"Well, if that is the case, it certainly is enough to excite them, that the very man who was the most bitter against us should die thus suddenly. It is a very strange circumstance that Luji should have denounced him." While they were talking the shouting and yelling seemed to approach rapidly, and now a band of Amatonga, their naked bodies smeared with paint, came rushing down from among the huts. In a moment more than a hundred yelling savages surrounded the tree, shouting, screaming, and brandishing their assegais. The rifles could do nothing against such a number. "Our only hope is in Umhleswa," whispered the missionary, as he bent his calm face over his note book, apparently unconcerned. They were a terrible looking set, those dark-skinned Amatongas, and the two Europeans felt themselves completely in their power. Hideously ugly, with their enormous mouths, woolly hair, and receding foreheads, they had still further disfigured themselves with paint Masheesh did all a man could do to quiet them, but it was no use; the white men were seized, separated, and their rifles taken from them, their hands being firmly tied together. Luji shared their fate, and the monkey very much frightened, jumped to his usual place on his shoulders, jabbering and grimacing. Several blows with the wood of the assegais were given, and thus ill-treated, with the whole band of yelling savages around them, the captives were driven up the centre of the Amatonga village. The change in their situation had indeed been a sudden and dangerous one. Relying on the promise of the chief, all anxiety had been dismissed from their minds, and the future had seemed bright and fair before them. A few minutes later, they found themselves bound prisoners, and on their way to the hut of the dead man. They reached the entrance, where on the threshold sat the wife of the dead chief, rocking herself to and fro, and uttering a succession of wailing cries. Suddenly starting up as the captives approached, she spoke quickly to the braves around her, gesticulating and screaming. She was urging her people to sacrifice the murderers of her husband, as an expiatory offering on the chief's grave. This much the missionary could understand, as he bent his calm, clear eye on the excited countenance of the frantic woman. The quiet glance seemed only to enrage her more, as shaking her long skinny fingers in his face, she turned and dashed into the death-chamber. Jostled violently along, the two prisoners found themselves standing in the hut close together. "We are lost, Hughes," said the missionary, in low, hoarse tones. "The chief may save us," replied his comrade. "There is yet hope." Inside the women were chaunting, in loud drawling tone, the good qualities of the deceased, telling of his virtues in peace, his wisdom in the council, and his great deeds of war. The body itself lay stretched at full length in one corner, lying on some panther skins.