“I have heard it,” he said with a sickly smile.

“And now you are about to learn whether the tale is true,” I added cheerfully.

Then he asked to see Umslopogaas alone.

I did not overhear their conversation, but the end of it was that Umslopogaas came and said in a loud voice so that no one could miss a single word, that as resistance was useless and he did not wish me, his friend, to be involved in any trouble, together with his men he had agreed to accompany this King’s captain to the royal kraal where he had been guaranteed a fair trial as to certain false charges which had been brought against him.  He added that the King’s captain had sworn upon the Great Medicine of the Opener-of-Roads to give him safe conduct and attempt no mischief against him which, as was well known throughout the land, was an oath that could not be broken by anyone who wished to continue to look upon the sun.

I asked the captain if these things were so, also speaking in a loud voice.  He replied, Yes, since his orders were to take Umslopogaas alive if he might.  He was only to kill him if he would not come.

Afterwards, while pretending to give him certain articles out of the waggon, I had a few private words with Umslopogaas, who told me that the arrangement was that he should be allowed to escape at night with his people.

“Be sure of this, Macumazahn,” he said, “that if I do not escape, neither will that captain, since I walk at his side and keep my axe, and at the first sign of treachery the axe will enter the house of that thick head of his and make friends with the brain inside.

“Macumazahn,” he added, “we have made a strange journey together and seen such things as I did not think the world had to show.  Also I have fought and killed Rezu in a mad battle of ghosts and men which alone was worth all the trouble of the journey.  Now it has come to an end as everything must, and we part, but as I believe, not for always.  I do not think that I shall die on this journey with the captain, though I do think that others will die at the end of it,” he added grimly, a saying which at the time I did not understand.

“It comes into my heart, Macumazahn, that in yonder land of witches and wizards, the spirit of prophecy got caught in my moocha and crept into my bowels.  Now that spirit tells me that we shall meet again in the after-years and stand together in a great fray which will be our last, as I believe that the White Witch said.  Or perhaps the spirit lives in Zikali’s Medicine which has gone down my throat and comes out of it in words.  I cannot say, but I pray that it is a true spirit, since although you are white and I am black and you are small and I am big, and you are gentle and cunning, whereas I am fierce and as open as the blade of my own axe, yet I love you as well, Macumazahn, as though we were born of the same mother and had been brought up in the same kraal.  Now that captain waits and grows doubtful of our talk, so farewell.  I will return the Great Medicine to Zikali, if I live, and if I die he must send one of the ghosts that serve him, to fetch it from among my bones.