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"It is, it is so!" came the deep, unanimous answer, that caused the stirless leaves to shake in the still air. "I understand, O Tshoza, brother of Matiwane and uncle of Saduko the chief," I replied. "But Bangu is a strong man, living, I am told, in a strong place.
"Tshoza, Inkoosi," answered the man. "Tshoza! Tshoza!" I said, for the name seemed familiar to me. "Who is Tshoza?" He came from Zululand some years ago with Saduko the Mad." Then, of course, I remembered at once, and my mind flew back to the night when old Tshoza, the brother of Matiwane, Saduko's father, had cut out the cattle of the Bangu and we had fought the battle in the pass. "Oh!"
"No friends," I answered, "I am not mad, but neither am I bad. I accompanied Saduko on this raid because he is dear to me and stood by me once in the hour of danger. But I do not love killing men with whom I have no quarrel, and I will not take the price of blood." "Wow!" said old Tshoza again, for Saduko seemed too astonished to speak, "he is a spirit, not a man. He is holy!"
As the eighth was taken I turned to Saduko and said: "There, that will do. These oxen I must have to replace those in my teams which died on the trek, but I want no more." "Wow!" said Saduko, and all those who stood with him, while one of them added I think it was old Tshoza: "He refuses six hundred cattle which are fairly his! He must be mad!"
His wisdom taught me how to snare the Amakoba, after they were decoyed from their mountain, and it was Tshoza, my uncle, who loosed the cattle from the kraals. I say that I did nothing, except to strike a blow or two with a spear when I must, just as a baboon throws stones at those who would steal its young." "I am glad to see that you are no boaster, Saduko," said Panda.
The rest I give to Tshoza and to the other men of the Amangwane who fought with us, to be divided among them in such proportions as they may agree, I being the judge in the event of any quarrel arising." Now these men raised a great cry of "Inkoosi!" and, running up, old Tshoza seized my hand and kissed it. "Your heart is big," he cried; "you drop fatness!
He is in the next hut, and dying!" "Dying! What of, Tshoza?" "I don't know," he answered mysteriously; "but I think he must be bewitched. For a long while, a year or more, he has eaten little and cannot bear to be alone in the dark; indeed, ever since he left Zululand he has been very strange and moody."
Of the latter, indeed, we got rid after a while, for, except those which I had given to my men, and a hundred or so of the best beasts that Saduko took with him for a certain purpose, they were sent away to a place which he had chosen, in charge of about half of his people, under the command of his uncle, Tshoza, there to await his coming.
But the old Amangwane, Tshoza, brother of the dead Matiwane, said: "No, Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, is wise. Why should we waste our strength on stone walls, of which none know the number or can find the gates in the darkness, and thereby leave our skulls to be set up as ornaments on the fences of the accursed Amakoba?
These men were placed under the command of Tshoza, for he was the most experienced of the Amangwane, and led by the three guides who had dwelt among the Amakoba, and who "knew every ant-heap in the land," or so they swore.
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