e scowled contemptuously upon
the lines of dark and threatening faces, then turned erect and fearless
towards the chief.

For a few moments they confronted each other thus in silence. The
Englishman, somewhat weak and unsteady from exhaustion and
ill-treatment, could still look the arbiter of his fate straight in the
eyes without blenching. They might do their worst and be damned, he
said to himself. He, Tom Carhayes, was not going to whine for mercy to
any nigger--even if that "nigger" was the Chief Paramount of all the
Amaxosa tribes.

The latter, for his part, was not without respect for the white man's
intrepidity, but he had no intention of sparing him for all that. He
had been debating with his chiefs and councillors, and they had decided
that Carhayes ought to be sacrificed as an uncompromising and determined
enemy of their race. The other it might be expedient to keep a little
longer and see how events would turn.

"What have you to say, _umlungu_?" said Kreli at length.

"Nothing. Not a damn thing," broke in Carhayes, in a loud, harsh tone.

"Tom, for God's sake don't be such a fool," whispered Eustace, who was
near enough to be heard. "Can't you be civil for once?"

"No, I can't; not to any infernal black scoundrel," roared the other
savagely. "It's different with you, Eustace," changing his tone to a
bitter sneer. "Damn it, man, you're about half a Kafir already. Why
don't you ask old Kreli for a couple of his daughters and set up a kraal
here among them, eh?"

A sounding whack across the ear with the haft of an assegai choked the
words in his throat. He stood, literally foaming with fury.

"Attend, thou white dog," cried a great deep-toned voice. "Attend when
the Great Chief is talking to thee. _Au_!"

An infuriated mastiff straining at his chain is a pretty good
exemplification of impotent wrath, but even he is nothing to the aspect
and demeanour of Carhayes as he turned to the perpetrator of this
indignity. The veins rolled in his forehead as if they would burst.
The muscles stood out upon his neck like cords as he strove by a
superhuman effort to burst his bonds. But Hlangani only sneered.

"Listen when the Great Chief is talking to thee, thou jackal, or I will
strike thee again," he said.

"God damn the Great Chief!" roared poor Tom, his voice rising to a
hurricane shriek of fury under this shameful indignity, which he was
powerless to resent. "And you, Hlangani, you dog, if