A woman, young, tall, perfectly proportioned, light of colour, and with the bright and pleasing expression common among the well-born of the Ba-gcatya maidens, enhanced by large lustrous eyes, lips parted in a smile half-startled, half-coquettish, revealing a row of teeth of dazzling whiteness of unrivalled evenness. She wore a mÚtya or skirt of beautiful bead-work, and a soft robe of dressed fawn-skin but half concealed the splendid outlines of her frame. Withal there was an aspect of dignity in her erect carriage, and the pose of her head, which the Grecian effect of the impiti, or cone into which her hair was gathered above the scalp, went far to enhance. She was not alone—two other young women, also attractive of aspect, being in attendance upon her, though these held somewhat in the background.

"Greeting, Nyonyoba," she began, in a sweet and musical voice. "I was startled for a moment—here where I expected to find none."

"To thee, greeting, daughter of the great," returned Laurence, for this girl was a princess of the highest rank in the nation, being, in fact, a daughter of Nondwana the king's brother—that same chief whose son's accession to manhood was to be the occasion of his own departure to another sphere. Nor was it, indeed, the first time these two had talked together.

"And why are you sad and heavy of countenance, Nyonyoba? Was the hunt bad—the game scarce?" she went on, with a quick searching glance into his eyes.

"Not so," he answered. "Those who are with me bring on much ivory for the king's treasury. For yourself, Lindela, I found a bright-plumaged and rare bird, which I will stuff and set up for you."

The girl uttered a cry of delight, and her face brightened. It so happened that Laurence was something of a taxidermist, and had already stuffed a few birds and small animals for the chief's daughter, who was as delighted with her increasing "museum" as any child could have been. Now, in her unfeigned glee over the prospect of a new specimen, Lindela looked extremely attractive; and noting it, an unconscious softness had crept into the man's tone. Even the girls behind noticed it, and whispered to each other, sniggering:

"Hau! Isityeli! Quite a wooer! Nyonyoba is hoeing up new land."

"Withdraw a little from these, Lindela," he said in a lowered tone; "I would talk."

The chief's daughter made a barely perceptible sign, but her attendants understood it, and remained where they stood.

"The success or failure of a hunt is a small thing. Such does not render a man heavy of countenance," he went on, when they were beyond earshot.

"What does, then?" said the girl, raising her large eyes swiftly to his.

"Sorrow—parting. Such are the things which make life dark. I have dwelt long among your people, and at the prospect of leaving them my heart is sore."

As the last words left his lips, Laurence learned in just one brief flash of a second exactly what he wanted to know. But the look of startled pain in Lindela's face gave way to one of surprise.

"Of leaving them?" she echoed. "Has the Great Great One, then, ordered you to begone, Nyonyoba?"

"Not yet. But it will be so. Listen! At the full of the second moon."

A cry escaped her. She understood. For a moment the self-control of her savage ancestors entirely forsook her. She became the child of nature—all human.

"It shall not be! It shall not be!"

The passion, the abandonment in the soft, liquid Zulu tone—in the large eyes, transforming the whole attractive face—touched even him—penetrated even the scaly armour which encased his hardened heart. Considerations of expediency no longer reigned there alone as he stood face to face with the chief's daughter. She was a magnificent specimen of womanhood, he decided, gazing with unfeigned admiration upon her splendid frame, upon the unconscious grace of her every movement.

"If I go, I return not ever," he went on, resolved to strike while the iron was hot—to strike as hard as he knew how. "Yet how to remain—for the brother of the king is so great a chief that he who would approach him with lobola[3] would need to own half the wealth of the Ba-gcatya people. Now I, who owned much wealth, am yet poor to-day, for the Ba-gcatya have killed all my slaves, and the king has taken my ivory and goods."

The girl's eyes sparkled. Perhaps she too had learned something she wanted to know; indeed, it must have been so, for her whole face was lit up with a gladsome light, a wonderfully attractive light.

"Perchance the king will return some of it," she said. "Yet you are a white man, and strong, Nyonyoba—are all white men like you, I wonder?—and can overcome all difficulties. Listen! You shall not leave us at the full of the second moon. Now, farewell—and—forget not my name."[4]

There was a grandeur of resolution in her tone, in her glance, as she uttered these last words, her lustrous eyes, wide and clear, meeting his full. Laurence, standing there gazing after the tall, retreating form of the chief's daughter, felt something like a sense of exultation stealing over him. His scheme seemed already to glow with success. He had suspected for some time that Lindela regarded him with more than favour; and indeed, while weighing the prospect of casting in his lot with the Ba-gcatya, he had already in his own mind marked her out to share it. Now, however, the thing had become imperative. In order to save not merely his life, but to escape a fate which brooded over him with a peculiarly haunting horror, he had got to do this thing, to take to wife, according to the customs of the Ba-gcatya, the daughter of Nondwana, the niece of the king. Then not a man in the nation dare raise a hand against him; and the dour priesthood of the Spider might look further for their victim—and might find in their selection one much more remote from the throne.

