The fool Cetewayo has quarrelled with your people, the English, and on my counsel.

He has sent and killed women, or allowed others to do so, across the river in Natal.

His messengers came to me asking what he should do.

I answered, 'Shall a king of the blood of Chaka fear to allow his own wicked ones to be slain because they have stepped across a strip of water, and still call himself king of the Zulus ?' So those women were dragged back across the water and killed; and now the Queen's man from the Cape asks many things, great fines of cattle, the giving up of the slayers, and that an end should be made of the Zulu army, which is to lay down its spears and set to hoeing like the old women in the kraals." "And if the king refuses, what then, Zikali ?" "Then, Macumazahn, the Queen's man will declare war on the Zulus; already he gathers his soldiers for the war." "Will Cetewayo refuse, Zikali ?" "I do not know.

His mind swings this way and that, like a pole balanced on a rock.