So our song thundered forth as we marched straight onward. I gave another signal. Immediately every shield and weapon fell to the ground with one crash, and advancing nearer weaponless, we bent low, a forest of heads, and from every tongue in one roar there ascended the “Bayéte.” For we were now in the presence of the King.
In stern silence Dingane sat gazing upon us. Then he, too, gave a signal. Immediately an armed regiment moved across our rear. Between us and the weapons we had thrown down stood a wall of armed men, and in this I read our sentence of death. We had risked our chance and had foiled. By my counsels, I had led these hundreds of brave men to their doom.
Chapter Twenty One.
The Embassy of Tambusa.
“What do I see? Untúswa, the wanderer? Untúswa, who fled from the north to konza to another King? Ha! Greeting, Untúswa, for it seems long since we have beheld thee.”
So spake Dingane, softly, flatteringly, even as Umzilikazi was wont to do what time the stake or the alligators were preparing for somebody, and I indeed felt dead already.
“And these,” went on the King, bending his stern gaze upon my following. “A warrior-like band indeed, and it seems a pity to slay such, yet must they all die.”
This he said almost to himself, else had the slayers been at work already. And I—the boldness of desperation came into me then.