"Inkoosi Umkulu!" I exclaimed. "Why, they say he lived hundreds of
years ago."

"Do they, Macumazahn? If so, have I not told you that we black people
cannot count as well as you do? Really it was only the other day.
Anyhow, after his death the Zulus began to maltreat us Undwandwe and the
Quabies and the Tetwas with us--you may remember that they called us the
Amatefula, making a mock of us. So I quarrelled with the Zulus and
especially with Chaka, he whom they named 'Uhlanya' [the Mad One]. You
see, Macumazahn, it pleased him to laugh at me because I am not as other
men are. He gave me a name which means
'The-thing-which-should-never-have-been-born.' I will not speak that
name, it is secret to me, it may not pass my lips. Yet at times he
sought my wisdom, and I paid him back for his names, for I gave him very
ill counsel, and he took it, and I brought him to his death, although
none ever saw my finger in that business. But when he was dead at the
hands of his brothers Dingaan and Umhlangana and of Umbopa, Umbopa who
also had a score to settle with him, and his body was cast out of the
kraal like that of an evil-doer, why I, who because I was a dwarf was
not sent with the _men_ against Sotshangana, went and sat on it at night
and laughed thus," and he broke into one of his hideous peals of
merriment.

"I laughed thrice: once for my wives whom he had taken; once for my
children whom he had slain; and once for the mocking name that he had
given me. Then I became the counsellor of Dingaan, whom I hated worse
than I had hated Chaka, for he was Chaka again without his greatness,
and you know the end of Dingaan, for you had a share in that war, and of
Umhlangana, his brother and fellow-murderer, whom I counselled Dingaan
to slay. This I did through the lips of the old Princess Menkabayi,