The words, the fiendish laugh, sent Gerard nearly off his head. Beckoning Sobuza aside, he besought the chief to delay his advance, to try and make terms with Ingonyama. But Sobuza shook his head. The thing was impossible, he explained. The king’s orders were absolute. Little or nothing was left to his own discretion, who was merely the king’s “dog,” and entrusted with carrying them out. Poor Gerard, with the horrible picture he had discovered that day upon the rock of death now vividly before his eyes, besought and implored. In vain. He even appealed to the recollection of the aid he had been able to render the chief—a thing that at any other time he would have died rather than have done. Still in vain. Sobuza was firm. The king’s orders were imperative and had to be carried out, though one man or a thousand perished. What Jeriji asked was impossible. They had delayed enough already. Then he turned to those who were holding down the emissaries.
“These dogs of Ingonyama’s! Could he not even send me a kehla, instead of talking to me, Sobuza, an induna of the king, through the mouths of two common dog-whelps like these. Let your spears devour them both!”
Eagerly the signal was watched for, eagerly it was obeyed. Down struck the spear-points, bright and flashing, up they rose again, ruddy and gore-dimmed, then down again. The quivering bodies of the foolhardy emissaries lay pierced with a dozen great gashes.
Covered with blood, one of them half rose. It was that of the spokesman.
“Hamba gahle (‘Farewell;’ literally, ‘Go in peace.’), Sobuza, induna of the king,” he gasped, ironically. “Hamba gahle, Umlúngu! The Tooth bites! The Tooth bites!” And, with a devilish chuckle, ferocious, untamable, fearless to the last, the young warrior, choked with the torrents of his own blood, sank back and died.
“Au!” growled the chief impatiently, with an angry scowl. “We have lost more than enough time over this carrion. Yet if all these dogs, who call themselves ‘blood-drinkers,’ care as little for their lives as you two, by the head-ring of the Great Great One we shall have a merry fight before we ‘eat up’ Ingonyama’s house.” Then aloud “Forward, children of the king!”