“Nay, O Great One!” answered Lambati; “I could but repeat the words of Ingona; and what would that avail me? Nothing! I, too, have said!”
“Let him also be taken away, and watched as carefully as Ingona,” ordered the king. “Mapela, have you aught to say in justification of your conspiracy against me?”
“Ay, that have I,” answered Mapela, springing to his feet and speaking in a defiant tone of voice. “My justification, O Lobelalatutu! is that under your governance the Makolo, formerly the most powerful and warlike nation in the world, is fast becoming a nation of women, and the contempt and laughing-stock of our neighbours. Soon shall we forget the art of war, our young men will sicken at the sight and smell of blood, and we shall become the prey of the first nation that dares attack us. Are not these sufficient reasons for our desire to see thee removed, and a man placed upon the throne in thy stead?”
A low murmur, whether of approval or the reverse it was difficult to say, ran round the line of assembled chiefs at this defiant speech from the mouth of one of the most powerful chiefs of the nation, but it subsided again instantly.
“Have you aught further to say, O Mapela?” demanded the king.
“Nay,” answered Mapela, still in the same defiant tone of voice. “What I have already said should surely be sufficient.”
“It is,” answered the king dryly, as he signed the guards to remove the rebel. “Is there anyone present who thinks and feels as does Mapela?”
“Yea!” answered two of the implicated chiefs, named respectively Amakosa and N’Ampata, as they simultaneously sprang to their feet.
“And have you, Amakosa, anything to add to, or take from, what Mapela has said?” demanded the king.
“Nothing!” briefly answered Amakosa.