men name as an _Isanusi_ [witch-doctor, or
seer] of renown."

"_Hau_!" burst from the councillors in wild amaze at the audacity of
this white man.

"Your eyes?" echoed Ingonyama, and his voice came low and trembling with
suppressed fury. "Your eyes, Jandosi? _Ha_! You shall not indeed
_strain_ your eyes seeing through the dark, _for I will make them dark
for ever_."

The fell meaning of the tone and words was plain to John Dawes. The
crisis had come.

"Move not," he returned quickly, his decisive ringing tone arresting as
by magic the signal which the chief was about to make. "Before that
happens we will sit in darkness together. Stir but a finger, Ingonyama,
and the tribe Igazipuzi may proceed to the election of a new chief."

With the muzzle of a revolver pointing full at his breast, the butt in
the hand of a man whose daring and resolution was known to all, no
wonder Ingonyama should sit rigid and paralysed. His councillors shared
his dazed immovability. What marvellous thing was to happen next, they
thought?

Dawes, who was standing beside his horse, prepared for the first hostile
move, had not raised his arm. He had merely brought the weapon to bear
after the method known as "firing from the hip." To all outward
appearance he was merely conversing rather animatedly with the chief.

The latter stared at him as though he could hardly believe his senses.
But there was the little round ring, pointing full upon his breast from
barely six yards off. The merest pressure of a finger, and it would let
out his life as he sat.

"You have treated us ill, Ingonyama," went on Dawes, sternly. "We have
no quarrel with the people of the Zulu; on the contrary, we are at
peace. Yet you have kept us here against our will, and treated us as
enemies. In two days `my tongue' speaks at Undini, in the ears of the
Great Great One, by whose light _you_ live."

This reference to the king, by one of his favourite titles, had a
strange effect upon this chief, whom the speaker by this time more than
half suspected of being a rebellious and plotting vassal. For an
instant it seemed that the latter's uncontrollable rage would triumph
over his fear of death. But he only said, with a sneer--

"Not so, Jandosi. `Your tongue,' however long, will be brought back
here. Long before the end of two days it will have ceased to speak for
ever. When a tongue is too long, we cut it. _Ha_! We have a Tooth
here which can bite i