"Zwabeka? Zazwe?" More than ever now did the listener prick up his ears. So it was Zwabeka himself--Zwabeka who was supposed to be sick-- Zwabeka whose guest he was--Zwabeka the most influential chief in the Matyantatu district--who had been advocating the murder of himself and his travelling companion, and now was planning a treacherous and wholesale massacre of all the whites, when they should be gathered together wholly unsuspecting, and probably almost wholly unarmed, at the race meeting and gymkhana which was to be held at Gandela on the day after to-morrow! And Zazwe--an equally important chief located in the adjoining district of Sikumbutana! and from this he began to suspect what was in point of fact correct--that this meeting embraced some half-dozen or more of the most influential chiefs of Matabeleland. Here was a pretty sort of conspiracy he had all unconsciously been the means of getting behind. Crouching low he listened with all his might and main. His brain seemed bursting. The very hammering of his pulses seemed to impair his sense of hearing. Oh, but it must not--it should not! Then a dog began barking on the farther side of the kraal. Oh, that infernal cur! The lives of hundreds of his unsuspecting countrymen--and women--depended on what he might hear next, and were they to be sacrificed to the yapping of an infernal mongrel cur! But still the brute yelped on. And now as regarded his own safety this man thought nothing, he whom we have heard referred to as a `funkstick,' as prone to show the white feather, and so forth. Whether the imputations were true or not, lying there now, listening for the continuation of the bloodthirsty and murderous plot, Lamont felt absolutely no shred of a sense of fear-- instead, one of savage irritation. That yapping cur which interfered with his sense of hearing--could he but have strangled it with his bare hands! He was no longer Piers Lamont, an individual. He was an instrument, a delicate and subtle, though potent machine, and he felt as though the destined smoothness of his working had been interfered with and thrown out of order. "Here then is the plan," went on the one he had identified as Zwabeka, after a little general discussion which the barking of the dog and his own excitement had prevented him from adequately grasping. "When these Amakiwa are gathered at Gandela, on the next day but one, Qubani, who is known to some of them, will be in their midst. The place where they race their horses is outside the town, and it is overhung by a bush-covered mountain-side. Good! On that mountain-side, in the bushes, a strong _impi_ will muster--and watch. When the sign is given--_Ou_! in no time will there be any Amakiwa left alive. Tell it again, my father."