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Tyisandhlu, moreover, had expressed a wish that a body of picked men should be armed with the rifles taken from the slavers, and instructed in their use; and to this Laurence had readily consented. "Yet consider, Ndabezita," he had said, "is it well to teach them reliance on any weapon rather than the broad spear?
But then, everything is relative in this world, and to a man who has spent hours of a long day journeying towards a mysterious, horrible, and certain death, the discovery of release and life, even with such slender chances, was joy after the boding dread which those long hours had held for him. Yes, that was it, of course. Tyisandhlu had not been faithless to the friendship between them.
But Tyisandhlu seemed to have forgotten his existence, for he bestowed no further word upon him; however, he was taken charge of by Ngumúnye, who assigned him a large hut within the royal kraal. The next few days were spent by the Ba-gcatya in dancing and ceremonial and by Laurence Stanninghame in trying to find out all he could about the Ba-gcatya.
And now he and Tyisandhlu were seated once more together in the royal dwelling, this time alone. "But to be sprung from an ancient tree avails a man nothing in my country if he is poor," went on Laurence. "Rather is it a disadvantage, and he had better have been born among the meaner sort. That is why I have found my way hither, Ndabezita." "That is why?
"Whau!" exclaimed the two indunas simultaneously, with their hands to their mouths. But Tyisandhlu said nothing, though a very humorous gleam seemed to steal over his fine features in the firelight. "The daughters of the Ba-gcatya are exceeding fair," repeated Laurence, "but I, the poorest man in the nation, cannot take wives.
Tyisandhlu for some moments uttered no word, but stood gazing fixedly upon his prisoner in contemplative silence. Laurence, for his part, was studying, no less attentively, the king.
On learning the cause of the tumult, Tyisandhlu had come forth, and now sat, as he frequently did, to administer justice at the head of the great central space. When the shouts of "bonga!" which greeted his presence had subsided, he ordered that the two whites should be brought forward.
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