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The Queen, or Chieftainess, Toeremetsjani, is the present head of the Secocoeni tribe and the head wife of the late chief, Secocoeni. This tribe, it will be remembered, was the one which successfully resisted the Boers under President Burger and Commandant Paul Kruger a successful resistance which was one of the troubles leading directly to the abortive annexation of the Transvaal.
The little Chieftainess is bitten in the finger by a hooded snake. The Floweret withers! Imba dies!" Almost instantly there was a disturbance in the kraal and Menzi appeared, following by a man carrying a bag. He cried back in the same strange voice: "I hear. I come. Tie string or grass round the lady Imba's finger below the bite. Tie it hard till she screams with pain."
The souls of these Sasunnachs were full of THINGS. They made a fine show as they emerged from the darkness of their wraps into the light of the numerous candles; nor did the approach of the widowed chieftainess to receive them, on the arm of Alister, with Ian on her other side, fail in dignity.
Cronjé admitted that he did not know whether these were indunas. He considered them guilty, not because they had done anything, but because in their position as advisers of the Chieftainess they ought to have advised her better than they appeared to have done. Instructions had therefore been given to arrest these indunas, and they had caught as many as they could.
He bore himself with the swagger of a personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for assistance had he felt in danger. But the beggars had flocked into the rich quarter, and their chieftainess vanished.
"Watcher-by-Night," he said to me in his deep voice, but also speaking in a whisper, "this chieftainess is not one woman, but all women. Beneath those robes of hers I seem to see the beauty of one who has 'gone Beyond, of the Lily who is lost to me. Do you not feel it thus, Macumazahn?"
"Greeting to thee, my Chieftainess, greeting to thee, Wife of my youth, whom I have won in war. Never shall we part, thou and I, and together will we die, thou and I, for I am not minded that others should handle thee when I am gone." Thus he cried in the hearing of men, then turned to Jikiza, who stood weeping, because he had lost all.
Two more months went by peacefully, when one morning a herd who was tending the cattle that belonged to Suzanne and Sihamba, sought audience of the chieftainess. "What is it?" asked Sihamba, for she saw by the man's face that something strange had happened. "This, lady," he answered.
At length, when the brave Paou was surprised and cooped up by a strong blockading force of the Emperor's ships, O-po-tae showed all his deadly spite, and refused to obey the orders of Paou, and even of the chieftainess, which were, that he should sail to the relief of his rival.
"That dream must be given up," Berenice said seriously, "there are two obstacles. But I have no doubt Aemilia would make quite as good a chieftainess as I should have done. Some day, Aemilia, if you return to Britain with Beric, as I hope you will do, and Pollio becomes a commander of a legion, I will get him to apply for service there.
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