"But," objected M'Bongwele, "if you are spirits you should know all that you want to know about these ruins without coming here to investigate. The spirits know everything." A low murmur of applause from the king's adherents followed this enunciation, showing that they evidently considered their monarch to be getting the better of the strangers, and a smile of gratification flickered for an instant over M'Bongwele's features. "Not everything," corrected the professor. "We know a great many things, but not everything. And what we know we have been obliged to find out by investigation. We spend the greater part of our existence in passing from place to place investigating and finding out things." "Then I have been misinformed, and the spirits are neither so wise nor so powerful as I thought them to be," retorted the king. "Perhaps so," quietly remarked the professor. "Nevertheless we are very powerful--sufficiently so to destroy you and your whole army in a moment, should we choose to do so. Would you like to witness a specimen or two of our power?" M'Bongwele glanced somewhat nervously about him for a second or two, and then with an obvious effort answered: "Yes." "I see that some of your followers here are armed with bows," continued the professor. "Are they good marksmen?" "The best in the world," answered the king proudly. The professor in his turn hesitated an instant; he was about to make a dangerous experiment. Then he drew from his pocket a small crimson silk rosette, and, placing it in M'Bongwele's hand, said: "I will attach this to any part of my dress you choose to point out; then order one of your archers to shoot an arrow at it, and observe the result." The king took the rosette in his hand, examined it carefully, and passed it round among his suite for inspection. On receiving it back he suddenly wheeled round in his chair, and, reaching over, laid his finger on Lethbridge's breast exactly over the heart. "Fasten it _there_," he said with a scornful smile, "and I will shoot at it myself." The professor was disconcerted. The danger of the experiment consisted in the possibility that the archer, instead of aiming at the rosette, would select an eye or some part of the head for a mark, in which case the result would be fatal. He was quite willing to incur the risk himself, trusting that the archer's vanity would impel him to aim at the right spot; but he had never contemplated the turn which affairs had now taken. Lethbridge, however, with a languid smile and a shrug of the shoulders, rose to his feet, and, nonchalantly flicking the ash off the end of his cigar, waited for the professor to affix the rosette. A happy inspiration just then occurred to von Schalckenberg. "It is a very small mark," he murmured confidentially to M'Bongwele; "I do not believe you can hit it. Shall I get something larger?"