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IV

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THE "CASTLE" LINER

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But during the two following nights, Cobby had from Rolls the whole story—how Daisy, King of M'Niami, refused to send the white child to Wo-Ngwanya, having been warned by the whites of the Florida that, if he separated the child from her parents, the white Knulu-knulu (great-great God) would be down upon him, whereas, if he refused to send her, all would go well with him. By this advice he was guided: whereupon, war—Wo-Ngwanya warning Daisy that, if one hair of the white lamb was harmed, then, the Wo-Ngwanya army, if victorious, would not fail to raze Daisy's great-place to the ground. And Wo-Ngwanya was victorious: whereupon Daisy, in a passion of anger against the Florida unfortunates for their false prophecy, and for all the disaster it had brought upon his head, turned round and put them all to death, except the little one, whom, on capitulating, he handed over to Wo-Ngwanya.

"Eh," said Rolls to Cobby, "but that King of Wo-Ngwanya was cutting a stick for the back of his own royal house, look. Spiciewegiehotiu was no lamb come up out of any water—dragon more like—Machiavelli—Napoleon—and proved one too many for that royal house. The prophecy of the inganya Mandaganya that 'the lamb' would make Wo-Ngwanya 'great' has proved abundantly true, for when Spicie entered it, that country was no bigger than Bucks; now she can put into the field 180,000 of the bravest warriors—can and does put, for like a butting goat she has pushed and butted, north and east, and west, till that country may now make a map broader than Wales. But her idea was to make Wo-Ngwanya great for herself and her 'children,' the Wa-Ngwanya, not for the reigning house; and she was not much over sixteen when her scheming and intriguing broke out in the deuce of a bobbery. She got round the King, who now had cancer, to proclaim her his President of the Council at a new-moon ceremony; upon which two of the King's three brothers, and his only son—a lad of nineteen—took flight by night with a troop of followers from Eshowe—that's the royal kraal, or capital—in order to bring three regiments from the North upon Eshowe, seize the power, and get hold of Spiciewegiehotiu and Mandaganya, whose designs they were quite up to. Well, your troop of indunas gallop full bat through a night and day, they reach the regiments, they hold an indaba—that's a debate—of officers in a forest at midnight, decide what to do, and to do it quick; and, as the indaba is about over, one of the assembly stands up, points at the princes, and commands, 'arrest the traitors'—Spiciewegiehotiu, wrapped in an officer's kaross, her face blackened; and with her her Sueela. She rode back to Eshowe at the head of one of the regiments, the three princes prisoners in its midst."

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