You might say, 'I think I know where the witch lives who causes these evils'-- in your sleep, Macumazahn." "Mameena," I said, "tell me no more.

Setting your dreams on one side, can I be false to my friend, Saduko, who talks to me day and night of you ?" "Saduko! Piff!" she exclaimed, with that expressive gesture of her hand.
"And can I be false," I continued, seeing that Saduko was no good card to play, "to my friend, Umbezi, your father ?" "My father!" she laughed.

"Why, would it not please him to grow great in your shadow?
Only yesterday he told me to marry you, if I could, for then he would find a stick indeed to lean on, and be rid of Saduko's troubling." Evidently Umbezi was a worse card even than Saduko, so I played another.
"And can I help you, Mameena, to tread a road that at the best must be red with blood ?" "Why not," she asked, "since with or without you I am destined to tread that road, the only difference being that with you it will lead to glory and without you perhaps to the jackals and the vultures?
Blood! Piff! What is blood in Zululand ?" This card also having failed, I tabled my last.
"Glory or no glory, I do not wish to share it, Mameena.

I will not make war among a people who have entertained me hospitably, or plot the downfall of their Great Ones.

As you told me just now, I am nobody--just one grain of sand upon a white shore--but I had rather be that than a haunted rock which draws the heavens' lightnings and is drenched with sacrifice.