before me and set up to be king in my place, and because of this my heart is bitter, so bitter that I have gathered my strength to make war upon you.  Yet, at the last, I have taken another council, bethinking me that, if we fight, in the end it may chance that neither of us will be left alive to rule, and that the people also will be brought to nothing.  To the north there lies a good country and a wide, where but few men live, and thither I would go, setting the mountains and the river between us; for there,