"Oh! surely my God has forsaken me! Within six hours of safety and doomed to perish here; oh! surely my God has forsaken me!" and she burst out weeping in the bitterness of her disappointed hope.
"Say not so," answered Sihamba gently, "for I think that the Great one whom you worship will save you yet." As she spoke a messenger arrived saying that the Zulus had sent forward heralds who desired to speak with her, and that these heralds waited within earshot of the first wall.
"I will come," said Sihamba, and she passed down the cleft and through the man hole into the fortifications which were built about the source of the river.

But she would not allow Suzanne to accompany her.
When she reached the outer wall she climbed it and stood upon it, for Sihamba was a woman who knew no fear, and there, about forty paces away, she saw three great Zulus standing, and with them him whom she dreaded more than all the Zulus on the earth--Piet Van Vooren himself.

When the Zulu captains caught sight of her upon the wall, they jeered aloud and asked whether this was indeed Sihamba Ngenyanga, or if a she-monkey had been sent to talk with them.
"I am Sihamba," she answered quietly, "or I am a monkey, as it may please you, though the white man with you can tell you what I am." "I can," said Piet with a laugh.

"You are a witch and a thief, and the fate that I promised you long ago is with you at last." "Murderer," mocked Sihamba in answer, "I see Death standing behind you, and with him shadows of the Fear to come.

But I would speak with these chiefs and not with an outcast half-breed.