“You are a liar, Kuliso,” replied Beryl calmly. “A great chief of the House of Ndhlambe is a great liar. Ha! Do not stop. Again I warn you—do not stop.”
I thought that moment was Kuliso’s last. That terrible merciless look, which had temporarily frozen down, gleamed forth anew on Beryl’s face. I caught my breath. But again the instinct of self-preservation was stronger than his natural exasperation, and he stepped forward with renewed alacrity.
“We shall never get him in to Fort Lamport, or anything like as far,” I said, as the road thither lay but a short space in front of us. “He’ll be rescued, or give us the slip long before.”
“I don’t intend to take him to Fort Lamport, or anything like as far,” she answered shortly.
“But—where then?” I asked, thoroughly mystified.
“I am going to take him to look upon those he has murdered. Then I am going to shoot him dead—there, at the place where he has murdered them.”
I gasped.
“Great heavens, Beryl! you are never going to do anything so mad!”
“I am. What do you suppose I brought him all this way for—Be careful, Kuliso,” relapsing into Kafir. “My eyes are on you, although I’m talking. The bullet, too, is just as ready.”
To say that I was thunderstruck is to put it mildly. When I had agreed to our daring and desperate scheme, the arrest of the chief in the very thick of his own followers, I had never bargained for this. The idea was that by seizing him ourselves we could bring him to justice and thus prevent his escape, for if his said arrest were attempted in the ordinary way his followers would never give him up. They would resist any attempt to take him by force, as sure as such attempt were made. This would probably bring on a war, but not condign punishment upon Kuliso. I was filled with admiration for the promptitude and resolution with which she had forced him to accompany us, but that he was marching to his swift and certain doom had never entered my head—that Beryl had constituted herself his judge, jury and executioner, least of all. No, assuredly I had never bargained for this.