With the muzzle of a revolver pointing full at his breast, the butt in the hand of a man whose daring and resolution was known to all, no wonder Ingonyama should sit rigid and paralysed. His councillors shared his dazed immovability. What marvellous thing was to happen next, they thought?
Dawes, who was standing beside his horse, prepared for the first hostile move, had not raised his arm. He had merely brought the weapon to bear after the method known as “firing from the hip.” To all outward appearance he was merely conversing rather animatedly with the chief.
The latter stared at him as though he could hardly believe his senses. But there was the little round ring, pointing full upon his breast from barely six yards off. The merest pressure of a finger, and it would let out his life as he sat.
“You have treated us ill, Ingonyama,” went on Dawes, sternly. “We have no quarrel with the people of the Zulu; on the contrary, we are at peace. Yet you have kept us here against our will, and treated us as enemies. In two days ‘my tongue’ speaks at Undini, in the ears of the Great Great One, by whose light you live.”
This reference to the king, by one of his favourite titles, had a strange effect upon this chief, whom the speaker by this time more than half suspected of being a rebellious and plotting vassal. For an instant it seemed that the latter’s uncontrollable rage would triumph over his fear of death. But he only said, with a sneer—
“Not so, Jandosi. ‘Your tongue,’ however long, will be brought back here. Long before the end of two days it will have ceased to speak for ever. When a tongue is too long, we cut it. Ha! We have a Tooth here which can bite it short. Your ‘tongue’ shall be bitten on the point of The Tooth, Jandosi. Ha!”
Which being rendered out of the vernacular of “dark” talking, dear to the South African native, into plain English, meant that in the chief’s opinion Gerard would assuredly be recaptured, and in that event would be adjudged to the hideous fate of the wretch whose body he had found impaled on the summit of The Tooth.
“I think not, Ingonyama. I think my ‘tongue’ will speak at Undini in words that will move the Lion of the Zulu to wrath. It may be that it will speak of another Lion, who sits beneath the white shield as a king, who within the territory of the great king levies war upon and treats as enemies the friends of the Lion of the Zulu. Yet it is not too late. You have but to give the word, now this night, that I and mine may depart unmolested, and I can draw back my ‘tongue’ before it reaches as far as Undini, for I am a peaceable trader, and have no wish to mix myself up in anybody’s quarrels.”
A deep-chested gasp of wonder escaped his listeners.
“You are a bold man, Jandosi,” exclaimed the chief.