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With these materials the men, under M'Bongwele's instructions, proceeded to construct a ladder, which, when completed, they reared against the side of the ship; and by this means the king and his fifty chosen warriors ascended and triumphantly reached the deck.
Did not all this point to M'Bongwele's speedy downfall? He decided that it undoubtedly would, and that he would forthwith adopt that line of policy, cautiously, yet without losing a single favourable opportunity. So far as M'Bongwele was concerned, he found himself in a greater strait than ever.
After we have finished you can send out men to do what is necessary here." And, with a very grim expression of face, he turned and led the way to the Flying Fish. Ten minutes later the ship came gently to earth in the Great Place before M'Bongwele's palace.
"The fourteen white people, who were like unto yourselves, O Great Spirit, but were dressed in clothing that appeared to have shrunk and become stained through long soaking in the great water that is salt, were by M'Bongwele's order brought to his village, where he questioned them.
In the old days of the reign of M'Bongwele those days which you were so anxious to restore your dying would have been a lingering, long-drawn-out, excruciating torment; but under the teaching of those who put me on this throne I have learned to be merciful, and my sentence is that you be led forth and hanged by the neck from the bough of the tree that ended M'Bongwele's cruel and iniquitous life, and there left as an example and a warning to all who think such evil thoughts as yours.
And, finally, we know that when the four Spirits revisited this country in their great glittering ship that flies through the air, they again deposed M'Bongwele and hanged him and his chief witch doctor from the bough of a tree, because, despite their previous warning, they persisted in their evil-doing. And in M'Bongwele's place they made you, Lobelalatutu, King of the Makolo."
The allotted ten minutes had not quite expired when the professor, the last of the party, made his appearance in the pilot-house, by which time the Flying Fish was some five hundred feet in the air, with her nose pointing in the direction of M'Bongwele's village, and her propeller driving her ahead at full speed.
I wonder, now, where they were found! Somewhere not very far from here, I'll be bound, or they would not have found their way into M'Bongwele's hands.
Lualamba was one of M'Bongwele's most trusted chiefs, and shortly before sunset he and the head witch-doctor were summoned to a special conference with the king. Meanwhile the travellers, having enjoyed a most excellent night's rest, rose betimes in the morning and prepared for a thorough systematic investigation of the ruins.
And beneath these, again, they found two pairs of coarse blue-cloth trousers, a thick pilot-cloth coat, two blue-striped shirts, a pair of coarse worsted stockings, and one or two other oddments that had evidently belonged to one or more of the ill-fated party of white people who had fallen into M'Bongwele's hands, and of whose identity the searchers were now endeavouring to discover some trace.
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