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“No ghosts, they say.
What is a ghost?–
Nay, what are thoughts and stars and winds?
They cannot tell–they show at most
Those formal swathes the pedant binds
Across clear eyes, the while he plugs
The apertures of liberal lugs.”

SHAGBAG on Dogmatism.

I.

I had been for two days endeavouring to frame a workable quarantine scheme in respect of an outbreak of lung sickness amongst the natives’ cattle in several of those deep valleys which cleave the Xomlenzi range from the Northern bank of the Tina River, and it was late in afternoon when I reached the kraal of my friend Numjala, Headman over a section of the Baca tribe of Kafirs. The mounted policeman who had accompanied me let his tired horse fall in a particularly bad drift, thus laming the animal, and had had to remain behind in consequence. Thus I was alone, but this circumstance did not trouble me, because my horse was fresh, and I knew the country well.

Numjala is a roan of parts; he must be well over sixty years of age, but his eye is bright and his wit is keen. He is well off, for a native, and very hospitable.

The moon being new, her pale crescent sank quickly after the sun, but the sky was perfectly clear and the stars more than ordinarily bright. To reach home I had about twelve miles to ride, that is, by taking a short cut along footpaths; along the main road the distance was nearer twenty.

Numjala was very anxious that I should spend the night at his kraal, and offered, would I agree to remain, to kill a juicy looking kid and roast it for supper. I had, however, promised my wife to return by midnight, and I feared she might be uneasy were I not to do so; I therefore declined the invitation.

“Does your horse lead well?” asked Numjala.

“Not particularly,” I replied; “why do you ask?”

“You say you are going by the footpath past the Ghoda bush?”

“Yes.”

“Unless your horse leads well, you will never get him past the Ghoda to-night, this being the night of the New Moon. You will certainly never ride him past.”

The Ghoda bush is a narrow strip of forest running down the side of a steep mountain which forms one side of a valley, the other side being formed of a perpendicular cliff, at the foot of which a stream brawls. The strip of forest does not quite reach the stream, a grassy glade, about twenty-five yards in width, lying between. Over this glade the footpath leads. The Ghoda is about a mile from Numjala’s kraal, and just beyond it is the drift over the stream.

“What has the Moon to do with it?” I asked.

“That is a hard question. I only know that no horse can be ridden past the Ghoda after sundown when the Moon is new.”

“Look here, Numjala,” I said reprovingly, “a man of your intelligence ought to be ashamed of even pretending to believe such a thing. Why this is worse than what you told me about the grass not growing at the spot where Ncapayi and his men were killed by the Pondos.”

“Is it?”

(Ncapayi, Great Chief of the Baca tribe, with many hundreds of his followers, was killed in 1845 in a battle fought with the Pondos on the Northern bank of the Umzimvubo river, between what is now Mount Frere and the sea.)

“Yes, and nearly as bad as your account of the snow falling on Tshaka’s impi and killing hundreds of his soldiers, whilst it fell nowhere else in the neighbourhood.”

“Why should not that be true?”

Fearing that it would be useless to attempt demonstrating to Numjala that, logically, no one is bound to prove a negative, I evaded his question, and said:

“You told me the other day that you believed in witchcraft. Surely you did not mean that?”