they went before her like shadows. And in the folds of her blanket
she bore me on her back. It is true.

"She was straight as the palm when she fled from the kraal, and when
after long journeying she set me down at the hiding-place, she was
thin and bent. Thin and bent was the chief's wife, she who had
maidens to wait on her.

"At the hiding-place in the forest there were people whose kraals
had been burnt by the men-robbers. Outcasts they were, of many
tribes, living together without a chief; but the place was fat, and
they grew fat, being without spirit.

"And Muata the child played with other children and grew. He grew on
the fatness of the land, and when he could walk, his playmates were
the young of the jackal; his playthings were the bow and the spear.

"Ohe! Muata grew to strength like the lion's cub in the knowledge of
the hunt. She, even his mother, taught him to follow the trail,
showed him the leaf bruised by the foot of a man traveling, showed
him the tracks of the beasts, taught him the cries of the animals.

"She rubbed the oil into his skin, set him to hurl the spear, to
shaft the arrow, to hit the mark; set him to run and swim, to creep
like a snake, to bound like the buck.

"So Muata grew in the ways of a hunter; and when the men of the
place went on the hunt, Muata went with them--went as a hunter, and
the hut of his mother had meat to spare.