“I think that I will let you go as I can trust you, Gaasha,” said Ralph, “but tell me the name of your home, that I may know where to send to seek you if you should not come back as you promise.”

“Have I not said that I will come back, Baas, unless the lions or the Zulus should eat me on the way?  But the name of the house of my tribe is Umpondwana.  It is only a little tribe, for the Zulus killed many of us in the time of Chaka, but their house is a very fine house.”

“What does Umpondwana mean?” asked Ralph idly as he lit his pipe.

“It means the Mountain of the Man’s Hand, Baas.”

Ralph let his pipe fall to the ground, and I saw his face turn white beneath the sunburn, while of a sudden his grey eyes looked as though they were about to leap from their sockets.

“Why is it called the Mountain of the Man’s Hand?” he asked in a hollow voice.  “Speak quick now, and do not lie to me.”

Gaasha looked up at him astonished.  “How should I know, Baas, when the place was named so before I was born, and none have told me?  But I think that it may be because upon one of the slopes of the mountain, which has great cliffs of red rock, are five ridges, which, seen from the plain below, look like the four fingers and thumb of a man.  Also the place has another name, which means ‘where the water springs out of the rock,’ because from between two of the ridges, those that are like the thumb and first finger, flows a stream which comes from the heart of the mountain.”

“On which side of the mountain are the ridges and the stream?” asked Ralph in the same unnatural voice.

“Baas, when the sun rises it strikes on them.”

Now Ralph swung to and fro like a drunken man, and had I not put my arm about him I believe that he would have fallen.

“It is the mountain of my vision,” he gasped.

“Be not foolish,” I answered, for I feared lest when he found that all this strange resemblance was a chance, the bitterness of his disappointment might overwhelm him.  “Be not foolish, son; are there not many hills in this great land with ridges on their flanks, and streams of water running down them?”

Then, as Ralph seemed unable to answer me, I asked of Gaasha: 

“Who is the chief of this tribe of yours?”

“He is named Koraanu,” he answered, “if he still lives, but a man I met some months ago told me that he has been dead these two years, and that she who used to rule us when I was a little child had come back from the lands whither she had wandered, and is now Inkoosikaas of the Umpondwana.”

“What is the name of this chieftainess?” I asked in the midst of a great silence.

Gaasha answered at once; that is, after he had taken a pinch of snuff, but to us it seemed a year before the words crossed his lips.

“Her name, lady,” and he sneezed, “is”—­and he sneezed again, rocking himself to and fro.  Then slowly wiping away the tears which the snuff had brought to his eyes with the back of his hand he said, “Ow! this is the best of snuff, and I thank the Baas for giving it to me.”