I promise him in return the greatest fee that ever yet was paid to a doctor in Zululand." Now Zikali lifted his big head, shook his grey locks, and opening his wide mouth as though he expected manna to fall into it from the sky, he laughed out loud.
"O-ho-ho," he laughed, "Oho-ho-ho-o, it is worth while to have lived so long when life has brought me to such an hour as this.
What is it that my ears hear?
That I, the Indwande dwarf, I whom Chaka named 'The-Thing-that-never-should-have-been-born,' I, one of the race conquered and despised by the Zulus, am here to speak a word which the Zulus dare not utter, which the King of the Zulus dares not utter.

O-ho-ho-ho! And what does the King offer to me?
A fee, a great fee for the word that shall paint the Zulus red with blood or white with the slime of shame.

Nay, I take no fee that is the price of blood or shame.

Before I speak that word unknown--for as yet my heart has not heard it, and what the heart has not heard the lips cannot shape--I ask but one thing.

It is an oath that whatever follows on the word, while there is a Zulu left living in the world, I, the Voice of the Spirits, shall be safe from hurt or from reproach, I and those of my House and those over whom I throw my blanket, be they black or be they white.