And yet, there were times, when, recurring to it in his own mind, honest George Bayfield would grow grave and shake his head and ejaculate softly to himself:
“My little Lyn! No—it can’t be. Oh, Great Scot!”
End of Book II.
[a/]
Chapter One.
“Woz’ubone, kiti kwazulu.”
Lo Bengula sat within the esibayaneni—the sacred enclosure wherein none dare intrude—at his great kraal, Bulawayo.
The occupation on which the King was then engaged, was the homely and prosaic one of eating his breakfast. This consisted of a huge dish of bubende, being certain ingredients of the internal mechanism of the bullock, all boiled up with the blood, to the civilised palate an appalling article of diet, but highly favoured by the Matabele. Yet, while devouring this delicacy with vast appetite, the royal countenance was overcast and gloomy in the extreme.
Lo Bengula sat alone. From without a continuous roar of many voices reached him. It was never hushed, the night through it had hardly been hushed, and this was early morning. Song after song, some improvised, others the old war-songs of the nation, interluded with long paeans of his own praises, rising from the untiring throats of thousands of his warriors—yet the King, in his heart of hearts, was tired of the lot.