“It is too much; mine eyes are not strong enough to gaze upon so much splendour! Bayete! Bayete!! Bayete!!!”
As for the king, his gratification and pride were unbounded: never before, I suppose, had he beheld any man so completely overpowered with admiration as this old induna; and if such was the effect of his appearance upon a man with whom he was, comparatively speaking, familiar, what might he not expect to be the result when he exhibited himself in his kingly attire to his troops? He swelled visibly with gratified vanity—for vanity and fear of witchcraft are the two overmastering emotions of the savage—grinned from ear to ear as he took the mirror in his hand and gazed admiringly at the reflected image of himself crowned with the smart shako and its nodding horsehair plume, and finally turned to me with the question:
“Say now, white man, what think ye? Do I look like a white king?”
“In every respect, Your Majesty,” answered I, with several mental reservations.
“Au! it is good; it is very good indeed!” he exclaimed. “Now am I a white king, and when my enemies behold me they shall tremble, and their hearts shall melt within them as the snow upon the mountain tops melts when the glory of the sun shines upon it. Their courage shall fail and their spirit shall wither at the sight of me, even as the grass withers and shrivels at the breath of fire. I am the king!”
A silence of a few minutes followed this rhapsody, then he turned to the still prostrate induna, and, kicking him gently in the ribs with his booted foot, exclaimed:
“Rise, Mapela, and behold me! You must grow accustomed to the sight of me in my kingly garb, for now that I have it I shall often delight the eyes of my people by wearing it. Say, now, shall I go forth this instant and make glad the hearts of the soldiers who are gathered in the great square by showing myself to them?”
Mapela revolved this very important question in his mind for nearly a minute; then he raised his head and answered:
“If, O Great, Great One, the words of the humblest of thy servants carry weight with thee I would say, show not thyself in thy glorious garb until to-morrow. There are but a few warriors in the square to-day, so few that they are altogether unworthy of so great an honour as that which thou dost suggest; moreover, they would go away and babble to others of what they had seen, and much of the glory and splendour of thy first appearance in those magnificent garments would be wasted. Wait until to-morrow, O Elephant whose tread causes the earth to tremble with fear, and then—when the whole army is gathered together, and all can see thee at the same moment—thou shalt reveal thyself in all thy magnificent splendour, and—and—words fail me to predict the result.”
“Perhaps thou art right, Mapela the Wise One,” answered the king, kindly overlooking—or perhaps not noticing—the rather lame and impotent conclusion of the induna’s high-flown speech. “Yes; perhaps thou art right,” (this rather regretfully). “But there is no reason why I should not at once show myself to my wives; and, by the bones of my royal father, I will! There be those among them who of late have shown a tendency to make light of my words and hold me of small account. I will see what they will say and how they will act when they behold me as I now am!”