to kill you as an offering to her anger, but there has been
enough blood-letting to-day. Yet you shall have a marriage gift to this
girl, whom I myself will take in marriage: you shall give a hundred head
of cattle. Then get you gone from among the People of the Axe, lest a
worse thing befall you, Masilo the Pig."

So Masilo rose up and went, and his face was green with fear, but he
paid the hundred head of cattle and fled towards the kraal of Chaka.
Zinita watched him go, and she was glad of it, and because the
Slaughterer had named her for his wife.

"I am well rid of Masilo," she said aloud, in the hearing of Galazi,
"but I had been better pleased to see him dead before me."

"This woman has a fierce heart," thought Galazi, "and she will bring no
good to Umslopogaas, my brother."

Now the councillors and the captains of the People of the Axe konzaed
to him whom they named the Slaughterer, doing homage to him as chief
and holder of the axe, and also they did homage to the axe itself. So
Umslopogaas became chief over this people, and their number was many,
and he grew great and fat in cattle and wives, and none dared to gainsay
him. From time to time, indeed, a man ventured to stand up before him in
fight, but none could conquer him, and in a little while no one sought
to face Groan-Maker when he lifted himself to peck.

Galazi also was great among the people, but dwelt with them little, for
best he loved the wild woods and the mountain's breast, and often, as of
old, he swept at night across the forest and the plains, and the howling
of the ghost-wolves went with him.

But henceforth Umslopogaas the Slaughterer hunted very rarely with the
wolves at night; he slept at the side of Zinita, and she loved him much
and bore him children.

CHAPTER XVIII. THE CURSE OF BALEKA

Now, my father, my story winds back again as the river bends towards its
source, and I tell of those events which happened at the king's kraal
of Gibamaxegu, which you white people name Gibbeclack, the kraal that is
called "Pick-out-the-old-men," for it was there that Chaka murdered all
the aged who were unfit for war.

After I, Mopo, had stood before the king, and he had given me new wives
and fat cattle and a kraal to dwell in, the bones of Unandi, the Great
Mother Elephant, Mother of the Heavens, were gathered together from the
ashes of my huts, and because all could not be found, some of the bones
of my wives were collected also to mak