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just after the great war, during which no man could sow or reap, a
famine came upon the land, and the people murmured because of the
famine, and looked round like a starved lion for something to rend.
Then it was that Gagool, the wise and terrible woman, who does not
die, made a proclamation to the people, saying, 'The king Imotu is no
king.' And at the time Imotu was sick with a wound, and lay in his
kraal not able to move.

"Then Gagool went into a hut and led out Twala, my half-brother, and
twin brother to the king, whom she had hidden among the caves and
rocks since he was born, and stripping the '/moocha/' (waist-cloth)
off his loins, showed the people of the Kukuanas the mark of the
sacred snake coiled round his middle, wherewith the eldest son of the
king is marked at birth, and cried out loud, 'Behold your king whom I
have saved for you even to this day!'

"Now the people being mad with hunger, and altogether bereft of reason
and the knowledge of truth, cried out--'/The king! The king!/' but I
knew that it was not so, for Imotu my brother was the elder of the
twins, and our lawful king. Then just as the tumult was at its height
Imotu the king, though he was very sick, crawled from his hut holding
his wife by the hand, and followed by his little son Ignosi--that is,
by interpretation, the Lightning.

"'What is this noise?' he asked. 'Why cry ye /The king! The king!/'

"Then Twala, his twin brother, born of the same woman, and in the same
hour, ran to him, and taking him by the hair, stabbed him through the
heart with his knife. And the people being fickle, and ever ready to
worship the rising sun, clapped their hands and cried, '/Twala is
king!/ Now we know that Twala is king!'"

"And what became of Imotu's wife and her son Ignosi? Did Twala kill
them too?"

"Nay, my lord. When she saw that her lord was dead the queen seized
the child with a cry and ran away. Two days afterward she came to a
kraal very hungry, and none would give her milk or food, now that her
lord the king was dead, for all men hate the unfortunate. But at
nightfall a little child, a girl, crept out and brought her corn to
eat, and she blessed the child, and went on towards the mountains with
her boy before the sun rose again, and there she must have perished,
for none have seen her since, nor the child Ignosi."

"Then if this child Ignosi had lived he would be the true king of the
Kukuana people?"

"That is so, my lord; the sacred snake is round his middle. If he
lives he is king; but, alas! he is long dead."

"See, my lord," and Infadoos pointed to a vast collection of huts
surrounded by a fence, which was in its turn encircled by a great
ditch, that lay on the plain beneath us. "That is the kraal where the
wife of Imotu was last seen with the child Ignosi. It is there that we
shall sleep to-night, if, indeed," he added doubtfully, "my lords
sleep at all upon this earth."

"When we are among the Kukuanas, my good friend Infadoos, we do as the

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