The words, quick, hurried, broke off. On the faces of both men was a look of keen, anxious alertness. For a wild and fierce clamour had suddenly arisen and was drawing nearer and nearer, loud, swelling, threatening.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TWO PERILS.
"Just what I feared," said Hazon calmly, but with ever so faint a glance at his confederate. "Our people are in revolt."
Both men rose to their feet, but leisurely, and turned to confront the approaching tumult. And formidable enough this was. The Wangoni advanced in a compact mass, beating their shields with their spear-hafts, yelling in concert a shrill, harsh battle-song, into which they had managed to import an indescribable note of defiance, announcing their intention of returning to "eat up" those they had so weakly spared the previous day. On either side of them came the Arab and Swahili element, in silence, however, but a silence which was no less ominous than their sullen and scowling looks, and the almost significant gestures wherewith they handled their rifles.
"What do they want, Lutali?" said Hazon, turning to the Arab who, with Holmes, had just joined the pair. But Lutali shrugged his shoulders, and his hawk-like features scarce moved. Then he said:
"Who may think to strive against the hand of Allah and that of his Prophet? Yon foul dogs, even they—so great is the mercy of Allah—even they might have been turned into good Moslemia, even as other such have been before them. Yet we—we have left them to wallow in the mire of their cannibal abominations. Our people are not satisfied, El Khanac, and they fear that ill may come of it."
"A magnificent and comfortable hypocrisy that," said Laurence, in English. "Such combination of soul-saving and slave-selling is unique." Then, in Swahili, "But what do they want, Lutali?"