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No wonder his blood grew chill within him. Would he be the next? "And you would still become one of us, Nyonyoba?" "I would, Great Great One; and to this end have I sent much ivory, and many things the white people prize, including three new guns and much ammunition, to Nondwana." "Ha! Nondwana's hand is large, and opens wide," said the king, with a hearty chuckle.
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.
In other words, Laurence entered into such plans with a luke-warmness which would have been astonishing to the superficial judgment, but was not so to that of his listener. Nondwana, the brother of the king, was seated among a group of his followers in the gate as Laurence went forth the next morning to return to his own quarters.
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.
The king might take long in deciding whether to restore his property or not, and etiquette forbade him to refer to the matter again at any rate for some time to come. That Nondwana might demand too much lobola, or possibly refuse it altogether as coming from him, was a contingency which, strange to say, completely escaped Laurence's scheming mind. "Greeting, Nyonyoba.
This chief, though older than Tyisandhlu in years, was not the son of the principal wife of their common father, wherefore Tyisandhlu, who was, had, in accordance with native custom, succeeded. There had been whisperings that Nondwana had attempted to oppose the accession, and very nearly with success; but whether from motives of policy or generosity, Tyisandhlu had foreborne to take his life.
The former motive may have counted, for Nondwana exercised a powerful influence in the nation. In aspect, he was a tall, fine, handsome man, with all the dignity of manner which characterized his royal brother, yet there was a sinister expression ever lurking in his face a cruel droop in the corner of the mouth. "Greeting, Nyonyoba.
But the royal guards barred the gate, suffering no entrance save on the part of the two white men, together with Nondwana and a few of the greater among the people. "This is the tightest place we have been in yet," murmured Hazon. "To tread on the superstitions of any race is to thrust one's head into the jaws of a starved lion." "D their filthy superstition," said Holmes, savagely desperate.
Nondwana, the king's brother, he suspected of being not over favourably disposed towards himself, possibly through jealousy. "That will be when the second moon is at full?" continued one of the talkers. "It will. Ha! The Spider will receive a brave offering. Yet how shall it devour one who bears its Sign?" "It may not," rejoined the other. "Hau! that will in truth be a test if the sign is real."
The ceremony which was to bring him to what would almost certainly be a fearful fate was set for the fall of the second moon, the talkers had said but of this he had been already aware, for the chief Nondwana and his son were both well known to him. That would give him a little over six weeks. Escape?
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