"Let no man approach until this note shall again sound," said the king. "Preserve clear a wide space around, lest the ear that opens too wide be removed from its owner's head. Go."
The man saluted humbly and withdrew. And then for long did they sit together and talk in a low tone, the barbarian monarch and the white adventurer—and the subject of their talk seemed fraught with some surprise to the latter, but with satisfaction to both.
"See now, Nyonyoba," concluded the king. "They have brought you here, here whence no man ever returned; and you would become one of us. Well, be it so. There is that about you I trust."
"Whence no man ever returned?" echoed Laurence.
"Surely. Ha! A white man found his way hither once, but—he was a preacher—and I love not such. He never returned."
"But what of my two friends? You will not harm them, Ndabezita, because they are my friends, and we have fought together many a long year," urged Laurence.
"I will spare them for that reason. They shall be led from the country with their eyes covered, lest they find the way back again. But—if they do—they likewise shall never depart from it. And now, Nyonyoba, all I have told you is between ourselves alone. Breathe not a whisper of it or anything about me even to your friends. For the present, farewell, and good fortune be yours."
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Founder of the Zulu dynasty, and of course patriarchally greater than the royal house of this Zulu-originated tribe.