The man turned, expressionless, his eyes wide open; he stared at the pile of glowing timber.
“A beautiful house with many lights,” said the King, softly, and the man’s face smiled now in response. “They wait for you there. You are tired, and they will spread soft mats for you that you may sleep. Go quickly. You must.”
The man ran forward, floundered for a few steps among the red-hot embers, then threw up his arms and fell full length. The flakes of burning wood closed over him like a wave of crimson sea; a gross and yellow smoke rose where he had fallen.
The King mounted his horse and called aloud. “You have seen—remember it well, remember it well! To those who throw down their arms and go back forthwith to their huts, I grant their lives.”
Helped or driven by the men of the patrol, they threw down their knives and spears and slunk away down to the huts that were massed in a straggling street on the shore.
CHAPTER XIV
Many of the rebels had fallen to the revolvers of the white men at bay, and many more to the rifles of the patrol. Two of their leaders had perished before their eyes, and the death of one of them, slave to the fixed eyes and whispered words of the King, had seemed to them miraculous. How could they have been mad enough to contend against such a power? Spiritless and unarmed, thrust on by the patrol with the butt of the rifle, they staggered down the slopes to their huts on the beach.
But the King knew well enough how dangerously incomplete his victory was. The youngest of the three brothers had got clear away, and he had taken men with him. They should have been followed of course, but the King had been reluctant to spare a man until he was certain of the main body of the rebels. The first sign of his mistake was a cloud of smoke rolling up from his offices and stores on the beach below. The King thought of his spirit-vats and galloped off.