vehement and undisguised expletive at the expense of the defaulter. “He’s playing Harry—not a doubt about it. I’ll make an example of him this time. Rather! Hold on. Where’s my thickest sjambok?”(Sjambok: A whip, made out of a single piece of rhinoceros, or sea-cow hide, tapering at the point. It is generally in the shape of a riding-whip.)He dived into the house, and, deaf to his wife’s entreaties and expostulations, armed himself with the formidable rawhide whip in addition to his gun, and flinging the bridle once more across the horse’s neck, sprang into the saddle.“Coming, Eustace?” he cried.“No. I think not. The sheep can’t be far off, and you can easily bring them in, even if, as is not unlikely, Goníwe has sloped. Besides, I don’t think we ought to leave Eanswyth all alone.”With a spluttered exclamation of impatience, Carhayes clapped spurs to his horse and cantered away down the kloof to recover his sheep and execute summary vengeance upon their defective herd.“Do go after him, Eustace. Don’t think about me. I don’t in the least mind being left alone. Do go. You are the only one who can act as a check upon him, and I fear he will get himself—all of us—into some terrible scrape. I almost hope Goníwe has run away, for if Tom comes across him in his present humour he will half kill the boy.”“He won’t come across him. On that point you may set your mind quite at ease. He will have no opportunity of getting into hot water, and I certainly shan’t think of leaving you alone here to-night for the sake of salvaging a few sheep more or less. We must make up our minds to lose some, I’m afraid, but the bulk of them will be all right.”“Still, I wish you’d go,” she pursued anxiously. “What if Tom should meet with any Kafirs in the veldt and quarrel with them, as he is sure to do?”

no mean antagonist, even had he been similarly armed, and he was unarmed.“No, I do not fear you,” he replied quietly, keeping his eyes upon hers, like a skilful fencer. The answer seemed rather to amuse than irritate her.“He does not fear me!” she repeated. “Ha! Inyoka, (Serpent), does he fear thee!” she cried, darting the serpent’s head within a couple of inches of the prisoner’s face. The reptile hissed hideously, but Eustace, who knew that it had been rendered harmless, and that it must long since have spat its venom glands empty, did not allow himself to be disconcerted by this. A murmur of wonder arose from the spectators.(The rinkhaal, a variety of cobra, has the faculty of being able, when angry, to eject an acrid, venomous saliva, to a distance of about six feet.)“He is not afraid! The white wizard is not afraid!” they cried.“Dost thou dare to stand before me while I strike thee? Is thy charm potent enough, O white wizard?” said Ngcenika, raising the assegai in the air.“I dare.”“Present thy breast, then. Give thy heart to my stroke. Let thy ‘charm’ protect thee if it can.”A desperate plan had occurred to Eustace—to wrench the assegai from the hag’s hand and make a dash for the forest. But even concurrently with the idea, he realised the absolute impracticability of it. He more, than doubted his ability to disarm his adversary; he had no doubt at all as to the certainty of his being seized long before he could accomplish that feat. No—he must stand up to the blow. It was his only chance, and at any rate his death would be a swift and painless one.The dark, brawny arm of the sorceress was upraised, her muscular fingers gripped the assegai haft a few inches from the blade. The shining spear-head gleamed aloft.Not once did his glance wander from that cruel demon-face confronting him. Yet between it and him floated the sweet, oval contour of another very different countenance.“Love of my life—preserve that life once more for thyself!” he murmured with the impassioned fervour of an invocation of faith. His lips moved.“Ha! Thou repeatest thy charm, O white wizard,” said Ngcenika. “Is it stronger than mine? Is it stronger than mine?”One might have heard a pin drop. That fierce, excitable crowd, bending forward, straining their eyes upon this unwonted scene, held their very breath as they gazed.The prisoner stood with chest expanded—erect—facing the witch-doctress. There was a flash of light through the air, and the spear descended. No writhing body, gushing with blood, sank to the earth. The prisoner stood, erect and smiling.“Hau!” cried the warriors. “The ‘charm’ is too strong. The white man is unhurt—Mawo!”Ngcenika could be seen examining the point of her assegai in scowling concern. It was completely flattened and turned.It must not be supposed that Eustace was so simple as to imagine that the sorceress would strike at the spot where she knew the impediment was concealed—over his heart, to wit. That cunning she-devil, as he well knew, would aim just to the right of this, and would reckon infallibly upon transfixing him. Accordingly, while watching the stroke, with incredible quickness and dexterity he timed himself to swerve slightly in that direction thus actually catching the point of the weapon upon the silver box. Again had the love of Eanswyth stepped between himself and death.“Where is the man who owns this spear?” cried the witch-doctress, suddenly.

