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"I won't go, Nada," he cried, trying to laugh. "I promise cross my heart and hope to die! I won't go until you tell me I can." And then, feeling that something had almost gone wrong for a moment, Peter yipped from his nest in the bunk, and the gladness in Nada's eyes thanked Jolly Roger for his promise when he came back with the coffee pot.
In all the world there were but two people whom he loved these were I, Mopo, who was called his father, and Nada, she who was said to be his twin sister. Now it must be told of Nada that as the boy Umslopogaas was the strongest and bravest of children, so the girl Nada was the gentlest and most fair.
Was it possible she had followed him after his flight, determined to find him, and share his fate? His heart pounded. Who else, of all the women in the world, could be following his trail across the Barrens a thousand miles from civilization? He began to shout her name. "Nada Nada Nada!" And hidden in the gloom at his side Peter barked. Storm and darkness swallowed them.
Peter, in his dog way, fell a-wondering as he stood there, but kept his manners and remained still. When it was all over he felt a desire to show his teeth and growl, for when Father John had kissed Nada, and was shaking Jolly Roger's hand, he saw his mistress crying in that strange, silent way he had so often seen her crying in his puppyhood days.
But the boy loved roaming like a fox, and where he went there Nada followed. So it came about that one day they slipped from the kraal when the gates were open, and sought out a certain deep glen which had an evil name, for it was said that spirits haunted it and put those to death who entered there.
"Got you both now, haven't I?" he gloated. "Can't get away, can you?" He put his gun away, and bowed low to Nada. "How do you like married life, Mrs. Jolly Roger?" McKay's face was whiter than Nada's. "You coward!" he spoke in a low, quiet voice. "You low-down miserable coward. You're a disgrace to the Service. Do you mean you are going to keep my wife ironed like this?" "Sure," said Breault.
But Jolly Roger saw the look, and the growing pallor, and had noted them for two weeks past. And later that afternoon, when Nada returned to Cragg's Ridge, and he re-crossed the stream with Peter, there was a hard and terrible look in his eyes which Peter had caught there more and more frequently of late. And that evening, in the twilight of their cabin, Jolly Roger said,
The Lily was none other than Nada; and how could Umslopogaas give Nada, whom he thought his sister, and who was my daughter, to Dingaan against her will? Also, because of Nada, Dingaan and Umslopogaas were now at bitter enmity, and for this same cause I was disgraced and a fugitive, and my counsels would no longer be heard in the ear of the king.
But for youth, the glorious youth of Roger and Nada, it would seem very short when in later years they looked back upon it.
Therefore I tell of them before they began to change. Now, although I take it out of its strict chronological order, the first of these histories that I wish to preserve is in the main that of an extremely beautiful woman with the exception of a certain Nada, called "the Lily," of whom I hope to speak some day, I think the most beautiful that ever lived among the Zulus.
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