And now that he was face to face with the prospect, it struck him as anything but an unpleasing one. Such an alliance would place him among the most powerful chiefs in the land. All the ambition in the adventurer's soul warmed to the prospect. To be high in authority among this fine race, part-ruler over this splendid country, sport in abundance, and that of the most enthralling kind—war occasionally; to dwell, too, in the strong revivifying air of these grand uplands! Why, a man might live forever under such conditions.

And the other side of the picture—what was it? Even if he returned to civilization—even if it were possible—he would now return almost as poor as he had quitted it,—to the old squalid life, with its shifts and straits. His whole soul sickened over the recollection. Nothing could compensate for such—nothing. Besides, put nakedly, it amounted to this: His experiences of respectability had been disastrous. They had been such as to draw out all that was latently evil in his nature, and, indeed, to implant within him traits which at one time he could never have suspected himself capable of harbouring. Physically it had reduced his system to the lowest. All things considered, he could not think that the adventurous life—hard, unscrupulous, lawless as it was—had changed him for the worse. It had developed many good traits, and had enabled him to forget many evil ones.

"I would have speech with the king."

Those who sentinelled the gate of the great kraal, Imvungayo, conferred a moment among themselves, and immediately two men were sent to learn the royal pleasure as to the request. Laurence Stanninghame, awaiting their return, was taciturn and moody, and as he gazed around his one thought was lest his scheme should miscarry. The sun had just gone below the western peaks, and a radiant afterglow lingered upon the dazzling snow ridges, flooding some with a roseate hue, while others seemed dyed blood-red. Long files of women, calabash on head, were wending up from the stream, singing as they walked, or exchanging jests and laughter, their soft, rich voices echoing melodiously upon the evening stillness. Even the shrill "moo" of cattle, and the deep-toned voices of men—mellowed by distance, came not inharmoniously from the smaller kraals which lay scattered along the hillside; and but for the shining spearheads and tufted shields of the armed guard in the great circle of Imvungayo, the scene was a most perfect one of pastoral simplicity and peace. And then, as the gray, pearly lights of evening, merging into the sombre shades of twilight, drew a deepening veil over this scene of fair and wondrous beauty, once more the words of Lindela, in all their unhesitating reassurance, seemed to sound in this man's ears, rekindling the fire of hope within his soul,—perchance rekindling fire of a different nature.

"The Great Great One awaits you, Nyonyoba."

Laurence started from his reverie, and, accompanied by two of the guards, proceeded across the great open space in silence. At the gate of the isigodhlo, an inclosure made of the finest woven grass, and containing the royal dwellings, he deposited his rifle on the ground, and, deliberately unbuckling the strap of his revolver holster, placed that weapon behind the other; and thus unarmed, according to strict Zulu etiquette, he prepared to enter. An inceku, or royal household servant, received him at the gate, and the guards having saluted and withdrawn, he was ushered by the attendant into the king's presence.

The royal house, a large, dome-shaped, circular hut, differed in no respect from the others, save that it was of somewhat greater size. Laurence, standing upright within it, could make out three seated figures, the shimmer of their head-rings and the occasional shine of eyeballs being the only distinct feature about them. Then somebody threw an armful of dry twigs upon the fire which burned in the centre, and as the light crackled up he saw before him the king and the two fighting indunas, NgumÚnye and Silawayo.

"BayÉte!" he exclaimed, lifting his hat courteously.

"I behold you, Nyonyoba," replied the king. "Welcome—be seated."

With a murmur of acknowledgment, Laurence subsided upon the grass mat which had been placed for him by the inceku, who had followed him in. Then there was silence for a few moments, while a couple of women entered, bearing large clay bowls of tywala, or native beer; and the liquor having been apportioned out according to etiquette, the attendants withdrew, leaving Laurence alone with the king and the two indunas.

"And the hunt, has it been propitious?" began Tyisandhlu presently.

"It has. Ten tusks of ivory are even now being brought in," replied Laurence. "Also an unusually fine leopard skin which fell to my bullet, and which I would beg the king to accept."

