Now the Council murmured, but Dingaan replied: "Once we sought to keep her in whom dwelt the Inkosazana of the Zulus. But things have gone amiss, and she brings curses on us. If shape and spirit were joined together again, mayhap the curses would be taken off our heads. Yet we dare not give her to you, unless she gives herself of her own will. Moreover, first the divination, then the pay. Is that enough?"
"It is enough," they answered, speaking all together. "Set out the matter, King of the Zulus, and we will see what we can do."
Then Dingaan beckoned to a man with a withered hand who sat close to him, listening and noting all things, but saying nothing, and said: "Stand forth, thou Mopo, and tell the tale."
So Mopo rose and began his story. He told how he alone among the people of the Zulus had thrice seen the spirit of the Inkosazana in the days of the "Black-One-who-was-gone." He told how many moons ago the white man, Ibubesi, had come to the Great Place speaking of a beautiful white maiden who was known by the name of the Inkosazana-y-Zoola, a maiden who ruled the lightning, and was not as other maidens are, and how he had been sent to see her, and found that as was the Spirit of the Inkosazana which he knew, so was this maiden.
"Wow!" he added, "save that the one walked on air and the other on earth, they are the same."
Moreover, as a spirit she seemed wise. He told of the trapping of Noie, and of the decoying of Rachel into Zululand, and of the interview between her and the King by moonlight when she smelt out Noie. Now he was going on to speak of the question put by Dingaan to the Inkosazana, and the answer that she gave to him, when one of the little men who all this while sat as though they were asleep, blinking their eyes in the light--it was Eddo--said: "Surely thou forgettest something. Tongue of the King, thou who are named Mopo, or Umbopa, Son of Makedama; thou forgettest certain words which the Inkosazana whispered to thee when she threw her cloak about thy head ere thou fleddest away from the Council of the King. Of course, we do not know the words, but why dost thou not repeat them, Tongue of the King?"
Mopo stared at them, and his teeth chattered, then he answered: "Because they have nothing to do with the story, Ghost-men; because they were of my own death, which is a little matter."
The three dwarfs turned their heads towards each other and said, each to the other: "Hearest thou, Priest, and hearest thou, Priest, and hearest thou, Priest? He says that the words were of his own death and have nothing to do with the story," and they smiled and nodded, and appeared to go to sleep again.