not matter to you whether or no I return to his kraal to mend guns
there. If you think that he will be angry because I am missing, you had
better cross the border also; we can go together."

"And leave my father and all my brethren to his vengeance? Black Heart,
you do not understand. How can you, being so named? I am a soldier, and
the king's word is the king's word. I hoped to have died fighting, but I
am the bird in your noose. Come, shoot, or you will not reach the border
before moonrise," and he opened his arms and smiled.

"If it must be, so let it be. Farewell, Nahoon, at least you are a brave
man, but every one of us must cherish his own life," answered Hadden
calmly.

Then with much deliberation he raised his rifle and covered the Zulu's
breast.

Already--whilst his victim stood there still smiling, although a
twitching of his lips betrayed the natural terrors that no bravery can
banish--already his finger was contracting on the trigger, when of a
sudden, as instantly as though he had been struck by lightning, Hadden
went down backwards, and behold! there stood upon him a great spotted
beast that waved its long tail to and fro and glared down into his eyes.

It was a leopard--a tiger as they call it in Africa--which, crouched
upon a bough of the tree above, had been unable to resist the temptation
of satisfying its savage appetite on the man below. For a second or two
there was silence, broken only by the purring, or rather the snoring
sound made by the leopard. In those seconds, strangely enough, there
sprang up before Hadden's mental vision a picture of the _inyanga_