one by no
means free from danger; for apart from the bad reputation of Kuliso and
his clan, there was again unrest on the border--unrest which was
deepening day by day, so, although ostensibly unarmed, each of us had a
loaded revolver in his right hand pocket. A strange expedition indeed,
its object a barter over the price of human life; and if such failed,
what about we three in the midst of hundreds, if not thousands, of
brooding savages, in ugly and vindictive mood? But Septimus Matterson
declared he had never been afraid of Kafirs, and did not intend to make
a start in that line now. Yet I, for my part, as we took our way
through the Ndhlambe location--with miles of kraals on either hand,
studding the veldt far and wide, whose dusky denizens turned out at
sight of us, following on our steps near and far to see what went on
over at the Great Place--why, I found myself devoutly hoping we might be
suffered to return as we had come.

The chief, Kuliso, was a tall, broad, finely built man in the prime of
life, with, for a Kafir, quite a heavily bearded face. It was a strong
face, too, with its lofty forehead and air of command, but it was a
crafty and unreliable one. Around him squatted a dozen or so of much
older men, grey-bearded and wizened--being, in fact, his _amapakati_, or
councillors. All wore no other clothing than an ample blanket, stained
red with ochre, carelessly draped around the body, and for adornment
most of them, including the chief, had a splendid armlet of solid white
ivory just above the left elbow. With an eye to artistic effect it
occurred to me that the group, with their shrewd dark faces and
unconscious grace of attitude, against the background of domed huts, and
the increasing groups of Kafirs clustering up from all sides, their
reddened frames in contrast against the green of the veldt and the
yellow thatch of the huts, would have made no mean subject for the
artist's paint-brush.

But little scope was there for the indulgence of artistic imaginings,
for the day was destined to be long and trying. Septimus Matterson,
speaking fluently and at length, yes, even pathetically--for I had
learned enough of the Xosa tongue by that time to be able to follow him,
roughly, through most of his arguments to recognise that much--
recapitulated all the sad circumstances. If these had brought sorrow to
the House of Kuliso, he said, they had hardly brought less to his own
house; and Brian and I, lis