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Updated: June 25, 2025
At the gate he turned, and their eyes met for a moment. Then it closed behind him, and she was left alone again. A little while later Mami entered, and said that she had been sent by Ibubesi to serve the Inkosazana as a messenger, should she need one. Rachel, seated on the bench, motioned to her to go into the hut and bide there, and she obeyed.
It was as Mami had said, very strong, a kind of tableland ringed round with precipices that could only be climbed through a single narrow nek, and overshadowed by the great Quathlamba range. The people, who were engaged in planting their corn, gathered round him, staring at him as though he were one risen from the dead, and greeted him with respectful words.
"I am here, Mami," said he. "Friend of my heart," she answered. "It is so long!" Then he told her how, through Cumner's Son, he had been turned from his visit two days before, and of the journey down, and of the fighting, and of all that had chanced. She smiled, and assented with her eyes her father had told her. "My father knows that thou dost come to me, and he is not angry," she said.
But when the sum was offered to Dali Mami he declared it wholly insufficient for purchasing the freedom of such a captive, though it was considered adequate as the ransom of the younger brother Rodrigo.
Minute by minute the time ebbed away, and still Rachel sat motionless on the bench. Towards the end of the third hour someone unbolted and knocked at the door. Mami opened it and reported that Ibubesi stood without, and desired to know whether she had any word for him. "None," answered Rachel, remembering her oath, and the door was barred again.
In that condition, being unable to make any resistance, she had been captured the day before by these two galleys, which belonged to the corsair Arnaut Mami, and which not having stowage room for her great cargo, had taken her in tow to convey her to the river Larache.
Rachel answered that it was not necessary that three of them should be put to so much trouble. It would be enough if Mami came. She desired to be waited on by Mami alone, her sisters need not come any more. They all three saluted again, and said that she should be obeyed; the two younger ones with alacrity. To Rachel it was evident that these women were much afraid of her.
He awoke to find himself lying in a hut roughly fashioned of branches, and attended by a Kaffir woman of middle age. "Who are you?" he asked. "I am named Mami," she answered. "Mami, Mami! I know the name, and I know the voice. Say, were you one of the wives of Ibubesi, she who spoke with me through the fence?" and he strove to raise himself on his arm to look at her, but fell back from weakness.
Moreover, Mami described the man in the words of the lad, and Rachel thought that he could be none other than Tamboosa, whom she had commanded to follow her with the white ox. Mami added that when he received this message Ibubesi seemed much disturbed, though to his people he declared that it was all nonsense, as Dingaan's Mouth would not come alone, or deliver the King's word to a boy.
Mami declared, indeed, that so great was their fear and discontent, that she thought they would desert the town in a body, were it not that they dreaded lest they should fall into the hands of the Kaffirs who were watching it. Rachel asked her whether they would not then take her and Dario and deliver them up to the Zulus, or to the white people on the coast.
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