Now I leant forward and looked at him.

"What is the end at which you aim, O Zikali?" I asked. "You are not one
who beats the air with a stick; on whom do you wish the stick to fall at
last?"

"On whom?" he answered in a new voice, a low, hissing voice. "Why, on
these proud Zulus, this little family of men who call themselves the
'People of Heaven,' and swallow other tribes as the great tree-snake
swallows kids and small bucks, and when it is fat with them cries to the
world, 'See how big I am! Everything is inside of me.' I am a Ndwande,
one of those peoples whom it pleases the Zulus to call 'Amatefula'--poor
hangers-on who talk with an accent, nothing but bush swine. Therefore I
would see the swine tusk the hunter. Or, if that may not be, I would
see the black hunter laid low by the rhinoceros, the white rhinoceros of
your race, Macumazahn, yes, even if it sets its foot upon the Ndwande
boar as well. There, I have told you, and this is the reason that I
live so long, for I will not die until these things have come to pass,
as come to pass they will. What did Chaka, Senzangakona's son, say when
the little red assegai, the assegai with which he slew his mother, aye
and others, some of whom were near to me, was in his liver? What did he
say to Mbopa and the princes? Did he not say that he heard the feet of
a great white people running, of a people who should stamp the Zulus
flat? Well, I, 'The-thing-who-should-not-have-been-born,' live on until
that day comes, and when it comes I think that you and I, Macumazahn,
shall not be far apart, and that is why I have opened out my heart to
you, I who have knowledge of the future. There, I speak no more of
these things that are to be, who perchance have already said too much of
them. Yet do not forget my words. Or forget them if you will, for I