The circle closed in, and now they were right under the walls. Still no sound! What did it mean? Simply that the man who had counselled further delay had spoken the right word. The occupants were probably fast asleep.
Softly, noiselessly, Jabula put forth his hand and grasped the handle of the door; softly, noiselessly, he turned it. To his amazement the door readily opened. It was not even fast.
He whispered a moment to those behind him, and he and several others entered the room. Then, as prearranged, a blaze sprang up as one of them had struck a match and lighted an impromptu torch of grass and sticks intertwisted, and rubbed over with grease. More amazement! There, in an arm-chair, with back towards them, lounged the figure of a man. The broad-brimmed hat was pulled rather forward over the eyes, as though its wearer were fast asleep.
“U’ Lamonti!” murmured Jabula; adding, by way of injunction, “He is sleepy with drink. Do not kill him. We will take him alive.”
For a moment the induna and those inside the door stood contemplating the sleeping figure, the fitful glare of the impromptu torch lighting their savage faces and blood-covetous eyes. They felt no further misgiving. The other white man would be asleep too—also drunk. What surpassing fools these Amakiwa were.
“Wake, Lamonti,” said Jabula, advancing to the arm-chair and its occupant. “Lo, we have come to visit thee.”
And those were the last words he ever spoke, for he had tripped and stumbled over a line of taut string stretched across the room, and at the moment he did so there was a concussion that might well have shaken the world, together with a most awful and appalling roar; which, however, those within or around did not even hear, inasmuch as they, together with Lamont’s homestead, had been literally blown from the face of the earth.
When the sun rose the following morning, it rose upon a strange scene. The site of Lamont’s homestead was now represented by a huge pit surrounded by a jumble of stones and fragments of wood and of iron—human remains, also fragmentary, in ghastly profusion, mixed with half-charred shields and fused and twisted metal. And outside the radius of this indescribable ruin, an odd savage here and there was picking himself up, and blinking dazedly as he asked a comrade what had happened, and was surprised that though he could see the latter’s lips moving he could not hear one word of what was said. Indeed it would be long before those who had escaped with life would recover from the shock of that awful concussion, even if they ever did.