“I’m afraid I’m late,” he went on. “I hope you did not begin to get frightened. The fact is, I had a very long hard scramble after those wretched birds.”
“Yes. Oblige me by putting down that bundle of sticks, and going and sitting over there. I am going to build this fire, not you. Don’t you hear? Do as you’re told,” she went on, with a little stamp of her foot, as he made no movement towards obeying. “You do the outdoor work, I the in. That’s fair division of labour.”
“I won’t hear of any ‘division of labour,’ falling to you,” he objected.
“Now, how often have we fought over this already? The only thing we ever do fight about, isn’t it? Go and sit over there, you poor tired thing, and—and talk to me.”
The while she took the sticks from his hands, looking up into his face, with a merry, defiant expression of command mingled with softness upon hers, that again John Ames came near losing his head. However, he obeyed. It was sheer delight to him to sit there watching her, as she broke up the sticks and deftly kindled a blaze in the fireplace, securely sheltered by rocks from outside gaze, chatting away the while. The fire was wanted rather for light and cheerfulness than for cooking purposes, for it was late, and there was sufficient remaining from the last cooking to make a supper of. While they were discussing this he told her about his afternoon’s doings, and the long and hard scramble he had been obliged to undertake over two high granite kopjes before obtaining his birds. There was smoke visible, far away to the south-west, but what it meant was impossible to say. Then she, for her part, told him what she had seen. He looked surprised, even startled, and the next moment strove to conceal it.
“Are you dead sure your imagination wasn’t playing tricks with you, Nidia? When one is alone in a place like this for hours at a time one’s imagination will turn anything into shape. I have more than once blazed at a stump in the dusk, when my mind has been running upon bucks.”
“But my mind wasn’t running upon bucks, nor yet upon tall old men with long white beards,” returned Nidia, sweetly. “But the face! oh, it was too awful in its expression. I don’t believe the thing was of this earth.”
“I expect it’s some one in the same boat as ourselves.” And John Ames lighted his pipe—for he had obtained a stock of tobacco from Shiminya’s store-hut as well as matches—and sat silent. The prospect of falling in with another fugitive was anything but welcome. It would not even add to their safety, rather the reverse, for it was sure to mean two skippers in one ship. Such a fugitive too, as Nidia had described this one to look like, would prove anything but an acquisition. But—was that all?
No, not quite. He was forced to own to himself that he had no desire to hurry the end of this idyllic and primitive state of existence, certainly not at any price less than Nidia’s entire safety. He would have welcomed a strong patrol, though with mingled feelings. He certainly would not welcome at all the appearance of a fellow refugee, which would end the idyll, without the compensating element of rescue.
“He had no gun, you say?” he went on.