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Hitherto he had spared their lives surely now he would not sacrifice them to the clamour of a mob. Yet, as Hazon had said, to tread on the superstitions of any race was the most fatal thing on earth. "What is this that has been done?" spoke the king, when he had heard all that the accusers had to say. "Surely no such deed has been wrought among us since the Ba-gcatya have been a nation."
Was it waiting for night to steal upon him in the darkness, to wreath around him those terrible tentacles, and to drain his life-blood? Now, indeed, all stood clear. "The Spider" was no allegorical term, but literal fact. That frightful monster with which he had just come face to face was indeed the demon-god of the Ba-gcatya!
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.
Was there indeed an influence about this trinket or rather, the love which had hallowed it which was potent to stand between him and peril in the direst extremity, even as it had stepped between him and certain death at the spears of the victorious Ba-gcatya? Slightly improved as was his helpless condition, yet he could not hope.
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.
All this impressed him to an extent which he had hardly deemed possible, though of any outward evidence thereof he gave no sign. "Are all dead up yonder?" he asked some of the Ba-gcatya, as he joined them in their frugal fare. A laugh, derisive but not discourteous to himself, greeted the question. "Au! The bite of The Spider does not need repeating twice," was the reply.
With surprising readiness the march began. Loads were shouldered and slaves yoked together extra firmly. Those who were too weak to keep up the pace treble that of the normal one at which they were hurried forward, were ruthlessly speared; but whether they were slain by their captors or by the pitiless Ba-gcatya mattered but little.
He laid himself out to make friends with them, and this was easy, for the natural suspiciousness wherewith the savage invariably regards a new acquaintance, once fairly laid to rest, the Ba-gcatya proved as chatty and genial a race of people as those of the original Zulu stock. But on one point the lips of old and young alike were sealed, and that was the fate of Lutali.
Or was it that at this moment certain words, spoken long ago in warning, now stood forth clear and in flaming letters upon his brain: "Other men have gone up country with Hazon, but not one of them has ever returned!" He himself, abiding henceforward among the Ba-gcatya, and Holmes consigned to the mysterious doom, would not those warning words be carried out in all their fell fatality?
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.
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