In another minute I was watching her solitary little figure, now wrapped
again in the hooded kaross, as it vanished over the brow of the rise
behind us, and really, as she went, I felt a lump rising in my throat.
Notwithstanding all her wickedness--and I suppose she was wicked--there
was something horribly attractive about Mameena.
When she had gone, taking my only looking-glass with her, and the lump
in my throat had gone also, I began to wonder how much fact there was in
her story. She had protested so earnestly that she told me all the truth
that I felt sure there must be something left behind. Also I remembered
she had said Zikali wanted to see me. Well, the end of it was I took a
moonlight walk up that dreadful gorge, into which not even Scowl would
accompany me, because he declared that the place was well known to be
haunted by imikovu, or spectres who have been raised from the dead by
wizards.
It was a long and disagreeable walk, and somehow I felt very depressed
and insignificant as I trudged on between those gigantic cliffs, passing
now through patches of bright moonlight and now through deep pools of
shadow, threading my way among clumps of bush or round the bases of tall
pillars of piled-up stones, till at length I came to the overhanging
cliffs at the end, which frowned down on me like the brows of some
titanic demon.
Well, I got to the end at last, and at the gate of the kraal fence was
met by one of those fierce and huge men who served the dwarf as guards.
Suddenly he emerged from behind a stone, and having scanned me for
a moment in silence, beckoned to me to follow him, as though I were
expected. A minute later I found myself face to face with Zikali, who
was seated in the clear moonlight just outside the shadow of his hut,
and engaged, apparently, in his favourite occupation of carving wood
with a rough native knife of curious shape.
For a while he took no notice of me; then suddenly looked up, shaking
back his braided grey locks, and broke into one of his great laughs.
"So it is you, Macumazahn," he said. "Well, I knew you were passing my
way and that Mameena would send you here. But why do you come to see the
'Thing-that-should-not-have-been-born'? To tell me how you fared with
the buffalo with the split horn, eh?"
"No, Zikali, for why should I tell you what you know already? Mameena
said you wished to talk with me, that was all."
"Then Mameena lied," he answered, "as is her nature, in whose throat
live four false words for every one of truth. Still, sit down,
Macumazahn. There is beer made ready for you by that stool; and give me
the knife and a pinch of the white man's snuff that you have brought for
me as a present."