Strangely wakeful, he lounged there, filling and lighting pipe after pipe of good Magaliesberg. The stars gleamed forth from the dark vault, so bright and clear and lamp-like in the glow of night in those high, subtropical latitudes, that it seemed as though the hand had but to be stretched forth to grasp them. Away over the veldt, jackals yelped; and the glimmer of the camp fire, dying low, emboldened the hungry little beasts to come nearer and nearer, attracted by the fresh meat brought in during that afternoon. The native followers, their heads in their blankets, had ceased their sonorous hum of gossip, and were mingling their snores with the somewhat discomforting sounds emitted by the nostrils of Pemberton. Away on the northern sky-line, a faint glow still hung, and from time to time a muffled snatch of far-away song. A dance of some sort was in late progress at the King's kraal, but such had no novelty for Blachland. The exploration of the King's grave, however, had; and he could think upon nothing else. Yet, could he have foreseen, his companions had uttered words of sound wisdom. He had better have left Umzilikazi's sepulchre severely alone. CHAPTER TWO. BEFORE THE KING. "Tumble out, Blachland. We've got to go up and interview the King." Thus Sybrandt at an early hour on the following morning. "And," he added in a low voice, "I hope the _indaba_ will end satisfactorily, that's all." "Why shouldn't it?" was the rather sleepy rejoinder. And the speaker kicked off his blanket, and, sitting up, yawned and stretched himself. Three savage-looking Matabele were squatted on the ground just within the camp. They were _majara_, and were arrayed in full regimentals, i.e. fantastic bedizenments of cowhair and monkey-skin, and their heads crowned with the _isiqoba_, or ball of feathers; one long plume from the wing of a crested crane stuck into this, pointing aloft like a horn. The expression of their faces was that of truculent contempt, as their glance roamed scornfully from the camp servants, moving about their divers occupations, to the white men, to whom they were bearers of a peremptory summons. It was significant of the ominous character of the latter, no less than of the temper of arrogant hostility felt towards the whites by the younger men of the nation, that these sat there, toying with the blades of their assegais and battle-axes; for a remonstrance from Sybrandt against so gross a violation of etiquette as to enter a friendly camp with weapons in their hands had been met by a curt refusal to disarm, on the ground that they were King's warriors, and, further, that they were of the King's bodyguard, and, as such, were armed, even in the presence of the Great Great One himself.