“Greeting, my father,” he exclaimed, when we had stared at each other for a moment in silence. “Au! but it is well that none of those who come on behind me were in my place now.”
“Who come on behind thee? What meanest thou, fool, leading those who pursue thee to my hiding-place?”
“Nay, father; I came to warn thee, for this place is known to them, and from one point yonder”—and he pointed upward and across the chasm—“it can be seen into. Then they will surround it by day and by night, for none will venture in by so narrow a way as this, and the choice before us will be a leap into yon depth, or death by hunger and thirst, or on the stake of impalement, which is even now reared outside the King’s Great Place.”
I looked at Jambúla somewhat suspiciously, for a thought had come into my mind: What if he were meaning to betray me? What if he had been offered life, and even honour, to decoy me forth, so that my pursuers might pounce upon me, with the alternative of death in torments should he fail? Who could be trusted? On whose faith could one set entire belief?
“Let us go hence, my father, and that immediately,” he said, “for we must find a safer refuge than this. The mist is still upon the mountains, but at any moment it may roll back. Here is food that will last us some little time.”
He picked up a bundle which lay on the ground. It contained a quantity of grain, stamped and prepared as for amasi. For arms he had a broad assegai and three or four casting ones, and a great short-handled knob-stick, which he had brought especially for me, when he should find me.
Whatever my suspicions, it was clear I could not remain in that place for ever. Jambúla leading the way, we retraced the perilous cliff path, and stood outside upon the mountain once more. At first I kept a sharp look-out, but soon my suspicions were entirely lulled, and I was able to appreciate the fidelity of my slave, who had sought me out with the resolve to share my peril in the day of my downfall and flight.
We kept on along the summit of the mountain range in complete silence, for a man’s voice travels far in those quiet solitudes. Then, as the sun rose, the mist rolled higher and higher up the slope, and there on the further side lay the open country.
It was flat, or gently rolling, and now the dew lay upon it like the sunlight on the points of the waves of the sea. Here and there, like moving dots, we could see herds of game browsing, and the tall necks of giraffes stalking among the flat tops of the mimosas. It was a fair and gladsome sight, Nkose, and for us who had to traverse it, promised, at any rate, no scarcity of food.
But just then our eyes lighted upon that which was by no means a gladsome sight—and this was a moving body of armed men. They had evidently come through the mountains by the Place of the Three Rifts, and were now moving along the base in such wise that did we descend from where we were now we should walk right into the midst of them. We could make out nearly a hundred of them. Well for us was it that the mist lifted when it did.