If he will come and ask me, without mockery, to exercise my skill on behalf of all of us, I will try to exercise it, although I know very well that he believes it to be but as an idle little whirlwind that stirs the dust, that raises the dust and lets it fall again without purpose or meaning, forgetting, as the wise white men forget, that even the wind which blows the dust is the same that breathes in our nostrils, and that to it, we also are as is the dust." Now I, the listener, thought for a moment or two.

The words of this fighting savage, Mavovo, even those of them of which I had heard only the translation, garbled and beslavered by the mean comments of the unutterable Sammy, stirred my imagination.

Who was I that I should dare to judge of him and his wild, unknown gifts?
Who was I that I should mock at him and by my mockery intimate that I believed him to be a fraud?
Stepping through the gateway of the fence, I confronted him.
"Mavovo," I said, "I have overheard your talk.

I am sorry if I laughed at you in Durban.

I do not understand what you call your magic.