“Not so, O Zikali. Who would wish to do hurt to the wisest and most ancient man in all the land, to him who touches the far past with one hand and the present with the other, to him who was old before our grandfathers began to be? Nay, you are safe, you on whom not even the ‘Black One’ dared to lay a finger, although you were his enemy and he hated you. As for the reason why you have been brought here, tell it to us, O Zikali. Who are we that we should instruct you in the ways of wisdom?”
When the dwarf heard this he broke into one of his great laughs.
“So at last the House of Senzangakona acknowledges that I have wisdom. Then before all is done they will think me wise indeed.”
He laughed again in his ill-omened fashion and went on hurriedly, as though he feared that he should be called upon to explain his words:
“Where is the fee? Where is the fee? Is the King so poor that he expects an old Dwandwe doctor to divine for nothing, just as though he were working for a private friend?”
Panda made a motion with his hand, and ten fine heifers were driven into the circle from some place where they had been kept in waiting.
“Sorry beasts!” said Zikali contemptuously, “compared to those we used to breed before the time of Senzangakona”–a remark which caused a loud “Wow!” of astonishment to be uttered by the multitude that heard it. “Still, such as they are, let them be taken to my kraal, with a bull, for I have none.”
The cattle were driven away, and the ancient dwarf squatted himself down and stared at the ground, looking like a great black toad. For a long while–quite ten minutes, I should think–he stared thus, till I, for one, watching him intently, began to feel as though I were mesmerised.
At length he looked up, tossing back his grey locks, and said:
“I see many things in the dust. Oh, yes, it is alive, it is alive, and tells me many things. Show that you are alive, O Dust. Look!”
As he spoke, throwing his hands upwards, there arose at his very feet one of those tiny and incomprehensible whirlwinds with which all who know South Africa will be familiar. It drove the dust together; it lifted it in a tall, spiral column that rose and rose to a height of fifty feet or more. Then it died away as suddenly as it had come, so that the dust fell down again over Zikali, over the King, and over three of his sons who sat behind him. Those three sons, I remember, were named Tshonkweni, Dabulesinye, and Mantantashiya. As it chanced, by a strange coincidence all of these were killed at the great battle of the Tugela of which I have to tell.
Now again an exclamation of fear and wonder rose from the audience, who set down this lifting of the dust at Zikali’s very feet not to natural causes, but to the power of his magic. Moreover, those on whom it had fallen, including the King, rose hurriedly and shook and brushed it from their persons with a zeal that was not, I think, inspired by a mere desire for cleanliness. But Zikali only laughed again in his terrible fashion and let it lie on his fresh-oiled body, which it turned to the dull, dead hue of a grey adder.
He rose and, stepping here and there, examined the new-fallen dust. Then he put his hand into a pouch he wore and produced from it a dried human finger, whereof the nail was so pink that I think it must have been coloured–a sight at which the circle shuddered.
“Be clever,” he said, “O Finger of her I loved best; be clever and write in the dust as yonder Macumazana can write, and as some of the Dwandwe used to write before we became slaves and bowed ourselves down before the Great Heavens.” (By this he meant the Zulus, whose name means the Heavens.) “Be clever, dear Finger which caressed me once, me, the ‘Thing-that-should-not-have-been-born,’ as more will think before I die, and write those matters that it pleases the House of Senzangakona to know this day.”