I rendered this for the benefit of the chief that my companion observed that the women of the Abaqulusi were far better looking than any he had ever seen in Zululand, which evoked a laugh from those men who heard, and a delighted squeal from those of the sex thus eulogised. Then Falkner committed his first blunder. We had gained the chief's hut, and stooping down, I had entered the low door first, Falkner following. When halfway through he drew back. "Dash it all!" he exclaimed, "I've dropped my matchbox." "Never mind. Come right through," I warned. "Don't stop on any account." But it was too late. He had already crawled back, and picked up the lost article. "Why what's the row?" he said, startled at my peremptory tone. "Only that it's awful bad manners with them to stop halfway through a door and back out again. It's worse, it makes a sort of bad _muti_. It's a pity you did it." "Oh blazes, how was I to know? Sort of ill luck, eh--evil eye and all that kind of business? Well, you can put that right with them." I tried to do this, incidentally explaining that he was a new arrival in the country and could not talk with their tongue yet, and of coarse was not familiar with their ways, that I hoped they would bear this in mind during the time we should spend at the kraal. But although the chief and his son took the incident in good part I could see they would much rather it had not happened. As regarded the offender himself one thing struck me as significant. Time was, and not so long ago either, when he would have pooh-poohed it, as a silly nigger superstition. Now he showed some little concern, which was a sign of grace. _Tywala_, which is beer brewed from _amabele_, or native grown millet, if fresh and cleanly made, is an excellent thirst quencher on a hot day, and you never get it so well and cleanly made as in the hut of a Zulu chief. Of this a great calabash was brought in, and poured out into black bowls made of soft and porous clay. "By Jove, Glanton," cut in Falkner, during an interval in our talk. "This is something like. Why this jolly hut," looking round upon the clean and cool interior with its hard polished floor, and domed thatch rising high overhead--"is as different as possible to the poky smoky affairs our niggers run up. And as for this tipple--oh good Lord!" There was a squashing sound and a mighty splash. He had been raising the bowl to his lips, and that by the process of hooking one finger over the rim thereof. The vessel being, as I have said, of soft clay was unable to stand that sort of leverage, and had incontinently split in half, and the contents, liberal in quantity, went souse all over his trousers as he sat there, splashing in milky squirts the legs of Majendwa and three or four other men of rank who had come in to join the _indaba_. These moved not a muscle, but I could catch a lurking twinkle in the eyes of the chief's son.