o the Baas
that we who never met in life, but who here are as twin sisters, wait
and count the years and count the months and count the days and count
the hours and count the minutes and count the seconds until once more he
shall hear our voices calling to him across the night.' That's what they
say, Baas. Then they were gone and only the flowers remained to show
that they had been standing there.

"Now I set off to bring you the message and travelled a very long way
at a great rate; if Jana himself had been after me I could not have gone
more fast. At last I got out of that quiet place and among mountains
where there were dark kloofs, and there in the kloofs I heard Zulu impis
singing their war-song; yes, they sang the _ingoma_ or something very
like it. Now suddenly in the pass of the mountains along which I sped,
there appeared before me a very beautiful woman whose skin shone like
the best copper coffee kettle after I have polished it, Baas. She was
dressed in a leopard-like moocha and wore on her shoulders a fur kaross,
and about her neck a circlet of blue beads, and from her hair there rose
one crane's feather tall as a walking-stick, and in her hand she held a
little spear. No flowers sprang beneath her feet when she walked towards
me and no birds sang, only the air was filled with the sound of a royal
salute which rolled among the mountains like the roar of thunder, and
her eyes flashed like summer lightning."

Now I let my hands fall and stared at him, for well I knew what was
coming.

"'Stand, yellow man!' she said, 'and give me the royal salute.'

"So I gave her the _Bayete_, though who she might be I did not know,
since I did not think it wise to stay to ask her if it were hers of
right, although I should have liked to do so. Then she said: 'The Old
Man on the plain yonder and those two pale White Ones have talked to you
of their love for your master, the Lord Macumazana. I tell you, little
Yellow Dog, that they do not know what love can be. There is more love
for him in my eyes alone than they have in all that makes them fair. Say
it to the Lord Macumazana that, as I know well, he goes down to battle
and that the Lady Mameena will be with him in the battle as, though he
saw her not, she has been with him in other battles, and will be with
him till the River of Time has run over the edge of the world and is
lost beyond the sun. Let him remember this when Jana rushes on and death
is very near to him to-da