Black Elephant,” answered the man. “Every corner of that tagati place did we search, but found in it no living thing that could have done this—ghost or other. In every cave and hole we penetrated, but nothing could we find, Father of the Wise.”
“In this instance, Father of the Fools,” sneered Umzilikazi, a black and terrible look taking the place of the pleasant and smiling expression his face had hitherto worn. “Yet, stay. What else did you find there? No sign, perchance?”
“There was a sign, Divider of the Sun,” replied Hlatusa, who now considered himself, and they that were with him, already dead. “There was a sign. The hoof-mark as of a huge bull was imprinted in the ground beside the bodies.”
“And wherefore did ye not rout out that bull and return hither with his head, O useless ones?” said the King.
“No bull was it, but a ghost, Great Great One,” replied the leader. And they who had been with him murmured strongly in support of his words.
“Now have I heard enough,” said Umzilikazi. “You, Hlatusa, you I send forth at the head of twenty men, and you return, having lost two—not on the spears of a fighting enemy, but in strange fashion. And no one do ye hold accountable for this, but return with a child-tale about ghosts and the hoof-mark of a ghost-bull. Hamba gahle, Hlatusa. The alligators are hungry. Take him hence!”
With these fatal words the throng of slayers sprang forward to seize him. But Hlatusa waited not to be seized. Rising, he saluted the King; then turning, he stalked solemnly and with dignity to his doom—down through the serried ranks of the people, down through the further gate of the kraal, away over the plain, keeping but two paces in front of his guards. A dead silence fell upon all, and every face was turned his way. We saw him stand for a moment on the brow of the cliff which overhung the Pool of the Alligators, wherein evil-doers were cast. Then we saw him leap; and in the dead silence it seemed we could hear the splash—the snapping of jaws and the rush through the water of those horrible monsters, now ever ravening for the flesh of men.
Chapter Two.
“Behold the Sign!”
The silence was broken by a long, muttering roll of thunder. Masses of dark cloud were lying low down on the further sky, but overhead the sun darted his beams upon us in all the brightness of his mid-day fierceness, causing the great white shield held above the King to shine like polished metal. To many of us it seemed that the thunder-voice, coming as it did, was an omen. The wizard spell of the Red Death seemed to lie heavy upon us; and now that two of ourselves had fallen to its unseen terror, men feared, wondering lest it should stalk through the land, laying low the very pick and flower of the nation. Murmurs—deep, threatening, ominous—rose among the dense masses of the crowd. The King had decreed one victim, the people demanded another; for such was the shape which now those murmurs took.
Umzilikazi sat in gloomy silence. He liked not the sacrifice of good and brave fighting men, and the thing that had happened had thrown him into a dark mood indeed. Not until the murmurs became loud and deafening did he seem to notice them. Then the izanusi, deeming that their moment had come, took up the tale. Shaking their hideous ornaments and trappings, they came howling before the King; calling out that such dark witchcraft was within the nation as could not fail to destroy it. But upon these the Great Great One gazed with moody eyes, giving no sign of having heard them; and I, watching, wondered, for I knew not what was going to follow. Suddenly the King looked up.
“Enough of your bellowings, ye snakes, ye wizard cheats!” he thundered. “I have a mind to send ye all into this Ghost Valley, to slay the thing or be slain by it. Say; why are ye not ridding me of this evil thing which has crept into the nation?”
“That is to be done, Ruler of the World!” cried the chief of the izanusi. “That is to be done; but the evil-doer is great—great!”
“The evil-doer is great—great!” howled the others, in response.
“Find him, then, jackals, impostors!” roared the King. “Whau! Since old Masuka passed into the spirit-land never an izanusi have we known. Only a crowd of bellowing jackal-faced impostors.”
For, Nkose, old Masuka was dead. He had died at a great age, and had been buried with sacrifices of cattle as though one of our greatest chiefs. In him, too, I had lost a friend, but of that have I more to tell.
Now some of the izanusi dived in among the crowd and returned dragging along several men. These crawled up until near the King, and lay trembling, their eyes starting from their heads with fear. And now, for the first time, a strange and boding feeling came over me, as I recognised in these some of the Bakoni, who had been at a distance when we stamped flat that disobedient race, and had since been spared and allowed to live among us as servants.
“Well, dogs! What have ye to say?” quoth the King. “Speak, and that quickly, for my patience today is short.”
Whau! Nkose! They did speak, indeed, those dogs. They told how the Red Death was no new thing—at least to them—for periodically it was wont to make its appearance among the Bakoni. When it did so, it presaged the succession of a new chief; indeed, just such a manifestation had preluded the accession to the supreme chieftainship of Tauane, whom we had burned amid the ashes of his own town. The Red Death was among the darker mysteries of the Bakoni múti.
Not all at once did this tale come out, Nkose, but bit by bit, and then only when the Great Great One had threatened them with the alligators—even the stake of impalement—if they kept back aught. And I—I listening—Hau! My blood seemed first to freeze, then to boil within me, as I saw through the ending of that tale. The darker mysteries of the Bakoni múti!—preluding the accession of a new king? The countenance of the Great Great One grew black as night.
“It is enough,” he said. “Here among us, at any rate, is one to whom such mysteries are not unknown. The Queen of the Bakoni múti—who shall explain them better than she?”
The words, taken up by the izanusi and bellowed aloud, soon went rolling in chorus among the densely-packed multitude, and from every mouth went up shouts for Lalusini—the Queen of the Bakoni múti. Then, Nkose, the whole plot burst in upon my mind. Our witch doctors had always hated my inkosikazi, because she was greater than they; even as they had always hated me, because I had old Masuka on my side, and was high in the King’s favour, and therefore cared nothing about them, never making them gifts. Now their chance had come, since old Masuka was dead and could befriend me no more, and my favour in the King’s sight was waning. Moreover, they had long suspected that of Lalusini the Great Great One would fain be rid; yet not against her had they dared to venture upon the “smelling out” in the usual way, lest she proved too clever for them; for the chief of the izanusi had a lively recollection of the fate of Notalwa and Isilwana, his predecessors. Wherefore they had carefully and craftily laid their plot, using for the purpose the meanest of the conquered peoples whose very existence we had by that time forgotten.
Now the shouts for Lalusini were deafening, and should have reached my kraal, which, from where I sat, I could just see away against the hillside. But the shouters had not long to shout, for again a way was opened up, and through it there advanced she whom they sought.
No dread or misgiving was on the face of my beautiful wife, as she advanced with a step majestic and stately as
