“Don’t rise, Lenzimbi. Make the blood circulate, but do it quietly. Don’t move from your place until I tell you,” and, dexterously feeling his way, the old man, in a couple of slashes, cut through the prisoner’s bonds.
“Ah, that’s better,” whispered Claverton, stretching his limbs, which had been terribly cramped, so securely had they bound him. “But I say, Xuvani, there’s a poor devil of a preacher shut up here somewhere. Couldn’t we bring him out, too?”
“Do I owe the Umfundisi anything?” was the cold reply. “Lenzimbi shall go free, but I would not stir an arm to save a townfull of these black-coated preachers. If this white man is a real prophet, his God will save him; if not, the Gaikas may do what they please with him—I care not.”
Now, I am aware that by all the laws of romance Claverton should have absolutely refused to accept his own deliverance rather than desert a countryman, whoever he might be. But, even at the risk of his irretrievably losing the reader’s good opinion, the fact must be recorded that not only did no such wild idea enter his head for a moment, but that he there and then dismissed all thought of his companion in adversity from his mind. What was this cowardly, egotistical, “shoppy” preacher to him? He had never seen him before they had picked him up in the bush, and certainly had no great wish ever to see him again. If it had been Hicks or Armitage, or any of his old comrades, even Allen, the case would have been vastly different; but to sacrifice himself, Lilian, everything, for such as this—no, not he.
“Xuvani,” he suddenly exclaimed. “Where is the ‘charm’ that was taken from me to-day? I cannot leave that behind.”
“Whaow! It is lost,” replied the old Kafir, a little impatiently. “Stand up, now, and roll yourself in that blanket, for it is time to start.”
But Claverton did not move. A queer freak had taken possession of him. He might never see Lilian again; he was not going to leave her image here among the savages—that image which he had worn upon his heart throughout so many perils and trials. It was of no use accepting life. No wonder his would-be deliverer stood and muttered impatiently that he must be mad. Here was a man with a frightful death by torture awaiting him in a few hours, and who, instead of availing himself of the proffered deliverance without loss of time, refused to move because he had lost a trinket. The experience of the savage had never held anything so curious as this.
“We are losing time, we are losing time,” he muttered. “Are you so very tired of life, Lenzimbi?”
“Yes—almost,” and he made no sign of moving. “Ah!—”
Something had suddenly been thrust into his hand. He grasped it. It was the steel locket.