s wounded, presumably by the hailstones. Then
it was that in my wrath I put off the pretence of not understanding
their language and went for them before they could utter a single word.

"Where are our servants, you murderers?" I asked, shaking my fist at
them. "Have you sacrificed them to your devil-god? If so, behold the
fruits of sacrifice!" and I swept my arm towards the country beyond.
"Where are your crops?" I went on. "Tell me on what you will live this
winter?" (At these words they quailed. In their imagination already they
saw famine stalking towards them.) "Why do you keep us here? Is it that
you wait for a worse thing to befall you? Why do you visit us here now?"
and I paused, gasping with indignation.

"We came to look whether you had brought back to life that doctor whom
you killed with your magic, white man," answered the king heavily.

I stepped to the corner of the court-yard and, drawing aside a mat that
I had thrown there, showed them what lay beneath.

"Look then," I said, "and be sure that if you do not let us go, as
yonder thing is, so shall all of you be before another moon has been
born and died. Such is the life we shall give to evil men like you."

Now they grew positively terrified.

"Lord," said Simba, for the first time addressing me by a title of
respect, "your magic is too strong for us. Great misfortune has fallen
upon our land. Hundreds of people are dead, killed by the ice-stones
that you have called down. Our harvest is ruined, and there is but
little corn left in the storepits now when we looked to gather the new
grain. Messengers come in from the outlying land telling us that nearly
all the sheep and goats and very many of the cattle are slain. Soon we
shall starve."

"As you deserve to starve," I answered. "Now--will you let us go?"

Simba stared at me doubtfully, then began to whisper into the ear of
the lamed diviner. I could not catch what they said, so I watched their
faces. That of the diviner whose head I was glad to see had been cut by
a hailstone so that both ends of him were now injured, told me a good
deal. His mask had been ugly, but now that it was off the countenance
beneath was far uglier. Of a negroid type, pendulous-lipped, sensuous
and loose-eyed, he was indeed a hideous fellow, yet very cunning and
cruel-looking, as men of his class are apt to be. Humbled as he was
for the moment, I felt sure that he was still plotting evil against us,
somewhat against the w