, which you will
remember was at some little distance from the great kraal, I found my
family and followers in a state of wild consternation and grief. The
little white girl was lost!

She had not been wandering, not even playing outside with the other
children. When last seen she was creeping through the door of the hut
wherein she usually dwelt--that of Fumana, the youngest of my wives--and
this hut she had never been seen to leave. When last seen it was
shortly before the setting of the sun.

This was a matter to be turned inside-out, and that speedily, to which
end I called up all those concerned, and questioned them one by one; the
children who had last been with her, my wives, and the Bakoni
slave-girls. But while my two younger wives were half-mad with grief--
for they loved the little one--Nangeza only laughed evilly, saying that
it could be but a small thing to a mighty chief like myself the loss of
a wretched little whelp of the Amabuna: for thus she would often speak
to anger me, knowing that I always held Kwelanga to be not of the
Amabuna at all, but of a far greater race.

"So, woman!" I replied, pointing my stick at her menacingly, "it may be
a small matter to myself, but it will be a weighty one for all here
concerned, for did not the King give Kwelanga into our care? Ha! the
alligators have been robbed of their food to-night--it may be that
to-morrow they will be full."

I could see fear upon the faces of those who heard my words; but again
Nangeza laughed evilly. I was resolved now that the end of such doings
had come. The morrow would show.

"Now to the search!" I cried. "The little one may have wandered abroad
and have sunk down to sleep in the forest. She may not be far."

"Perhaps yonder moves her bed," said Nangeza, with her black laugh, as
the wild howling of a hyena sounded very near. "While such are moving
about it is little enough will be found of any child who has sunk down
to sleep in the forest, and it has long been night."

A murmur of approval greeted these words, for few among us liked to move
about at night. And the voices of the hyenas and other beasts wailing
dismally through the forest sounded as the ravenings of ghost animals
scenting the blood of those who still lived as men. But for such
considerations I cared little then. I gave my orders, and no man there
but preferred to face the ghost animals to facing me having disobeyed
them. So we set out, by twos and