ways slept till
then, and had ever since been gnawing at his thoughts.

He recalled the deafening thunder of the drums, the glare and the
blood, the moon peering down through the branches like the face of a
perverse divinity pale from pride, and the thought that had come to him
there, in his sickness and lonely hopelessness--that while some in a
fit of decrepitude and despair might turn to God, others might turn to
the oblivion promised by evil.

Raising his head, he called out in a voice as strong as the king's:

"Still dreaming, Muene-Motapa? Awake, and let me go!"

The king leaped to his feet, to pace the earthen floor. His kilt of
leopards' paws swayed from side to side; his amulets jingled; his
shaven head glistened amid the shadows, like an ebony ball. His court
bowed their naked bodies, muttering:

"Father of elephants! He shall stamp on this man, and his foot shall
shake the whole earth!"

Muene-Motapa bitterly asked his captive:

"Is there not always rich meat, and beer and brandy in season? I have
also hundreds of women who are young, as slender as palm trees, with
teeth like milk. I will buy women from the Arabs, with red or tawny
skin and straight hair like waterfalls. I will send men to steal the
women of Mozambique--white women with hair brighter than firelight.
Why do you not marry my little sisters, my brother? They pine away for
you. Or is it wealth? I know the little bible that you carry in that
pouch! When you look into it, you remember all the quartz reefs in the
gorges of the mountains beyond my forests, with their veins of gold and
of gray and yellow copper; and the river sands full of gold; and the
places where you have seen the iron that draws iron, and the tin, and
the black grease. But I have already told you that you shall be rich.
What is the matter with you, Bangana? Are you deaf?"

He squatted down before Lawrence Teck, and thrust forward his angry
face; and his pendent, pear-shaped earrings of jasper, which some
Phoenician adventurer had worn perhaps four thousand years ago,
quivered as he shouted with all his might:

"Are you deaf, I say? Shall I open your ears with a spear point?"

He stared in stupefaction at Lawrence Teck's stony countenance, then
suddenly burst into sobs.

"See how I love him!" he moaned, "and yet he hates me; and I shall
never be great."

The prisoner thought to himself, "Now, if ever, is the time." He laid
his hands on the shoulders of