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Updated: June 24, 2025
There he stood, rolling his eyes and hugging his kaross around him because of the cold, and something in his anxious, indeterminate expression told me at once that he knew himself to be a man in terrible danger.
I gave him a pannikin of water and he drank, then he went on: "Already the spear had begun to prick look, here is the mark of it" and opening his kaross he pointed to a little white line just below the breast-bone "when a strange shadow thrown by the fire of the burning huts came between Bangu and me, a shadow as that of a toad standing on its hind legs.
"Yonder, under the kaross," answered John, pointing to a skin rug which lay in the corner. "Have you killed it?" "No, Messenger," answered the man, "I dare not. Alas! we must live with the thing here in the hut till it chooses to go away." "Truly," said Owen, "I am ashamed to think that you who are a Christian should still believe so horrible a superstition.
About half-past ten o'clock that night I was sitting in my wagon, reading by the light of the all but full moon for, this being the eve of the great annual festival, the town was in an uproar, and the volume of sound emanating from it and from the temporary encampments outside it rendered sleep impossible when I became aware of a figure muffled in a great kaross in such a manner as to render identification impossible.
For a few seconds, perhaps five, he covered his face with the corner of the kaross he wore, then he looked up and spoke to the king in a clear voice. "O King," he said, "I am a very old man; as a youth I served under Chaka the Lion, and I heard his dying prophecy of the coming of the white man. Then the white men came, and I fought for Dingaan at the battle of the Blood River.
Having now no weapon, he seized him by the collar of his kaross, or cloak, and, with a violent effort, hurled him to the ground. Both horses were going at racing speed. The Colonel, unable to check his, passed on, but before he was beyond reach the agile savage had leaped to his feet, drawn another assagai from the bundle which he carried, and hurled it after his enemy.
I followed, carrying the historic stool, and when he had seated himself on his kaross on the further side of the fire, took up my position opposite to him. This fire was fed with some kind of root or wood that gave a thin clear flame with little or no smoke.
"O King," I said, "as one who has known this man in the past, I plead with you. How that powder came into his kaross I know not, but perchance it is not poison, only harmless dust." "Yes, it is but wood dust which I use for the cleaning of my nails," cried Masapo, for he was so terrified I think he knew not what he said. "So you own to knowledge of the medicine?" exclaimed Panda.
For a moment or two the talon-like right hand of the man hovered greedily over the little display; then it flashed back and was lost in the folds of the kaross, which were quickly drawn round the head again, all but concealing it from view. The man stepped back a pace and drew himself up haughtily, and, with a gesture of contempt, pointed to the gifts. "Au!" he exclaimed.
The window was open a little way at the top, and for fear of the night-chill his fine leopard-skin kaross had been spread over her.... One dimpled, rounded, bare arm lay upon the soft dappled fur, the babyish fingers curled one upon the other. Rosy human tendrils that should never twine again in a mother's hair.
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