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Updated: June 22, 2025
At the question the woman's lips began to tremble, and her eyes swam with tears. "Ah! great doctor," she said, "why do you ask me of my husband? Have you not heard that he has driven me away and that another takes my place?" "Do I hear all the gossip of this town?" asked Hokosa, with a smile.
Now Hokosa looked at the dust at his feet, then he gazed upwards searching the heavens, and answered: "Did not I tell you yesterday? I think that this will happen. I think but who can be quite sure of the future, Hafela? that you and the most of your army by this hour to-morrow night will be lying fast asleep about this place, with jackals for your bedfellows."
"What say you, Hafela?" repeated Nodwengo, addressing the prince, who stood upon a point of rock above him in full sight of both armies. Hafela turned and looked at Hokosa hanging high in mid-air. "What say I?" he answered in a slow and quiet voice.
Then Hokosa, the king's mouth, answered me, telling the thought of the king: 'You are a bold man, you whose name is John, but who once had another name you, my servant, who dare to appear before me, and to make it known to me that you have been turned to a new faith and serve another king than I. Yet because you are bold, I forgive you.
Henceforth, Hokosa, do right, and take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow is with God, and what He decrees, that shall befall." "I hear you," said Hokosa, "and I obey." For a while he rocked himself to and fro, staring at the ground, then he lifted his head and spoke: "Woman," he said, "the knot is untied and the spell is broken. Begone, for I release you and I divorce you.
Therefore let me go, and if it should chance that I am taken, trouble not about the matter, for thus it will be fated to some great end. Above all, though often enough I have been a traitor in the past, do not dream that I betray you, keeping in mind that so to do would be to betray my own soul, which very soon must render its account on high." "As you will, Hokosa," answered the king.
Up she went while all men watched, higher and higher yet, till passing out of the finger-like foliage she reached the cross of dead wood whereto Hokosa hung, and placing her feet upon one arm of it, stood there, supporting herself by the broken top of the upright. Hokosa was not yet dead, though he was very near to death. Lifting his glazing eyes, he knew her and said, speaking thickly:
Reaching this great shelf in safety and advancing to the edge of it, these men started a boulder, which, although as it chanced it hurt no one, fell in the midst of a group of the defenders and bounded away through them. "Now we must be going," said Hokosa, looking up, "for no man can fight against rocks, and our spears cannot reach those birds.
But I tell you, King, that I had rather die as your father would have killed me in the old days, or your brother would kill me now, did either of them hate or fear me, than live on in safety, owing my life to a new law and a new mercy that do not befit the great ones of the world. King, I am your servant," and giving him the royal salute, Hokosa rose and left his presence.
The camp of the king saw and understood, and from every throat of the thousands of men, women and children gathered there, went up a roar of rage and horror. The king lifted his hand, and silence fell upon the place; then he mounted on the wall and cried aloud: "Do you yet live, Hokosa, or is it your body only that those traitors have fastened to the tree?"
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