Volume Two—Chapter Twenty Two.
The “Word” of the Great Chief.
Tired of gazing at the prisoner, and realising, moreover, that there was not much fun to be got out of one who took matters so coolly, the women and children ceased to crowd round him, and he was left very much, to himself. It was broiling hot, and every now and then upon the sultry hushened air came the discharge of firearms in the far distance. Evidently the rival forces were making targets of each other; but it was probably only a slight skirmish with some patrol, and Claverton did not allow himself to hope anything from the circumstance. The Kafirs, too, seemed in no way to trouble themselves about it.
“Time passes slowly, doesn’t it, Lenzimbi?” said Mopela, mockingly. “It passed quicker sitting by the pool at midnight, you and the tall dark lily at Seringa Vale. How well you looked together! Why didn’t you bring her here with you, eh? It would have been much more comfortable for you, and for us, ha, ha!”
At that moment Claverton would have bartered his life to be free to spring upon the jibing savage and tear him in pieces with his bare hands. But it is safe to worry a chained mastiff, if only the chain is strong enough.
“Ha! ha! What will the dark lily say when you do not return to her?” went on Mopela. “When she hears how you were cut in pieces like a sheep, or roasted. Once we killed a man by putting red-hot stones upon him. At last they slid off, but we held them on again with sticks. He was two days dying. That was for witchcraft. Another was smeared over with honey, and a nest of black ants was broken over him. They stung him, they got into his ears, and nose, and eyes, and stung him everywhere. He died raving mad. Another was skinned alive, and then his skin was sewn round him again. Another was hung by the heels over a slow fire, and his eyes were put out with red-hot fire-sticks. Which of these things would you rather have happen to you, Lenzimbi?” concluded the Kafir with a hideous laugh.
“Nothing of the kind will happen to me,” was the imperturbable reply.
A low boom of thunder smote upon the air—long, very distant, but distinctly audible. On the farthest horizon a little cloud was just visible. The slightest suspicion of a superstitious misgiving was in the breasts of the bystanders. How could this man preserve such perfect imperturbability unless he were sure of some miraculous deliverance?
“Will it not?” jeered Mopela. “What will happen then?”