CHAPTER TWENTY. THE HISTORY OF CERTAIN DISTRESSED DAMSELS. Meanwhile Seketulo, the chief in command of king M'Bongwele's household cavalry, returned to the village in due course, and lost no time in dismissing his men, chuckling to himself as he reflected that, after all, he had beaten his monarch in the race homeward. Time passed on; the sun set; the evanescent twilight faded out of the sky; the stars twinkled forth in all the mellow radiance characteristic of the tropics; and still the adventurous M'Bongwele and his wondrous prize came not. Hour after hour lagged slowly away; and at length the expectant villagers, who had poured into the open air to witness the triumphant arrival of the king, returned to their huts--their transient enthusiasm overcome by their habitual apathy and indolence--and surrendered themselves willingly enough to the blandishments of sleep. All, with the exception, that is to say, of the guard detailed to watch over the prisoners, the anxious Lualamba, and Seketulo. These were all wakeful enough, the latter perhaps even more so than any of the others. For, as the night waxed and the great full moon rolled slowly upward into the sky, the powerful chief, who had won for himself the envied position of commander of the king's cavalry (a position equivalent to that of commander-in-chief of the whole army), felt the hope growing within him that the foolhardy king and those with him had been carried off to the nether regions for a permanency by the wondrous Thing of which they had so audaciously sought to secure the possession. And in that case (M'Bongwele being without sons, and having, in order to avoid possible future complications, carefully slaughtered all his brothers and other relations on his accession to the throne) there would be a vacancy in that particular country for a king, which vacancy Seketulo believed himself powerful enough to secure and fill.