The moon was nearly at full, and I stood looking over the screen of woven grass which was erected in front of the door, leaving just room on each side for a man to pass. The scene was of wonderful beauty. The great circle of domed huts lying between their dark ring fences, the shimmering solitude of the moonlit plain, and beyond, the far amphitheatre of terraced cliffs rising to the twinkling stars. The calm beauty of it all riveted me, accustomed as I was to night in the open—do we ever get accustomed to such nights as this I wonder?—and I stood thinking, or rather beginning to think—when—
Such a clamour broke forth upon the sweet stillness of the night as though all the dogs in the kraal—no, in the world—had suddenly gone stark, staring, raving mad, and then in the light of the broad moon I saw Falkner Sewin clad in nothing but a short light shirt, sprinting as I feel sure he never sprinted before or since. Behind him poured forward a complete mass of curs, gaunt leggy brutes and as savage as they make them, given the conditions of night and a fleeing unwonted object. The ground was open in front of Majendwa’s huts, so he had some start.
“This way!” I yelled, lest he should mistake the hut, then quick as lightning I was inside. So was he, in about a moment, and was on his back with both heels jammed hard against the slammed-to wicker slab that constituted the door, while the whole snarling mouthing pack was hurling itself against the same, snapping and growling, till finding they couldn’t get in, the ill-conditioned brutes started to fight with each other. Then a man came out of an adjacent hut and shied knobsticks into the lot, dispersing them with many a pained yell. The while I lay there and laughed till I cried.
“If you could only have seen yourself, Falkner, covering distance in the moonlight and a short shirt,” I managed to gasp at length. “Man, what the deuce took you wandering about at night? They don’t like that here, you know.”
“Oh damn what they like or what they don’t like!” he growled pantingly. “I couldn’t sleep—some infernal leggy thing or other ran over me—so thought I’d admire the view a little by moonlight. Then those loathly brutes came for me all at once. Here! give us hold of that fat flask we had the sense to bring along. I want a drink badly.”
“So do I!” I said starting off to laugh again. “Well, you mustn’t do any more moonlight patrols. It’s tagati, as the Zulus say.”