“It shall be done,” said the commandant, and laboriously he made the note on the paper before him.

When he had finished he looked up and said:  “The charge against you, Allan Quatermain, is that, being one of the commission who recently visited the Zulu king Dingaan, under command of the late Governor and General Pieter Retief, you did falsely and wickedly urge the said Dingaan to murder the said Pieter Retief and his companions, and especially Henri Marais, your father-in-law, and Hernando Pereira, his nephew, with both of whom you had a quarrel.  Further, that afterwards you brought about the said murder, having first arranged with the king of the Zulus that you should be removed to a place of safety while it was done.  Do you plead Guilty or Not guilty?”

Now when I heard this false and abominable charge my rage and indignation caused me to laugh aloud.

“Are you mad, commandant,” I exclaimed, “that you should say such things?  On what evidence is this wicked lie advanced against me?”

“No, Allan Quatermain, I am not mad,” he replied, “although it is true that through your evil doings I, who have lost my wife and three children by the Zulu spears, have suffered enough to make me mad.  As for the evidence against you, you shall hear it.  But first I will write down that you plead Not guilty.”

He did so, then said: 

“If you will acknowledge certain things it will save us all much time, of which at present we have little to spare.  Those things are that knowing what was going to happen to the commission, you tried to avoid accompanying it.  Is that true?”

“No,” I answered.  “I knew nothing of what was going to happen to the commission, though I feared something, having but just saved my friends there”—­and I pointed to the Prinsloos—­“from death at the hands of Dingaan.  I did not wish to accompany it for another reason:  that I had been married on the day of its starting to Marie Marais.  Still, I went after all because the General Retief, who was my friend, asked me to come, to interpret for him.”

Now some of the Boers present said: 

“That is true.  We remember.”

But the commandant continued, taking no heed of my answer or these interruptions.

“Do you acknowledge that you were on bad terms with Henri Marais and with Hernan Pereira?”

“Yes,” I answered; “because Henri Marais did all in his power to prevent my marriage with his daughter Marie, behaving very ill to me who had saved his life and that of his people who remained to him up by Delagoa, and afterwards at Umgungundhlovu.  Because, too, Hernan Pereira strove to rob me of Marie, who loved me.  Moreover, although I had saved him when he lay sick to death, he afterwards tried to murder me by shooting me down in a lonely place.  Here is the mark of it,” and I touched the little scar upon the side of my forehead.

“That is true; he did so, the stinkcat,” shouted the Vrouw Prinsloo, and was ordered to be silent.