them with guns--yes, and
'by-and-byes' also with the throat of thunder" (that is, or was, the
Kafir name for cannon).[*] "They would be invincible. Chaka's kingdom
would be nothing to ours, for a hundred thousand warriors would sleep
on their spears, waiting for your word. If you wished it even you could
sweep out Natal and make the whites there your subjects, too. Or perhaps
it would be safer to let them be, lest others should come across the
green water to help them, and to strike northwards, where I am told
there are great lands as rich and fair, in which none would dispute our
sovereignty--"

[*--Cannon were called "by-and-byes" by the natives, because
when field-pieces first arrived in Natal inquisitive Kafirs
pestered the soldiers to show them how they were fired.
The answer given was always "By-and-bye!" Hence the name.--
EDITOR]

"But, Mameena," I gasped, for this girl's titanic ambition literally
overwhelmed me, "surely you are mad! How would you do all these things?"

"I am not mad," she answered; "I am only what is called great, and you
know well enough that I can do them, not by myself, who am but a woman
and tied with the ropes that bind women, but with you to cut those ropes
and help me. I have a plan which will not fail. But, Macumazahn," she
added in a changed voice, "until I know that you will be my partner in
it I will not tell it even to you, for perhaps you might talk--in your
sleep, and then the fire in my breast would soon go out--for ever."

"I might talk now, for the matter of that, Mameena."

"No; for men like you do not tell tales of foolish girls who chance to
love them. But if that plan began to work, and you heard say that kings
or princes died, it might be otherwise. You might say, 'I think I
know where the witch lives who causes these evils'--in your sleep,
Macumazahn."

"Mameena," I said, "tell me no more. Setting your dreams on one side,
can I be false to my friend, Saduko, who talks to me day and night of
you?"

"Saduko! Piff!" she exclaimed, with that expressive gesture of her hand.

"And can I be false," I continued, seeing that Saduko was no good card
to play, "to my friend, Umbezi, your father?"

"My father!" she laughed. "Why, would it not please him to grow great
in your shadow? Only yesterday he told me to marry you, if I could, for
then he would find a stick indeed to lean on, and be rid of Saduko's
troubling."

Evidently Umbezi was a wors