“Is he the son of a stranger, sisters?”
“He is the son of a stranger.”
Then they crept nearer, crept on their hands and knees, till they were within ten paces of where I sat among the indunas near to the king. The indunas looked on each other and grew grey with fear; and for me, my father, my knees were loosened and my marrow turned to water in my bones. For I knew well who was that son of a stranger of whom they spoke. It was I, my father, I who was about to be smelt out; and if I was smelt out I should be killed with all my house, for the king’s oath would scarcely avail me against the witch-doctors. I looked at the fierce faces of the Isanusis before me, as they crept, crept like snakes. I glanced behind and saw the slayers grasping their kerries for the deed of death, and I say I felt like one for whom the bitterness is overpast. Then I remembered the words which the king and I had whispered together of the cause for which this Ingomboco was set, and hope crept back to me like the first gleam of the dawn upon a stormy night. Still I did not hope overmuch, for it well might happen that the king had but set a trap to catch me.
Now they were quite near and halted.
“Have we dreamed falsely, sisters?” asked Nobela, the aged.
“What we dreamed in the night we see in the day,” they answered.
“Shall I whisper his name in your ears, sisters?”
They lifted their heads from the ground like snakes and nodded, and as they nodded the necklets of bones rattled on their skinny necks. Then they drew their heads to a circle, and Nobela thrust hers into the centre of the circle and said a word.
“Ha! ha!” they laughed, “we hear you! His is the name. Let him be named by it in the face of Heaven, him and all his house; then let him hear no other name forever!”
And suddenly they sprang up and rushed towards me, Nobela, the aged Isanusi, at their head. They leaped at me, pointing to me with the tails of the vilderbeestes in their hands. Then Nobela switched me in the face with the tail of the beast, and cried aloud:—