“Surely they dare not,” interposed Frank. “They know that Charles will be returning, before long, with messengers from the English governor at Cape Town. He is not likely to endure the murder of a British subject without a shadow of justice or reason. And when he hears—”
“Ay, Frank, that is just it,” said De Walden. “They will take care that he shall never hear it. They will probably say that I have died of some disease, or have taken my departure from their kraal of my own accord. But your evidence would disprove their story, and they will have no scruples in securing your silence by the surest of all methods—that is, by putting you to death.”
“Then they would have to account for all four of us,” observed Gilbert, “and some one in the kraal—Dalili or Gaiké, or Mololo perhaps—might tell Charles the truth, and then very signal punishment would probably be exacted.”
“You do not know these people,” said De Walden. “The influence of this pretended prophet would be greater than ever after his supposed victory over me. They will be too much terrified to venture even on a word. If Kobo had remained faithful to us indeed—”
“The treacherous wretch!” exclaimed Frank, passionately. “I feel more indignant with him than with Chuma, or even Maomo himself.”
“This is no time for anger, Frank,” said the elder man, gravely. “I should not speak of him at all, if it had not been necessary to explain to you your true position. If Kobo had remained faithful, I say, something might have been done. We might have sent him off from the village, and Chuma would have been afraid that he had gone to report what had happened to the English. But that hope does not exist, and there is nothing for it but for us all to prepare ourselves for the worst.”
“They may do what they will,” said Warley. “If they take your life, I have no wish to keep mine.”
“You must not say that, Ernest. God may have a great work for you to do; and if your life is preserved, I shall feel assured it is for that purpose. But we have probably but a short time to pass together; let us make the best use of that.”
They all knelt down while the missionary offered up a fervent prayer in behalf of each one of them, in which all heartily joined; and they were still engaged in their prayers, when Kobo re-entered, accompanied by his satellites, to announce to them their sentence, or rather that of De Walden.
This, he gave them to understand, with diabolical exultation, was to be the most painful form of death that imagination could conceive—one which was resorted to only in the instance of enemies captured in war, upon whom they wished to inflict the worst possible sufferings. De Walden was to be eaten alive by ants! He was to be pegged down on his back over one of the large ant-hills, some three feet in height—great numbers of which were to be found at the distance of a mile or two from the village—his neck, wrists, and ankles firmly secured by thongs of rhinoceros hide, so that it would be impossible to move even an inch to the right or left. He was to be left in this position half an hour or so after nightfall, about which time the ants, which had remained in a state of torpor all day, were wont to come out of their nests in such multitudes as to blacken the whole of the ground round one of their hills. They would be sure to fasten at once on any animal substance near them, and so great was their voracity, that in the course of three or four hours, the largest carcasses would be stripped of every particle of skin or flesh, and be left a bare and whitened skeleton.