While there was life there was hope.
He was not going to throw away a single chance.

To this end, then, he lay perfectly still, closing his eyes again, for
he wanted to think, to clear his terribly aching and beclouded brain.
And while thus lying, seemingly unconscious, his ears caught the subdued
hum of his captors' conversation--caught the whispered burden of their
superstitious misgivings, and he resolved to turn them to account.

"It is a powerful `charm,'" one of them was saying. "We ought to find
it--to take it away from him."

"We had better not meddle with it," was the reply. "Wait and see. It
may not be too powerful for Ngcenika, or it may. We shall see."

"Ha! Ngcenika--the great prophetess. _Ewa, ewa_!" [Yes--yes]
exclaimed several.

A powerful charm? Ngcenika, the prophetess? What did they mean. Then
it dawned upon him as in a flash. The uplifted assegai, the great
leaping barbarian, grinning in bloodthirsty glee as the weapon quivered
in his sinewy grasp: then the blow--straight at his heart. It all came
back lo him now.

Yet how had he escaped? The stroke had been straight, strong, and
surely directed. He had felt the contact. Checking an impulse to raise
his hand to his heart, he expanded his chest ever so slightly. No
sharp, pricking pang, as of a stab or cut. He was unwounded. But how?

And then as the truth burst upon him, such a thrill of new-born hope
radiated throughout his being that he could hardly refrain from leaping
to his feet then and there. The silver box--Eanswyth's gift at
parting--this was what had interposed between him and certain death!
The silver box--with its contents, the representation of that sweet
face, those last lines, tear stained, "warm from her hand and heart," as
she herself had put it--this was what had turned the deadly stroke which
should have cleft his heart in twain. What an omen!

A "charm," they had called it--a powerful "charm." Ha! that must be his
cue. Would it prove too potent for Ngcenika? they had conjectured. The
name was familiar to him as owned by Kreli's principal witch-doctress, a
shadowy personage withal, and known to few, if any, of the whites, and
therefore credited with powers above the average. Certain it was that
her influence at that time was great.

More than ever now had he his cue, for he could guess his destination.
They were taking him to the hiding place of the Paramount Chief, and
with the thorough knowledge