Allan Quatermain, page 209 by H. Rider Haggard
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d I know not. And so they passed on to the second outer room, she pleading and he shaking his head, and saying, "Nay, nay, nay". And it seemed to me that he was about to call the guard, when she stopped talking and looked at him with great eyes, and I saw that he was bewitched by her beauty. Then she stretched out her hand and he kissed it, whereon I gathered myself together to advance and take her, seeing that now had Bougwan become a woman, and no longer knew the good from the evil, when behold! she was gone.'
'Gone!' I ejaculated.
'Ay, gone, and there stood Bougwan staring at the wall like one asleep, and presently he went too, and I waited a while and came away also.'
'Art thou sure, Umslopogaas,' said I, 'that thou hast not been a dreamer this night?'
In reply he opened his left hand, and produced about three inches of a blade of a dagger of the finest steel. 'If I be, Macumazahn, behold what the dream left with me. The knife broke upon Bougwan's bosom and as I passed I picked this up in the sleeping-place of the White Queen.'
CHAPTER XVIII
WAR! RED WAR!
Telling Umslopogaas to wait, I tumbled into my clothes and went off with him to Sir Henry's room, where the Zulu repeated his story word for word. It was a sight to watch Curtis' face as he heard it.
'Great Heavens!' he said: 'here have I been sleeping away while Nyleptha was nearly murdered -- and all through me, too. What a fiend that Sorais must be! It would have served her well if Umslopogaas had cut her down in the act.'
'Ay,' said the Zulu. 'Fear not; I should have slain her ere she struck. I was but waiting the moment.'
I said nothing, but I could not help thinking that many a thousand doomed lives would have been saved if he had meted out to Sorais the fate she meant for her sister. And, as the issue proved, I was right.
After he had told his tale Umslopogaas went of