g all the while that your accusations were
false. What explanation or excuse have you to offer for your
wickedness?" demanded the professor, sternly.

The man pondered for a moment, as though considering what answer he
should make. At length he looked up, and said--

"Why should I make excuse? The men were my enemies, and I used such
power as I possessed to destroy them."

"It is enough," said von Schalckenberg.

Then, addressing the great assemblage before him, he continued--

"Men of the Makolo, ye have heard the questions that I have put to these
two men, and the answers that they have given to those questions. They
have acknowledged that the charges brought against them are true. They
have taken many lives, doomed many to die in lingering torment for the
mere gratification of their own personal enmity and their love of
cruelty. Out of their own mouths are they judged and condemned; they
have misused their power, and therefore is it taken from them. They
have wantonly taken the lives of others, therefore are their own lives
forfeit. The sentence passed upon them is that they die a shameful and
ignominious death. Take them, therefore, fasten strong ropes about
their necks, and hang them both from the great branch of yonder tree
until they be dead."

Dead! The word touched M'Bongwele and stirred him as could no other
word in his own or any other language. He? Dead? And by the hands of
others? How many of his unresisting subjects had he condemned to suffer
death--the death of acute lingering, long-drawn-out, seemingly
interminable suffering? And how he had laughed with ferocious glee when
he had succeeded in making some of them--not many, only one or two
occasionally--quail at the prospect of what lay before them! But he had
never dreamed of a day when he himself should be doomed to suffer the
ignominy of public execution. How should he? Was he not the king? and
was his word not the law? Who should dare to raise a hand against him?
The idea seemed to him preposterous, grotesque, an absurdity, until he
glanced upward and saw those set, stern white faces gazing down upon him
with eyes in which he read the truth that his doom was fixed, immutable,
inexorable. Involuntarily he shuddered, and glanced wildly about him as
though looking for a way of escape. Would his own people stand tamely
by and see him, their king, perish at the word of these mysterious,
terrible strangers? Or would a single one