nfuriated reply. "_Baleka_, do you
hear--quick--sharp--at once, or you're dead men!"

"Don't do anything so foolish, Tom," said a voice at his side, and a
hand was stretched out as though to arrest the aim of the threatening
piece. "For God's sake, remember. We are not at war--yet."

"That be hanged!" came the rough rejoinder. "Anyway, we'll give these
fellows a royal thrashing. We are two to three--that's good enough
odds. Come along, Eustace, and we'll lick them within an inch of their
lives."

"We'll do nothing of the sort," replied the other quietly and firmly.
Then, with an anxiety in his face which he could not altogether conceal,
he walked his horse over to the prostrate Kafir. But the latter
suddenly staggered to his feet. His left shoulder was streaming with
blood, and the concussion of the close discharge had stunned him. Even
his would-be slayer looked somewhat relieved over this turn which
affairs had taken, and for this he had to thank the plunging of his
horse, for it is difficult to shoot straight, even point blank, with a
restive steed beneath one, let alone the additional handicap of being in
a white rage at the time.

Of his wound the Kafir took not the smallest notice. He stood
contemplating the two white men with a scowl of bitter hatred deepening
upon his ochre-besmeared visage. His three countrymen halted irresolute
a little distance--a respectful distance, thought Carhayes with a
sneer--in the background, as though waiting to see if their assistance
should be required. Then he spoke:

"Now hear my words, you whom the people call Umlilwane. I know you,
even though you do not know me--better for you if you did, for then you
would not have wounded the sleeping lion, nor have aroused the anger of
the hooded snake, who is swift to strike. Ha! I am Hlangani," he
continued, raising his voice to a perfect roar of menace, and his eyes
blazed like live coals as he pointed to the shot wounds in his shoulder,
now black and hideous with clotted blood. "I am Hlangani, the son of
Ngcesiba, a man of the House of Gcaleka. What man living am I afraid
of? Behold me here as I stand. Shoot again, Umlilwane--shoot again, if
you dare. _Hau_! Hear my `word.' You have slain my dog--my white
hunting dog, the last of his breed--who can outrun every other hunting
dog in the land, even as the wind outstrippeth the crawling ox-wagon,
and you have shed my blood, the blood of a chief. You had better f