Fleetwood stood facing them, and shook his head.
“No. I will not give him to you,” he answered, quietly decisive.
The uproar grew. Angry voices were raised in hubbub and spears waved. It looked as if a sudden impetuous charge, which would have overwhelmed all before it, was about to be made. But somehow those two double-barrels—for Wyvern had taken his cue from the other and, aiming low, had got his piece well upon the confronting mass—constituted a moral force there was no gainsaying. They made no aggressive move.
“This is our meat you have taken, Ujó,” called out one, who seemed the most prominent among the excited Usutus. “Meat for the teeth of our spears. Now, give it up, for we will have it.”
“You will not have it, Jolwana, not from here, at any rate,” answered Fleetwood, who knew the speaker. “Au! and how didst thou win thy head-ring? Was it not in company with a son of Majendwa? And what of him who lies here? He, too, is a son of Majendwa. Hamba gahlé! Yes—go carefully, for the sons of Majendwa are many.”
He thus addressed as Jolwana seemed beside himself with rage. He addressed a few furious words to the others in a ferocious undertone. A move forward was made and a threatening roar went up from the whole pack. But simultaneously with it, a shot rang out sharp. Jolwana’s shield, then flourished over his head, was pierced, and Jolwana’s fingers ached with the concussion.
“I was but playing with thee, Jolwana,” went on Fleetwood, slipping a fresh cartridge into his rifle barrel with lightning-like rapidity. “Stop now, or next time thou goest into the Great Unknown. Then—what of thy two young wives—thy new, pleasant young wives? Whose will they then become?”
At these words, another roar went up, but it was a roar of laughter. Fleetwood not only knew the other, but knew his circumstances thoroughly. A young man to be head-ringed, and one whom Cetywayo had allowed to tunga near the close of the war, and that for a special and secret service performed, he had the reputation of being intensely jealous. With this knowledge used with rare tact, Fleetwood had succeeded in turning the angry crowd into a laughing crowd, and it is a truism that a laughing crowd ceases to be dangerous. This crowd now roared with laughter again and again, for the Zulu has a keen sense of humour. So these heated combatants, themselves and their weapons bespattered with the blood of fleeing fugitives, forgot their blood-lust, and roared with genuine merriment again and again. But Jolwana, their leader, the only one head-ringed among them, did not seem to enter into the joke at all. However, he stopped, which was all Fleetwood—and, incidentally, Wyvern—wanted of him.
“A son of Majendwa!” he scoffed. “Au! but a son of Majendwa ceases to be such when he is found on that side. He has become a hunting dog of the Abelungu.”
“Who art thou?” asked Fleetwood of the fugitive, who had now recovered from his exhaustion. “I recall thy face but thy name escapes me.”