The toad-like creature on the platform swayed its great head slowly as a tortoise does, and contemplated us with its flaming eyes.  At length it spoke in a thick, guttural voice, using the tongue that seemed to be common to this part of Africa and indeed to that branch of the Bantu people to which the Zulus belong, but, as I thought, with a foreign accent.

“So you are the white men come back,” it said slowly.  “Let me count!” and lifting one skinny hand from the ground, it pointed with the forefinger and counted.  “One.  Tall, with a white beard.  Yes, that is right.  Two.  Short, nimble like a monkey, with hair that wants no comb; clever, too, like a father of monkeys.  Yes, that is right.  Three.  Smooth-faced, young and stupid, like a fat baby that laughs at the sky because he is full of milk, and thinks that the sky is laughing at him.  Yes, that is right.  All three of you are just the same as you used to be.  Do you remember, White Beard, how, while we killed you, you said prayers to One Who sits above the world, and held up a cross of bone to which a man was tied who wore a cap of thorns?  Do you remember how you kissed the man with the cap of thorns as the spear went into you?  You shake your head—­oh! you are a clever liar, but I will show you that you are a liar, for I have the thing yet,” and snatching up a horn which lay on the kaross beneath him, he blew.

As the peculiar, wailing note that the horn made died away, a woman dashed out of one of the doorways that I have described and flung herself on her knees before him.  He muttered something to her and she dashed back again to re-appear in an instant holding in her hand a yellow ivory crucifix.

“Here it is, here it is,” he said.  “Take it, White Beard, and kiss it once more, perhaps for the last time,” and he threw the crucifix to Brother John, who caught it and stared at it amazed.  “And do you remember, Fat Baby, how we caught you?  You fought well, very well, but we killed you at last, and you were good, very good; we got much strength from you.

“And do you remember, Father of Monkeys, how you escaped from us by your cleverness?  I wonder where you went to and how you died.  I shall not forget you, for you gave me this,” and he pointed to a big white scar upon his shoulder.  “You would have killed me, but the stuff in that iron tube of yours burned slowly when you held the fire to it, so that I had time to jump aside and the iron ball did not strike me in the heart as you meant that it should.  Yet, it is still here; oh! yes, I carry it with me to this day, and now that I have grown thin I can feel it with my finger.”