"See," said I, pointing to the
dead brute, "is the Law not alive?
"Bah!" he exclaimed; "he was an actor--he knows how to be dead."
In that case it is easy to understand their fear of the dead, who really were a menace and an evil.
Without an instant's hesitation he seized the dead wrists and dragged the body upon its back to the point where he had just entered.
Returning to the body, he lifted it to his shoulder, and risking all on a quick sally, ran swiftly across the narrow opening which separated the prisoner's tent from that of the dead man.
The dead jeddak's hands and head were removed to be added to the ornaments of his conqueror, and then his women cremated what remained, amid wild and terrible laughter.
Without a sound he slipped to the floor, stone dead.
"Stolen," she shuddered, and thought of the
dead soldier with his face uplifted to the sky in an agony of supplication.
"'My son,' she answered, 'most ill-fated of all mankind, it is not Proserpine that is beguiling you, but all people are like this when they are dead. The sinews no longer hold the flesh and bones together; these perish in the fierceness of consuming fire as soon as life has left the body, and the soul flits away as though it were a dream.
I do not know whether your son is alive or dead, and it is not right to talk when one does not know.'
Now that his two sons perished in one day, Brother by brother murderously slain, By right of kinship to the Princes
dead, I claim and hold the throne and sovereignty.
"The king must see the
dead infant, and if he suspect, and even reeds have ears, you know the heart of Chaka and where we shall lie to-morrow."