, will admit
that--I ask you to give the man his life, free from all stigma or
disgrace of defeat; and to repeal your sentence that, if conquered, he
should be given to the ants."

The silence that followed this bold request of mine was so intensely
profound that when it had endured for a minute or more at its full
tension I began to suspect that I had unwittingly committed some utterly
unpardonable offence, and that all nature was breathlessly awaiting the
fall of the avenging thunderbolt. For it was not only that every man
present in that great open space seemed tongue-tied, they seemed to be
not even drawing their breath; they were as absolutely motionless as so
many statues; there was not even the faint sound of a man shifting his
weight from one leg to the other, not even the scarcely perceptible
touch of a spear-haft upon a shield, nor even the faint rustle of the
warriors' plumes in the wind, for, strangely enough, at that precise
moment even the wind itself seemed to pause in its breathing: and
glancing round me in vague discomfiture I perceived that every man in
the square was staring blankly before him, right into space. The fact
was--as I subsequently learned--that in preferring my request I had
asked the king, in so many words, to break the most sacred oath known to
the Mashonas, and had he risen in his wrath and plunged his bangwan
through my heart, nobody would have been in the least degree surprised;
that, indeed, was the logical sequence for which everybody was at that
moment waiting. But my request must have touched some hitherto hidden
and unsuspected chord in the king's heart, for presently, when the
tension had become almost unendurable, Lomalindela raised his head and
said, in so gentle a tone of voice that it electrified everybody:

"Au, white man, you know not what you ask! I have sworn by the bones of
my royal father that if that man was conquered, and survived the fight,
I would give him to the ants; and that is an oath which I dare not
break, for otherwise great evils would fall upon the house of
Lomalindela, King of the Mashona."

"Doubtless, O King, what thou sayest is true--under ordinary
circumstances," I replied. "But these circumstances are not ordinary;
on the contrary, they are so exceptional that they will probably never
again occur. The oath which you took was taken in ignorance. You did
not know that, in taking that oath, you were virtually condemning a man
to a dreadful de