CHAPTER X.
NOMBE The Swazis, shivering, for all these people hate cold, and shaking themselves like a dog when he comes to shore, gathered round, examining me.
"Why!" said one of them, an elderly man who seemed to be their leader, "this is none other than Macumazahn, Watcher-by-Night, the old friend of all us black people.

Surely the spirits of our fathers have been with us who might have risked our lives to save a Boer or a half-breed." (The Swazis, I may explain, did not like the Boers for reasons they considered sound.) "Yes," I said, sitting up, "it is I, Macumazahn." "Then why," asked the man, "did you, whom all know to be wise, show yourself to have suddenly become a fool ?" and he pointed to the raging river.
"And why," I asked, "do you show yourself a fool by supposing that I, whom you know to be none, am a fool?
Look across the water for your answer." He looked and saw the Basutos, fifty or more of them, arriving, just too late.
"Who are these ?" he asked.
"They are the people of Sekukuni whom you should know well enough.

They have hunted us all night, yes, and before, seeking to murder us; also they have stolen our oxen, thirty-two fine oxen which I give to your king if he can take them back.

Now perhaps you understand why we dared the Crocodile River in its rage." At the name of Sekukuni the man, who it seemed was the captain of some border guards, stiffened all over like a terrier which perceives a rat.

"What!" he exclaimed, "do these dirty Basuto dogs dare to carry spears so near our country?
Have they not yet learned their lesson ?" Then he rushed into the water, shaking an assegai he had snatched up, and shouted, "Bide a while, you fleas from the kaross of Sekukuni, till I can come across and crack you between my thumb and finger.