The crowd parted to make way for him, and amid ominous mutterings and an unpleasantly suggestive shaking of weapons towards him, he rode away as he had come. None followed him. The chief's eye was upon his receding figure. The chief's "word" had been given. But even protected by that safe conduct, he would be wise to put as much space as possible between himself and that sullen and warlike gathering, and that, too, with the greatest despatch. None followed him--at the moment. But Hlangani mixed unperceived among the crowd, whispering a word here and a word there. And soon, by twos and threes, a number of armed savages stole silently forth into the night, moving swiftly upon the retreating horseman's track. CHAPTER EIGHT. "ON THE ROCK THEY SCORCH, LIKE A DROP OF FIRE." "What are they really doing over there, do you suppose, Eustace?" said Eanswyth anxiously, as they regained the house. The thunder of the wild war-dance floated across the intervening miles of space, and the misty glare of many fires luridly outlined the distant mountain slopes. The position was sufficiently terrifying to any woman alone there save for one male protector, with hundreds of excited and now hostile savages performing their weird and clamourous war rites but a few miles away. "I'm afraid there's no mistake about it; they are holding a big war-dance," was the reply. "But it's nothing new. This sort of fun has been going on at the different kraals for the last month. It's only because we are, so to say, next door to Nteya's location that we hear it to-night at all." "But Nteya is such a good old man," said Eanswyth. "Surely he wouldn't harm us. Surely he wouldn't join in any rising." "You are correct in your first idea, in the second, not. We are rapidly making such a hash of affairs _in re_ Kreli and the Fingoes over in the Transkei, that we are simply laying the train for a war with the whole Amaxosa race. How can Nteya, or any other subordinate chief, refuse to join when called upon by Kreli, the Chief Paramount. The trouble ought to be settled before it goes any further, and my opinion is that it could be." "You are quite a politician," said Eanswyth, with a smile. "You ought to put up for the Secretaryship for Native Affairs." "Let us sit out here," he said, drawing up a couple of cane chairs which were always on the _stoep_. "Here is a very out-of-the-way phenomenon-- one the like of which we might not witness again in a lifetime. We may as well see it out."