With much inward trepidation a warrior stepped forward.“Thy weapon is bewitched!” cried the hag, in a terrible voice.The man made no reply. He thought his doom was sealed.“Yes, thy weapon is bewitched.” Then raising her voice: “Where is the man who struck this white wizard in battle?”A moment’s hesitation—and there advanced from the ranks of the fighting men a tall, powerful warrior. He grasped in his hand a broad-bladed assegai, with the point broken short off.“I am Mfulini, the son of Mapute,” he began, not waiting to be addressed first. “I am a fighting man of the race of Gcaléka! I love war. Hau! I have struck more than one enemy, but have never struck him twice. Hau! I struck this white man and my weapon broke, my strong umkonto (The broad headed close-quarter assegai) that has drunk the heart’s blood of five Fingo dogs. The weapon is bewitched. He who has done this thing must be found. The wizard must be found. Hau!”“Ewa, Ewa!” shouted the warriors. “The wizard must be found. The great witch-doctress must find him. Then will the white man’s magic be no longer too strong for her. He must be killed! Find him! Find him! He must be killed!”Chapter Thirty One.The “Smelling Out.”“He must be killed! He must be killed!”The cry was taken up. The bloodthirsty shout rolled through the ranks fiercer and fiercer till the wild roaring chorus was deafening. That crouching, armed multitude, a moment before so motionless and silent, sprang erect, swaying to and fro, frenzied with uncontrollable excitement;a legion of dark demons roaring and howling under the promptings of superstition and ferocity; bellowing for blood—blood, blood, no matter whose. Weapons waved wildly in the air, and the deep-throated shout volleyed forth. “He must be killed!”The warriors were seated in an immense double semicircle. Gliding with her half-dancing step to the upper end of this, the witch-doctress began chanting an incantation in a high nasal key, an invocation to the great Inyoka (Serpent) who held the kraal and its inhabitants under its especial favour. As she commenced her round, the shouting of the warriors was hushed. All stood upright and silent. Different emotions held sway in each grim, dark countenance. The hearts of many were sinking with deadly fear, yet each strove to meet the eye of the terrible witch-doctress boldly and without quailing. They knew that that fatal round would prove of deadly import to one or more of them ere it was completed.“Ho—Inyoka ’nukulu!” (Great serpent) chanted the hag, with a significant shake of the body of the hideous reptile, which she held by the neck. “Find the wizard! Find the wizard!”“Find the wizard!” echoed those whom she had already passed by as she commenced her passage along the line.“Find the wizard!” they shouted, rapping the ground with their sticks. Those who had yet to undergo the ordeal kept stem silence.The chorus grew in volume as the number qualified to swell it increased. Not merely a lust for blood did that horrid shout represent—it embodied also a delirious relief on the part of those already safe.Suddenly Ngcenika made a half pause, raising her voice in the midst of her yelling chant. The serpent, its black coils writhing and twisting around her arm, opened its jaws and hissed horribly. Those still expectant held their breaths; those already relieved shouted and hammered with their sticks harder than ever. Those directly opposite the sorceress, at this ill-omened juncture, stood turned to stone.“Find him, Inyoka!” snarled the hag.“Find him! Find him!” echoed the deep-toned chorus.But the pause was only momentary. Not yet was the victim singled out. Ngcenika resumed her way, only to repeat the process further along the line. And this she would do at intervals, sometimes coming to a dead stop in such significant and purpose-fraught fashion that the whole body of spectators stood ready to hurl themselves like lightning upon the unlucky one denounced. The hellish hag was enjoying the terror she inspired, and as strong men of tried bravery one after another quailed before her she gloated over their fears to such a pitch that her voice rose to a deafening shriek of demoniacal glee.The other end of the great human crescent was nearly reached and still no victim. And now those who had escaped so far began to feel their apprehensions return. It would be no unprecedented affair were a second trial to occur, or even a third. The sorceress might elect to make her fatal progress through the ranks again and again. There were barely fifty men left. Unless the victim or victims should be found among those, a second progress was inevitable.The bloodthirsty chorus rose into a deafening roar. The tension was fearful to witness. The hideous possession of the repulsive witch-doctress had communicated itself in some degree to the mass of excitable savages. Many were foaming at the mouth and apparently on the eve of convulsions. Not satisfied with the shouting, the infuriated mob beat time with their feet in addition to their sticks, as they joined in the hell-hag’s demoniacal incantations, and the perspiration streamed from every pore till the very air was heavy with a sickening and musky odour. It was a repellent and appalling scene, and even the white spectator, apart from the extreme peril of his own situation, felt his blood curdle within him at this vision of what was very like a diabolical power let loose. But there was worse to follow.Suddenly the sorceress was seen to halt. Her voice rose to a frightful yell, as with blazing eyes, and pouring forth a torrent of denunciation, she raised the great black serpent aloft in such wise that its writhing neck and

hissing jaws made a dart straight at the face of a man in the rear rank of the line and near the end of the latter.“Thou hast found him, Inyoka! Thou hast found him! Show us the wizard!” screeched the hideous witch-doctress. The grinning skull and the two devil-like horns of hair which surmounted her head quivered convulsively. Her eyes started from the sockets, and the weird and barbaric amulets hung about her person rattled like castanets. She was once more the mouthing demoniac of a short half-hour ago.The writhings and hisses of the serpent had become perfectly frantic. Suddenly the reptile was seen to spring free of her grasp and to fling itself straight at the man whose face it had first struck at.“The wizard! The wizard!” roared the warriors. “Hau! It is Vudana! Vudana, the son of Sekweni, Hau!”“Vudana, the wizard! Seize him!” shrieked the sorceress. “Seize him, but slay him not. He must confess! He must confess! On your lives, slay him not!”The first part of her mandate had already been obeyed. Those in his immediate neighbourhood had flung themselves upon the doomed man and disarmed him almost before the words of denunciation had left the hag’s lips. The second part was in no danger of being disobeyed now. Better for the victim if it had.The latter was a man just past middle age, with a quiet and far from unpleasing cast of features. He was not a chief, but had a reputation for shrewdness and foresight beyond that of many an accredited leader.“Ha, Vudana! Vudana, the wizard!” cried Ngcenika mockingly. “Vudana, who did not believe in the efficacy of my magic. Vudana, who pretended to manufacture ‘charms’ as effective as mine. Vudana, whose poor attempts at magic have been effective to destroy mine in the case of all who believed in them. Call the names of those who fell,” she cried, addressing the crowd. “They are all believers in Vudana, not in me! Where are they now? Ask the Amanglezi—even the Amafengu, beforewhose bullets they fell. Ask the jackal and the vulture, who have picked their bones. Ask Mfulini, the son of Mapute, whose weapon was turned by the magic of the white man! Was he a believer in Vudana’s ‘charms’?” she added in a menacing voice, rolling her eyes around.“He was not,” shouted the warrior named, springing forward. “Where is the man who bewitched my broad umkonto. Let him confess and say how he did it.”“It is well, Mfulini,” said the witch-doctress grimly, knowing that the other trembled for his personal safety now that she had dexterously turned suspicion upon him. “Thou shall be the man to make him confess.”“I have nothing to confess,” said Vudana. He lay on his bark, held powerless by several men while waiting for a reim to be brought wherewith to bind him. He knew that he was doomed—doomed not merely to death, but to one of the differing forms of frightful torment meted out to those accused of his offence. He knew moreover that whether he accused himself or not the result would be the same, and a warrior light blazed from his eyes as he replied.“If the Great Chief wants my cattle, my possessions, they are his; let him take them. If he wants my life, it too is his; let him take it. But I will not accuse myself of that which I have never committed.”If Kreli had heard this appeal he made no sign. Witchcraft was an offence—theoretically at any rate—outside the secular province. “Smelling out” was a good old custom which had its uses, and one not lightly to be interfered with. It was doubtful, however, whether he did hear, for a shout of execration, led by the witch-doctress, drowned the victim’s words.“He will not confess! Au! Where are the hot stones? To the fire! To the fire!” roared the crowd. The witch-doctress uttered a fiendish laugh.“No. To the ants!” she cried.“Ewa! Ewa! To the ants!” they echoed. “Bring him along. Hau! The

ants are hungry!”A noosed reim was thrown round the doomed man’s neck, and another made fast to each of his wrists, and thus, with the whole crowd surging and yelling around him, he was dragged into the adjoining forest.“Hamba-ké, umlúngu!” (“Go on, white man”) said several of the warriors guarding Eustace, motioning him to proceed. “We are going to show you a sight. Quick, or we shall be late!”By no means free from apprehension on his own account, Eustace obeyed. When they arrived among the eager and excited crowd, the entertainment had already begun. All made way for the white prisoner and his guards, and there was a fiendish leer on many a dark face which needed not a muttered remark or two to explain. The horrible scene he was about to witness was extremely likely to be his own fate.The doomed man lay spread eagled on his back; his hands and feet, stretched to their utmost tension, were fastened to stout pegs driven into the ground. Two of the Kafirs were busily anointing his naked body with a sticky compound, which was, in fact, a mixture of honey and native beer. This they smeared over him with bits of rag: ears, eyes, nose, coming in for a plentiful share. Already his flesh seemed alive with moving objects, and then the cause became apparent. The wretched man was tied down right across a huge ant’s nest, which had been broken in order to receive his body. Already the infuriated insects were making their bites felt. He was to be devoured alive by black ants.“Confess, Vudana,” cried Ngcenika. “Confess thy witchcraft and how thy ‘charms’ were obtained. The black ants bite hard. Ha!”“Confess? Ha-ha!” jeered the sufferer, his eyes blazing. “Not to thee, vulture. Not to thee, jackal. Not to thee, spawn of a Fingo dog. Ha! That is the witch-doctress of the Amagcaleka! Such a thing as that! What magic can she make? A cheat—a liar! I can die—I can die as I have lived—a man, a warrior.”“Hau! A wizard! A traitor!” vociferated the crowd. “Confess thy

witchcraft, lest we put thee to the flaming torment. The fire bites deeper than the black ants. Hau!”“I laugh at the fire,” roared the victim. “I laugh at all that you can do. The fire is but a pleasant warmth. The bite of the ants is but the softest tickling. Thou dog, Mfulini, were I free, I would whip thee round the kraal.”“Is thy bed a comfortable one, Vudana?” replied the barbarian thus apostrophised, with a sneer. And picking up a handful of the venomous insects he scattered them upon the tortured man’s face with a brutal laugh.For all his defiant fortitude the latter was undergoing agonies. The ants were swarming all over his body, crawling into his nostrils and ears, biting everywhere, eating the rims of his eyelids, his lips, his throat, and he was powerless to move a hand or foot. The spectators crowded around, mocking and jeering at him. A few minutes ago he was a man of consideration—now all pushed and fought for the front places to witness his sufferings, all heaped execrations upon him as they gloated over the horrible punishment of one who had been denounced as a wizard.“Whose magic is the greatest, Vudana—thine or mine?” jeered Ngcenika, bending over her victim until her face was close to his. But the proximity of that repulsive countenance infuriated even the helpless victim. With a roar of rage he spat full into it, vociferating:“Thou spawn of a Fingo dog! Thine hour is come. I have put my mark upon thee. Before many moons are dead thou too shalt die, and thy death shall be even as mine. I, Vudana, say it. Hear ye my words all!”“He has confessed,” shouted the crowd. “He is a wizard. He has confessed. Let him die the death!”With a yell of fury Ngcenika started back, and glared vengefully around as if inquest of some means whereby to add to the sufferer’s agony. Then she remembered that it would hardly bear adding to under the circumstances, and contented herself with a satanic laugh.“You were not always a ‘loyal,’ Xalasa?”“Whau!” cried the man, bringing his hand to his mouth, in expressive native fashion. “When the fire trumpet first sounded in the midnight sky, I answered its call. While the chiefs of the Ama Ngqika yet sat still, many of their children went forth to war at the ‘word’ of the Paramount Chief. Many of us crossed into the Gcaléka country and fought at the side of our brethren. Many of us did not return. Hau!”“Then you became a ‘loyal’?”“Ihuvumenté (The Government) was very strong. We could not stand against it. Ha! Amasoja—Amapolisi—bonké. (Soldiers—police—all) I thought of all the men who had crossed the Kei with me. I thought of the few who had returned. Then I thought, ‘Art thou a fool, Xalasa? Is thy father’s son an ox that he should give himself to be slain to make strength for Sarili’s fighting men?’ Hau! I came home again and resolved to ‘sit still.’”“But your eyes and ears were open among the Ama-Gcaléka. They saw—they heard of my brother, Umlilwane?”“Thy brother, Umlilwane, was alive at the time the white Amagcagca (Rabble) knocked me down and kicked me. He is alive still.”“How do you know he is alive still?” said Eustace, mastering his voice with an effort, for his pulses were beating like a hammer as he hung upon the other’s reply. It came—cool, impassive, confident:“The people talk.”“Where is he, Xalasa?”“Listen, Ixeshane,” said the Kafir, glancing around and sinking his voice to an awed whisper. “Where is he! Au! Kwa ’Zinyoka.”“Kwa ’Zinyoka! ‘The Home of the Serpents!’” Well he remembered the jeering, but ominous, words of the hideous witch-doctress at the time his unfortunate cousin was being dragged away insensible under the

directions of his implacable foe, Hlangani. “He will wake. But he will never be seen again.” And now this man’s testimony seemed to bear out her words.“What is this ‘Home of the Serpents,’ Xalasa?” he said.“Au!” returned the Kafir, after a thoughtful pause, and speaking in a low and apprehensive tone as a timid person in a haunted room might talk of ghosts. “It is a fearsome place. None who go there ever return— none—no, not one,” he added, shaking his head. “But they say your magic is great, Ixeshane. It may be that you will find your brother alive. The war is nearly over now, but the war leaves every man poor. I have lost all I possessed. When you find your brother you will perhaps think Xalàsa is a poor man, and I have too many cattle in my kraal. I will send four or five cows to the man who told me my brother was alive.”In his heart of hearts Eustace thought how willingly he would send him a hundred for precisely the opposite intelligence.“Where is ‘The Home of the Serpents’?” he said.“Where? Who knows? None save Ngcenika, who talks with the spirits. None save Hlangani, who rejoices in his revenge as he sees his enemy there, even the man who struck him, and drew the blood of the Great Chief’s herald. Who knows? Not I. Those who go there never return,” he added impressively, conveying the idea that in his particular instance “ignorance is bliss.”Eustace’s first instinct was one of relief. If no one knew where the place was, clearly no one could tell. Then it struck him that this rather tended to complicate matters than to simplify them. There had been quite enough insinuated as to himself, and though guiltless as to his cousin’s fate, yet once it got wind that the unfortunate man was probably alive somewhere, it would devolve upon himself to leave no stone unturned until that probability should become a certainty. Public opinion would demand that much, and he knew the world far too well to make the blunder of treating public opinion, in a matter of this kind, as a negligeable quantity.“But if you don’t know where the place is, Xalasa, how am I to find it?” he said at length. “I would give much to the man who would guide me to it. Think! Is there no man you know of who could do so?”But the Kafir shook his head. “There is none!” he said. “None save Ngcenika. Whau, Ixeshane! Is not thy magic as powerful as hers? Will it not aid thee to find it? Now I must go. Where the ‘Home of the Serpents’ is, thy brother is there. That is all I can tell thee.”He spoke hurriedly now and in an altered tone—even as a man who has said too much and is not free from misgiving as to the consequences. He seemed anxious to depart, and seeing that nothing more was to be got out of him for the present, the two made no objection.Hardly had he departed than Josane appeared. He had noted the arrival of Xalasa, though Xalasa was under the impression that he was many miles distant. He had waited until the amakosi (Literally “chiefs.” In this connection “masters”) had finished their indaba (Talk) and here he was. He was filled with delight at the sight of Ixeshane and his eyes felt good. His “father” and his “friend” had been away for many moons, but now he was back again and the night was lighter than the day. His “father” could see, too, how he had kept his trust, the old man went on. Where were the houses of all the other white amakosi! Heaps of ashes. The house of his “father” alone was standing—it alone the torch had passed by. As for the destruction which had taken place within it, that could not be prevented. The people “saw red.” It had taxed the utmost effort of himself and Ncanduku to preserve the house. Reft of hyperbole, his narrative was plain enough. A marauding band had made a descent upon the place on the very night they had quitted it, and, although with difficulty dissuaded from burning it down, the savages had wrecked the furniture and looted the stores, as we have shown. This, however, was comparatively a small evil.Hoste, wearied with all this talk, which moreover he understood but imperfectly, had waxed restive and strolled away. No sooner was he out of earshot than Josane, sinking his voice, remarked suddenly:“Xalasa is a fool!”

Eustace merely assented. He saw that something was coming, and prepared to listen attentively.“Do you want to find Umlilwane?” went on the old Kafir with ever so slight an expression on the “want.”“Of course I do,” was the unhesitating reply. But for the space of half a minute the white man and the savage gazed fixedly into each other’s faces in the starlight.“Au! If I had known that!” muttered Josane in a disappointed tone. “If I had known that, I could have told you all that Xalasa has—could have told you many moons ago.”“You knew it, then?”“Yes.”“And is it true—that—that he is alive now?”“Yes.”“But, Josane, how is it you kept your knowledge to yourself? He might have been rescued all this time. Now it may be too late.”“Whau, Ixeshane! Did you want him rescued?” said the old fellow shrewdly. “Did the Inkosikazi want him rescued?”This was putting matters with uncomfortable plainness. Eustace reddened in the darkness.“Whatever we ‘wanted,’ or did not want, is nothing,” he answered. “This is a matter of life and death. He must be rescued.”“As you will,” was the reply in a tone which implied that in the speaker’s opinion the white man was a lunatic. And from his point of view such was really the case. The old savage was, in fact, following out a thoroughly virtuous line of conduct according to his lights. All this while, in order to benefit the man he liked, he had coolly and deliberately beensacrificing the man he—well, did not like.“Where is ‘The Home of the Serpents,’ Josane? Do you know?”“Yes. I know?”Eustace started.“Can you guide me to it?” he said, speaking quickly.“I can. But it is a frightful place. The bravest white man would take to his heels and run like a hunted buck before he had gone far inside. You have extraordinary nerve, Ixeshane—but—You will see.”This sounded promising. But the old man’s tone was quiet and confident. He was not given to vapouring.“How do you know where to find this place, Josane?” said Eustace, half incredulously in spite of himself. “Xalasa told us it was unknown to everybody—everybody but the witch-doctress?”“Xalasa was right. I know where it is, because I have seen it. I was condemned to it.”“By Ngcenika?”“By Ngcenika. But my revenge is coming—my sure revenge is coming,” muttered the old Gcaléka, crooning the words in a kind of ferocious refrain—like that of a war-song.As this juncture they were rejoined by Hoste.“Well, Milne,” he said. “Had enough indaba? Because, if so, we may as well trek home again. Seems to me we’ve had a lot of trouble for nothing and been made mortal fools of down to the ground by that schelm, Xalasa’s, cock-and-bull yarns.”“You’re wrong this time,” replied Eustace. “Just listen here a while and you’ll see that we’re thoroughly on the right scent.”