“Good,” said the King. “Thou hast the look of a warrior indeed, and thou shalt wield thy spear in the ranks of my army now. See now, Kumbelwa. Take charge of these two white men, whose servant thou wouldst seem to be. I will talk with thee later. Go.”
Thus dismissed, Haviland and Oakley breathed more freely. It was a respite at any rate. Yet with the scenes of horror and vengeance weighing heavy upon them, their minds were full of foreboding as to what was to come, as they took up their quarters in the large square hut assigned to them. And even yet, the stakes with their writhing victims seemed to haunt them, and in the mind of each was the unspoken thought that they themselves might be the next.
Chapter Twenty Six.
The End of Mushâd.
After this they saw nothing of the King. The days went by, growing into weeks, and still there seemed no prospect of their perilous and irksome captivity drawing to its end. Though outwardly treated as guests, there were not wanting downright intimations that they could not come and go as they pleased, and they received a significant hint that the country was very unhealthy did they venture out of sight of the stockade. At first they strove to take an interest in the novelty of their position, and in the conditions of life of this strange race; but the people were very reserved, and seemed afraid to say much; so that except through Kumbelwa they could learn but little about them—and not a great deal through him. The King’s name, they gathered, was Umnovunovu; and yet it was in reality only a title, like that of the Pharaohs of Egypt, for the kings of the Inswani had no name, and their former one became very much hlonipa, i.e. not to be uttered.
“You see, Oakley,” Haviland said, “there’s no end to the curious twists and turns of native etiquette—and the unformulated, or what would be to us the unwritten laws, are the strangest of all. In Zululand, for instance, white men who have had the country and people at their fingers’ ends all their lives have told me that the more certain they were they knew everything, the more certain something was to occur to show them they didn’t.”
“Well, this is a mighty ugly crowd, anyway,” answered Oakley, “and, like Pharaoh of old, Mr Umnovunovu doesn’t intend to let us go in a hurry.”
They were growing very dejected under their enforced detention. The climate was not bad, and a great improvement on the steamy heat of the lower country; indeed, the nights were at times distinctly sharp. But everything tended to depress them. They had nothing on earth to do, and, as Oakley said, all their time to do it in. For another thing, the atmosphere of continuous slaughter and death got very much upon their nerves. Besides the slaver captives, who were done to death under varying circumstances of barbarity, at the rate of several a day, and whose tortured shrieks it was impossible to keep out of their ears, several of the Inswani were taken out and put to death, as they were informed, by order of the King. This young savage seemed positively to wallow in blood and torture; yet, so far from the feet undermining the loyalty of his subjects, it seemed rather to cement their adherence. But, though cruel and bloodthirsty, he was of unimpeachable courage, and more than one tale of heroic valour did Kumbelwa narrate in which the young King was the central figure.