he scenes of horror and vengeance
weighing heavy upon them, their minds were full of foreboding as to what
was to come, as they took up their quarters in the large square hut
assigned to them. And even yet, the stakes with their writhing victims
seemed to haunt them, and in the mind of each was the unspoken thought
that they themselves might be the next.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

THE END OF MUSHAD.

After this they saw nothing of the King. The days went by, growing into
weeks, and still there seemed no prospect of their perilous and irksome
captivity drawing to its end. Though outwardly treated as guests, there
were not wanting downright intimations that they could not come and go
as they pleased, and they received a significant hint that the country
was very unhealthy did they venture out of sight of the stockade. At
first they strove to take an interest in the novelty of their position,
and in the conditions of life of this strange race; but the people were
very reserved, and seemed afraid to say much; so that except through
Kumbelwa they could learn but little about them--and not a great deal
through him. The King's name, they gathered, was Umnovunovu; and yet it
was in reality only a title, like that of the Pharaohs of Egypt, for the
kings of the Inswani had no name, and their former one became very much
_hlonipa_, i.e. not to be uttered.

"You see, Oakley," Haviland said, "there's no end to the curious twists
and turns of native etiquette--and the unformulated, or what would be to
us the unwritten laws, are the strangest of all. In Zululand, for
instance, white men who have had the country and people at their
fingers' ends all their lives have told me that the more certain they
were they knew everything, the more certain something was to occur to
show them they didn't."

"Well, this is a mighty ugly crowd, anyway," answered Oakley, "and, like
Pharaoh of old, Mr Umnovunovu doesn't intend to let us go in a hurry."

They were growing very dejected under their enforced detention. The
climate was not bad, and a great improvement on the steamy heat of the
lower country; indeed, the nights were at times distinctly sharp. But
everything tended to depress them. They had nothing on earth to do,
and, as Oakley said, all their time to do it in. For another thing, the
atmosphere of continuous slaughter and death got very much upon their
nerves. Besides the slaver captives, who were done to death under
varying