g seen him, and that
Amaxosa, keeping his lonely vigil by torchlight, passed through the most
fearsome trial his courageous but untutored heart had ever known; for
whilst he watched and waited, patient as a statue carved in stone, the
great Zulu heard a light footfall behind him, and, turning quickly,
beheld, to his utter horror, the well-known figure of the ancient Muzi
Zimba approaching through the gloom. The warrior's heart stood still
with fear and his very blood froze in his veins--Muzi Zimba, whose dead
body he had that very day helped to consign to its grave, and upon whose
breast he had placed giant rocks to scare the beasts of prey; yet here
he stood, and there before him in the flesh stood Muzi Zimba. Nay, it
could not be flesh and blood, but a spook (spirit) of the mountain, and
not even a child of the Undi could fight with spooks. Coming swiftly to
him, the vision spoke quietly to him in broken Zulu. "Greeting," it
said, "greeting, Lion of the Undi, what dost thou here by night in Muzi
Zimba's secret way."

"Greeting, great Father of the Spooks," boldly answered the Zulu. "I do
this here, I watch thy dark and narrow stair, oh, Ancient One, by order
of the Great White Chief, my father, and if any enter to disturb thy
restful peace, he dies a swift and easy death on this my ready spear."

"Well done, Amaxosa," was the cool reply which the astonished chief
received from his ancient friend, the "Father of the Spooks," as the
dread thing deftly removed its flowing wealth of beard and whiskers, and
revealed the clean-shaved countenance of Stanforth Kenyon, the American
detective.

"Wow, Inkoos!" said the astonished Zulu. "Wow! the thing was indeed
well done; and I, even I, the son of the witch-doctor, Isanusi, would
have let thee pass and leave me for a spook. Yet, did it seem strange
to me, my father, thou shouldst speak to thy son with the tongue of his
own people, for ever I heard that the Ancient One who has gone from us,
knew not to speak as speak the children of the Zulu."

Briefly explaining his intentions to the chief, Kenyon carefully
readjusted his disguise, and, nimbly mounting the ladder of rope,
scrambled out of the mouth of the well, and at once found himself in a
clump of bushes, and close to the outskirts of the slavers' town,
towards which he fearlessly directed his now seemingly feeble steps.

Well was it for Stanforth Kenyon that years of rigid training in his own
peculiar walk of li