“Ehé! E-hé!” roared the listeners. “To The Tooth, to The Tooth with him!”
It was the hour of sunset, and the sweet golden glow fell upon a wild sea of ferocious figures, of hideous mouthing faces and gleaming spear-blades. The whole population had mustered within the kraal, and were crowding up, striving to obtain a view of the chief and his councillors and the white prisoner; and again and again from the savage roaring throats went up the fiendish shout.
“To The Tooth! to The Tooth!”
“Even now I do not fear you, Ingonyama,” went on the trader, intrepidly. “For my death will surely be avenged—ay, as surely as yonder sun will rise to-morrow. It may be that the might of the king will rise up and stamp flat this tribe of abatagati (those who practise arts of wizardry); it may be that my own countrymen will. But it shall surely be done, ye who call yourselves Igazipuza, and my death shall be avenged.”
Again the wild, roaring clamour drowned his words. The intrepidity of the man exasperated them while compelling their admiration. Of the latter, however, Ingonyama felt none. He only remembered his own humiliation at this man’s hands, here on this very spot. His features working, his eyes rolling in fury, he said slowly—
“Let him be bitten on the point of The Tooth.”
“Ha! on the point of The Tooth! on the point of The Tooth!” roared the ferocious crowd in deafening chorus. And a multitude of eager hands were stretched forward to seize the unfortunate man, and drag him away to his hideous death of torture.