rward.
They were coal black from head to foot, and their faces were more like
masks than the human countenance, being bedaubed with some pigment that
gave each of them the aspect of possessing two huge goggle eyes. But
these horrible beings seemed at first sight to have no arms and no legs,
their whole anatomy being encased in a sort of black, hairy sacking,
whence tails and streamers, also hairy, flapped in the air as they
moved. Hideous, indeed, they looked,--hideous and grotesque, half
reptile, half devil.

They surrounded Lutali--all in dead silence, the guards precipitately
falling back to give them way. Then the king spoke, and his words were
gentle and mocking:

"Go now to thy Paradise, O believer; these will show thee the way.
_Hamba-gahle!_"

He waved his hand, and, in obedience to the signal, the whole group of
black horrors fastened upon the Arab and dragged him away. And from all
who beheld there went up a deep, chest note of exclamation that was part
satisfaction, part awe.

The king, having received further reports and attended to other business
connected with the army, withdrew. Laurence, watching the stately
personality of this splendid savage retiring amid the groups of indunas
towards the gate of the great kraal, felt his ever-present conjectures
as to his own fate merge in a vivid sense of interest. But Tyisandhlu
seemed to have forgotten his existence, for he bestowed no further word
upon him; however, he was taken charge of by Ngumunye, who assigned him
a large hut within the royal kraal.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Cannibals.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE SHADOW OF THE MYSTERY.

The next few days were spent by the Ba-gcatya in dancing and
ceremonial--and by Laurence Stanninghame in trying to find out all he
could about the Ba-gcatya. He laid himself out to make friends with
them, and this was easy, for the natural suspiciousness wherewith the
savage invariably regards a new acquaintance, once fairly laid to rest,
the Ba-gcatya proved as chatty and genial a race of people as those of
the original Zulu stock. But on one point the lips of old and young
alike were sealed, and that was the fate of Lutali. No word would they
ever by any chance let fall as to this; but the awed silence wherewith
they would treat all mention of it, and their hurried efforts to change
the subject, added not a little to the impression the last glimpse of
his Arab confederate had made upon Laurence. What awesome, devilish
mys