H. Rider Haggard

“ Yet, at the last, I have taken another council, bethinking me that, if we fight, in the end it may chance that neither of us will be left alive to rule, and that the people also will be brought to nothing. To the north there lies a good country and a wide, where but few men live, and thither I would go, setting the mountains and the river between us; for there, far beyond your borders, I also can be a king. ”

“ Be guided by them and grow great; reject them and die a wanderer, a little man of no account. But first, this is the price that you shall swear by the sacred oath to pay to Hokosa, if his wisdom finds favour in your sight and through it you come to victory: That after you, the king, he, Hokosa, shall be the first man in our land, the general of the armies, the captain of the council, the head of the doctors, and that to him shall be given half the cattle of Nodwengo, who now is king. ”

“ The white man, Messenger, will be too clever for you, for as you say, he is a reader of the thoughts of men.”
“Can the dead read men’s thoughts, or if they can, do they cry them on the market-place or into the ears of kings?” asked Hokosa. “Have I not told you that, before I see the signal fire yonder, the Messenger shall sleep sound? I have a medicine, Noma, a slow medicine that none can trace.”
“The Messenger may sleep sound, Hokosa, and yet perchance he may pass on his message to another and, with it, his magic. ”