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"I glanced, and saw a young man, who might have been a Neapolitan count—handsome, but for his loutish, foul mouth. He was in talk with a garçon, and seemed to be thinking of anything but Rolls.
"'One of the enemy,' I said: 'who are they? and—how do you know?'
"'Agents of Macray,' he answered, 'who is out to get me, and it's no chop when a rascal has power. How I know? By the movement of an eyelid. Besides, I live here, and so does yonder carrion-crow.'
"All this I found difficult to realize; and, reverting to the previous question, asked him if he was sure that the savage is the happier.
"'Down to the ground sure!' was his answer: 'your savage is likelier to die sudden, I admit: but you come with me to Basutoland, that belongs to the nation like the air, and for every rag and groan in Glasgow or Bethnal Green you will see a grin of gladsomeness, and a toe that dances. "Here," the Barotse say, "hunger is not known." Or come with me—— Yes, I think I may tell you now of another country: Wo-Ingwanya—but don't pronounce the "I," Ngwanya say; the people are Wa-Ngwanya; one of them is a Mo-Ngwanya; their language is Se-Ngwanya. Far up country—South-Central Africa—not far from the Indian Ocean—"Children of the Elephant," they call themselves, either because they are Zulu in origin, or because of an enormous rock, bigger than London, that stands on four low legs; but I in my own mind always call them "Children of the Wind," because in those uplands the breezes of heaven don't cease from streaming through their feathery head-dress, breathing upon their faces health and freshness—at least, they didn't during the weeks I was there—and sometimes terrific tempests visit them. It is sixteen years since I first heard of that country, and then I heard one and another assert that no such country is on earth; ey, but there is that country, for not nineteen months gone I was in it with a caravan of negroid Arabs, and saw the men inlay metals—noblest lot of blacks I've dropped upon. They trekked north, like Umzilikaze; but long before Chaka's day—before any Zulu King whose name is known to us; yet are so conservative, that I could still drop to much of their lingo. Well, those darkies are in Paradise in comparison with St. Pancras—scream with laughter of heart in the face of sun and moon, their moochas of ox-tails and plumes of ostrich and saccaboola feathers, that stream on the breezes, seeming to scream with laughter, too—so long as they don't get killed, look, by enemies, or by "our mother"—that's their ruler: for she's a devil of a despot. "Our mother" owns each inch of Wo-Ngwanya for her people, and is paid rent for it; no man may say "this acre is mine"; and that's where the laughter comes from, if I am a man that knows anything. Eh, but she's a hot un, is "our mother"; I ought to know: the beggar sentenced me to death—ugliest bit of road I've yet got over. If a Mo-Ngwanya girl slips, without "our mother's" consent, that's a sure case of "off with her head"—harsh, bloody. And who do you think "our mother" is?'—here Rolls laid his hand on mine, hard, with the knuckles whitened—'You'd never guess; hear it now: girl of seventeen—eighteen by this time. White girl. Hear her name: Spiciewegiehotiu.'