“Can we get there to-night?” she asked eagerly.
“We try. Where you from?”
Then she told him, and about the murder of the Hollingworths; and her voice shook and her eyes filled. To her listener it was all a huge joke. He knew she was tinder the impression that she was talking to a loyal policeman. Then she began asking questions about John Ames. Was he at home? and so forth. But Nanzicele suddenly became afflicted by a strange density, an almost total ignorance of English.
For upwards of an hour they journeyed on, leaving the cultivated lands, and striking into wilder country. Once a great snake rose in their path, and went gliding away, hissing in wrath, and bright-plumaged birds darted overhead. Vast thickets of “wacht-een-bietje” thorns lined the river-bank, and these they skirted.
Nidia was becoming exhausted. So far excitement and nervous tension had kept her up. Now she felt she could hold out no longer. Just then they halted.
In front was the vast thicket. Shiminya, bending down, crawled into what was nothing more nor less than a tunnel piercing the dense thorns and just wide enough to admit the body of a man. There was something sinister in its very aspect. Nidia drew back.
“Go after him. Go after that man,” ordered Nanzicele, roughly.
“No. I don’t like it. I can’t get through there,” she answered. “This can’t be the way to Sikumbutana.”
Nanzicele snatched out the short-handled heavy knob kerrie stuck through his belt.
“Go after that man,” he roared, flourishing it over her head.