"Behold my father!" said Noie in the same icy voice.
"But," whispered Rachel, "he only sleeps. No spear has touched him."
"Not so, he is dead, dead by the White Death after the fashion of his people."
Now Rachel wondered what this White Death might be, and of which people the man was one. That he was not a Zulu who had been stunted in his growth she could see for herself, nor had she ever met a native who at all resembled him. Still she could ask no questions at that time; the thing was too awful. Moreover Noie had knelt down before the body, and with her arms thrown around its neck, was whispering into its ear. For a full minute she whispered thus, then set her own ear to the cold stirless lips, and for another minute or more, seemed to listen intently, nodding her head from time to time. Never before had Rachel witnessed anything so uncanny, and oddly enough, the fact that this scene was enacted in the bright sunlight added to its terrors. She stood paralysed, forgetting the Zulus, forgetting everything except that to all appearance the living was holding converse with the dead.
At length Noie rose, and turning to her companion said: "My Spirit has been good to me; I thank my Spirit, which brought me here before it was too late for us to talk together. Now I have the message."
"The message! Oh! what message?" gasped Rachel.
An inscrutable look gathered on the face of the beautiful native girl.
"It is to me alone," she answered, "but this I may say, much of it was of you, Inkosazana-y-Zoola."
"Who told you that was my native name?" asked Rachel, springing back.
"It was in the message, O thou before whom kings shall bow."
"Nonsense," exclaimed Rachel, "you have heard it from our people."
"So be it, Lady; I have heard it from your people whom I have never seen. Now let us go, your father is troubled for you."
Again Rachel looked at her sideways, and Noie went on: "Lady, from henceforth I am your servant, am I not? and that service will not be light."
"She thinks I shall make her dig," thought Rachel to herself, as the girl continued in her low, soft voice: "Now I ask you one thing--when I tell you my story, let it be for your breast alone. Say only that I am a common girl whom you saved from the soldier."
"Why not?" answered Rachel. "That is all I have to tell."
Then once more they went on, Rachel wondering if she dreamed, the girl Noie walking at her side, stern and cold-faced as a statue.