lose your
head, man; keep cool. It's the only thing to be done."

The warning was needed, for he to whom it was addressed had already
shown signs of preparing to resist this hostile threatening
demonstration. The gravity of the tone in which it was uttered,
however, went far to neutralise in his mind the reassuring effect of the
imperturbable aspect of his companions.

The swarm of savages came crowding round the four white men, brandishing
their assegais and battle-axes, and frightening the horses not a little.
But two Bechuana boys who were attendant upon their masters they
managed to frighten a good deal more. These turned grey with terror,
and really there was some excuse for it.

For each had been seized by a tall ruffian, who, gripping him by the
throat, was making believe to rip him with a great assegai brandished in
front of the miserable wretch's face, every now and then letting him
feel the point sufficiently to make him think the stroke already dealt,
causing the victim to yell and whine with terror. The while his white
masters could do nothing to protect him, their efforts being needed to
calm and restrain their badly-frightened horses: an element of the
grotesque which evoked roars of bass laughter from the boisterous and
bloodthirsty crowd.

"Cease this fooling!" shouted Sybrandt, in the Sindabele tongue. "Is
this how you treat the King's guests? Make way. We are bound upon the
King's business."

"The King's business!" echoed the warriors. "The King's business! Ah!
ah! We too are bound upon the King's business. Come and see, Amakiwa.
Come and see how we black ones, the children of the King, the Eater-up
of the Disobedient, perform his bidding."

Then, for the first time, our party became aware that in the midst of
the crowd were two men who had been dragged along by raw-hide thongs
noosed round their necks; and, their horses having quieted down, they
were able to observe what was to follow. That the poor wretches were
about to be sacrificed in some hideous and savage fashion was only too
obvious, and they themselves could not refuse to witness this horror,
for the reason that to do so would be, in the present mood of these
fiends, almost tantamount to throwing away their own lives.

"What is their offence, Sikala-kala?" asked Sybrandt, addressing a man
he knew.

"Their offence? _Au_! it is great. They have gone too near the
_Esibayaneni_, the sacred place where the King, the Great