“If so, you have paid back their hate, Zikali, but cease to cast round the lion, like a timid hound, and tell me what you mean.  Of whom do you speak?”

“That is the trouble, Macumazahn.  I do not know.  This lion, or rather lioness, lies hid in the caves of a very distant mountain and I have never seen her—­in the flesh.”

“Then how can you talk of what you have never seen?”

“In the same way, Macumazahn, that your priests talk of what they have never seen, because they, or a few of them, have knowledge of it.  I will tell you a secret.  All seers who live at the same time, if they are great, commune with each other because they are akin and their spirits meet in sleep or dreams.  Therefore I know of a mistress of our craft, a very lioness among jackals, who for thousands of years has lain sleeping in the northern caves and, humble though I am, she knows of me.”

“Quite so,” I said, yawning, “but perhaps, Zikali, you will come to the point of the spear.  What of her?  How is she named, and if she exists will she help me?”

“I will answer your question backwards, Macumazahn.  I think that she will help you if you help her, in what way I do not know, because although witch-doctors sometimes work without pay, as I am doing now, Macumazahn, witch-doctoresses never do.  As for her name, the only one that she has among our company is ‘Queen,’ because she is the first of all of them and the most beauteous among women.  For the rest I can tell you nothing, except that she has always been and I suppose, in this shape or in that, will always be while the world lasts, because she has found the secret of life unending.”

“You mean that she is immortal, Zikali,” I answered with a smile.

“I do not say that, Macumazahn, because my little mind cannot shape the thought of immortality.  But when I was a babe, which is far ago, she had lived so long that scarce would she knew the difference between then and now, and already in her breast was all wisdom gathered.  I know it, because although, as I have said, we have never seen each other, at times we walk together in our sleep, for thus she shares her loneliness, and I think, though this may be but a dream, that last night she told me to send you on to her to seek an answer to certain questions which you would put to me to-day.  Also to me she seemed to desire that you should do her a service; I know not what service.”

Now I grew angry and asked,

“Why does it please you to fool me, Zikali, with such talk as this?  If there is any truth in it, show me where the woman called Queen lives and how I am to come to her.”

The old wizard took up the little assegai which he had offered to me and with its blade raked our ashes from the fire that always burnt in front of him.  While he did so, he talked to me, as I thought in a random fashion, perhaps to distract my attention, of a certain white man whom he said I should meet upon my journey and of his affairs, also of other matters, none of which interested me much at the time.  These ashes he patted down flat and then on them drew a map with the point of his spear, making grooves for streams, certain marks for bush and forest, wavy lines for water and swamps and little heaps for hills.