Child of Storm

"Oh, yes, Inkoosi," she answered, "that is my poor name. But how did you

hear it, and how do you know me?"

"I heard it from one Saduko"--here she frowned a little--"and others,

and I knew you because you are so beautiful"--an incautious speech at

which she broke into a dazzling smile and tossed her deer-like head.

"Am I?" she asked. "I never knew it, who am only a common Zulu girl to

whom it pleases the great white chief to say kind things, for which I

thank him"; and she made a graceful little reverence, just bending

one knee. "But," she went on quickly, "whatever else I be, I am of no

knowledge, not fit to tend you who are hurt. Shall I go and send my

oldest mother?"

"Do you mean her whom your father calls the 'Worn-out-old-Cow,' and

whose ear he shot off?"

"Yes, it must be she from the description," she answered with a little

shake of laughter, "though I never heard him give her that name."

"Or if you did, you have forgotten it," I said dryly. "Well, I think

not, thank you. Why trouble her, when you will do quite as well? If

there is milk in that gourd, perhaps you will give me a drink of it."

She flew to the bowl like a swallow, and next moment was kneeling at my

side and holding it to my lips with one hand, while with the other she

supported my head.

"I am honoured," she said. "I only came to the hut the moment before

you woke, and seeing you still lost in swoon, I wept--look, my eyes are

still wet [they were, though how she made them so I do not know]--for I

feared lest that sleep should be but the beginning of the last."

"Quite so," I said; "it is very good of you. And now, since your fears

are groundless--thanks be to the heavens--sit down, if you will, and

tell me the story of how I came here."

She sat down, not, I noted, as a Kafir woman ordinarily does, in a kind

of kneeling position, but on a stool.

"You were carried into the kraal, Inkoosi," she said, "on a litter of

boughs. My heart stood still when I saw that litter coming; it was no

more heart; it was cold iron, because I thought the dead or injured man

was--" And she paused.

"Saduko?" I suggested.

"Not at all, Inkoosi--my father."

"Well, it wasn't either of them," I said, "so you must have felt happy."

"Happy! Inkoosi, when the guest of our house had been wounded, perhaps

to death--the guest of whom I have heard so much, although by misfortune

I was absent when he arrived."

"A difference of opinion with your eldest mother?" I suggested.