which he had come. Telling him of
what he had seen, of course poor beggar! Can't you imagine him, with
those tall surprised black soldiers all round him and the great
dangerous bulk of negro king before him, trying to make them
understand, trembling with horror and fury, raging in homely useless
English against the everyday iniquity of Africa? Can't you imagine
it, Padre?"

"Ssh! You'll get a temperature," warned Father Bates. "Yes; I can
imagine it. It makes me humble."

"You see, I know what had maddened him. The first work of N'Komo's I
ever saw was a young mother and a baby dead and and finished with,
and it nearly sent me off my head. If I'd been half the man this poor
beggar was I'd have had N'Komo's skin salted and sun-dried before I
slept. He he didn't wait to mourn about things; he went straight
ahead to find the man who had done them and deal with him.

"Probably they took him for a lunatic; at any rate, they soon began
to laugh at him, shaking and talking in their midst. He was a new
thing to have sport with, and N'Komo presently leaned forward,
grinning, touched him on the arm, and pointed. The white man's eyes
followed the black finger to where a poor devil lay on the ground,
impaled by a stake through his stomach. It was N'Komo's way of
telling him what to expect, and he understood. He stopped talking.

"The nigger who saw it all and told me about it said that when he had
looked round on all the horrors he turned again towards N'Komo, and
at the sight of his eyes N'Komo ceased to grin. His big brute face
went all to bits, as a Kaffir's does when he is frightened. But the
white man made a little backward jerk with his hand that's what it
seemed like to the nigger who told me and suddenly, from nowhere in
particular, a big pistol materialized in his grip. He must have been
pretty clever at the draw. His hand came up, there was a smart little
crack, a spit of smoke, and N'Komo, the great war chief, was rolling
on the ground, making horrible noises like like bad plumbing, with
half his throat shot away, and the man who had done it was backing
towards the main gate with the big revolver swinging to right and
left across the group of warriors.

"And he got away, too. That, really, is the most wonderful part of
the whole thing. I expect that as soon as N'Komo was settled, the
usual row and the usual murders began by various would-be successors.
By night they had all started north again, on a hot-foot race