"White–Mouse!" I ejaculated. "Where is she? Poor woman, she is dead, and for you, as the rest of us soon will be. And now you talk to me about my promises to her. How do you know what I promised her, you anathema'd bag of mysteries?"
"I do know, Lord," he replied, still more vaguely and gently. Then suddenly he added, "Hark! I hear the comfort coming," and lifted his hand in an impressive manner, only to drop it again in haste, because a passing bullet had scraped the skin off his finger.
Something caught my ear and I listened. From far away came a sound which reminded me of that made by a pack of wild dogs hunting a buck at night, a kind of surging, barbarous music.
"What is it?" I asked.
Kaneke, who was sucking the scraped finger, removed it from his mouth and replied that it was "the comfort", and that if I would look perhaps I should see.
So I did look through a crack between two stones towards the direction from which the sound seemed to come, namely eastward beyond the dry swamp where the veld was formed of great waves of land spotted with a sparse growth of thorn trees, swelling undulations like to those of the deep ocean, only on a larger scale. Presently, coming over the crest of one of these waves, now seen and now lost among the thorns, appeared a vast number of men, savage–looking fellows who wore feathers in their hair and very little else, and carried broad, long–handled spears.
"Who the deuce are these?" I asked, but Kaneke made no answer.
There he sat behind his stone, pointing towards the reeds in which the Arabs were hidden with his bleeding finger and muttering to himself.
Hans who, wild with curiosity, had thrust his sticky face against mine in order to share the view through the chink, whispered into my ear:
"Don't disturb him, Baas. These are his friends and he is telling them where those Arabs are."
"How can he tell people half a mile away anything, you idiot?" I asked.
"Oh, quite easily, Baas. You see, he is a magician, and magicians talk with their minds. It is their way of sending telegrams, as you do in Natal, Baas. Well, things look better now. As your reverend father used to say, if only you wait long enough the devil always helps you at last."
"Rot!" I ejaculated, though I agreed that things did look better, that is, unless these black scoundrels intended to attack us and not the Arabs. Then I set myself to watch events with the greatest interest.
The horde of savages, advancing at a great pace—there must have been two or three hundred of them—made for the dry pan like bees for their hive. Whether Kaneke instructed them or not, evidently their intelligence department was excellent, for they knew exactly what they had to do. Reaching the edge of it, they halted for a while and ceased their weird song, I suppose to get their breath and to form up. Then at some signal the song began again and they plunged into those reeds like dogs after an otter.
Up to this moment the Arabs hidden there did not seem to be aware of their approach, I suppose because their attention was too firmly fixed upon us, for they kept on firing at the koppie in a desultory fashion. Now of a sudden this firing ceased, and from the thicket below arose yells of fear, surprise, and anger. Next at its further end, that which lay towards Kaneke's town, appeared the Arabs running for all they were worth, and presently, after them, their savage attackers.
Heavens, what a race was that! Never have I seen men go faster than did those Arabs across the plain with the wild pursuers at their heels. Some were caught and killed, but when at last they vanished out of sight, most of them were still well ahead. Hans wanted to shoot at them, but I would not allow it, for what was the use of trying to kill the poor wretches while others were fighting our battle? So it came about that the only shot we fired that day, I mean in earnest, was that which I had aimed at Gaika, which was strange when I had prepared for a desperate battle against overwhelming odds.
All having vanished behind the irregularities of the ground, except a few who had been caught and speared, in the silence which followed the war–song and the shoutings, I turned to Kaneke and asked for explanations. He replied quite pleasantly and briefly, that these black men were some of his "friends" whom the Arabs had always feared he would bring upon them, which was why they kept him prisoner and wished to kill him.
"I had no intention of doing anything of the sort, Lord," he added, "until it became necessary in order to save our lives. Then, of course I asked them for help, whereon they came at once and did what was wanted, as you have seen."
"And pray how did you ask them, Kaneke?"
"Oh, Lord, by messengers as one always asks people at a distance, though they were so long coming I feared lest the messengers might not have reached them."
"He lies, Baas," said Hans, in Dutch. "It is no good trying to pump the truth out of his heart, for you will only tire yourself bringing up more lies."
As I agreed, I dropped the subject and inquired of Kaneke whether his friends were coming back again. He said he thought so and before very long, as he had told them not to attack the town in which dwelt many innocent women and children.
"But, Lord," he went on, with unusual emphasis, "when they do return I think it will be well that you should not go to speak to them. To tell the truth, they are savage people, and being very naked, might take a fancy to your clothes, also to your guns and ammunition. I will just go down to give them a word of thanks and bring back some porters to take the place of those who have run away, whom, by the way, I hope they have not met. Foreseeing something of the sort, I asked them to bring a number of suitable men."
"Did you?" I gasped. "You are indeed a provident person. And now may I ask you whether you intend to return to your town, or what you mean to do?"
"Certainly I do not intend to return, Lord, in order to care for people who have been so ungrateful. Also, that spotted sickness is most unpleasant to see. No, Lord, I intend to accompany you to the country of the Lake Mone."
"The Lake Mone!" I said. "I have had enough of that lake, or rather of the journey to it, and I have made up my mind not to go there."
He looked at me, and under the assumed mildness of that look I read intense determination as he answered:
"I think you will go to the Lake Mone, Lord Macumazahn."
"And I think I will not, Kaneke."
"Indeed. In that case, Lord, I must talk to my friends when they return, and make certain arrangements with them."
We stared at each other for what seemed quite a long time, though I dare say it was only a few seconds. I don't know what Kaneke read of my mind, but what I read of his was a full intention that I should accompany him to the Lake Mone, or be left to the tender mercies of his "friends", at present engaged in Arab–hunting who, it seemed, had so great a passion for European guns and garments.
Now there are times when it is well to give way, and the knowledge of those times, to my mind, often marks the difference between a wise man and a fool. As we all know, wisdom and folly are contiguous states, and the line dividing them is very thin and crooked, which makes it difficult not to blunder across its borders, I mean from the land of wisdom into that of folly, for the other step is rarely taken, save by one inspired by the best of angels.
In this instance, although I do not pretend to any exceptional sagacity, I felt strongly that it would be well to stick on my own side of the line and not defy the Fates as represented by that queer person Kaneke, and his black "friends" whom he seemed to have summoned from nowhere in particular. After all, I was in a tight place. To travel back without porters, even if I escaped the "friends" and the Arabs who now had a quarrel against me, was almost impossible, and the same might be said of a journey in any other direction. It seemed, therefore, that it would be best to continue to suffer those ills I knew of, namely the fellowship of Kaneke on an expedition into the unknown.