This question was settled just as the first faint streaks of approaching dawn began to brighten the eastern horizon, when the ship was moved up into the great square before the king’s house, where the whole of the king’s body-guard were drawn up under arms, and, beyond them, the remaining inhabitants of the village, a dense, surging, excited, squabbling crowd.
On the approach of the Flying Fish the latter flung themselves face downwards, in abject terror, to the ground, and the armed and mounted warriors betrayed a disposition to stampede which was only with the utmost difficulty checked and restrained by Seketulo. Even this chief found himself unable to wholly conceal the feeling of nervousness which agitated him; but he in this trying moment enjoyed a consciousness, unshared by any other man there present, of having done his best to make the erstwhile prisoners comfortable.
As the huge ship settled quietly down in the centre of the great square a profound and deathlike silence suddenly succeeded the confused babbling sound which had hitherto prevailed, and when the four travellers stepped out from the pilot-house to the deck and appeared at the gangway a visible shudder ran through the entire concourse of people there assembled. They dreaded they knew not what, and their fears were only in a very trifling degree allayed by the promise of intercession on their behalf which Seketulo had made to them.
The professor was of course to be spokesman for the occasion; it was he, therefore, who broke the terrible silence by exclaiming, in a loud, commanding tone of voice:
“Seketulo, we are your friends. Advance, therefore, and listen to the commands which we are about to lay upon you!”
The reassured and now happy chief struck with his spurred heels the sides of his charger, and the animal, bounding and caracoling, advanced to within a few yards of the ship’s side, where his rider dismounted and, with bowed head and bended knee, waited for such communication as might be vouchsafed him.
“Listen, O Seketulo!” continued the professor. “We entered this country animated by feelings of the most amicable nature to its king and to every one of its inhabitants. We showed this by distributing presents of beads, cloth, and other matters when Lualamba and his warriors first visited us. And we asked for nothing in return save permission to examine and explore the ruins on yonder plain; offering to pay promptly and liberally for whatever assistance we might need. Is not this the truth?”
“It is, O most mighty wizard,” answered Seketulo humbly; some of the braver warriors also venturing to murmur:
“It is! It is!”
“And how have we been treated?” asked the professor. “Your king, not satisfied with our friendship and the presents we gave him, wickedly and treacherously devised a scheme to get us into his power—a scheme which, in order to try him, we permitted to succeed. And, having done that, he further attempted to gain possession of this ship,”—this fact having leaked out in Seketulo’s previous conversations—“profanely and audaciously thinking he could subdue her to his will and control her as we do. Now, therefore, be it understood by all present that, for his base treachery, M’Bongwele is dethroned, and Seketulo will, from this moment, reign in his stead. Let a detachment of the guard enter the palace and bring M’Bongwele forth to hear his sentence!”