But the queen's mistress of the robes--let me call her so--has told her that she is expected to take unto herself a husband in three moons, and that it must be either Kaloomah or Kalamazoo.
This is now no state secret. All the queen's people know, from her own palace gates to the remotest mud hut on this cannibalistic territory. They all know it, and they look forward to that week of festivity as children in the rural districts of England look forward to a fair.
There will be a monster carousal that day.
The soldiers of the queen will make a raid on a neighbouring hill tribe, and bring back many heads and many hams.
If Kaloomah is the favourite, then Kalamazoo will be slain and cooked.
If the queen elects to smile on Kalamazoo with his necklace of the maternal molars and incisors, then Kaloomah with the best grace he can must submit to the knife.
Yet must I do justice to both and say that it is not because they fear death that they are so anxious to curry favour with the young and lovely queen. Oh no! for both are over head in love with her.
And a happy thought has occurred to Leeboo. She will play one against the other, and thus, in some way to herself at present unknown, endeavour to effect her escape from this land of murder, blood, and beautiful scenery.
So there they stand silently, a spear-length from her dais, she glorying in the power she knows she has over both. There they stand in silence, for court etiquette forbids them to speak until spoken to.
Very like a couple of champion idiots they are too. Big Kaloomah doesn't quite know what to do with his hands, and Kalamazoo is fidgeting nervously with his necklace, and apparently counting his dead mother's teeth as monks count their beads.