of them dare to lay
sacrilegious hands upon him in obedience to the order of these
strangers? With the half-formed hope that generations of iron
discipline and unquestioning obedience to the king's will might yet
avail to protect him in the moment of his utmost need, his glance
searched face after face. In vain! He had allowed his tyranny to carry
him so far that at length there was scarce a man among those present who
could say with certainty that his own life would not be the next
demanded to satisfy some savage whim of the king. There were not twenty
among all those hundreds who would raise a hand to save him! Too late
he saw the full depth of his rash, headstrong, criminal folly, and to
what straits it had led him; and, suddenly snatching a spear from the
hand of one of his astonished and unwary guards, he strove to drive its
point into his own heart. But the owner of the spear recovered himself
in a flash, and, seizing the blade of the weapon in his bare hand, he
twisted it upward with such strength that the slender wooden shaft
snapped, leaving the head in his hand and the innocuous shaft in that of
M'Bongwele. At the same instant half a dozen men flung themselves upon
the king, and in a trice his hands were drawn behind him, and securely
bound. Then, from somewhere, two long thongs or ropes of twisted
raw-hide were produced and quickly knotted round the necks of the two
condemned men, and in a tense, breathless silence they were led away to
the fatal tree.

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE KING'S NECKLACE.

With the return of Lobelalatutu from his gruesome task, and while the
bodies of M'Bongwele and M'Pusa still swung from the tree, the professor
turned to his friends and said--

"Having disposed of one king, the onus now rests upon us of appointing
another. The question consequently arises: What is to govern us in the
somewhat delicate task of choosing a suitable man?"

"Yes," agreed Sir Reginald; "and it is a somewhat difficult question to
answer: very much too difficult to answer offhand. We want a man--"

"Excuse me for interrupting you, old chap," broke in Lethbridge; "but I
should like to offer a suggestion, based upon my knowledge of the
peculiarities of the savage mind, as acquired in various out-of-the-way
corners of the globe. In the light of what this chief, Lobelalatutu,
has told us to-day, I am of opinion that we made a rather serious
mistake when, on the occasion of our last visit here,