“Xi!” cried the warriors in contemptuous disgust, the sharp click sounding in chorus like the cracking of sticks. “Bayéte, Nkulu ’nkulu!” they mocked. “We konza to thee, young lion, who roars louder than the Lion of the Amandebeli.”
Thus they jeered the fallen chief, and amid their shouts of laughter I gave orders that he should be tied with his right hand to his left ankle, so that he could walk only with great difficulty. This I did, Nkose, because he was contemptible as a pitiful coward. Had he been a brave man, although he was doomed, I would have spared him insult; but for a chief, the chief of a nation, to crouch among the women and whine for mercy—au! he deserved all that befell him.
“Now,” I cried, when I had set aside those whom I judged should be taken alive to the King, “as for these, they shall have a choice of deaths. Yonder the cliff is high, and the way thereto is smooth and level. Hold! give them a fair chance. Go now, ye that remain of the nation of Bakoni! Hambani gahle!”
The warriors roared aloud at this jest. Those of the vanquished who were left alive started to run, doubtless hoping to find a way of escape. But there was none such, for the cliff went down in a smooth wall to a vast depth. Then I gave the word, and the young men leaped forward in pursuit, and in a moment that sunny cliff brow was red with death. Every one of the Bakoni had been forced to spring from the height or was speared.
Chapter Ten.
The Mystery Queen.
While the young men were thus amusing themselves, Nkose, I ran my gaze over the faces of the prisoners whom we had spared, and as I did so it fell upon a countenance which made me start and grip my assegai. The man who owned this face met my glance, and shook with fear. And well he might; for, in spite of a plentiful besmearing of red ochre, I knew that face and he saw that I did—knew it for the face of the deserter, the slave Maroane.
“Spare me, father,” he murmured quickly in the Sechuana tongue. “Spare me, and I will tell you something that will be worth knowing—something which the King would give me my life ten times over to know.”