"Back, back!" he shouted, meeting the crowd of charging savages who, shield and spear uplifted, were bearing down in full career upon the village.
In the headlong, exciting moment of their charge they hardly recognized him. Laurence Stanninghame's life hung upon a hair. Then, with a great burst of laughter, mocking, half defiant, they surged past him. They "saw red," and no power on earth seemed able to stop those human wolves now rushing upon their helpless prey.
"Back, back!" thundered Laurence again. "The village is dead, I tell you. It is the abode of death!"
This told. Barbarians have a shrinking horror of infectious disease. Thoughts of smallpox, cholera, what not, arose in the minds of these. No other consideration on earth could have restrained that charge, yet this one did. They stopped short.
"Lo! the stillness, the silence," went on Laurence, pointing to the lifeless village. "Would you, too, travel the voiceless and weaponless path of death?"
But mutterings both loud and deep went through the Wangoni ranks. What was this? They had been ordered to charge—been signalled to charge, and now they were forbidden to enter the village. "El Afà" (the serpent) had been absent from the expedition, and now turned up here, alone. Savages are ever suspicious, and these were no exception to the rule of their kind.
"Whau, what does it mean?" half sneered their leader, scowling resentfully upon Laurence as the warriors crowded around, growling like a pack of baffled wolves. "Had we not better send some in to see if these dogs are indeed all dead?"
"Not so, Mashumbwe," was the unconcerned reply. "Tarry until the others arrive, then will we act together."
But a furious clamour arose at the words. The Wangoni did not entirely believe the explanation; and to further their doubts there now arose from the inside of the huts the puling wail of infants which the mothers had not been entirely able to stifle.