Tyisandhlu for some moments uttered no word, but stood gazing fixedly upon his prisoner in contemplative silence. Laurence, for his part, was studying, no less attentively, the king. The finely shaped head and lofty brow--the clear eyes and oval face, culminating in a short beard, whose jetty thickness just began to show here and there a streak of gray,--the noble stature and erect carriage, impressed him even more, thus face to face, than at a distance. "They say thou bearest the Sign of this nation, O stranger," began the king, speaking in the Zulu tongue, "and that to this thou owest thy life." "That is true, Great Great One," answered Laurence. "But how know we that the Sign is genuine?" continued Tyisandhlu. "By this, Father of the People of the Spider. Not once has it stood between me and death, but twice, and that at the hands of your people." A murmur of astonishment escaped his hearers. But the king said: "When was this other time?--for such would, in truth, be something of a test." Then Laurence told the tale of his conflict with the Ba-gcatya warriors beneath the tree-fern by the lagoon--and the murmur among the listeners deepened. "I was but one man, and they were twelve," he concluded. "Twelve of the finest warriors in the world, even the warriors of the People of the Spider. Yet they could not harm me, see you, Great Great One. They could not prevail against the man who held--who wore the Sign of the Spider." Now an emphatic hum arose on the part of all who heard--and indeed there had been a silence that might be felt while he had been narrating his tale. More than ever was Laurence convinced that in deciding to tell it he had acted with sound judgment. He had little or nothing to fear from the vengeance of the relatives of those he had slain--for he had seen enough of these people to guess that they did not bear a grudge over the fortunes of war--over losses sustained in fair and open fight. And, on the other hand, he had immensely strengthened his own case. "Yet, you made common cause with these foul and noisome _Izimu_,"[1] said the king, shifting somewhat his ground. "These carrion dogs, who devour one another, even their own flesh and blood?" "I but spared one of their villages, O Great North Wind. For the rest, how many have I left standing?" "That is so," said Tyisandhlu, still gazing fixedly at his prisoner. Then he signed the latter to retire among the warriors, and, turning, gave a few rapid directions in a low voice to an attendant. In the result, a group of armed warriors was seen hurrying forward, and in its midst a man, unarmed--a man ragged and covered with dried blood, and with his arms ignominiously bound behind him. And wild amazement was in store for Laurence. He had reckoned himself the sole survivor of the massacre. Yet now in this helpless and ill-treated prisoner he recognized no less a personage than Lutali.