spear-hafts was as a winter gale rushing through a leafless
wood; with one voice it began to thunder forth the royal titles.

"O Great Spider! Terrible Spider! Blood-drinking Spider, whose bite is
death! O Serpent! O Elephant! Thunderer of the heavens! Divider of the
Sun! House Burner! O Destroyer! O All Devouring Beast!" These were some
of the titles used--but the praisers would always bring back the _bonga_
to some attribute of the spider. Laurence, who understood the system,
noted this peculiarity, differing, as it did, from the Zulu practice of
making the serpent the principal term of praise. Finally, as by signal,
the shouting ceased, and the principal leaders of the _impi_, disarming,
crept forward, two by two, to the king's feet.

Laurence was too far off to hear what was said, for the tone was low,
but he judged, and rightly, that the chiefs were giving an account of
the expedition. At length the king dismissed them, and pointing with the
short knob-stick he held in his hand, ordered that he himself should be
brought forward.

The ranks of the warriors opened to let him through, and as, having been
careful to disarm in turn, he advanced, Laurence could not repress a
tightening thrill of the pulses as he wondered what fate it was, as
regarded himself, that should now fall from the lips of this despot,
whose very name meant a terror and a scourge.

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. The finely shaped head and
lofty brow--the clear eyes and oval face, culminating in a short beard,
whose jetty thickness just began to show here and there a streak of
gray,--the noble stature and erect carriage, impressed him even more,
thus face to face, than at a distance.

"They say thou bearest the Sign of this nation, O stranger," began the
king, speaking in the Zulu tongue, "and that to this thou owest thy
life."

"That is true, Great Great One," answered Laurence.

"But how know we that the Sign is genuine?" continued Tyisandhlu.

"By this, Father of the People of the Spider. Not once has it stood
between me and death, but twice, and that at the hands of your people."

A murmur of astonishment escaped his hearers. But the king said:

"When was this other time?--for such would, in truth, be something of a
test."

Then Laurence told the tale of his conflict with the Ba-gca