us chant, "who, as our magic tells us, are destined to deliver
our land from the terrible scourge, we greet you, we bow before you, we
acknowledge you as our lord and brother, to whom we vow safety among us
and in the desert, to whom we promise a great reward."

Again they bowed, once, twice, thrice; then stood silent before me with
folded arms.

"What on earth are they saying?" asked Scroope. "I could catch a few
words"--he knew a little kitchen Zulu--"but not much."

I told him briefly while the others listened.

"What does Mameena mean?" asked Miss Holmes, with a horrible acuteness.
"Is it a woman's name?"

Hearing her, Harut and Marut bowed as though doing reverence to that
name. I am sorry to say that at this point I grew confused, though
really there was no reason why I should, and muttered something about a
native girl who had made trouble in her day.

Miss Holmes and the other ladies looked at me with amused disbelief,
and to my dismay the venerable Harut turned to Miss Holmes, and with his
inevitable bow, said in broken English:

"Mameena very beautiful woman, perhaps more beautiful than you, lady.
Mameena love the white lord Macumazana. She love him while she live, she
love him now she dead. She tell me so again just now. You ask white lord
tell you pretty story of how he kiss her before she kill herself."

Needless to say all this very misleading information was received by the
audience with an attention that I can but call rapt, and in a kind of
holy silence which was broken only by a sudden burst of sniggering on
the part of Scroope. I favoured him with my fiercest frown. Then I fell
upon that venerable villain Harut, and belaboured him in Bantu, while
the audience listened as intently as though they understood.

I asked him what he meant by coming here to asperse my character. I
asked him who the deuce he was. I asked him how he came to know anything
about Mameena, and finally I told him that soon or late I would be even
with him, and paused exhausted.

He stood there looking for all the world like a statue of the patriarch
Job as I imagine him, and when I had done, replied without moving a
muscle and in English:

"O Lord, Zikali, Zulu wizard, friend of mine! All great wizard friend
just like all elephant and all snake. Zikali make me know Mameena,
and she tell me story and send you much love, and say she wait for
you always." (More sniggers from Scroope, and still intenser interest
evinced by