As one man that huge assembly sprang to its feet,—and the quivering rattle of spear-hafts was as a winter gale rushing through a leafless wood; with one voice it began to thunder forth the royal titles.
"O Great Spider! Terrible Spider! Blood-drinking Spider, whose bite is death! O Serpent! O Elephant! Thunderer of the heavens! Divider of the Sun! House Burner! O Destroyer! O All Devouring Beast!" These were some of the titles used—but the praisers would always bring back the bonga to some attribute of the spider. Laurence, who understood the system, noted this peculiarity, differing, as it did, from the Zulu practice of making the serpent the principal term of praise. Finally, as by signal, the shouting ceased, and the principal leaders of the impi, disarming, crept forward, two by two, to the king's feet.
Laurence was too far off to hear what was said, for the tone was low, but he judged, and rightly, that the chiefs were giving an account of the expedition. At length the king dismissed them, and pointing with the short knob-stick he held in his hand, ordered that he himself should be brought forward.
The ranks of the warriors opened to let him through, and as, having been careful to disarm in turn, he advanced, Laurence could not repress a tightening thrill of the pulses as he wondered what fate it was, as regarded himself, that should now fall from the lips of this despot, whose very name meant a terror and a scourge.
Tyisandhlu for some moments uttered no word, but stood gazing fixedly upon his prisoner in contemplative silence. Laurence, for his part, was studying, no less attentively, the king. The finely shaped head and lofty brow—the clear eyes and oval face, culminating in a short beard, whose jetty thickness just began to show here and there a streak of gray,—the noble stature and erect carriage, impressed him even more, thus face to face, than at a distance.
"They say thou bearest the Sign of this nation, O stranger," began the king, speaking in the Zulu tongue, "and that to this thou owest thy life."
"That is true, Great Great One," answered Laurence.
"But how know we that the Sign is genuine?" continued Tyisandhlu.
"By this, Father of the People of the Spider. Not once has it stood between me and death, but twice, and that at the hands of your people."
A murmur of astonishment escaped his hearers. But the king said: