"And how have we been treated?" asked the professor. "Your king, not satisfied with our friendship and the presents we gave him, wickedly and treacherously devised a scheme to get us into his power--a scheme which, in order to try him, we permitted to succeed. And, having done that, he further attempted to gain possession of this ship,"--this fact having leaked out in Seketulo's previous conversations--"profanely and audaciously thinking he could subdue her to his will and control her as we do. Now, therefore, be it understood by all present that, for his base treachery, _M'Bongwele is dethroned_, and Seketulo will, from this moment, reign in his stead. Let a detachment of the guard enter the palace and bring M'Bongwele forth to hear his sentence!" In an instant Lualamba--anxious above all things to please the powers that be, and having, moreover, in revengeful remembrance many little gratuitous slights and insults which he had suffered at the king's hands--dismounted a squadron of the guard, and, surrounding the palace, himself entered the building at the head of half a dozen men. Two or three minutes later the party reappeared with the dethroned monarch in their midst. They advanced until almost level with the spot occupied by Seketulo, when, at a sign from the professor, they halted; the guards disposing themselves round M'Bongwele in such a manner that, whilst to escape was an utter impossibility, he could still see and hear the individual who, perched far aloft in the gangway of the ship, was about to address him. M'Bongwele never, perhaps, looked more kingly than whilst he thus stood to receive his sentence of dethronement. He was fully conscious of his treacherous behaviour to his guests, but he felt no shame thereat, for he had been schooled in the belief that treachery, falsehood, ay, even deliberate, cold-blooded murder, was perfectly justifiable in the pursuit of power. His only feeling was that he had played a bold game for a high stake and had lost it. The moment of reckoning had now arrived, the penalty of failure had to be paid, and though he knew not what that penalty might be--though his brain was teeming with all sorts of possible and impossible horrors--he never for a moment forgot that he was a monarch, that the eyes of his people were on him, noting his every look and gesture, and he summoned all his fortitude to his aid, in order that, since fall he must, he should fall as becomes a king.