“Wait and see. If you have been telling me those interesting stories to try and frighten me—well, then, Mopela, you’re a bigger fool than even I took you for, and have been taking a vast deal of trouble about nothing. But now, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll go to sleep.”
They stared at him. Here was a marvellous thing. These white men, too, were so afraid of pain; and this one, whom in a few hours they intended to burn alive, announced his intention of going to sleep. But they offered no objection. He was in their eyes a natural curiosity, and to be studied as such.
And he actually did sleep, and slept soundly, too, so that two hours later when the whole kraal was astir and in a commotion, he awoke quite refreshed. The arbiters of his fate had arrived.
The chief, Sandili, a refugee with the remnant of his tribe in the fastnesses of the Amatola forest, was a very different personage to the sleek, well-fed, benevolent-looking old “sponge” who had asked for sixpences when sitting against the wall of the Kaffrarian trading-store. To begin with, he was sober, a state he could rarely plead guilty to during the piping times of peace. But there were no canteens in these rugged strongholds, and the very limited supply of liquor that could be smuggled in was but as a drop in the bucket to this habitual old toper. His temper, too, was peevish and uncertain, whether owing to the supplies of grog being cut off, or the reverses sustained by his arms, was open to debate. So when this prisoner stood before him as he sat in front of his hut surrounded by his amapakati (councillors) and attendants, the old chief’s countenance wore none of its former friendliness and geniality.
One swift glance at the rows of dark, impassive faces, whose eyes were fixed upon him, keenly noting every point of his demeanour, and Claverton saluted the chief—easily, naturally, and as between equals. A murmur ran through the group in acknowledgment, and every eye was bent upon the prisoner. For some moments they regarded each other in silence, and then Sandili spoke.
“Who are you, white man, and what are you doing here?”
“Who am I? The chief will recollect that we have met before. Does he not remember Thompson’s store and the man who talked with him there? That was myself.”
Again a hum of assent ran through the group, and the chief sat gazing at his prisoner as if in deep thought. And what an unaccountable turn of fate it seemed to Claverton! The last time he had talked with this man he had felt for him a good-humoured, contemptuous kind of pity as he gave him the trifling gifts which the other had asked for; and Lilian’s sweet eyes had looked upon the old savage with a delicious air of half-frightened interest, much as she might have regarded a tame old lion, and then they had ridden so light-heartedly away, without much thought of the evil to come. How vividly that day came back to him now—now, as he once more stood before the old chief, whose lightest word was sufficient to decide his fate! Verily, the turns in the wheel of Fortune are capricious.
Seeing that no one was in a hurry to break the silence, Claverton continued: