Behind each party, also, I perceived a number of Zulus in their war-dress, all of them armed with broad stabbing spears.
The two parties arrived at the stone upon which I was sitting almost simultaneously, as probably it had been arranged that they should do, and halted, staring at each other.

As for me, I sat still upon my stone and smoked on.
"Allemachte! Allan," puffed the Vrouw Prinsloo, who was breathless with her walk up the hill, "so here you are! As you did not come back, I thought you had run away and left us, like that stinkcat Pereira." "Yes, Tante (aunt), here I am," I answered gloomily, "and I wish to heaven that I was somewhere else." Just then Dingaan, having settled his great bulk upon the stool and recovered his breath, called to the lad Halstead, who was with him, and said: "O Tho-maas, ask your brother, Macumazahn, if he is ready to try to shoot the vultures.

If not, as I wish to be fair, I will give him a little more time to make his magic medicine." I replied sulkily that I was as ready as I was ever likely to be.
Then the Vrouw Prinsloo, understanding that the king of the Zulus was before her, advanced upon him, waving her umbrella.

Catching hold of Halstead, who understood Dutch, she forced him to translate an harangue, which she addressed to Dingaan.
Had he rendered it exactly as it came from her lips, we should all have been dead in five minutes, but, luckily, that unfortunate young man had learnt some of the guile of the serpent during his sojourn among the Zulus, and varied her vigorous phrases.

The gist of her discourse was that he, Dingaan, was a black-hearted and bloody-minded villain, with whom the Almighty would come even sooner or later (as, indeed, He did), and that if he dared to touch one hair of her or of her companions' heads, the Boers, her countrymen, would prove themselves to be the ministers of the Almighty in that matter (as, indeed, they did).