Every eye was bent upon the new arrival. With a quick, instinctive movement the savages closed around the foolhardy Englishman. There was a scowl of deadly import upon each grim face. Hundreds of assegais were poised with a quiver of suppressed eagerness. The man's life seemed not worth a moment's purchase. "Out of my way, you _schepsels_!" he cried roughly, urging his horse through the sullen and threatening crowd, as though so many hundreds of armed and excited barbarians worked up to the highest pitch of blood-thirstiness were just that number of cowering and subservient slaves. "Out of my way, do you hear? Where is Nteya? I want Nteya, the chief. Where is he?" "Here I am, _umlungu_ [White man]. What do you want with me?" answered Nteya--making a rapid and peremptory signal to restrain the imminent resentment of his followers. "Am I not always here, that you should break in upon me in this violent manner? Do _I_ go to _your_ house, and ride up to the door and shout for you as though you were stricken with sudden deafness?" The chief's rebuke, quiet and dignified, might have carried some tinge of humiliation to any man less overbearing and hot-headed than Tom Carhayes, even as the low growl of hardly contained exasperation which arose from the throng might have conveyed an ominous warning. But upon this man both were alike thrown away. Yet it may be that the very insanity of his fool-hardiness constituted his safety. Had he quailed but a moment his doom was sealed. "I didn't come here to hold an _indaba_," [Talk--palaver] he shouted. "I want my sheep. Look here, Nteya. You have put me off very cleverly time after time with one excuse or another. But this time you are _pagadi_ [Cornered]. I've run you to earth--or rather some of those _schepsels_ of yours. That young villain Goniwe has driven off thirty-seven of my sheep, and two of your fellows have helped him. I've spoored them right into your location as straight as a line. Now?" "When was this, Umlilwane?" said Nteya, imperturbably. "When? When? To-night, man. This very night, do you hear?" roared the other. "_Hau_! The white man has the eyes of twenty vultures that he can see to follow the spoor of thirty-seven sheep on a dark night," cried a mocking voice--and a great shout of derisive laughter went up from the whole savage crowd. The old chief, however, preserved his dignified and calm demeanour. "You are excited, Umlilwane," he said--a faint smile lurking round the corners of his mouth. "Had you not better go home and return in the morning and talk things over quietly? Surely you would not forget yourself like a boy or a quarrelsome old woman." If a soft answer turneth away wrath, assuredly an injunction to keep cool to an angry man conduceth to a precisely opposite result. If Carhayes had been enraged before, his fury now rose to white heat.