t, for the party of armed men who had
conducted them on to the ground now forced their way into the lane and,
arranging themselves in a circle round the two white men, led them back
to where the cacique of the village sat enthroned. And as they passed
back along the lane of humanity which they had fought their way through
a few minutes previously, many of those whose arms still tingled with
the jar of the parried blows which they had aimed at them, now greeted
their return with murmurs of commiseration or admiration. Then, almost
before they realised where they were, they found themselves, still
hemmed in by their armed guards, facing the cacique, who sat for some
moments silent, regarding them with an inscrutable countenance. Then,
raising his hand for silence, he spoke.

"White men," he said, "ye have not fulfilled the terms of the agreement
which I made with you. Ye were to run from this end of the lane to the
other, and ye walked. And instead of accepting unresistingly--as was
intended--the blows which were aimed at ye, you took by force and
superior strength two clubs from my people, wherewith to defend
yourselves; and, worst of all, ye have killed outright no less than
four, more men of the Mayubuna and maimed five others so that it will be
many days before they will again be able to provide food for their wives
and children. Therefore, because of all this, and what has gone before,
your doom is--"

"Nay, nay; be merciful, O my father!" cried a number of women's voices,
"be merciful!" And, forcing their way through the throng, a party of
some twenty women of varying ages--from girls of seventeen or eighteen
to one withered hag who, from her appearance, might have been a hundred
years old--flung themselves upon their knees before the cacique.

"Mercy!" reiterated the cacique, in astonishment. "Who pleads for mercy
on behalf of these white men? Surely not you, Insipa, whose only son
they have done to death, leaving you desolate in your old age?"

"Yea; I, even I, Insipa," answered the hag above mentioned. "Hearken
now, O my father," she continued. "It is a custom among us that if a
man be killed, and his slayer be taken alive, if the mother or widow of
the slain man claim the slayer as her slave, to provide food for her in
the place of the slain man, her demand shall be granted, and the slayer
shall be given to her for the rest of her life. Now, behold these two
white men and see what mighty men they