What is it, Baas?
he asked. Here there are no lions, nor any game.
Look the other side of the bush, Hans.
He slipped round it, making a wide circle with his usual caution, then, seeing the snake which was, by the way, I think, the biggest immamba I ever killed, suddenly froze, as it were, in a stiff attitude that reminded me of a pointer when it scents game. Having made sure that it was dead, he nodded and said,
Black 'mamba, or so you would call it, though I know it for something else.
What else, Hans?
One of the old witch-doctor Zikali's spirits which he sets at the mouth of this kloof to warn him of who comes or goes. I know it well, and so do others. I saw it listening behind a stone when you were up the kloof last evening talking with the Opener-of-Roads.
Then Zikali will lack a spirit,
I answered, laughing, which perhaps he will not miss amongst so many. It serves him right for setting the brute on me.
Quite so, Baas. He will be angry. I wonder why he did it?
he added suspiciously, seeing that he is such a friend of yours.
He didn't do it, Hans. These snakes are very fierce and give battle, that is all.
Hans paid no attention to my remark, which probably he thought only worthy of a white man who does not understand, but rolled his yellow, bloodshot eyes about, as though in search of explanations. Presently they fell upon the ivory that hung about my neck, and he started.
Why do you wear that pretty likeness of the Great One yonder over your heart, as I have known you do with things that belonged to women in past days, Baas? Do you know that it is Zikali's Great Medicine, nothing less, as everyone does throughout the land? When Zikali sends an order far away, he always sends that image with it, for then he who receives the order knows that he must obey or die. Also the messenger knows that he will come to no harm if he does not take it off, because, Baas, the image is Zikali himself, and Zikali is the image. They are one and the same. Also it is the image of his father's father's father—or so he says.
That is an odd story,
I said.
