assed a just sentence. Blinded by prejudice and falsehood, and
maddened by the dreadful losses their people had suffered during the
past few days at the hands of a devilish savage, they believed that I
was the instigator of those losses, one who ought to die. Indeed, all,
or nearly all the Boers were persuaded that Dingaan was urged to this
massacre by the counsels of Englishmen. The mere fact of my own and my
servant's miraculous escape, when all my companions had perished,
proved my guilt to them without the evidence of Pereira, which, being no
lawyers, they thought sufficient to justify their verdict.

Still, they had an uneasy suspicion that this evidence was not
conclusive, and might indeed be rejected in toto by a more competent
court upon various grounds. Also they knew themselves to be rebels who
had no legal right to form a court, and feared the power of the long arm
of England, from which for a little while they had escaped. If I were
allowed to tell my tale to the Parliament in London, what might not
happen to them, they wondered--to them who had ventured to pass sentence
of death upon a subject of the Queen of Great Britain? Might not this
turn the scale against them? Might not Britain arise in wrath and crush
them, these men who dared to invoke her forms of law in order to kill
her citizen? Those, as I learned afterwards, were the thoughts that
passed through their minds.

Also another thought passed through their minds--that if the sentence
were executed at once, a dead man cannot appeal, and that here I had
no friends to take up my cause and avenge me. But of all this they
said nothing. Only at a sign I was marched away to my little house and
imprisoned under guard.

Now I propose to tell the rest of the history of these tragic events as
they happened, although some of them did not come to my knowledge till
the morrow or afterwards, for I think this will be the more simple and
the easier plan.

CHAPTER XXI. THE INNOCENT BLOOD

After I had been taken away it seems that the court summoned Hernan
Pereira and Henri Marais to accompany them to a lonely spot at a
distance, where they thought that their deliberations would not be
overheard. In this, however, they were mistaken, having forgotten the
fox-like cunning of the Hottentot, Hans. Hans had heard me sentenced,
and probably enough feared that he who also had committed the crime of
escaping from Dingaan, might be called on to share that sentence.