spoke a cloud was passing over the face of the moon, and that
when he ceased speaking it was quite obscured by this cloud, so
that the Vale of Bones was plunged in a deep twilight that was
almost darkness. Further, in a nervous kind of way, he did
something more to his wizard's fire which again caused it to
throw out a fan of smoke that hid him and the execution rock in
front of which he sat.

The cloud floated by and the moon came out as though from an
eclipse; the smoke of the fire, too, thinned by degrees. As it
melted and the light grew again, I became aware that something
was materializing, or had appeared on the point of the rock above
us. A few seconds later, to my wonder and amazement, I perceived
that this something was the spirit-like form of a white woman
which stood quite still upon the very point of the rock. She was
clad in some garment of gleaming white cut low upon her breast,
that may have been of linen, but from the way it shone, suggested
that it was of glittering feathers, egrets' for instance. Her
ruddy hair was outspread, and in it, too, something glittered,
like mica or jewels. Her feet and milk-hued arms were bare and
poised in her right hand was a little spear.

Nor did I see alone, since a moan of fear and worship went up
from the Councillors. Then they grew silent stared and stared.

Suddenly Zikali lifted his head and looked at them through the
thin flame of the fire which made his eyes shine like those of a
tiger or of a cornered baboon.

"At what do you gaze so hard, King and Councillors?" he asked.
"I see nothing. At what then do you gaze so hard?"

"On the rock above you stands a white spirit in her glory. It is
the Inkosazana herself," muttered Cetewayo.

"Has she come then?" mocked the old wizard. "Nay, surely it is
but a dream, or another of my tricks; some black woman painted
white that I have smuggled here in my medicine bag, or rolled up
in the blanket on my back. How can I prove to you that this is
not another cheat like to that of the spirit of Mameena whom the
white man, her lover, did not know again? Go near to her you
must not, even if you could, seeing that if by chance she should
_not_ be a cheat, you would die, every man of you, for woe to him
whom Nomkubulwana touches. How then, how? Ah! I have it.
Doubtless in his pocket Macumazahn yonder hides a little gun,
Macumazahn who with such a gun can cut a reed in two at thirty
paces, or shave the hair from