Blachland had now drawn back as far as he could, short of clambering out of the place altogether, and, his blood all curdling with horror and dread, he stood watching the monster with a kind of fell fascination. He dared not fire. The cavernous echoes of the report would go booming forth over all the land so to say, and bring an entire hornet's nest about his ears from which there would be no escape. The King's Snake! He recalled the utter derision wherewith he had received Sybrandt's statement on the subject--and yet it was only too fearfully true. A black _imamba_, Sybrandt had said, and this was one, and an enormous one at that. He knew, moreover, that this species was the most deadly and ferocious of serpents. No, he would stay here no longer--not another moment. Better meet death a hundred times in the ordinary way at the hand of enemies in the open, than remain here, shut up in a charnel house, with this awful black fiend. Acting on this idea, he began to feel for a firm hold of the stone parapet, intending to spring out quickly and at all risks, but still keeping his eyes on the reptile. It, strange to say, still remained where it was, just behind the skeleton of the King, and though still hissing furiously, made no movement forward to attack him. Encouraged by this, he got a firm grip on the topmost stone, and hoisted himself carefully up. Then he let himself down again. For simultaneously with the appearance of his head above the stones, a shout had broken forth from beneath, then another and another. His presence there had been discovered. Well, he had a choice of two deaths, both equally horrible. Was there not a third, however, which was less so? There was. He might blow out his own brains. That would be quicker at any rate. But almost immediately upon the idea came the consciousness that these were no hostile shouts that rose booming, full-voiced, to raise the echoes of the King's grave. "_Kumalo! Ho, inyoka 'nkulu! Ho, Inyoka 'mninimamdhla! Bayete_!" [See Note 1.] With a flash of returning hope, Blachland peered forth, trusting to the combined effect of distance and shadow, to render his head invisible from below. Two men were standing on the flat place beneath--where lay the heaps of charred bones--two old men, with right hand uplifted and facing the tomb--and he recognised one as Umjane, a favourite and trusted councillor of Lo Bengula's, the other as Faku, the old induna who had intervened when the warriors were clamouring to be allowed to massacre the four white men on the occasion of their last visit to the King. Now they were here to give the _nbonga_ at the grave of Umzilikazi, and the listener's heart sank again, for he had heard that this was a process which sometimes lasted for hours. But, as though in compensation, he noticed that the snake had abated its fury. It had dropped its hideous head, and lay there, in a shining, heaving coil as the sonorous chant proceeded: