So our bonds were undone and we walked to where the king and Brother John stood, the miserable Imbozwi and his attendant doctors huddled in a heap before them.

“Who is this?” said Bausi to him, pointing at Brother John.  “Is it not he whom you vowed was dead?”

Imbozwi did not seem to think that the question required an answer, so Bausi continued: 

“What was the song that you sang in our ears just now—­that if Dogeetah came you would be ready to be shot to death with arrows in the place of these white lords whose lives you swore away, was it not?”

Again Imbozwi made no answer, although Babemba called his attention to the king’s query with a vigorous kick.  Then Bausi shouted: 

“By your own mouth are you condemned, O liar, and that shall be done to you which you have yourself decreed,” adding almost in the words of Elijah after he had triumphed over the priests of Baal, “Take away these false prophets.  Let none of them escape.  Say you not so, O people?”

“Aye,” roared the multitude fiercely, “take them away.”

“Not a popular character, Imbozwi,” Stephen remarked to me in a reflective voice.  “Well, he is going to be served hot on his own toast now, and serve the brute right.”

“Who is the false doctor now?” mocked Mavovo in the silence that followed.  “Who is about to sup on arrow-heads, O Painter-of-white-spots?” and he pointed to the mark that Imbozwi had so gleefully chalked over his heart as a guide to the arrows of the archers.

Now, seeing that all was lost, the little humpbacked villain with a sudden twist caught me by the legs and began to plead for mercy.  So piteously did he plead, that being already softened by the fact of our wonderful escape from those black graves, my heart was melted in me.  I turned to ask the king to spare his life, though with little hope that the prayer would be granted, for I saw that Bausi feared and hated the man and was only too glad of the opportunity to be rid of him.  Imbozwi, however, interpreted my movement differently, since among savages the turning of the back always means that a petition is refused.  Then, in his rage and despair, the venom of his wicked heart boiled over.  He leapt to his feet, and drawing a big, carved knife from among his witch-doctor’s trappings, sprang at me like a wild cat, shouting: 

“At least you shall come too, white dog!”

Most mercifully Mavovo was watching him, for that is a good Zulu saying which declares that “Wizard is Wizard’s fate.”  With one bound he was on him.  Just as the knife touched me—­it actually pricked my skin though without drawing blood, which was fortunate as probably it was poisoned—­he gripped Imbozwi’s arm in his grasp of iron and hurled him to the ground as though he were but a child.

After this of course all was over.

“Come away,” I said to Stephen and Brother John; “this is no place for us.”