on all fours to the royal presence, he grinned with satisfaction at the instructions he received. He kept clapping his hands softly while he was attending; and having taken a sip from the goblet offered him by his royal master, he crawled back to his former place. The king was in high good humour; and after a few more jokes, retired to his bed-chamber, whilst the band played their usual serenade from their adjacent hut.
Only too faithfully was the king’s sentence carried out next morning. Before it was light, five men wended their way towards the old man’s hut, one of whom, Mashoku himself, went in and seized his victim by the leg. Quite incapable of making any resistance, the poor man trembled like a leaf. He was dragged off to the river-side, and there thrust into a canoe that was lying in readiness. A few strokes of the paddle brought it into midstream; and while three of the assistant executioners kept it steady, Mashoku and the other man lifted the helpless creature by the shoulders and legs, and held him in the water. A gurgling noise, a few bubbles on the surface of the stream, and all was over. The body was hauled back into the boat, to be thrown into the water again at a spot near the bank where the king’s scavengers always flung their refuse to the crocodiles.
Such is an example of the summary way in which Sepopo would dispose of the friendless and infirm; and as the number of strangers that gathered round the king at Sesheke was considerable, executions of this kind were more frequent than in many other places. Under certain rulers—such for instance as Sepopo’s grandfather, who was much respected by
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