"You are a great hunter, Nyonyoba—a very great one. Whau! The Ba-gcatya will become too rich if you tarry long among us," said Tyisandhlu quizzically, but evidently pleased at the news. "We shall soon be able to arm the whole nation with the fire-weapons, now that we have so much ivory to trade with the northern peoples."

Something in the words struck Laurence. "If you tarry long among us," the king had said. Even these were ominous, and made in favour of the sinister design he had so accidentally discovered. Yet could this courtly hospitality, of which he was the object, indeed cover such a horrible purpose? Well, he dare not bolster himself up with any hope to the contrary, for now many and many an incident returned to his mind, little understood at the time, but, in the light of the conversation he had overheard, as clear as noonday. The fear, the anxiety, too, which had flashed over the face of Lindela at his significant words, proved that the ordeal through which it was designed to pass him was a real and a terrible one. Through her, and her only, lay his chance of escaping it.

"I am glad the king is pleased," he went on, "for I would fain tarry among the Ba-gcatya forever. And, becoming one of that people, shall not all my efforts turn towards rendering it a great people?"

A hum of astonishment escaped the two indunas, and Laurence thought to detect the same significant look on both their faces. Then he added:

"And those whom I have already taught in the use of the fire-weapon, they are strong in it, and reliable?"

"That is so," assented Tyisandhlu.

"And I have taught many the ways of the chase, no less than the more skilled ways of war—that too is true, O Burning Wind?"

"That too is true," repeated the king.

"Good. And now I would crave a boon. While the People of the Spider have become more formidable in war, while the ivory comes pouring into the king's treasury, faster than ever it did before, so that soon there will be enough to buy fire-weapons for the whole nation, I who brought all this to pass remain poor—am the poorest in the nation—and—the daughters of the Ba-gcatya are fair—exceeding fair."

"Whau!" exclaimed the two indunas simultaneously, with their hands to their mouths. But Tyisandhlu said nothing, though a very humorous gleam seemed to steal over his fine features in the firelight.

"The daughters of the Ba-gcatya are exceeding fair," repeated Laurence, "but I, the poorest man in the nation, cannot take wives. For how shall I go to the father of a girl and say, 'Lo, I desire thy daughter to wife, but my slaves have been killed, and my other possessions are now the property of the king; yet inasmuch as I cannot offer lobola, having nothing, give her to me on the same terms?' My house will not grow great in that way. Say now, Ndabezita, will it?"

"I think not, Nyonyoba," answered the king, struggling to repress a laugh. "Yet perhaps a way may be found out of that difficulty, for in truth thou hast done us good service already. But we will talk further as to this matter in the future. For the present, here waits outside one who will show thee what thou wilt be glad to see."

Quick to take this hint of dismissal, Laurence now arose, saluted the king, and retired, not ill-pleased so far with the results of his interview. For in the circumlocutory native way of dealing with matters of importance, Tyisandhlu had received with favour his request, preferred after the same method, that some of his possessions should be restored to him. Then he would offer lobola for Lindela, and——

"I accompany you farther, Nyonyoba, at the word of the Great Great One, by whose light we live."

The voice of the inceku who had ushered him forth broke in upon his meditations. This man, instead of leaving him at the gate of the isigodhlo, still kept at his side, and Laurence, manifesting no curiosity, having picked up his weapons where he had left them, accompanied his guide in silence.

They passed out of Imvungayo, and after walking nearly a mile came to a large kraal, which Laurence recognized as that of Nondwana, the king's brother. And now, for the first time, he felt a thrill of interest surge through him. Nondwana's kraal! Had Tyisandhlu, divining his wishes, indeed forestalled them? But this idea was as quickly dismissed as formulated. The king had probably ordered that one or two of the Ba-gcatya girls should be allotted to him—possibly chosen from those in attendance upon the royal wives. His parting remark seemed to point that way.

"Enter," said the inceku, halting before one of the huts. "Enter, and good go with thee. I return to the king. Fare thee well!"

Laurence bent down and pushed back the wicker slab that formed the door of the hut, and, having crawled through the low, beehive-like entrance, stood upright within, and instinctively kicked the fire into a blaze. And then, indeed, was amazement—wild, incredulous, bewildering amazement—his dominant feeling, for by the light thus obtained he saw that the hut was tenanted by two persons. No feminine voice, however, was raised to bid him welcome in the soft tongue of the Ba-gcatya, but a loud, full-flavoured, masculine English one:

"Stanninghame—by the great Lord Harry! Oh, kind Heavens, am I drunk or dreaming?"