The chief, and all present, listened with profound attention, and evidently with great interest; nor were the important facts thus set forth, confined to the audience in the lodge; for sentence after sentence was loudly repeated by a crier for the benefit of the whole village.
On asking
the chief the use of them, he replied, that if two or three of his men were shot, their neighbours would not see the bodies, and so be discouraged.
The chief made an harangue welcoming the white men to his village, and expressing his happiness in taking them by the hand as friends; but at the same time complaining of the poverty of himself and his people; the usual prelude among Indians to begging or hard bargaining.
The chief consulted apart with his companions, and messengers despatched to collect certain others of the most distinguished men of the tribe.
The king himself, followed by his guards, some of
the chiefs, and Gagool, who hobbled away after them with marvellous alacrity, fled for the huts, so that in another minute we ourselves, the would-be victim Foulata, Infadoos, and most of
the chiefs who had interviewed us on the previous night, were left alone upon the scene, together with the dead body of Scragga, Twala's son.
"Let them go!" thought
the chief justice, with somewhat of an old Puritan feeling in his breast.
At this point the trained faculties of
the Chief Inspector ceased to hear the voice of the constable.
The chief, a wicked-looking fellow with the sharp-filed teeth that often denote the cannibal, received him with apparent friendliness.
Why, you're all seams, my girl!" said
the Chief; and then he laughed heartily at his latest joke and a chorus of small voices echoed the chorus with "tee-hee-hee!
"You are going," he said to
the chief of police, "to kill an innocent man, for it is impossible that he should have murdered a creature who was dead already.
Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa, Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of
the chief representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign.
And yet, perhaps
the chief spoke of some other Mopo, for the name was not my own only--in truth, Chaka had killed a chief of that name at the great mourning, because he said that two Mopos in the land were one too many, and that though this Mopo wept sorely when the tears of others were dry.