ere I sat among the indunas near to the king. The
indunas looked on each other and grew grey with fear; and for me, my
father, my knees were loosened and my marrow turned to water in my
bones. For I knew well who was that son of a stranger of whom they
spoke. It was I, my father, I who was about to be smelt out; and if I
was smelt out I should be killed with all my house, for the king's
oath would scarcely avail me against the witch-doctors. I looked at
the fierce faces of the Isanusis before me, as they crept, crept like
snakes. I glanced behind and saw the slayers grasping their kerries for
the deed of death, and I say I felt like one for whom the bitterness is
overpast. Then I remembered the words which the king and I had whispered
together of the cause for which this Ingomboco was set, and hope crept
back to me like the first gleam of the dawn upon a stormy night. Still
I did not hope overmuch, for it well might happen that the king had but
set a trap to catch me.

Now they were quite near and halted.

"Have we dreamed falsely, sisters?" asked Nobela, the aged.

"What we dreamed in the night we see in the day," they answered.

"Shall I whisper his name in your ears, sisters?"

They lifted their heads from the ground like snakes and nodded, and as
they nodded the necklets of bones rattled on their skinny necks. Then
they drew their heads to a circle, and Nobela thrust hers into the
centre of the circle and said a word.

"Ha! ha!" they laughed, "we hear you! His is the name. Let him be named
by it in the face of Heaven, him and all his house; then let him hear no
other name forever!"

And suddenly they sprang up and rushed towards me, Nobela, the aged
Isanusi, at their head. They leaped at me, pointing to me with the tails
of the vilderbeestes in their hands. Then Nobela switched me in the face
with the tail of the beast, and cried aloud:--

"Greeting, Mopo, son of Makedama! Thou art the man who smotest blood on
the door-posts of the king to bewitch the king. Let thy house be stamped
flat!"

I saw her come, I felt the blow on my face as a man feels in a dream. I
heard the feet of the slayers as they bounded forward to hale me to the
dreadful death, but my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth--I could not
say a word. I glanced at the king, and, as I did so, I thought that I
heard him mutter: "Near the mark, not in it."

Then he held up his spear, and all was silence. The slayers stopped in
their stride, the