ade with us. A party of my braves shall
seek the fallen huts and bring back the images."

The rattling sound of the rude applause was once more heard.

"No, chief," replied Wyzinski; "we are not traders. We have turned from
our road to ask your aid. Give it, and we shall succeed. The report
will go far and wide that through the protection of a great king our
fathers' truth has been manifested, and traders will follow in our
footsteps. Speed us on our journey, chief."

Mozelkatse did not reply, and for a few moments there was a deep
silence. It was broken in a sudden and startling manner. A little man,
almost a dwarf, deformed in person and fearfully ugly, leaped into the
circle. Executing a wild dance, which he accompanied with shrill
screams, he spun round, the warriors crouching down and applauding, not
as heretofore with their spears, but by beating on the hard baked ground
with their sticks, sometimes altogether, sometimes in an irregular
manner.

Stopping as suddenly as he had begun in his mad dance, the sorcerer, for
such he was, threw himself violently on the ground at Mozelkatse's feet,
breaking as he did so a necklace of bones which he wore round his neck.
For the first time the living circle of dusky braves gave way, and all
able to do so crowded round the sorcerer, who with fixed and straining
eyes was staring at the masses of bones lying here and there, from the
position of which the augury was to be drawn. Luckily for the
travellers, the omen was tolerably propitious, the seer pronouncing that
though there was danger in the path, the white chiefs should return in
safety.

The circle was again formed, and a long discussion ensued, in the course
of which several of the more noted chiefs joined in, and the result was
a mass of evidence as to the existence of ruins somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Manica, a country lying to the northward, well watered
by tributaries of the Zambesi, all the evidence being however merely
hearsay. Eventually the king's aid and protection were promised, and
Mozelkatse retired, two braves as he did so advancing, and taking from
their sheaths the long glittering knives, performed a curious dance
round the strangers, eventually cutting away the grass upon which they
had sat, and burying it in a hole under the stone which had served as a
throne. This being a ceremony always performed by the chief who wishes
to retain the friendship of his visitors, during their tempora