"By-the-by, I wonder what on earth has become of Stanninghame all this time?" said Holmes, apparently glad to quit an unprofitable subject.
"So do I. He ought to have joined us by now. He is just a trifle foolhardy, is Stanninghame, in knocking about so far afield alone," and a shade of anxiety steals over the speaker's face.
Holmes makes no reply, and for a while lies back on his rug, puffing away at his pipe and busy with his thoughts. These are not altogether pleasant. The process which had transformed the fine, open-natured, wholesome-hearted young Englishman into a slave-hunter, the confederate of ruthless cut-throats and desperadoes, had, in truth, been such as to engender the reverse of pleasant thoughts. Yet, that he had come to this was rather the fault of circumstances than the fault of Holmes. He had enjoyed the big game shooting and the ivory trading of the earlier stage of the trip, the more so from the consciousness that there was profit in both; and when a large caravan of the above and other legitimate merchandise had been run down to the coast, he had steadfastly refused to take the opportunity of parting company with the others. Then when they had pushed farther into the equatorial regions, and, joining with Lutali, had embarked on their present enterprise, all opportunity of withdrawing had gone. The precise point at which he had cast in his lot with this, Holmes could not with certainty define. Yet there were times when he thought he could. He had relieved his conscience with indignant, passionate protest, when first his eyes became fairly opened to the real nature of the enterprise; and then had supervened that terrible bout of malarial fever, his tardy recovery from which he owed entirely to the care and nursing of both Hazon and Stanninghame. But it left him for a long time weakened in mind and will no less than in body, and what could he do but succumb to the inevitable? Yet he had never entered into the sinister undertaking with the whole-heartedness of his two conscienceless confederates, and of this the latter were aware.
However, of his scruples they were tolerant enough. He was brimful of pluck, and seemed to enjoy the situation when they were attacked by overwhelming odds and had to fight hard and fiercely, such as befell more than once. And they would insidiously lay salve to his misgivings by such arguments as we have just heard Hazon adduce, or by reminding him of the fortune they were making, or even of the physical advantage he was deriving from the trip.
The latter, indeed, was a fact. The life in the open, the varying climates, frequent and inevitable hardships and never-absent peril, had made their mark upon Holmes. Once recovered from his attack, he began to put on flesh and muscle, and his eyes were clear and bright with that keen alertness which is the result of peril as a constant companion. In short, as they said, he looked twice the man he had done when lounging around the Stock Exchange or the liquor bars of Johannesburg.
Through the hot hours of noontide the raiders lie at their ease. Many are asleep, others conversing in drowsy tones, smoking or chewing tobacco. The Wangoni divide their time about equally between taking snuff and jeering at and teasing the unfortunate captives. These, crouching on the ground, relieved during the halt of their heavy forked yokes, endure it all with the stoicism of the most practical phase of humanity—the savage. No good is to be got out of bewailing their lot, therefore they do not bewail it; moreover, belonging to a savage race, and far from the highest type of the same, they have no thought of the future, and are thus spared the discomfort and anxiety of speculating as to what it may contain for them. Indeed, their chief anxiety at this moment is that of food, of which they would fain have more, and gaze with wistful eyes upon their captors, who are feasting on the remnant of what was until lately their own property. But the latter jeeringly suggest to them the expediency of their devouring each other, since they seem to have a preference for such diet.
Then, as the sun's rays abate somewhat in fierceness, the temporary camp is struck. Bearers take up their loads, fighters look to their arms, the soiled and gaudy finery of the semi-civilized sons of the Prophet contrasting with the shining skins of the naked Wangoni, even as the Winchester and Snider rifles and great sheath-knives and revolvers of the first do with the broad spears and tufted hide shields of the latter. And with the files of dejected-looking slaves, yoked together in their heavy wooden forks, or chained only, the whole caravan, numbering now some six hundred souls, moves onward.
But in the mind of the principal of the two white leaders, as he traces a cipher on the scene of their recent halt, and in that of the other, who watches him, is present, now with deepening anxiety, the same thought, the same speculation: What has become of the third?