“You not get my letter, sir?” said the latter, hurriedly, eagerly.
“Your letter? Oh, I see,” replied Elvesdon.
“I warned you sir; you not take my warning. It not my fault you here, sir.”
“It’s damned well your fault there’s a ‘here’ for us to be in, and the fault of those who sent you, you scoundrel,” returned Elvesdon bitterly, and perhaps a little unjustly. For again the self-reproach in not having taken the warning in time, came uppermost, and here was some one to vent it on.
“I help you sir—now if I can,”—said the Fingo, earnestly. “But—it not easy and—”
“Whau! Jobo!” cried a great voice as two hulking Zulus came up. “Here is much white men’s talk—too much. Get back to thy preaching—that is more in thy line. Whau!”
They were Zulus from beyond the river, and cared nothing for missionaries and their methods—let alone for a greasy humbug of an inferior black man. The Rev. Job Magwegwe slunk away before their great domineering voices and manner. And the two white men felt immeasurably more drawn to these.
“So that’s the chap who sent the letter!” remarked Elvesdon. “He’s an infernal rascal all the same. ‘Help’! Fat lot of help he’ll give us—even if he could.”
“Don’t you be too cock-sure about that, Elvesdon. I’ve known queerer things in my time than even that. It’s astonishing how things can work round—not when—but where you least expect them. It’s something to know we have a friend among the enemy let me tell you. He might be of use to us yet.”
“Well if he is I’ll forgive him—or try to. These swine, though, are responsible for nearly all the mischief. I’d hang the whole ‘Ethiopian Church’ if I had despotic power, or, at any rate, give its infernal mischievous emissaries a hundred apiece with the cat and then disband the whole rotten organisation. But, Thornhill. Do you think this schelm really would help us if he could?”