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"Your Spirit is stronger than mine. Did not Zikali foretell it? Kill, Saduko." "Nay," answered Saduko. "If you are weary I am weary, too, and wounded as well. Take a spear, Bangu, and we will fight." So they fought there in the moonlight, man to man; fought fiercely while all watched, till presently I saw Bangu throw his arms wide and fall backwards. Saduko was avenged.
Some of them would have let me go, but just then Bangu came up and saw the dead man, who was his brother. "'Wow! he said when he knew how the man had died. 'This lion's cub is a wizard also, for how else could he have killed a soldier who has known war? Hold out his arms that I may finish him slowly. "So two of them held out my arms, and Bangu came up with his spear."
"I never knew before that Macumazahn was a man who broke a promise to his friend." "Would you be so kind as to explain your meaning, Saduko?" "Is it needful?" he answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Unless my ears played me tricks, you agreed to go up with me against Bangu.
"'What will happen to me, Wizard, if I spare the boy? asked Bangu. "Zikali stretched out his hand and touched the scratch that the assegai had made in me here. Then he held up his finger red with my blood, and looked at it in the light of the moon; yes, and tasted it with his tongue. "'I think this will happen to you, Bangu, he said.
I wished further to find out if he was a common humbug, like so many witch-doctors, this dwarf who announced that my fortunes were mixed up with those of his foster-son, and who at least could tell me something true or false about the history and position of Bangu, a person for whom I had conceived a strong dislike, possibly quite unjustified by the facts.
Why, that would be murder. How can you ask me such a thing? But I have killed several to win cattle," I reflected aloud, remembering my expedition with Saduko against the chief Bangu, and some other incidents in my career. "I appreciate the difference, Quatermain. If you kill for cows, it is justifiable homicide; if you kill for women, it is murder."
I have seen many such; one at the kraal of your grandmother, for instance your grandmother the great Inkosikazi, when myself I escaped with my life because I was so old; but never do I remember a merrier than that which this moon shines on, and he pointed to the White Lady who just then broke through the clouds. "'I kill the wizard's cub, Zikali, that is all, answered Bangu.
Soon we saw that so far, at any rate, Fortune was playing into our hands, since herd after herd of kine were driven into the valley during the afternoon and enclosed in the stock-kraals. Doubtless Bangu intended on the morrow to make his half-yearly inspection of all the cattle of the tribe, many of which were herded at a distance from his town.
"Therefore," went on Panda, "for this reason, and for others, I am glad that Bangu has been punished, and that, although vengeance has crawled after him like a footsore bull, at length he has been tossed with its horns and crushed with its knees." "Yebo, Ngonyama!"
So I spoke a word in the ear of Saduko, saying, 'He is yours, if you can kill him; and his cattle are yours. Well, Saduko is not dull. With the help of this white man, Macumazahn, our friend from of old, he has killed Bangu and taken his cattle, and already my foot is beginning to heal." "We have heard it," said Cetewayo. "It was a great deed," added Umbelazi, a more generous critic.
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