"Have no fear, lord," said Gala sagely; "I will lie to him."
"If you tell me I lie, I will beat you to death, old monkey," said the wrathful Tobolaka. "This is true that I tell you."
The old man was dazed.
"A white woman," he said, incredulously. "Lord, that is shame."
Tobolaka gasped. For here was a sycophant of sycophants surprised to an expression of opinion opposed to his master's.
"Lord," stammered Cala, throwing a lifetime's discretion to the winds, "Sandi would not have this—nor we, your people. If you be black and she be white, what of the children of your lordship? By Death! they would be neither black nor white, but a people apart!"
Tobolaka's fine philosophy went by the board.
He was speechless with rage. He, a Bachelor of Arts, the favoured of Ministers, the Latinist, the wearer of white man's clothing, to be openly criticised by a barbarian, a savage, a wearer of no clothes, and, moreover, a worshipper of devils.
At a word, Cala was seized and flogged. He was flogged with strips of raw hide, and, being an old man, he died.
Tobolaka, who had never seen a man die of violence, found an extraordinary pleasure in the sight. There stirred within his heart sharp exultation, fierce joys which he had never experienced before. Dormant weeds of unreasoning hate and cruelty germinated in a second to life. He found himself loosening the collar of his white drill jacket as the bleeding figure pegged to the ground writhed and moaned.