Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 28, 2025
The lesson was one that he would not forget, and produced a salutary effect upon the rest of the multitude. They instantly fell back so far that Bippo, finding he had not been seriously hurt, saw that he was safe from further disturbance. It was only a few minutes later that Ziffak halted, his friends immediately doing the same.
The interior of the room would have been wrapped in gloom, had not the mother of Ziffak made her appearance and started a fire on the hearth at the further end of the apartment. The white men watched her closely to see how the Murhapas were accustomed to secure ignition. But they were disappointed.
King Haffgo, despite his confidence in Ziffak, began to feel some distrust of him. His refusal to attempt the leap of the chasm, and his former friendship for the explorers, might have been reasonably explained, but his failure to drive his javelin through the white man, who was so near and who never stirred from his position, could not be an accident.
From what has been related about these strange inhabitants of the Matto Grosso, it need not be said that they were too cunning, if left to themselves, to allow a door to stand open for their intended victims to escape, after penning them in such a trap. Ziffak was the shrewdest member of the Murhapa tribe and much more fitted to be its ruler than King Haffgo.
While he and his brother were wrangling, Ariel stood mute and with bowed head. She durst not speak, but withdrew only a minute or two before her parent. Ziffak was still warmly attached to Ashman, and was willing to risk his life in his behalf. Knowing that Waggaman and Burkhardt had had much to do with stirring the resentment of the king, he was angry enough to slay both of them.
They would do what they could, to excite distrust and enmity, but Ziffak was positive that since his brother had given his promise, it would be sacredly kept, and that for two days at least their stay at the village would be without peril to any one of the little company.
Ziffak did not remove his eyes from the natives, until he saw that his commands were not only obeyed, but that it was understood by them that the white men were not to be molested.
Guarded as she was by her father, who was sure to resent with instant death any such presumption on his part, he might well shrink from the appalling attempt; but love has many ways of picking the locks that may be fastened to keep hearts apart. "Ziffak!"
He was tired of idleness. The prospect of sitting for hours in the darkening apartment, talking with Ziffak, who, instead of being willing to give information, was doing his most to withhold it, was not inviting, but beyond this, he was restless because he was haunted by those marvellous eyes, peeping from behind the curtain in the king's room, and that smile of recognition when the gaze of the two met, thrilled him with a new and strange emotion.
So long as this young man remained in Ziffak's house, so long was it impossible for such meeting to take place; but, when Ashman sprang up and announced his intention of taking a stroll, Ziffak believed that it was with the intention of trying to see Ariel. That is to say, he suspected what really came to pass, though it was not in the mind of the youth.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking