girl! And thou
didst hope to stand man to man and face to face with Umslopogaas,
an Induna of the tribe of the Maquilisini, of the people of the
Amazulu? Behold, thy prayer is granted! And I didst swear to
hew thee limb from limb, thou insolent dog. Behold, I will do
it even now!'

The Masai ground his teeth with fury, and charged at the Zulu
with his spear. As he came, Umslopogaas deftly stepped aside,
and swinging Inkosi-kaas high above his head with both hands,
brought the broad blade down with such fearful force from behind
upon the Masai's shoulder just where the neck is set into the
frame, that its razor edge shore right through bone and flesh
and muscle, almost severing the head and one arm from the body.

'_Ou!_' ejaculated Umslopogaas, contemplating the corpse of his foe;
'I have kept my word. It was a good stroke.'

CHAPTER VIII

ALPHONSE EXPLAINS

And so the fight was ended. On returning from the shocking scene
it suddenly struck me that I had seen nothing of Alphonse since
the moment, some twenty minutes before -- for though this fight
has taken a long while to describe, it did not take long in reality
-- when I had been forced to hit him in the wind with the result
of nearly getting myself shot. Fearing that the poor little
man had perished in the battle, I began to hunt among the dead
for his body, but, not being able either to see or hear anything
of it, I concluded that he must have survived, and walked down
the side of the kraal where we had first taken our stand, calling
him by name. Now some fifteen paces back from the kraal wall
stood a very ancient tree of the banyan species. So ancient
was it that all the inside had in the course of ages decayed
away, leaving nothing but a shell of bark.

'Alphonse,' I called, as I walked down the wall. 'Alphonse!'

'Oui, monsieur,' answered a voice. 'Here am I.'

I looked round but could see nobody. 'Where?' I cried.

'Here am I, monsieur, in the tree.'

I looked, and there, peering out of a hole in the trunk of the
banyan about five feet from the ground, I saw a pale face and
a pair of large mustachios, one clipped short and the other as
lamentably out of curl as the tail of a newly whipped pug. Then,
for the first time, I realized what I had suspected before --
namely, that Alphonse was an arrant coward. I walked up to him.
'Come out of that hole,' I said.

'Is it finished, monsieur?' he asked anxiously; 'quite finished?