“You would have been in safety long ago without myself as a drag upon you.”
“Possibly; possibly not. But, speaking selfishly, I prefer things as they are. But it’s rough on you, that’s what I’m thinking about. By the way, old Shiminya isn’t quite such a rip as I thought. I was more than half afraid he’d have given us away when they cut him loose. But he doesn’t seem to have done so, or we’d have heard about it before now.”
This apparently careless change of subject did not impose upon Nidia. She saw through and appreciated it—and a thrill of pride and admiration went through her. Whimsically enough, her own words, spoken to her friend on the day of that first meeting, came into her mind. “I think we’ll get to know him, he looks nice.” And now—he had impressed her as no man had ever before done. Full of resource, strong, tactful, and eminently companionable as he had shown himself, she was intensely proud of the chivalrous adoration with which she knew he regarded her, and all manifestation of which he was ever striving to repress. What would she do when they returned to safety, and their ways would lie apart? For somehow in Nidia’s mind the certainty that they would return to safety had firmly taken root.
“Perhaps they haven’t cut him loose yet,” she suggested.
Her companion gave a whistle, and looked scared. Only for a moment, though.
“Bad for him in that case. It would have been better for him and safer for us—to have given him a tap on the head. I couldn’t prove anything against him, though I’ve had my eye on him for some time—besides, he seems to have taken some care of you. But he’s sure to have been found. He’s one of these Abantwana ’Mlimo, and too much in request just now.”
“Is there anything in that Umlimo superstition, do you think, John?”
“There is, to this extent. From what I can get out of the natives it is of Makalaka origin, and manifests itself in a voice speaking from a cave. Now I believe that to be effected by ventriloquy. There is a close ‘ring’ of hierarchs of the Abstraction, probably most of them ventriloquists, and they retain their power by the very simple but seldom practised expedient of keeping their eyes and ears open and their mouths shut. That is about the secret of all necromancy, I suspect, from its very beginning.”
“Then you don’t believe in a particular prophet who talks out of a cave?”
“No; if only for the reason that the cave the Umlimo is supposed to speak from is one that no man could get into or out of—at least, so the Matabele say. No; the thing is a mere abstraction; an idea cleverly fostered by Messrs Shiminya and Co. They shout up questions to the cave, and ventriloquise the answers back.”