“Bah! there is no need for you to look at those scratches; they were left by women’s nails. You are nothing but a woman. Silence! who told you to speak? If you are not a woman, show it. There is an armed Basutu among those rocks. He watches us. Your master cannot eat and sleep in peace when he is watched. Take that big stabbing assegai you are so fond of showing, and kill him, or die a coward! He must make no sound, remember.” Mazooku turned towards Ernest for confirmation of the order. A Zulu always likes to take his orders straight from his own chief. Mr. Alston noticed it, and added: “I am the Inkoosi’s mouth, and speak his words.” Mazooku saluted again, and turning, went to the waggon to fetch his assegai. “Tread softly, or you will wake him; and he will run from so great a man,” Mr. Alston called after him sarcastically. “I go among the rocks to seek ‘mouti’” (medicine), the Zulu answered with a smile. “We are in a serious mess, my boy,” said Mr. Alston to Ernest, “and it is a toss-up if we get out of it. I taunted that fellow so that there may be no mistake about the spy. He must be killed, and Mazooku would rather die himself than not kill him now.” “Would it not have been safer to send another man with him?” “Yes; but I was afraid that if the scout saw two men coming towards him he would make off, however innocent they might look. Our horses are dead, and if that fellow escapes we shall never get out of this place alive. It would be folly to expect Basutos to distinguish between Boers and Englishmen when their blood is up; and besides, Secocoeni has sent orders that we are to be killed, and they would not dare to disobey. Look, there goes Mr. Mazooku with an assegai as big as a fire-shovel.” The kopje, or stony hill, where the spy was hid, was about three hundred yards from the little hollow in which the camp was formed, and across the stretch of bushy plain between the two Mazooku was quietly strolling, his assegai in one hand and two long sticks in the other. Presently he vanished in the shadow, for the sun was rapidly setting, and, after what seemed a long pause to Ernest, who was watching his movements through a pair of field-glasses, reappeared walking along the shoulder of the hill right against the sky-line, his eyes fixed upon the ground as though he were searching among the crevices of the rocks for the medical herbs which Zulus prize.