“Stop!” cried the other, with so menacing a voice that Hume reeled back. “You are wasting time now, and I feel her heart beats more slowly. What claim have you to give half the treasure away?”
“I—I am captain of this party.”
“Ay, but you are not the chief of the people here.”
“No,” said Hume quickly; “but here he is. Sirayo!” And he spoke hurriedly to the chief.
“Half is his,” said Sirayo.
“Good!” said the man, this time in Zulu. “Swear it. I think I will trust you—since I have watched you for many nights—had your lives in my power, but spared you.”
“Then bring her out!”
“Take her yourself.”
And the next minute Hume was staggering blindly, fiercely through the dark and tortuous passage, with his precious burden.
Then the stranger overturned the burning vessel in the middle of the room, and stamped on the smouldering herbs; next he lifted Webster’s heavy form, to stagger off with it; while Sirayo did the same for Klaas, both returning to carry the chief, Umkomaas. They were all taken to the spring, shelters of rushes built over them, and a medicine man called to attend them. They had been all stupefied by the fumes of burning herbs, by the same fumes which, stealing through the cracks in the floor, had overcome them on their first night in the ruins; and the witch-doctor, after much waste of time over muttered incantations, brought them slowly to their senses, though they were too languid to move.